Lucy writes

No longer dancing in a world alone: Lorde opens floodgates of emotion at Sidney-Myer Music Bowl last week. (Photo: Andrew Tauber)

“Do you ever wish you could go inside a heart? Amongst the strings and atriums, beating and bleeding?” Lorde asks in a monologue booming across Kings Domain Gardens. There’s low cloud overhead and the air is thick with anticipation. A close up sepia film of the singer’s eyes peer into the souls of the 10,000-strong bellowing crowd.

The 21-year-old Auckland native threw Sidney Myer Music Bowl’s packed house into raptures from the opening bars of Homemade Dynamite, bouncing onto the barren stage in her signature wacky dance style with shameless new-found confidence.

“You look bloody beautiful mates!” The singer (born Ella Yellich-O’Connor) exclaims as she paces the stage, adorned in blue sequins and a floaty black skirt. Soon a group of contemporary dancers will join and mimic her in floating black material, ghostly behind her golden demanding presence.

“I love coming to Melbourne. I feel like we’re related in some way. When I look across at your city from home, I feel like I’m smiling at a cousin.”

"It's been a big year," she says, and it’s a colossal understatement. Her cousin’s show signifies the 63rd and final performance of the triumphant Melodrama World Tour and a bittersweet sense of an ending sits with purpose in the considered, sincere monologues punctuating the show.

The 90-minute set doesn’t let up, with the singer pulsating and twirling viscerally to her collaboration with Disclosure in Magnets, before Tennis Court, Buzzcut Season and Sober burrow deeper into B-side territory.

The Melodrama World Tour plays out in three acts, segmented by Lorde’s pensive reflections on her enormous year, accompanied by homemade footage of friends skateboarding, plunging into pools and fisheye close ups on greenhouse blooms. It’s disconcertingly intimate, but in these moments the crowd – and the squawking teenagers obnoxiously belting out every lyric off-key – disappear.

A costume change into heavily draped ivory lace accompanies the illumination of white floral neon lights, arching over the solemn singer like a holy alter.

“This year has been so fluorescent. But I do get lonely,” her voice cracks as she wipes away a tear, confessing the overwhelming pressure to deliver gold following her debut success in 2013. The distant cries of a punter professing his love in this moment of deep sincerity breaks the tension and the crowd laughs, sniffling in unison.

“I love you too,” she smiles before drifting into emotionally tumultuous ballad Liability. “The truth is I am a toy that people enjoy/ ‘Til all of the tricks don't work anymore/And then they are bored of me.”

The anxiety around her fame harks back to the awkward gothic teenager who was reluctantly thrust into the media’s gaze following the instant hysteria of Pure Heroine, and it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Lorde pauses, musing over the content of her earlier songwriting, the theme of loneliness ever-present from the beginning. “I wrote this song when I was sixteen and I was afraid of growing up,” she laughs at herself, smiling at the people in the back row, “Five years later, I think it’s all going to be okay.” A World Alone plays and the 6ft hipster standing next to me finally relents and bursts into tears. A colony of bats take flight and the dubious clouds above begin to rise. The theatrics are palpable.

Bruce Springsteen once covered the singer’s breakout hit Royals and Lorde offers a soul-full return of the favour with a stripped-back rendition of I’m On Fire.

Just as the crowd begins to tank, emotionally spent, does she pick up the pace again, ripping through her latest offerings with Perfect Places, Louvre, Supercut and anthemic Green Light pulsing beneath orange-lit strobes.

The singer returns on her signature lonesome to play one last song, Hard Feelings/ Loveless. Taking control of the synthesizer, the crowd hangs on every touch of the panel. Aptly, “Our bodies are young and blue/ A magical city, it's late and this song is for you.”

She has succeeded, as every last body in the Bowl feels - maybe selfishly so - that every bar was built just for them. That’s what Lorde does best, she makes us all feel like we’re dancing in a world alone, but it’s her world.

An underwhelming turnout to a viral chicken nugget event saw thousands fail to uphold their attendance on Friday night, Lucy Johnson writes.

Over 3000 Facebook users clicked to attend a chicken nugget dinner on Friday evening, however only 200 attended the event in person, sparking concern that social media platforms reduce the obligation to follow through with plans.

Corey Dunkin, the Sydney-sider was shocked when his informal Facebook event “went viral” after he posted in August saying he would be at George Street McDonald’s on October 6, and “if anyone wanted to join they should come”.

