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Keywords: Breath

  • AUSTRALIA

    Saving lives means saving culture

    • Brent Riley
    • 25 June 2020
    10 Comments

    People ask why it took the death of George Floyd to make so many Australians stand up. His experience mirrored that of so many Aboriginal people who have died while in custody. His dying words ‘I can’t breathe’ echo through our hearts, because this isn’t the first time a Bla(c)k man has uttered those words while being brutally arrested for a crime most white people would get a slap on the wrist for.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Air quality agony is the new reality

    • Megan Graham
    • 17 January 2020
    6 Comments

    It was my first time at this library. I'd come to escape the heavy smoke and my old draughty apartment. Approaching the service desk upon arrival, I admit to looking deliberately pathetic in the hopes of avoiding a laborious sign-up process to access the wi-fi. I only wanted somewhere I could work safely, breathing in non-toxic air.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    It's Christmas and I'll dance if I want to

    • Barry Gittins
    • 16 December 2019
    5 Comments

    Dance and music are as innate as breathing. Babies dance while in the womb, and the Yuletide can be prime time for 'playing music, singing and dancing [as a] healthy outlet for their emotions'. As William Stafford observed, kids dance 'before they learn there is anything that isn't music'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Wake me up when the election is over

    • Eliza Berlage
    • 10 May 2019
    5 Comments

    A recent survey found one in three women under 30 are reconsidering having children because of fears of climate change. There are young people telling their parents they have a choice between voting for the Coalition, and getting grandkids. Yet the public is not waiting with bated breath for the result on election night. They are just be waiting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election year hope and hijinks

    • Eliza Berlage
    • 18 January 2019
    10 Comments

    Entering an election year is like coming home for the holiday season. It's full of hope and hijinks but also promises and pain. And like every family, each party has its quirks. Hopefully a post-election Parliament will green light some meaningful reform to improve people's lives rather than always culture warring. But don't hold your breath.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Not even with time travel

    • Earl Livings
    • 03 December 2018
    3 Comments

    You never will know all ... You'd have to be everywhere at once, be behind and in every word and act, flow with the charged breath of mote and light. To sum up: You'd have to be God. Poor Thing. For the one fact denied God is the unforeseen.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rage, revile, repeat: Hanson's great swindle

    • Barry Gittins
    • 03 October 2018
    4 Comments

    Consider the sheer volume of Hanson's emotive denouncements over decades. The anti-intellectualism that undergirds her populism. The shifts in tack, to capture the wind of whichever tragic event puffs up her sails. We're breathing in Hanson's views without conscious recognition of their invalidity. That's why this book matters.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A night at the theatre

    • Ardakh Nurgaz
    • 22 August 2018

    An actor is holding a skull in his hand. Life has nothing to say. Someone is waiting to disembark from a bus. The stage is holding its breath.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The meaning of cake

    • Bernard Appassamy
    • 17 August 2018
    7 Comments

    Standing and waiting in a crowd at peak hour outside Newtown train station at the pedestrian crossing. A crossdresser wearing a one piece orange swimsuit, a tiny matching frilly skirt and platform shoes pushes through. The sound of a communal inbreath as she runs dangerously through the traffic to the other side.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A landscape called humanity

    • Colleen Keating, Joshua Ryujin, Rory Harris
    • 06 August 2018
    2 Comments

    Guided by divers and ropes, via a birth canal, from the womb of the cave in a dark mountain, through the tightness of crevasses. Hold your breath ... surrender fear ... heave in the labour from death to life. Why is it disasters create heroes?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Is it too hard to have a career in the arts?

    • Amelia Paxman
    • 15 June 2018
    17 Comments

    The slow, heartbreaking realisation that unfolded over a year or more was that none of this — the heavy glass trophy, breathing the same air as popular TV hosts, sitting at those fancy tables — would change anything. It was an elaborate farce, and I was still a nobody in a struggling ecosystem.

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  • RELIGION

    Accountability a virtue in churches and banks

    • John Warhurst
    • 22 May 2018
    33 Comments

    General apologies don't go far enough. Compensation is necessary, but also not enough. The reputation of the church would now be higher if there were more obvious signals of accountability by those in charge. The offer of resignation made as a group to Pope Francis by the entire Chilean hierarchy is a breath of fresh air.

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