Whining Magnate Goes Oscar Wilde
the universe might offer cosmic escape but our ugliness demands attention
Unfortunately, the only thing I can bring myself to write about this week — the worm that ate part of Robert F. Kennedy Jnr’s brain but which his campaign insists will not affect his ability to serve as president — is a vignette born perfectly formed.
It cannot be improved, except by the man whose brain was partly eaten by the worm who later clarified that he could “eat five more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate… I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap.”
For those wondering about the welfare of the worm, it died shortly after snacking, which makes sense to me, frankly.
Like most people, I find it easier to focus on the worm. By which I mean, the comedy of the creature. It is an objectively horrifying prospect, a brain-devouring worm, but at least this one went for RFK Jnr and not, say, a child.
I wrote all of the above more than a week ago now.
Things were bad, and I was grasping for my usual coping mechanisms and then attempting to rationalise them when I became catatonic with world-weary grief and couldn’t write a single word more because not even the fucking brain worm was capable of penetrating the glacial ice at the core of my being and making me laugh.
And then everyone in the whole world with the exception of me saw the geo-storm induced hyper-auroras.
In 1998, in the backyard of a home Mum rented from some relative of the record-holding sheep shearer Jackie Howe, the Leonid meteor shower sparked through the sky and I distinctly remember, all of 10 years’ old, that the universe felt like an antidote to the world. Specifically, it felt like the antidote to my world.
A friend once told me that he hated space because he couldn’t explain it and suggested that I loved it for the exact same reason. I didn’t seek order or understanding in the chaos of it, he said, because there was a symmetry between the cosmos and my own childhood that invoked, if not a sense of comfort, a sense of looking into the deep throat of time and saying: you too, huh?
It’s a bit grandiose, as far as stories go, but I am reminded of the comedian Daniel Kitson whose rejoinder to the accusation that the world didn’t revolve around him was: “Well from the point of view of my eyes, it kind of looks like it does.” And it all makes sense to me. There is, quite literally, no centre of the universe which has the effect of ensuring every possible location is also its middle.
Which is great news if you feel the infinite void is some kind of commentary on your existence.
The Leonid meteor shower was one of those moments, like the aurora migration of the weekend past, where so much of humanity gets to stop and feel awe together. I’ve still never seen anything like it, almost three decades later; there were so many bright fizzes of light streaking through the clear country sky. It’s like being taken to Sizzler one time and then never being allowed to return.
In 1833, the Leonids were even more spectacular with some 10,000 to 100,000 meteors every hour. Or 20 to 30 every second. People thought they were going to die:
“Upwards of 100 lay prostrate on the ground…with their hands raised, imploring God to save the world and them. The scene was truly awful; for never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell towards the Earth; east, west, north and south, it was the same.”
Colour me jealous!
Locked away and aurora-less in my house last weekend it seemed my tendency — when all about me was too hard — to dissociate through the medium of cosmic splendour was of limited use.
Sometimes you just have to deal with the world as it is. Not very well, perhaps, but muddling through all the same.
Art helps.
The French philosopher Simone Weil wrote:
“Art is an attempt to transport into a limited quantity of matter, modelled by man, an image of the infinite beauty of the entire universe. If the attempt succeeds, this portion of matter should not hide the universe, but on the contrary it should reveal its reality to all around.”
That’s one portrait from the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition titled Vincent Namatjira: Australia in Colour.
This is my aurora borealis.
And the whole world got to see this one because Gina Rinehart — depicted above — decided she did not much like her portrayal. The richest person in Australia then dispatched her emissaries from Swimming Queensland, including some gold medallists no less, to send the message to the NGA in landlocked Canberra that their patron and mega-donor, who once wrote the world’s shittest poem on a chunk of iron ore, thought the art miserable and wanted it removed.
