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So it seems Mary Poppins is taking over my world.
I'm seeing her everywhere.
A couple of weeks ago I discovered her in my local park.
Last week I saw her at the Capitol Theatre.
That night I even got to shake Mr Banks’ hand (well really it was Philip Quast, who is even cooler, and it is lovely to meet people from your childhood, people who unknowingly sang and danced into your loungeroom and heart and soul every afternoon on Playschool).
And then Mary’s image appeared on banners all over the city.
And then this week I heard an interview on Margaret Throsby with Valerie Lawson who is P.L. Travers’ biographer.
And then tonight walking down George St (how apt!)
I discovered that Town Hall has become Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane!
Hallo, hallo, hallo! What have we here then?!
Chimney sweeps and umbrellas lit with fairy lights tumbling out of Town Hall!
And the night was crisp
And the air was fresh
And it made me smile
Because anything can happen if you let it
I'm seeing her everywhere.
A couple of weeks ago I discovered her in my local park.
Last week I saw her at the Capitol Theatre.
That night I even got to shake Mr Banks’ hand (well really it was Philip Quast, who is even cooler, and it is lovely to meet people from your childhood, people who unknowingly sang and danced into your loungeroom and heart and soul every afternoon on Playschool).
And then Mary’s image appeared on banners all over the city.
And then this week I heard an interview on Margaret Throsby with Valerie Lawson who is P.L. Travers’ biographer.
And then tonight walking down George St (how apt!)
I discovered that Town Hall has become Number 17, Cherry Tree Lane!
Hallo, hallo, hallo! What have we here then?!
Chimney sweeps and umbrellas lit with fairy lights tumbling out of Town Hall!
And the night was crisp
And the air was fresh
And it made me smile
Because anything can happen if you let it
Meeting Mr Banks (Philip Quast)
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They say there is nothing new under the sun
But change is the only constant
Find new for yourself
Discover a new everyday
Singing with Indigo Trio was a delight
To learn new music that no other singer has sung before
To explore new songs
To play with other musicians and discover the new
Make changes
Every morning
Under this sun of ours
That glowing ball of chemistry
Is a new day
Original. New or back to the source from whence it came
All is light
All is song and dance
To find the new and make it your own
To be unafraid and just go out and do it
To conquer the old sayings
And make change
Make bliss
This is delight
But change is the only constant
Find new for yourself
Discover a new everyday
Singing with Indigo Trio was a delight
To learn new music that no other singer has sung before
To explore new songs
To play with other musicians and discover the new
Make changes
Every morning
Under this sun of ours
That glowing ball of chemistry
Is a new day
Original. New or back to the source from whence it came
All is light
All is song and dance
To find the new and make it your own
To be unafraid and just go out and do it
To conquer the old sayings
And make change
Make bliss
This is delight
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Imagine walking to the train station
And along the way you can see the Olgas
And an idyllic beach
And a hundred years of history marching through the tunnel
On the other side of the station an old steam train comes rushing out through green fields peppered with yellow flowers
Outside the fish and chip shop herds of seahorses swim in a blue ocean
And it is nice that someone took the effort
To paint murals around your suburb
The council made an effort to make it nicer
Prettier
Deter vandalism
Art is everywhere if you look closely enough
I have often walked down this street before
And now it sings in technicolour arrangements
(murals were painted by Robin Martin and commissioned by Ashfield Council. The Underline Project is also an initiative of Ashfield Council)
And along the way you can see the Olgas
And an idyllic beach
And a hundred years of history marching through the tunnel
On the other side of the station an old steam train comes rushing out through green fields peppered with yellow flowers
Outside the fish and chip shop herds of seahorses swim in a blue ocean
And it is nice that someone took the effort
To paint murals around your suburb
The council made an effort to make it nicer
Prettier
Deter vandalism
Art is everywhere if you look closely enough
I have often walked down this street before
And now it sings in technicolour arrangements
(murals were painted by Robin Martin and commissioned by Ashfield Council. The Underline Project is also an initiative of Ashfield Council)
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Image by Josephine Wall
Oh the joy of music
To play to sing to listen to watch
To play a freshly serviced flute
It’s like playing a new instrument
It’s fun to hit the high notes and not have to push as hard
It’s so satisfying to play and be so immersed in the music and suddenly a whole hour has passed
Sometimes the notes elude you and jump about the page and make no sense
Other times it’s like, well, music
And black notes and lines become melodies
And gloriousness
To connect with Bach
Who lived over two hundred years ago
Whole lifetimes and continents away
And yet here I am
This girl in Sydney, Australia playing Bach!