Dunkin wrote, "Will probably get some sweet 'n sour sauce to go along with it idk [I don’t know]."

The event was picked up and shared, with over 9000 users expressing an interest in the event. However, the nugget feast proved that fewer than one in ten users were willing to put their money – or their nuggets – where their mouth is.

Prior to the event, Dunkin alerted George Street McDonald’s of the proceedings and the franchise pledged to reserve a table and a cash register for the nugget lovers, a move which would in time prove unnecessary.

McDonald's replied to Dunkin’s announcement, “We love that you love McNuggets and we get it, so we've reserved you and your friends a table on Friday night and will have a register just for McNuggets, so you can enjoy them as quickly as possible."

Dunkin said he forgot about the event created back in August, but checked the page in the week leading up to the event to find it had become something of a phenomenon.

“It just started out as a bit of a joke, because it was the least amount of effort I could put into an event and I just wanted to see who would join me for some chicken nuggets,” Dunkin told news.com.au.

“I was going to go anyway, so I thought I’d see who wanted to come along. I didn’t say there was going to be a party or anything exciting was going to happen."

Dunkin said when he arrived at the fast food chain on Friday evening at the 7pm start there was already a crowd forming around his reserved space.

"When I entered the building, everybody started sharing and clapping and chanting," Dunkin said.

"It was amazing.”

Dunkin’s event is not the only one of its kind to amass a cult following. An event posted on Facebook last night celebrating the ten-year anniversary of Corey Worthington’s infamous house party has accumulated over 3000 likes in the space of a day (at time of print).

Similar other events calling for users to gather in public spaces for trivial matters have created a trend on social media recently.

While under ten per cent of those who RSVP’d actually bothered to chow down alongside Dunkin, the 30-year-old doesn’t appear to be too phased.

“I must be doing something right.”

For Melbourne audio producer and musician, Joel Watson, music was always the answer, it just took a lot of questioning himself and his heroes to get there, Lucy Johnson writes.

Source: Maddie Bell Photography [facebook]

THE dim, shingled walls of Fitzroy’s Worker’s Club are a far cry from the sanitised kitchens where Joel Watson crafted his culinary skills for the last decade. These venues are his stage now, and rattling the walls with his Valerie Avenue bandmates, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“When I was a kid I wanted life to be a musical,” Watson concedes, “As I grew up and went through puberty, I started wanting to communicate different messages and I knew I wanted to be in a band.”

It has been a decade since Watson left high school to pursue a career in cheffing, a completely different path to the musical he once had in mind. In that time the cyclical drainage of gruelling hours and high pressure took its toll on the Rosebud expat, however the rockstar dream is finally coming to fruition.

“My Dad was a muso and he really encouraged me to play guitar, but I picked up the bass,” the instrument he has chosen to stick to with Valerie Avenue.

“He and Mum were both really supportive of me, so that when inspiration hit me I had everything I needed.”

It wasn’t always easy for Watson to enjoy his musical endeavours though, and in his early professional years his bass took the back seat.

“I’d have half an hour spare when I was a chef and I would just write down poetry about what I was going through and get in my creative zone,” he says.

“But for a long time there music almost had no part in my life.”

Watson worked for a time at the Mornington Peninsula’s crown jewel Portsea Hotel before travelling to other esteemed eateries, and while the experience was rewarding, the intense pressure of the kitchens slowly took its toll.

“I am a pretty emotional person, and chefs really shouldn’t be”

“I was abusing drugs. I was down, depressed and I couldn’t work. But I never had nothing because I had friends who would take care of me,” he admits.

“I am the kind of person who can bottle up stress for like, a year and a half. So every eighteen months or so I’d have a breakdown, I’d quit my job and I’d take a road trip up the coast to get away.”

It was on one of his escapes Watson decided to delve deep into exploring his passion for hip hop, with hopes of gaining enough information to pursue his affinity for hip hop audio production.

On his informative road trip, a friend introduced him to Canberra MC, MLZ whom Watson dubbed “the patron saint of Australian hip hop”.

“He was a real dark knight.”

From there he was introduced to a number of formative artists including MCs Scarecrow, Toddler and Aussie hip hop collaboration Coda Conduct, all of whom he interviewed at length to deepen his understanding of the craft.

“I kept asking everybody, ‘why are you doing this?’ and ‘what got you into hip hop?’ and what I was really doing was asking everyone else so I could find my own answers,” he says.

