Limited in Sex?

I did like this story in the Herald today. In a search of child porn, police found that adult shops in King Cross were selling X-Rated DVDs!

Despite the stores openly displaying the apparently X-rated material, worth millions of dollars, on their shelves, Ms Hayes said the sale of the material had been going undetected for some time.

I am SHOCKED. D'ya hear me SHOCKED!

Of course this just illustrates the stupidity of the current law. It's illegal to sell X-Rated DVDs in NSW, even though they're widely available - I'd guess my bus to work (through Newtown, Broadway, then up George St) passes another half dozen adult shops, and I'd lay good money that each of these is carring X-Rated DVDs/videos as well - in shops and over the internet. So its a law that's usually ignored by all, both public and police. There's obvioisly a demand for porn, otherwise the shops wouldn't exist. The ready availablity of porn has done nothing to rot the fibre of society as far as I can tell, so why ban it?

Frankly, if we're willing to allow adults to freely choose to watch Today Tonight in the privacy of their own homes, I can see no reason why we shouldn't allow 'em to watch the odd bit of rumpty pumpty if they want to.

In a voice without restraint

On Saturday (10th Feb) night the Slothette and I went to see the Tallis Scholars. I'd heard of the Scholars, but I'm not sure that I'd actually ever heard any of their music, and we went along as an impulse, on the back of a positive puff piece in the paper. We both enjoy choral music, so it's passing strange that the Scholars had not registered on the radar before this. For the uninitiated, the Scholars focus on Renaissance choral music: no instruments, no accompaniment, simple, pure voices.

In short, the concert was sublime. The highlight was the performance of Thomas Tallis' motet for 40 voices, the mighty Spem in alium, performed with the assistance of the Sydney Chamber Choir. So good they did it twice, and I would have stayed for a third helping, had they offered. Also on offer were goodies such as Byrd's Mass for four voices and Parsons' Ave Maria.

I usually listen to music at work or on the bus, making it secondary to whatever distraction is at hand. Music in a concert is a different proposition, you're forced to listen to and concentrate on the music. The concert hall becomes a sensory deprivation tank where your only remaining sense is your hearing. This music allows your mind to float free, to flow with every swirl and eddy in its currents. At times the choir sounds like murmurings of a curiously harmonious crowd, perhaps a busy choral cafe, but occasionally a voice will soar free for a split second, like a silver fish breaching a stream. Other pieces have strands woven together into a tapestry, so that the listener can choose to follow either the warp or the weft of the harmony, or to sit back and feel the warmth and colour of the whole. At other times the choir sings with one voice, an instrument of clarity and power. Spem in alium, in particular, was mesmeric and shattering, destroying the soul for its duration.

So, yes, I loved it. It might be a measure of the concert's success that Sydney's notorious coughers seemed to have been silenced for the duration. The SMH also has a more polished, but still very enthusiastic review.