The Museum at the End of the World

Wendall -- every other Thursday

The past six weeks have been such a period of highs and lows. I've lost a beloved cousin and a friend of thirty-five years, but was also able to return to Australia for the first time since the pandemic.

As I take some time to grieve for these loved ones, I'll offer some photos from our days in Tasmania, land of the lost thylacine, and particularly, in this post, from MONA, the privately owned Museum of Old and New Art.

The Museum is one of the most extraordinary places James and I have ever visited.  You must book a 25 minute ferry-ride  to get there, and once you do, the bulk of the museum is entirely underground, tunneled out of a sandstone cliff.  Currently, it has three levels, connected by stairs and tunnels and a round, see-through elevator.  I wish I were a better photographer, but here are a few moments and objects from our visit.

The Ferry Ride:

Looking back at Hobart.

Looking back towards the "posh pit," where there's champagne for the 25 minute journey.

A detail from the stairway on the ferry.

ARRIVAL:

We climbed 96 stairs from the ferry to the outside of the Museum.

Another view from the top.

The Museum entrance.

INSIDE SPACES:

Looking into the lowest floor from above. Note the sandstone walls.

Another view from above, looking back towards one of the bars.

Another tunnel.

A view through one of the galleries.

A different view.

 

Three levels at once.

The Faro bar, complete with a James Turrell installation.

This huge architectural space has a deep pool of oil at the bottom, which becomes invisible and reflects everything around it.

The tunnel into the space.

The promontory into the liquid.

Looking at the reflection of the ceiling in the oil.

RANDOM ART:

James and the Giant Statue.

Passage to a crystal temple.

The Grotto.

Looking up towards the elevator.

The obligatory Warhols.

 

 

 

 

 And for the (mystery) writers, these two:

An entire room of empty books. Yikes.

Yep.

THE SOURCE RESTAURANT:

View from our table.

Their "grilled cheese" appetizer.

This was my risotto!

It truly is an extraordinary place, as is all of Tasmania (more on that in my next post), and it's a quick and inexpensive one hour flight from Melbourne, so if you're ever there, Cyd Redondo and I suggest a visit. Book ahead!

Hope everyone had a great time, hotel notwithstanding, at Bouchercon.

--Wendall

Writing in Hotels part 3

Wendall -- every other Thursday

As I am writing for a deadline, I will leave you this week with a few images of the place where I recently went to hide out.

Perfect noir writer's hideout

 

As most of you know, I work best in hotels and I returned to one of my favorites, in Carpinteria, California. As I’m working on a story about Hollywood, I experimented a bit with black and white and a filter or two.

 

I do a lot of my writing here on the balcony. Here are a few views from there.

Coffee required.

There's a reason why this is the room I always ask for.

If I go early enough for breakfast, I can even get the outer dining room to myself.

 

Here are a few photos from my "thinking" walks.

 

A few views from Linden and Carpinteria Avenues.

Of course, everything doesn't have to be black and white.

Working happy hour cocktail.

A bit of a filter looking down from the balcony.

And my attempts, usually futile to capture a full moon. It never looks as big in the photos as it does in the sky.

I was very lucky to be able to go away to write. The proof of whether the inspiration and focus worked or not, I guess, will be in the story.

--- Wendall

Crushed, or Howard Bannister Will Always Live in my Heart

 Wendall - every other Thursday

Ryan O’Neal passed away last week. This hit me particularly hard. Although many fell for him in Love Story, my crush, as an adolescent, came with his comic turns in in What’s Up Doc? and Paper Moon. I loved his character, Howard Bannister, so much, that I had Cyd Redondo name a Tasmanian Tiger after him in Drowned Under.

 

As Howard Bannister in What's Up Doc?

As Moses in Paper Moon

Norman Lear, another comic mastermind, whose sitcoms informed my youth, and who was articulate and hilarious to the end, passed away as well. As I approach a significant birthday during the holiday period, I’ve been thinking about what it means when your teenage crushes and early creative influences age and especially when they leave without you.

 

The groundbreaking Norman Lear

 

Everyone’s “growing up” crushes are different, although I don’t think I was the only one obsessed with Davy Jones in second grade. The Monkees, and their show, were so much a part of my elementary school years and my introduction to pop music, that it’s hard to comprehend that only Mickey Dolenz is still around.

 

Hey Hey We're the Monkees...

 

Other early crushes included Romeo and Juliet’s Leonard Whiting, The Goodbye Girl’s Richard Dreyfuss, Rob Grill of the Grassroots, and of course, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 

My first "Romeo."

Who could resist "Midnight Confessions"?

Sigh.

Especially because I share a hometown with James Taylor, he’s always been an idol and happily, more than 50 years later, like Jackson Browne, he’s still recording and performing.

 

Think I wore through three of these.

 

As we age, part of us wants to keep our early idols frozen in time. Immortal. Exactly the way we remember them. Mainly, perhaps, because it helps us stay in touch with the innocent, giddy part of ourselves that had those crushes so long ago. So, when we see them aging like we are, see them as human, it has a strange, disorienting effect, not to mention giving us a reminder of our own mortality. 

 

JT in 2020.

 

So many of  the writing influences and idols who were bigger than life in my younger years have passed on—Sam Shepherd, John Fowles, Walker Percy, Susan Sontag. They’ve joined Henry James, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, and Dickens in the pantheon. And so they are frozen, in a way, and I still have all their work to revisit and fall in love with all over again.

 

John Fowles portrait by Tomas Watson

 

Of course, famous actors, musicians, and painters will always live on in their music, in their movies, in museums, in the images of them that we can all still find online. That doesn’t keep me from feeling the planet is too empty without Prince. Or Mary Travers. Or Billy Wilder.

 

Still leaving a hole in the world.

 

But I think maybe we should remember the gift it is to see the ones we admired in our youth who are still around, still writing, still singing, still acting, still living, despite physical challenges and everything else that comes with our later years--to see what a whole, long life well-lived can be.

 

So here’s to Joni Mitchell, Helen Mirren, Anne Tyler, David Hockney, Sally Field, Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Redford, Bonnie Raitt, Margaret Atwood, and all the other artists who are still creating and paving our way, letting us know it’s never too late for us to write/paint/dance/sing.

 

Joni Mitchell, performing this year.

 

Tonight, I’m rewatching What’s Up Doc?, delighting in Ryan O’Neal’s crush-worthy performance, admiring the late Buck Henry’s hilarious script, and being thankful that Barbra Streisand still has the stamina to write a 1000 page memoir. . .

 

"You can't fight a tidal wave."

 -- Wendall

Wendall's newest Cyd Redondo mystery, Cheap Trills, is now available here:

 https://amzn.to/3PVPuc1

You can hear her on NPR's "Dog Talk" podcast here on Apple here: https://bit.ly/3GuBT7b and on Spotify here:  https://bit.ly/41as0Fo