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@blue.highersynth

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on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land.
reading and lending at @neighbourhood_bookclub.

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Join us for a free poetry writing session with Blue Hyslop this Saturday for the May instalment of CHROMATIC CIRCLE🏳️‍🌈
Through a series of directed tasks, participants will draw on queer theory to reimagine the relationship between subject and object. There will also be time for free writing, the sharing of work, and discussion.
CHROMATIC CIRCLE offers monthly arts-based sessions on Saturday afternoons for queer-identifying folks and allies. All levels of creative experience are welcome! Visit the TAC website to register now.
📅Saturday 9 May. 2-4pm
🎫Free, registration required
Bookings: https://tuggeranongarts.com/chromatic-circle-arts-program-monthly/ by @blue.highersynth

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5 months ago

It was an absolute pleasure having @blue.highersynth on the pod to talk all things storytelling and the @neighbourhood_bookclub. Their episode is out now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts (links in bio)!

Cover photo by @saltyjugs — edited with permission to fit the podcast‘s style.

#platoniclove #podcast #platonicallyyours by @blue.highersynth

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a year ago

In a quote from Umberto Eco that a lot of very annoying people use to justify purchasing a lot of very glossy books from a lot of very bright bookstores, he states that if “we consider books medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few”. I don’t often consider treating cuts, burns, and the flu with a book but, as a very annoying person, I do consider the words of an Italian post-modern philosopher to be a wonderful justification for my rapidly expanding library.

I have always enjoyed books as objects, as holders both of the written word and a more time-worn narrative. This year, the practice of accumulating has for me reached a new level, moving alongside and in tandem with my reading. I delight in seeing thoughts clarified in space as I move about the many stacks of secondhand stores, new perspectives invoked by my reading realising fresh pathways in knowing across the shelves.

I feel a moderator, facilitating conversation between texts as I brings new books, and new modes of seeing, into my home. My collection is deeply personal, deeply mine, but like the rest of my world, it is an accumulation I wish to share with others. To change and to be changed, to read and be read.

So borrow a book from me. It might have scribbles in it, or a couple of tales from the road it wants to share. But we can chat about it.

blue x by @blue.highersynth

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a year ago

When you spend enough time in a room, there is this feeling that you become the room. Just a little bit. The dining room of Such and Such is a room I will hold in me for a very long time, it’s floorplan my palm, each table number like the tips of my fingers. It is a beautiful room to have spent so much time in. The design by Mark Brook coming out in playful textures. The art curation and hang by Grace Blake and the sheer NUMBER of artists on display. Phebe Schmidt, Cassie Abraham, Nathan Nhan, Scott Chaseling, et AL. I feel like I know Tom Skeehan better than some of my extended family in how many times I have wiped, and rewiped, his tables.

When you spend enough time in a room, there is a feeling that you become the people you spend that time with. Just a little bit. I am often told I sound exactly like Caitlin Baker when I manage, and it doesn’t surprise me at all. She taught me how – continues to teach me how – to work with people with deep professionalism and respect. I am Caitlin in the way I set a table, lead a team, and hold my own against a customer with an attitude. I take inspiration from the rest of the team as well. Dash’s creativity and steadfast ability to follow through. Ross’ generosity and consideration. Mal’s frenetic energy and calm specificity. Nick’s solidness and humour. Everyone I have worked with, whether it be two shifts or two years, has given me something.

When you spend enough time in a room, with its people, there is a hope that they become like you. Just a little bit. A part of the restaurant in a scratch I accidentally left on a table, a system of organisation, a massive glass strawberry full of negroni. A part of the team in the way they tell a joke, explain a dish, or speak – just a little bit too much – to a table. A part of the guests who came in the doors, left, and then hopefully came back again.

I am not one to get sentimental when it comes to leaving. But when you spend enough time learning and – somehow – teaching in a place, it becomes hard not to. A restaurant is a place of story, and of sharing. The act of service is an art. We need places as cheeky and as honest as Such and Such. Get around it.

Viva la Such. x by @blue.highersynth

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a year ago

me + weston park by @saaarahlee taken in Weston Park, Yarralumla by @blue.highersynth

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2 years ago

EURYDICE
by Sarah Ruhl

Directed by Amy Kowalczuk
Movement by Michelle Norris

For @lexisekulessproductions at The Mill Theatre at Dairy Road

📸 @vitaemotus

@alanakateee @michaelcooperfanclub @shullerina @honestlyheila @snoosdale @mrsgooglechook by @blue.highersynth

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2 years ago

me + places by @saltyjugs 💙 taken in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory by @blue.highersynth

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2 years ago

MARY STUART
by Kate Mulvany after Friedrich Schiller

Directed by Luke Rogers
Design by Kathleen Kershaw

For @chaikatheatreco at @acthubcanberra

📸 Jane Duong by @blue.highersynth

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2 years ago

me by @saltyjugs 💙 by @blue.highersynth

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2 years ago

Coupla tasmaniacs by @blue.highersynth

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3 years ago

This one’s been hanging over my shoulder for ages, it feels like I should have finished it a while ago. Tartt’s prose is tight and engaging, instilling a disembodied sense of urgency in the reader that insists a fast pace. However a busy few months and a crippling phone addiction left me going days barely touching the book, occasionally smearing loose passages against an ever more weary brain. So instead of a brisk weekender of a thriller I find myself closing the final pages just over three months after passing my eyes over the double epigraph and cryptic prologue.

The Secret History is a tremendous achievement for a debut. Tartt’s sense of place is gorgeous. Sitting in a airport terminal on an unseasonably cool Christmas Eve, watching my flight getting delayed further and further into the night, I’m wholly wrapt in her vision of New England, can almost smell the smoke and booze-drenched academia. The atmosphere of the book is more storyteller than stage, as the world’s bleakness comes to the reader in a haze of nostalgic half-remembrance. The cold and at times heartless gaze of the protagonist imparts a feeling of ancient tragedy, of fatalism and high drama. It is a feeling reinforced by the sharply realised and deeply flawed cast of characters.
Tartt’s characters are a delight, both terrible and hilarious. While at times descriptions may drag I sit here now with such a vivid image of them it feels as though they sit next to me while I write this, chain smoking and brooding, obsessive over the aesthetics of scholarship and standing. Brought together by their own perceived otherness and their professor’s corral of entitlement, they exist in an echo chamber of ancestral wealth and ancestral ideals.

The Secret History is seductive, repulsive, and dripping with vicious mockery. I doubt it was written to be a warning against the dangers of tertiary education, but if I interpret it as such it acts as a great excuse for my lack of university attendance. by @blue.highersynth

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3 years ago

Melbum by @blue.highersynth

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3 years ago