Essays – The Electrified Journalist

Dead Eyes Opened

Is there anything more depressing than a media scrum and the press conference that follows it when a politician is being pursued today? At the Addison Road Community Centre in Marrickville I witness the background reality to how politics is played out for the public’s so-called benefit – looking into a glass bowl full of piranhas pursuing their ‘Gotcha’ moments and simplistic ‘angle’ journalism.

Half-hearted Love (Australia Day 2022)

By: Mark Mordue January 26, 2022January 26, 2022

EssaysAnzac Day, Australia Day, Change the Date, Cold Chisel, COVID-19, Don Dale, First Fleet, Marcia Langton, memorials, Mental As Anything, No Fixed Address, Richard Clapton, Survival Day, UTS, VietnamLeave a Comment

The queer slant of a summer day ending. Heat, humidity… I’m half knocked out by work and its only Tuesday. Tomorrow, it’s Australia Day again.

Intuition Kingdom

One year in, one year out. Not too sure what to think of the times we are in. It feels as if we are all sliding towards a date with destiny. And despite the information that pours down over us every day, most can’t see what’s on that horizon…

Why You Shouldn’t Underestimate the Upper Class

Read a fascinating piece in the Australian Financial Review by Pru Goward called ‘Why You Shouldn’t Underestimate the Underclass’. Apparently just everybody is talking about it!

Now another of her colleagues at the AFR, Crud Blower, has replied along like-minded lines to deepen the top-of-town class analysis even further.

There seems to be no stopping this neo-liberal rethink of our social ills. Caring condescension for all! Bravo! Rah rah! Read on….

Paul Cormack playing bass with Crow at the Palace Hotel in 1988.

Immaculate Friend

By: Mark Mordue May 25, 2021May 25, 2021

Essays, MusicCrow, death, friendship, Paul Cormack, Paul Gormack, Peg4 Comments

I heard the news yesterday that my friend Paul Cormack had died. The message came to me through his daughter Lena. Many might know Paul as the founding bass player for Crow and then Peg, key musical entities on the indie scene in Sydney. I first met Paul back in very early ‘80s when we shared a house together in Petersham.

The Magic Hour

By: Mark Mordue April 13, 2020April 13, 2020

Charge/Poetry, Essayscollective unconscious, COVID-19, light, Not The Same Anymore, poetry, prose, psychic, sunsets, Terrence Malick, the magic hour, The Strokes, twlight, walking, wanderingLeave a Comment

Walking the afternoon streets of the Inner West, waiting for that time the American film director Terrence Malick called “the magic hour”. It’s still too early yet, not silver enough by half, but the coolness hints at the night to come, and the promise of the first stars…

Living in the Time of Dylan

I believe we are in the Time of Dylan as much as the Time of COVID-19, and that maybe the former will be remembered as much as the latter.

Heroes, Just for One Day

By: Mark Mordue January 28, 2020January 28, 2020

Current/Reviews, Essays, Performanceboyhood, Convic Designs, grace, Inner West Council, masculinity, scooters, skaetboards, sydenham, urban male, Waterloo ParkLeave a Comment

I was always really proud of this story. A stonking hot summer’s day in Sydenham with my youngest son and his scooter buddies at a skatepark opening. Wrote the whole thing on my iPhone, sitting there in the concrete trenches among all the skateboard and scooter action. Youth and young manhood, a state of grace, a slice of nowhere.

Fire and Ice

In this regard, there seems to be an archetypal story uniting the constellation of works being played tonight. One that might tell the tale of a man caught between two worlds; a man who must play out a fated role, with a woman’s suffering or absence haunting him, with a lost child or shadow brother in danger, with an act of violence made necessary along the way, on a journey through places hot or cold – and always endless– where his spirit might be purified and put to rest, and some idea of justice or balance be restored. I don’t know if that is the story. But it sounded something like that to me as I dreamt and woke again.

Waiting For a Chance

By: Mark Mordue January 16, 2020January 16, 2020

Book Extract, EssaysDastgah, Esfehan, Iran, Khatami, Khomeini, revolution, travel, youth1 Comment

An old postcard story from Iran (c. 1998)

I’m an Australian journalist, editor, writer and poet.

I was born and raised in Newcastle, New South Wales, dividing my teenage years between the coastal steel-mining town and Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land.

After I finished uni in Newcastle I headed for the big city, and have lived in Sydney ever since – not counting detours back to the Northern Territory and down to Thirroul on the south coast – a year overseas back-packing everywhere from Iran to New York – and a block of time studying in China as a writer.

