I returned to Judith Butler last week, beginning a rereading of Gender Trouble and placing Undoing Gender on order at the Experimental Art Foundation. If my works tend to have single books that define them then what will emerge sometime in October I suppose will come from her. I seem to struggle to find theorists or philosophers whose works are less than a decade old who manage to ensnare me, perhaps because the contemporary in whatever they write needs to become history and forgotten first.
Judith Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, especially these writers though also so many others who stormed through me were introduced by – I’d like to remember this as – one person in a whirl of a year that ended with me moving to Melbourne. Sometimes the past is further away than it seems.
At EAF for the mediocre James Dodd exhibition opening following a bowl of noodles, nostalgia and sentimentalism Taiwanese beef noodle soup at Dumpling King with Banksia and Gloria, and I stumble into someone I haven’t seen in maybe eight years. Yes, there is a connection to these books and writers and the person with the books. Was it that I thought of them all and maybe even told some story about them responsible for this reappearance?
Sunday to Yingchow. Not as good as Dumpling King and more expensive. But another reunion, from Berlin and many emails to Adelaide, Paea here and me too. Then to the Grace Emily for an evening of drinking and talking before the last night of Alison’s 42a. Sitting on beer carpet with Xuan remembering Taipei and Taiwan. Later in the front bar with Paea, bits of ourselves. I thought last night how close I am to being home. So elusive.
