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Household Matters, KAGAMI
Mar. 15th, 2025 07:53 pmThe big news in my life in the past week was that I paid off my home loan for my Southbank apartment, the Rookery. I am one of those lucky people who, in the midst of COVID, took out a fixed-term loan and had sufficient money to pay it off but chose not to as interest rates increased beyond the rate. I actually made a little bit by not paying off my mortgage. However, the fixed period was coming to an end, so I paid it off before my interest rate increased from 1.9% to 6.8%. I've worked at making this apartment my own space: a combination of library and wunderkammer, increasingly an art gallery and nursery, and with a cosy mini-cinema with pleasant indirect lighting. Most of all, it is a peaceful environment where the ills and tumults of the world are left at the door.
At the very least, my pet rats, Mayday and Mayhem, seem to like the study as their abode. I've bought and constructed a cage for them, but their reaction to it indicates that they prefer to live behind the bookcase. Still, it will make a handy home for them when I travel and require rat-sitters to visit, and various creature comforts (hammocks, wheel) are on their way. Speaking of comforts, Aldi has a knock-off of the famous Squatty-Potty for less than $10, and of course,e I had to buy one. To this day, it has one of the best advertisements ever produced. Finally, with an impending interstate visitor in the form of Lara from Darwin, I have a plumber turning up next week to deal with a couple of minor watery annoyances.
If there was any sense of celebration in paying off my home loan, I guess it took the form of Erica H., and I going to see "KAGAMI" at the Melbourne convention centre last night. This production by Tin Drum with Ryuichi Sakamoto provided an exceptional virtual reality photogrammetry performance, in which Sakamoto collaborated in the production, knowing full well that his cancer was going to get the better of him. It was like being in a performance with a ghost, with extraordinary clarity. I found myself sitting next to the apparition of Sakamoto, less than two metres away, watching the quiet passion of his facial features, the movement of his hair and, of course, his fingers dancing across the virtual piano as he provided beautiful and impassioned music. Of course, I will be writing about this for Rocknerd, but for now, his dulcet tones are on constant repeat in the Rookery.
At the very least, my pet rats, Mayday and Mayhem, seem to like the study as their abode. I've bought and constructed a cage for them, but their reaction to it indicates that they prefer to live behind the bookcase. Still, it will make a handy home for them when I travel and require rat-sitters to visit, and various creature comforts (hammocks, wheel) are on their way. Speaking of comforts, Aldi has a knock-off of the famous Squatty-Potty for less than $10, and of course,e I had to buy one. To this day, it has one of the best advertisements ever produced. Finally, with an impending interstate visitor in the form of Lara from Darwin, I have a plumber turning up next week to deal with a couple of minor watery annoyances.
If there was any sense of celebration in paying off my home loan, I guess it took the form of Erica H., and I going to see "KAGAMI" at the Melbourne convention centre last night. This production by Tin Drum with Ryuichi Sakamoto provided an exceptional virtual reality photogrammetry performance, in which Sakamoto collaborated in the production, knowing full well that his cancer was going to get the better of him. It was like being in a performance with a ghost, with extraordinary clarity. I found myself sitting next to the apparition of Sakamoto, less than two metres away, watching the quiet passion of his facial features, the movement of his hair and, of course, his fingers dancing across the virtual piano as he provided beautiful and impassioned music. Of course, I will be writing about this for Rocknerd, but for now, his dulcet tones are on constant repeat in the Rookery.