Now, art is for everyone. Even the philistines at Swimming Queensland whose chief executive Kevin Hasemann conceded, in his utterly debased letter to the NGA director Dr Nick Mitzevich, that art “is subjective and open to interpretation, and has the power to inspire, provoke thought, and evoke emotions” deserve art, although one does get to wondering why Hasemann didn’t proactively glimpse a Klimt before penning his sad little missive to provoke a single thought in his own head.
It is perhaps the most pointless waste of swimmers since the warehouse fire at the sperm bank.
Olympic gold medallist Kyle Chalmers told The Sydney Morning Herald:
“I think she just deserves to be praised and looked upon definitely a lot better than what the portraits have made her out to be. Without her sponsorship, we would actually have nothing.”
Look, man, you might have the hydrodynamic form of a chlorinated porpoise but I don’t think Vincent fucking Namatjira is going to be taking artistic advice from a white guy who has the German phrase for “only the strong survive” tattooed across his chest.
Tell that to RFK’s worm. It was the best of us.
Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting has spent some $40 million over the last decade “supporting” Australia’s swimmers and all the magnate, herself worth more than $45 billion, asks for in return is their dignity.
Only the strong?
Give me strength.
Rinehart actually wanted two portraits removed. The second one, also by Namatjira, emerged later and is outstanding in the Weilian “reveals reality all around it” way that art ought to be.
Oscar Wilde penned The Picture of Dorian Gray as some gothic tale about the bargains we strike to excise ourselves from convention, and the ravages of time and hedonistic pursuit. Watching Eryn Jean Norvill play the titular Dorian (and 25 other characters) at the Sydney Theatre Company remains one of the most perfect experiences of my life; the rising sense of panic in Dorian’s squeaky voice as his life unravels and he reckons with the monstrosities that he visited upon himself and others. We all know the tenor of that recognition because we’ve all done it, to varying degrees.
But that’s something Gina Rinehart will never understand. To do so would require just a fleck of self-awareness and, as part of her overbearing commitment to extractive industry, she has mined all of that before selling it off in exchange for her father’s inheritance. Giving away money for power and influence when you have billions is the easiest thing in the world. I’ve no doubt Rinehart is a strong character, or that Kyle Chalmers is a good swimmer, but real strength doesn’t come from the back of the iron ore price. Or even iron ore!
Real strength isn’t even about knowing the simple truth that all our portraits are ugly and stricken.
It is knowing all of this and refusing to look away.
Observations
I picked Mum up from the airport in Brisbane yesterday after her 10-day trip into the arse end of Queensland to see her grandson. As we were driving home we saw some workers on the side of the road doing something that didn’t seem to be road work. “Must be fire ant people,” Mum said before suggesting they were hiring. “They’re looking for people,” she said. And I responded: “Well I can see where they’ve gone wrong. They should be looking for ants.” I laughed and laughed and laughed.
You can always tell when Mum has been around a baby. This is pretty much how she dressed my sister from the age of 0 to 8. But now it’s my nephew’s turn.
But also, please get ready for the best photo of grandma and child ever taken:
My heart!
And, finally, we’re about to embark on the long and arduous edits to this beast. It is a beast. I haven’t actually got them yet, they’re coming very soon, but I’ve gone up town and had the manuscript printed and bound as I am ready to face re-reading the damned thing from start to finish in preparation for the professional editor. They will have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of corrections and suggestions and requests but when they do I’d like to remember a.) the full breadth of what I have written and b.) the moments where I have missed out important bits or stuck in stuff that repeats or slows things down. Basically, I want to be mentally prepared. So I have my red pen (an Artline Fine 0.4, which I also use in blue for journal and notes but which the local newsagent has sold out of possibly because of me) and my 140,000 words wide-margin, double-spaced and a renewed sense of industry. Wish me luck.
I know so much is inexorably hard in so many ways (my own Substack is a litany of woes).
But I really want you to know that your particular skill at arranging thoughts into words never fails to make me joyfully snort coffee through my nose in a life affirming way.
Oh that photo of grandma & bub was utterly joyful.
Loved your smart arsed ant jest too 😂