Playing Chaminade and French Romance melodies and twentieth century abstractions and studies and scales
How incredible that I should be here
In this time and space
Playing music written hundreds of years ago!
Sharing music with children
Spreading musical love across generations
My grandmother and my mother gave it to me
Remember sitting in the lounge room watching The Pajama Game with Abuela and she knew all the words. She sat there singing,
I’m not at all in love!
And you looked at her in wonder! She knows all the words!!!
And now I pass it on to children through teaching
Kids this is music and it is the best thing since sliced bread
Sharing knowledge of melodies and dynamics and inspiring people to dance and sing and act
Today I found myself telling fifty children that performing is the best thing ever
And I meant it
How exciting how thrilling how joyous
The exhausting heartbreaking wonderful thrill of it
Music! As Jonathan Larson wrote: “food of love, emotion, mathematics, isolation, rhythm, feeling, power, harmony, and heavy competition!!!!”
I’ve done my practise for the day
The girl next door is playing her violin
Houses apart, worlds apart, connected by music
To play to sing to listen to watch
To play a freshly serviced flute
It’s like playing a new instrument
It’s fun to hit the high notes and not have to push as hard
It’s so satisfying to play and be so immersed in the music and suddenly a whole hour has passed
Sometimes the notes elude you and jump about the page and make no sense
Other times it’s like, well, music
And black notes and lines become melodies
And gloriousness
To connect with Bach
Who lived over two hundred years ago
Whole lifetimes and continents away
And yet here I am
This girl in Sydney, Australia playing Bach!
Playing Chaminade and French Romance melodies and twentieth century abstractions and studies and scales
How incredible that I should be here
In this time and space
Playing music written hundreds of years ago!
Sharing music with children
Spreading musical love across generations
My grandmother and my mother gave it to me
Remember sitting in the lounge room watching The Pajama Game with Abuela and she knew all the words. She sat there singing,
I’m not at all in love!
And you looked at her in wonder! She knows all the words!!!
And now I pass it on to children through teaching
Kids this is music and it is the best thing since sliced bread
Sharing knowledge of melodies and dynamics and inspiring people to dance and sing and act
Today I found myself telling fifty children that performing is the best thing ever
And I meant it
How exciting how thrilling how joyous
The exhausting heartbreaking wonderful thrill of it
Music! As Jonathan Larson wrote: “food of love, emotion, mathematics, isolation, rhythm, feeling, power, harmony, and heavy competition!!!!”
I’ve done my practise for the day
The girl next door is playing her violin
Houses apart, worlds apart, connected by music
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Happiness is coming home on a Sunday night after a long week of work and rehearsals and teaching and being able to chat to your family on the phone and throw together a pot of potato and leek soup and have a vegetable quiche slowly cooking in the oven, ready for lunches and dinners for the following week. It's slicing up a loaf of fresh sourdough bread from the markets, ready for toasts and sandwiches. It's having Adam Hills and Co. playing in the background, making you laugh as you chop spring onions and leeks and peel potatoes and throw diced pumpkin into a pot of boiling water to soften the flesh. It's finding a double yoke in the last egg. It's going to group meditation and feeling the love and being surrounded by oodles of positive energy. It's listening to podcasts on the train on the way home. It's wearing gumboots in the rain. It's the kindness and support of your friends. It's watching a musical with scripts in hands and being so close to the actors you can literally reach out and ouch them. It's the magic of being able to watch productions of shows thousands of miles away on your laptop. It's about taking pause amidst the hustle and smiling and saying wow. I live a life enchanted. And it is magical. And you lick leek and potato soup off the wooden spoon and know you've done good. The end.
