Nothing To It

It's been nearly 3 weeks since I did 400km in the Mallee.  In that time I've managed to do about 100k on the road and maybe 4 hours on the trainer in the shed.  I've driven myself into the ground running the Malled Routes rides, done my head in with technology at work, broken my back moving 15 cubic metres of soil in the garden and topped it off with the cold from hell.  Now I've got two weeks 'till the GSR, a cold, four more nights of Patti Smith and my 50th birthday to negotiate to get there.

Should be a cinch.

I can't let it go without boring you with news of the Steven Sebring film "Dream of Life" which I saw at ACMI last night.  The film was a really intimate portrait , beautifully and lovingly filmed.  It carried a fair bit of information and shed some new light on Patti's life and career.  Much more importantly it told so many stories which can't be put in words.  Often the juxtaposition of images, the soft fade of an edit, a momentary expression, glide of the hand or a strained muscle carried more information than a hundred books.  Sebring's camera opened its subject with the accuracy of a surgeon's scalpel.   The transformation from shy loving mother/daughter/friend to spitting, writhing, fire breathing performer is marvellously explored.

Before the film started Kristy Edmund, the Festival director came out to do an intro for the opening of the first major event.  She then announced that we had a bit of a surprise.  Steven and Patti came out and spoke for a while about the film.  Then Patti said she'd rather sing and knocked out "Grateful".  There wasn't a dry eye in the theatre.  She wished John Lennon a Happy Birthday and left us to "Imagine". 

Listening to her conviction and fire when speaking about George W's adventure in Iraq, conservation, torture and "using the rhetoric of freedom to justify tyranny" she glowed like a 20 year old.  It made me feel weak, pathetic and old by comparison.

I'm off in the morning to knock out 100k at a touch over lactate threshold.  Hope the cold gives up first.  Tomorrow night is concert night.

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