Moving toward the endless horizon listening to 'graceland' we felt that songs by a jewish new yorker recorded in south africa really captured the spirit of this red country.
I remember in the pause between evening and night watching a blood coloured moon struggle out of the desert, ascending against the dark as hope in the stomach with the initial promise of evening. The silence of the land at that moment with the prevalence of a miracle rising over the dust.
There was a night walk around Trephina gorge lead on by the mad energy of the rocks, the ancient ceremonies still chanting, my reveries ending when I realised we were lost and me shitting myself until Rob found the path back to the camp site which was less than 50 meters away from our lostness.
At the time I had the pretentious idea of making some ironic snaps of me dressed up as I would be in the city however I'd be in the desert...it was a particularly bleak period in my theoretical, spiritual and emotional life. This quickly descended in to nude photos of me contemplating nature, much better... Hard to explain but out there something lends itself to being naked. Perhaps it is the distinct lack of man, or the heat or the -not so- latent nudest within me. Rob was feeling it too.
Back in Melbourne I think of that land often, I think of the blasphemy it is to give any land a name yet here we seem to name everything and listen to nothing. The language of the land is known by the body: a renewal that continues without you and not on the promise of night nor love but love as present, improbable and real as a moon born from the heart of the desert. I return to it within and nude up.
