Bird hour double dawn

I've always been a morning g person. There's something about getting out of bed before the sun that does it for me. Maybe because part of me is from the bush  and no matter where I am in the world I rise before the sun and revel in what I call Bird hour. 

It doesn't really go for an hour. Most times about 30 minutes and then it fades out with the night as the sun gets out of bed and gets to work giving us free light and life.

My mothers family are from the bush, a long way west of here, where the Thompson River runs (when its not The Dry Season). so maybe that's  why I enjoy the various tunes of the Aussie birds all singing at the same time in their different pitches. It reconnects me with that country. I can shut my eyes and pretend I'm out at Jundah under a huge crisp starry sky with a slight glow in the east.

Monochrome Monday

"In with the old, out with the new"

 Today's post needs a bit of old skool film imagery from last century.

Steamfest 2013 - Americanos Abney Park were the headliners. We had no idea what to expect as this was the first Steampunk festival in our shire. My phone has a diary note taken while they were playing their song, Steampunk Revolution, "in with the old, out with the new" which is kinda how the Steampunks approach the creative process. It reminds me of the daDaists revolutionary penchant for whacking together a few  "found objects" and voila aRt.
I forsee a surfing spinnoff - broken bits of fibreglass, fins, tattered wetties, Gath hats with propellers and brass stuff hanging off it. Hmmm, note to self, revisit other folks' reject piles in the local kerbside cleanup.

Did the Pre-Raphaelites surf?

There's some cultural anthropologists out there with too much overthinking time on their hands positing ideas like "surfing's infatuation with wood and the retro designs of the Golden Age parallels the Pre-Raphaelite's reaction to the industrial revolution and the emergence of the SteamPunk phenomenon".
Big call. Dirty big call.
Isn't it all just about cheap labour, using advertising and social media to create a demand and moving units so as to maximise profits? But lets hear them out.

As Britain lumbered inexorably towards the ecological wasteland and dehumanisation of the Industrial Revolution and it's climax with the complete devaluation of human life at the mercy of "misery technology" in the First World War, the Pre-Raphaelites constructed an artistic universe (and the occasional commune) in which medieval culture had always existed and Nature was to be revered and represented in colourful detail. The glorious past of the Italian renaissance could be invoked in dirty, grey, Industrial Revolution England.
Escapism and denial maybe, but bloody great masterpieces nonetheless.

Steve Miller from the Caloundra Mal Club showing
what a 50+ goofy footer can do with a tasty beachie.

And so we surfers are at the beach head again. The planet is getting buggered on a daily basis to feed our aspirations. Our leaders and the "free" press whip up xenophobic fear and hostility towards harmless souls fleeing hostile regimes - their lives devalued, their individualism reduced to a soundbite "swarms of boat people invading our shores". (Sounds like Botany Bay 1770 revisited)
And in some quarters of hipster cool, the shortboard was never invented, everybody free surfs for a living and let's all dress like 19th century sailors, with 21st century gadgets.
Which brings me to the SteamPunk movement.

The SteamPunk movement takes these notions to the extreme and posits an alternative history where the internal combustion engine never happened and steam driven technology evolved and mashed with art, fashion and music. And yes Led Zeppelin's craft was real. Hobits existed.
If you're in SE Qld on the weekend, check out their two day SteamPunk exposition. Me, I'll be at the Wooden Surf Show not because of any infatuation with low-fi and past-tech, but as a matter of necessity - eventually we will all be riding wood instead of these petro-chemical projectiles of resin and foam. Might take a film camera.