Tim Winton and the occupation of the ratepayer

Reflecting on Tim Winton's understanding of how children can find themselves living in "occupied territory", and what they must do to survive...

In today's Sydney Morning Herald ("It's a risky business", 24 April 2008):

So what is it about risk? Winton reckons it's so prevalent among the young because Western culture has such safety and domesticity. "You can understand a residual appetite for wildness," he says. "But I think there's also a physical, psychological and erotic correlative to all that."

He knows all about it. He had that hunger for wildness that he gives the boys. When he was still quite young he moved from the Perth suburbs to Albany with his parents. "Growing up in a small country town, there was this palpable compulsion towards risk and that had to do with somehow defeating the empire of boredom and the empire of domesticity and the empire of the occupation ... youth often feel they're living under occupation; the occupation of the old and the occupation of the ratepayer.

"From that occupied territory, we'd go out on these pointlessly insurgent actions of risk-taking which simply involved fast cars, drugs, sexual misadventure and, where we were, firearms. And, for my tiny coterie of fellow travellers, water sports."

(The SMH article is in relation to Tom Winton's new novel, Breath.)

Staemmler's 2nd scheme of interaction

This is an initial attempt to animate Staemmler's second scheme of interaction between the partners in a couple.


I've shown the shapes shifting because that is what happens in the interactions between the partners - behaviours, and the meanings attributed to them by the other party, are in constant flux; and in constant reaction to a wide range of factors in the field* (cultural and gender to name just two), both in and out of awareness.

Frank Staemmler's schemes of interaction are in his paper Joint Constructions: On the Subject Matter of Gestalt Couple Therapy, Exemplified by Gender-Specific Misunderstandings with Regards to Intimacy, in Robert Lee's recent book The Secret Language of Intimacy.

field: "complex interaction of all effects for a given person". For more on the Gestalt field, see here and my own paper here (PDF).

Robert Lee's new book

Robert Lee was recently in Sydney and it was a pleasure to meet up with him again at the GANZ Professional Development Evening. And it was an opportunity to buy from this gentle man his new book The Secret Language of Intimacy (The GestaltPress, 2008), which continues his investigation into the dynamics of couple relationships.

As well as Robert's work and his description of how he runs his intimacy workshops, I was very taken by Frank M Staemmler's paper, in this book, on joint constructions and gender-specific misunderstandings. I'd like sometime to try to animate some of his constructions on this blog.

Another opening - "to the studios"

In a previous post I remarked on the experience of approaching a grassy rise at Mystery Bay. There was a sense of opening to the sky and the scape, and a great sense of hope.

I get a similar feeling from this wonderful work by Frank Auerbach in the current show at Rex Irwin gallery - Important drawings, prints and ceramics.

Frank Auerbach
Sketch; To the studios 1977
Ink on paper, 29.5 x 34.3cm (image Rex Irwin Art Dealer)

For me, Auerbach has captured the sense of hope and opening of a artist approaching his places of creation. And I think this sense can apply to others of us when we approach our places of creativity, whatever they may be. The title has "studios" in the plural and for me this is significant - the creative places in us are plural.