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(L) Abuelo and Abuela in Manila (R) My mum, with her siblings and cousins, aboard the Iberia, bound for Australia
The notion of writing down all that I knew about my family had been in my mind since coming to Australia... I did so with a particular audience in mind: my grand-daughters...
We are all part of a broad mosaic of many Spanish families that, since the Pacific War, have left the Philippines and today are now Canadian residents, or American, or Venezuelan, Argentinian, Chilean, the list is endless...
The couple that leaned against the ships's railings that chilly, drizzly April morning in 1963 as the "Iberia" sailed into Sydney Harbour, were thinking of their offspring when they set forth on their great migratory adventure. We believed then, and are more confident of it now, that generations yet unborn, our descendants, will join our children and grandchildren in thinking kindly of us for having put an end to the global wanderings of my branch of the family and settled in this blessed land, Australia."
Excerpt from My Family by Luis R. Esteban,
my wonderful Abuelo
my wonderful Abuelo
Forty-eight years ago you sailed into Sydney and leaned against the railing of the ship
Thinking of children who weren’t even born yet
All the children with you would one day be grown-ups and married with children of their own
Could you have imagined me, your granddaughter, named after you
Who when she went to Spain for the first time felt strangely at home
Despite the language barrier
Who longed her whole life to be European, to speak Spanish, who thrilled and delighted at finally getting a Spanish passport
How would you feel knowing your nieta is not an out and proud Australian
That I cringe at our accents and our inability to speak more than one language
That I find Australian culture frustrating
That I can’t stand that our national day of pride is a day commemorating a bloody battle thousands of miles away
That I cannot connect with Australian history because it is so contested
A few months ago I sailed into Sydney myself
I got up at 5am to watch the lights of Sydney Harbour come into view
And I thought of you leaning against the railing of the Iberia
Could you have imagined as you sailed past Nielsen Park or Point Piper or Taronga Zoo that these would be the sites of my childhood?
Strange to think that the Opera House wasn’t even finished yet
Could you have imagined me singing in the Opera House?! Or having my year 10 formal at the Zoo overlooking the giraffes looking out to the Harbour?
Could you have imagined that I would grow up among the eucalyptus and the smell of the Australian bush
And yet never feel at home in it
To feel frustrated every time someone asks “but don’t you feel so lucky?”
In two months, I’m leaving this place
To go to the land where your brothers live
And then to London to seek my own life and put down my own roots
Where I will be in forty-eight years time?
And what stories will have played out between my arrival at Heathrow and sitting down to reflect on it all?
Abuelo, forty-eight years ago you sailed to Sydney
To a land that for you was entirely sight unseen
No internet to do your research
No crystal ball to let you know that it was all going to be ok, that you were making the right decision
Our wanderings are not over yet
We are still shifting in time and space
But wherever we go, there we are
And we have our stories and our ancestors to guide the way
Thinking of children who weren’t even born yet
All the children with you would one day be grown-ups and married with children of their own
Could you have imagined me, your granddaughter, named after you
Who when she went to Spain for the first time felt strangely at home
Despite the language barrier
Who longed her whole life to be European, to speak Spanish, who thrilled and delighted at finally getting a Spanish passport
How would you feel knowing your nieta is not an out and proud Australian
That I cringe at our accents and our inability to speak more than one language
That I find Australian culture frustrating
That I can’t stand that our national day of pride is a day commemorating a bloody battle thousands of miles away
That I cannot connect with Australian history because it is so contested
A few months ago I sailed into Sydney myself
I got up at 5am to watch the lights of Sydney Harbour come into view
And I thought of you leaning against the railing of the Iberia
Could you have imagined as you sailed past Nielsen Park or Point Piper or Taronga Zoo that these would be the sites of my childhood?