It was MC Sereck, Paul Westgate who finally answered these questions and encouraged Watson to turn the passion into a career.

“I was like, ‘yes sir!’ [salutes]. I left like I’d been handed a torch from the blessed chosen one.”

Upon his return from the affirming road trip, Watson enrolled in audio engineering and returning to his bass.

“[In cheffing] I was surrounded by people I didn’t understand. Going from working in those environments to working with other creatives has been a big journey,” he says.

“I’m a very collaborative person and I need my little collective of a family to get things started.”

Things certainly started on a high after meeting his current creative commune through his studies at the Australian College of the Arts. Having commenced his studies in February, Watson attributes his creative hunger to the passions of his cohort.

”We are crazy, flamboyant equals bouncing around off each other chaotically. It just works,” he said.

“We are giving to each other without losing anything.”

Aside from his academic pursuits, Watson formed Valerie Avenue with classmates after hearing frontman Brad Dixon’s “powerfully expressive lyrics” at a university event.

“Our approach as a band is just taking the creative force that is Brad and putting some support behind him,” Watson says.

“Every gig has been about that and our peers really vibe off it.”

Oly Ithier, Valerie Avenue’s wild haired drummer expressed enthusiasm for working with Watson, both in their current band and on their upcoming hip hop collaboration, The Poet’s Tree.

“Recently, Joel came up with the idea that we’re starting a hip hop/ rap group. I’m drumming for that. Daniel Segrave is in it too, playing bass. I’m on the drums and Joel will be spitting some raps and playing some guitar,” Ithier confirmed.

“Joel really knows how to bring the vibes and energy for whatever genre of music we jam on, it’s like his mind is focusing on accuracy while his body and soul are connecting to something greater.”

This intangible connection to the music resonates in what Watson says is the reason he returned to his dream of “becoming a fucking rockstar”.

“In the end I had to ask myself, ‘why am I burning and cutting myself every day when I could be trying to make life into that musical I’d always wanted?’”

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW WAS CONDUCTED FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR REPUBLICATION.

In its fifth year, the Victorian Dance Festival moved from its rural tour to the big smoke, bringing with it an opportunity for all abilities to make a move, Lucy Johnson writes.

THERE were few things the population could be certain of at that time, however both confusion and time were almost always consistent.

In five short years, Dan had already established one thing: the tick, tock of the watch on his wrist. It was the only reliable factor in his world. It’s nimble second hand made its way around the white, round face without fail. Never did it stop and never was it wrong. Like the children in his classroom, Dan had mastered the telling of time far younger than the generations of digital time-tellers before him. Kindergarten teachers understood the grave importance of time-telling, and as such, worked tireless hours to impart the basic knowledge onto their students. The youth knew this skill would one day become invaluable, though he could never in his wildest dreams comprehend how his life would arc unpredictably around the steady tick, tock.

Aside from the telling of time, Dan was very clever at reading the world around him, even in the midst of its monochromatic chaos, his young brain could sense the forthcoming understanding of great things he would one day learn and share.

Within the brown bricked terrace, owned by his parents since before his elder sibling’s birth, Dan observed the world, forever looking up at the adults conversing around him. Quite the socialites within the working class suburb, his parent’s often participated in dinner parties and held social gatherings around the dark polished dining table.

Between these fascinating events and his time at primary school, Dan spent unusually long periods by the upstairs window, from where he could observe more specimens walking by on the footpath below, completely unaware they were being watched. Peeking over the window pane he could see all of the happenings of one Waratah Crescent, and it was here he saved his precious seconds by seeing first hand the accounts of his neighbours and local commuters.

For instance, Mrs Pratchett spent arduous time on her front porch drinking camomile tea, which she believed would keep her from catching a cold out in the elements. Of course Dan knew she was wrong because she was always seen coddled up beneath thick, scratchy blankets and wiping an endless stream of snot from her nose.

Mrs Pratchett lived directly across the road from Dan’s family. She didn’t have any children, and her husband, the late Mr Pratchett, had died some years before in a tragic car accident just around the corner.

The former headmistress was however fortunate enough to keep the company of Malvoleo, a majestic Russian Blue who perched upon her lap or curled loyally by her foot for all of her tea-drinking sessions.