I’ve written a few books of poetry, a collection of travel stories and a recently completed biography of Nick Cave that has taken me forever. There’s a draft of a novel I’m reworking and pretty happy about too. It’s as if all the voltage of the past has built up and despite all kinds of struggles much of what I’ve pursued is finding some fuller radiance now.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been published all over the country and internationally – from making my start in rock journalism to writing essays to doing interviews and reviews and covering all manner of things that take my interest.

Some of those crossed wires, bright sparks and loose connections can be found here.

– Mark Mordue

Back in 2004, I wrote an essay called ‘The Electrified Journalist’. It was an attempt to explore the line I’d been walking for most of my working life between non-fiction interests and fictional techniques, not to mention my attempts at a poetic style.

The New Journalism was one obvious reference. But really the lyricism of rock ‘n’ roll has always been a driver inside me, affecting me and pushing me, reshaping me.

‘The Electrified Journalist’ and was published at a wonderful music and arts website called Neumu.

The essay focuses on my rock journalism – but it speaks for much more in what I try to do. Nearly two decades on from writing it, I don’t think that much has changed.

Here’s a relevant fragment:

“I think there is a vaguely religious quality to all this, that writing about music and writing inspired by music leads to songs of innocence and experience on the page as much as between the ears. It’s a devotional act, a real love thing, which is why it can be an angry and hateful and messy thing too. I often think the best rock ‘n’ roll magazines and writers have a reach-for-the-stars touch of anarchy about them, a sense of risk that inevitably involves failure as much as moments of white-light wonder.”

‘The Electrified Journalist’ can be found in full here at weblink for Neumu.

Via Us: Poems From Inside the Corona

Via Us is a collection of poems exploring the impact of COVID-19 on an individual and the society he exists in. The meaning and nature of love, in particular relation to parenthood and connections to one’s children, is vital to the work. Questions of mortality are inevitably raised; reflections coloured by the virus as awareness of its presence grows. The writing struggles with isolation, but is also ecstatic with this same energy – connecting it to our era and its strangely separated, socially distanced, yet deeply shared mood. The goal is not just poetry, but a form of existential reportage enquiring into the day-to-day conditions of the world: journalism with an inner eye. It’s a vision supported by photographs taken at the same time as each work was being written: a few images even initiate the drive to create a poem; most are taken to enhance what is developing, or has just been set down in words. With the exception of some handwritten works from a notebook, all poems and photos were developed on an iPhone 9 using Notes and Camera facilities. All poems were developed over a period of seven weeks, from early March till just after Easter in April 2020. All poems were written in the Inner West of Sydney. Via Us is a diary of this place and time ................. PLEASE NOTE: A pdf 'Via Us' download is available below. The PayPal charge for one copy is accepted on trust. You can actually download 'Via Us' from the link supplied (just scroll down further to find) for free – or choose to donate the RRP$9.99 in multiples of 1,2,3 etc through PayPal as you wish. Any donation to project will cover time spent and costs, as well as a possible print outcome.

$9.99

Above is a video of me reading a poem of mine called ‘Tuesday Flowers’. It’s about a day with my kids. It was filmed at Jane Siberry‘s Songwriters in the Round night at Estonian House in Surry Hills. You can see Jane seated beside me, then Paul Andrews and Tanya Sparke. It was a special kind of event. Wherever you are in the world you should go when you see Jane when she is in town and it is being advertised… music, poems, conversations about creating, it’s a kind of magic opening up and different every time she gathers a community of artists together. Special thanks to Gary Crockett for making this slice of film and passing it along.

Berlin Babylon

Television – Berlin Babylon. Created and written by Tom Twyker, Achim von Borries and Hendrik Handloegten. Starring Volker Bruch as Inspector Gereon Rath and Liv Lisa Fries as Charlotte Ritter.

Books – The Plague by Albert Camus.

Film – Nada. They are closed for social distancing purposes.

Music – Shame, Drunk Tank Pink.

Performance – Kate Tempest at The Factory, Marrickville. It was something else. And yeah it has been a while since a live show was a normal thing to experience.

Count Volta demonstrates his newly-invented battery or “Voltaic pile” to Napoleon. Alessandro Volta (1745- 1827) was an Italian physicist. He became interested in electricity in 1786 after seeing the work of Galvani. Volta was the first to show that an electrical current flowed when two dissimilar metals were brought into contact. In 1800 he constructed a device which used this effect to produce a large flow of electricity. Bowls of salt solution were connected together by metal strips, each composed of copper at one end & tin or zinc at the other, and a current was produced. A compact version of this, using a stack of discs of copper, zinc & cardboard moistened with salt solution, was shown to Napolean in 1801. Upon presenting his invention, Napolean awarded Volta the medal of the Legion of Honor and made Volta a count. The unit of electrical potential, the volt (V), is named after him.