#different

Culture whether people admit it, understand it or don’t even think about is a massive part of society. It defines who we are, it separates us from the algorithm and it gives us our soul. Culture will always play a big part in what we do at Hoodies and to read about our views and understandings of culture, please become a subscriber today.

Opera Australia & Handa

I haven’t been to the Bregenz festival in Austria but it’s where the idea for opera on Sydney harbour came from and both are spectacular. Bregenz often has sets that go beyond anything that could be done in a regular opera house with one set including a massive skeleton over looking the stage. In Australia the sets perhaps haven’t reached the heights at Bregenz but to watch an Opera on one of the greatest Harbours in the world was a bucket list item for many a world traveller. Sadly though unless Opera Australia can come up with a new sponsor of the outdoor event it will be all over.

Haruhisa Handa who has sponsored the large scale outdoor opera productions on Sydney harbour for 15 years is pulling his money after disagreements over repertoire. Opera Australia are stuck in an unenviable position. They are a federally and state funded arts organisation but they also need to present productions that get bums on seats. In recent years to try and bring in bigger audiences OA has gone after major musicals, including staging Phantom of The Opera on Sydney harbour. Handa didn’t like this and wanted traditional opera on the harbour if they were going to use his money, but OA disagreed and bye bye money.

Musicals sell, they are what Opera was in the time of Puccini, but opera has gone from being akin to popular music to being what many see as an elitist art form for those that can afford a ticket. The balance between putting on works that sell and trying to develop the art form is a tricky. Puccini will sell, popular Verdi will sell, Mozart in most cases sells, but Giordano, Menotti, Berio and Cilea, not so much. So as much as the majority of opera has deep artistic merit if you can’t pull an audience for it then it’s not going on the stage. While the event of having opera on Sydney harbour is a spectacular thing to attend staging grand opera is a massive risk even if you’re backed by a billionaire and the big kicker, what if it rains?

It is a sad situation OA find themselves in. There are a mountain of good hard working creative people within the company and with this sponsorship deal going in the toilet some of them won’t have jobs anymore, but unfortunately such is the life of anyone who works in the creative industries and are at the whims of a billionaire.

The importance of a cultural centre

In 1995 I was put on the extra chorus list with the now defunct Victoria State Opera. I was very lucky to end up in a production of Eugene Onegin and it was from that moment my love affair with the State theatre began.

The backstage area of the state theatre is a rabbit warren of passages, dressing rooms, rehearsal rooms, a cafe and of course stage area. The most remarkable thing I ever thought about the theatre was that when you were actually in the auditorium when you looked above the stage to where the brass balls were placed that was the level of the Yarra river. The whole theatre is basically under water! Small things amuse small minds but I thought it was a fascinating achievement of engineering.

The state theatre has just reopened after a major refit and it’s good to have her back. Every major city across the world has a main theatre, a cultural soul if you like and it is so important.

Europe has theatres a plenty but here in Australia we don’t have as many so when we do get a refitted one it’s time to celebrate it, why? Because as the world does seemingly hand its soul over to Ai, governments and corporate greed we need cultural spaces that help us understand how important it is to keep creativity alive.

The State Theatre in Victoria is the soul of Melbourne, it’s where some of our greatest artists have performed and it’s where we can still go to escape the day to day. It’s where culture and creativity have their opportunities to shine and it’s where we can come together to celebrate all that is good in the world.

So next time the opportunity comes along to attend a concert or something at the State theatre please go, because our cultural soul needs filling.#keepitreal

I know we keep going on about it but in a world that seems so desperate to give away its soul and creativity we feel it’s time to start a movement that reminds us to?

#Keep it real.

I saw my first opera at 15 and loved it. I wasn’t posh, I wasn’t in the expensive seats I was in the cheap seats with people who had a love of something that touched their souls. That night at a performance of Carmen my soul was changed forever. If we do allow the Ai tech nerds to take over our lives we’ll have politicians and tech companies making sure that any kind of real voice against them is snuffed out without a whimper. So, as a result we are from now on going to add the # of keepitreal on everything we do.

#keepitreal is now along with, common sense, authenticity, accountability and different part of the whole Hoodies ideology. Now I know keep it real isn’t that original but what it is is a reminder to everyone the importance of being real, of connecting to people, of talking, of creativity by real people not an ai bot, of reading writing and discussing what we’ve learned. It’s about painting even if we stuck at it, it’s about singing in the rain and not allowing anyone to take our soul, our humanity away from us for the sake of money, greed and power.

So please, let’s do something together that shows these tech companies we still have our souls and that we will not go quietly into the night…if you’ve got a piece of writing, a painting,  a song, a poem, a photo…anything that shows your soul and what it means to have one please tag us @hoodiesmedia and use the #keepitreal tag.

Humanity is worth saving but without a soul we may as well let the nerds start handing out our UBI now. #keepitreal 

Maths is great but so is writing

Ok maths is great, yayyyyyyy! Yes all kids should be able to code and be like Elon, but what about writing? What about being able to describe the human condition rather than allowing an algorithm to write it for us?

I am one of this people that had a play with Ai writing and found it to be, well, not me so as much as it could well have been a massive time saver for me I don’t use it at all. Personally using Ai tools to write anything should be illegal! If you need an Ai bot to write anything for you then you should be ashamed. Writing is a key building block of who we are and right now we need to remember that being human is what separates us from the monkeys and the algorithm.

Will it all be too late? Will the majority of people realise too late that we could once think and write for ourselves, but allowed it to kill off jobs? It goes beyond jobs though, if we lose the opportunity, the necessity to write then who are we? We’re no one, we are a race of people who can’t think for themselves and are told what to do and say. So if you can write your own material, for work or for the joy of just expressing yourself do it and remember how important it is to be human in a world where humans aren’t as important as they used to be.

What happened to style?

The Aston Martin DB6, the Louvre, the Paris Opera House, the Patek Phillipe Calatrava, the grandest of grand stair cases, the cobbled lanes of Edinburgh and the small shop fronts that sit along side them, the mosaic tiles laid in the Block arcade in Melbourne, the gothic architecture of major cities…all designs of soul, of talent and of function. Today? Cars that look the same, art spaces designed for the soulless, watches made by tech nerds, stair cases that go up, concrete and bitumen replacing the cobbled streets with stories to tell. Architecture that has no soul functionality yes but details that are timeless? No.

What happened? Why did we go from such ornate buildings and works to functionality? Yes I can understand the point of the change but in 1925 drains were the same as they are today except drains then were ornate and functional, today they’re just mildly functional. Ok, cost is a factor in the changes but are no longer impressed with the craftsmanship of detailed work and why did we lose sight of soul?

Incorporating into all things Hoodies now is my unflinching desire to remind the world that to function it needs a soul. It needs passion, it needs to share in person experiences and it needs to feel alive. We are watching who we are as individuals taken away from us and we shouldn’t! We shouldn’t allow tech billionaires to patronise us with UBI we should say hey fuck you no thanks we’re ok doing our own thing!

Soul, passion, creativity, music, art, writing, literature, culture…they’re vital to humanity because they’re our inner being and right now we must do everything we can to protect them. So join us on the journey to save our souls, because we are never giving up on what it is to be human!