(as published in The Guardian, Thursday, June 23, 2016)

Conservative activist Patrick Shea claims responsibility for flyer and says Safe Schools ‘is not an anti-bullying campaign, rather it is about gender ideology’

Flyers accusing the Greens and Labor of promoting “extreme sex education” by backing the Safe Schools initiative aimed at reducing homophobic bullying have been distributed by a conservative activist to homes across Victoria’s marginal electorates.

The flyer was first posted in Bendigo on Tuesday and has since been reportedly received in other electorates.

It warns voters that Safe Schools encourages boys to “cross-dress as school girls” while providing a program which “sexualises and confuses Aussie kids”.

The flyer condemns Safe Schools’ acceptance of gender diversity, stating “[it] tells school kids they don’t have to be boys and girls: they can ‘decide which gender identity fits’ – transsexual, fluid gender, genderqueer or over 50 genders”.

Patrick Shea, an Inverloch resident, has claimed responsibility for authorising the flyer’s distribution and said he stands by its claims.

“I have been involved with Australian Family Association and [conservative Christian lobby group] National Civic Council for a long time. We have people who do research and lobbying and so forth and they put the flyer together and made sure it was accurate so I was happy to sign off on it,” Shea said.

“I am a passionate believer that the Safe Schools program is not an anti-bullying campaign, rather it is about gender ideology. Teachers should be responsible for teaching the three R’s whereas it is a parent’s job to teach their children about the subjects raised [by Safe Schools].”

Shea said the flyer had been distributed across electorates with close margins.

“We have targeted areas where the Labor party has a close margin with the Liberals. We want to hit Labor where it hurts,” he said.

“The Labor party and the Greens say they will roll out the Safe Schools program nationally and we totally disagree with it. We want to stop them from having that influence in Canberra.”

Shea condemned the existing sexual education programs in state schools, saying the terminology encouraged children to become sexually active too early.

“I think we should be calling it reproductive education, rather than sex ed. Using the word ‘sex’ opens up a massive can of worms,” he said.

Victorian Greens senator Janet Rice condemned the flyers.

“The Safe Schools Coalition saves lives,” she said in a statement. “These flyers are so hurtful and hate-filled, and only encourage the discrimination of LGBTIQ young people. Australia is better than this.”

Turnbull government unveils dramatic changes to Safe Schools program

Crikey reported this week that Shea was also behind an anti-same-sex marriage flyer being distributed to voters at Victorian pre-poll venues in the seats of Bendigo, McEwen, Indi, Corangamite, Latrobe, Dunkley, Deakin, Chisholm and Hotham.

The flyer says that legalising same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws would result in “freedom of speech lost” and people being “prosecuted if they oppose same sex ‘marriage’”. It also warns that “men using women’s toilets if they identify as female” would pose a safety risk for females.

The circulation of the flyers has come less than one week after the Greens candidate for Higgins, Jason Ball, found his campaign signs vandalised with homophobic slurs.

Donna Lancaster, the Greens candidate for McMillan – the electorate in which Shea resides – said the anti-Safe Schools mailbox flyer is “extremely misleading” and could potentially hurt young people in the LGBTI community.

“It is out and out discrimination and it is cruel to use these mud-slinging tactics so close to the election at the expense of the young LGBTI community,” she said.

“Furthermore, the flyer insinuates that Safe Schools will be mandatory in all schools when this is not the case. Safe Schools is targeted at secondary school year levels and can be implemented as the individual school sees fit.”

McMillan’s Labor candidate, Chris Buckingham, also defended the policy and pointed out the inaccuracies in the propaganda.

“Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of misinformation about the Safe Schools program and its content. The Safe Schools program is voluntary, with teachers and principals choosing the elements that are age-appropriate and meet the needs of their students,” he said.

“In 2013 Labor funded the national rollout of Safe Schools in response to shocking rates of bullying, suicide and exclusion impacting upon young LGBTI Australians.

“Eighty per cent of Australian LGBTI students face verbal abuse and bullying at school. Tragically, research also shows they are six times more likely to die from suicide, and that bullying and exclusion are major factors in suicide attempts.”

One recipient of the flyer said she “couldn’t believe” the way in which the flyer misrepresented the policies of Safe Schools. Carla Dullard, an undergraduate youth work student and Safe Schools advocate, said she was brought to tears upon receiving the flyer in her mailbox.

“Safe Schools is an anti-bullying program which could ultimately save a life,” she said. “Why would we prevent that?”