Strange to think that the Opera House wasn’t even finished yet
Could you have imagined me singing in the Opera House?! Or having my year 10 formal at the Zoo overlooking the giraffes looking out to the Harbour?
Could you have imagined that I would grow up among the eucalyptus and the smell of the Australian bush
And yet never feel at home in it
To feel frustrated every time someone asks “but don’t you feel so lucky?”
In two months, I’m leaving this place
To go to the land where your brothers live
And then to London to seek my own life and put down my own roots
Where I will be in forty-eight years time?
And what stories will have played out between my arrival at Heathrow and sitting down to reflect on it all?
Abuelo, forty-eight years ago you sailed to Sydney
To a land that for you was entirely sight unseen
No internet to do your research
No crystal ball to let you know that it was all going to be ok, that you were making the right decision
Our wanderings are not over yet
We are still shifting in time and space
But wherever we go, there we are
And we have our stories and our ancestors to guide the way
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The sky is melt-your-heart-blue, and it has been snowing white flowers all over the back corner of the garden. When you go for a closer look you discover three small toadstools. There must be fairies at the bottom of the garden for all this enchantment. The breeze is warm, and the air smells like change.
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Sometimes you feel down. And tired. And frustrated. And you have to remember that it’s okay to feel this way. And you have to remember to allow yourself some down time. It is okay to sit and watch television and not be productive a thousand percent of the time. And you watch Adam Hills who is a very funny and lovely man because he is so human and genuine. And the episode is about hobbies. And you recall that your hobby is collecting moments of lovely. And Nick Vujicic warms your heart because he is all heart. And Jennifer Byrne inspires you to smile because she genuinely smiles and talks about optimism. And you remember that happiness and bliss and joy need to be consciously cultivated. And you feel better because you have had a cup of chamomile tea with honey. And you have laughed. And you have let yourself be. And that is a moment of lovely in itself. And that lifts you a little bit so you feel ready to go out into the world again. The end.
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Imagine that as a child you watched Mary Poppins on repeat and there are countless million times you have watched Mary float down from the sky and dish out coloured spoonfuls of goodness and hold the beak of her umbrella and say that will be quite enough of that thank you! And as that little child you wished and prayed that Mary would one day actually fly into your world. And then imagine one day you are living in a place you have never lived before and one morning you go out for a jog. And you are in the park and next to the playground you spy a statue of Mary Poppins. And there she is with her feet in perfect first position and her umbrella held above her head and the familiarity of her makes you gasp. And even more surprising is the discovery that P.L. Travers (who wrote the original books upon which the movie was based) once lived just a short jog from your house. And the person who unveiled the statue six years ago is your aunty. And it is surprising. And it is lovely. And your inner six year old says that is too cool. Mary Poppins lives at my park.
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And one day you find yourself in a theatre surrounded by a bunch of avid theatre nerds and you are all there because in time and space you have sat listening to the original cast recordings over and over and some of you have performed in amateur productions of his shows and the music is what gets you. And although it is not a large venue, it is entirely intimate and you can hear his breath and the plosive p’s and b’s and t’s and feel the pressure of his pinky hitting the top notes of the piano. And he exudes so much energy so much passion so much life as he plays and sings the songs you know so well but suddenly tonight they are new because the brain that wrote them is performing them in front of you and you wonder how he can possibly still be sitting with all that energy surely he must be floating surely the way he taps his foot so insistently that the whole auditorium can hear it feel its pulse surely he must need to stand but his back is straight and there he is sitting playing the piano and singing. And he is utterly marvelous. The way the music is driving and full of vigor but the lyrics are melancholy and funny all at once and the whole room is transported to intimate worlds far away in the land of America but still so familiar it could have been your own living room. You have had that conversation. You have had that heart break. You have felt that loneliness. You have shared that laugh. The magic of watching the craft come to life. Feeling like you are there as he writes the notes the chords the lyrics the song is created in front of you before your eyes inside your very ears. And all there is a piano a microphone and a man in a spotlight. And it is lovely. It is breath-taking. It is music. The end.