Old warriors and new heroes
January 31, 2011Hello Everybody,
And as we sneak into February when this sounds even more ridiculous, A Happy New Year to you all! It is a rare cloudy day here in Sydney, Australia and such moody skylines always provide the perfect backdrop to a blog. I have just got back from the New South Wales Art Gallery which currently has an exhibition called ‘The First Emperor – China’s Entombed Warriors.’ In a nutshell, the First Emperor of China built a huge underground city in 220BC as a burial site for himself, and, as part of that obvious insanity, he constructed 8000 life-sized terracotta warriors to guard the city. And we thought Jackson was a bit odd? Apparently, no one knew anything about this Terracotta Army until some farmer was out digging a water well in 1974 when he stumbled across the head of one of the clay warriors. And as the old saying goes, ‘where there’s a clay head, there’s usually an immaculately preserved 8000-strong, life-sized terracotta army..’ They have a handful of these magnificent clay warriors on display in the exhibition and the detail and condition are remarkable. All I can say is, if you like garden gnomes, this exhibition will blow your mind! And apparently, they have only excavated a small part of this underground city. It does make you think that those nutters you see everyday at the beach with metal detectors really are missing the bigger picture? If treasure-hunting is your thing, my advice is grab a shovel and get yourself up to the Shaanxi province of Northern China. Trust me. This place is where it’s at! Anyway, the exhibition is well worth a look if it comes to an art gallery near you, if only to rethink the notion that around that time the whole planet was full of people who lived in caves and hunted bison with clubs… that really was just us!
Now, on to other news. I arrived here 3 weeks ago to find Australia had been taken completely unaware by the sudden arrival of one of the most powerful forces on earth, and I ‘aint talking about Oprah. Australia was once again struck by the cruel and unprovoked hand of Mother Nature. A woman whom, as I have previously pointed out, is simply not fit to be a mother. I watched the horror of the Queensland Floods unfold on television and it was genuinely heart-breaking. As usual, the good people of Australia came out in their thousands to help. Some literally, with mops, and shovels and buckets. The extraordinary effort which saw not just neighbours helping out neighbours, but strangers helping out strangers was one of the most powerful and reassuring acts of humanity I have ever seen. On a personal note I would like to thank everyone who came along to one of the 4 fundraisers I held here in Sydney. Tickets were only $10, but we had a donations bucket at the end. The total raised was $6,845.30, which is brilliant! Also, I must thank Bill and the good people of The Factory Theatre in Marrickville, who waived their venue costs for all the shows. I am please to announce 1 more of these shows on Monday 7th February. I will let you know as soon as they go on sale. It’s gonna’ take months and months to fix this, and a shitload of money, but we’ll get there! And, may I suggest, if there is any cash left over, we build 8,000 giant terracotta aussies and put them around the state of Queensland. That should see us right for the next 2000 years…
Cheers,
Danny
P.S. I know a lot of you in New Zealand have been enquiring about tour dates. I have been really pushing my people over there to get them to me asap. They are now telling me they won’t go on sale until the middle of February. So, I am sorry about that. I have no idea why it is taking so long? If they are not on sale by then, I will book the tour myself!
