- Published on
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)
- Published on
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
- Published on
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.
- Published on
(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