Whale Wattle Sonata 1 For Two Violins

On the intersection of Poetry, dance and music

When I was young I remember being taken by my mother to the South Coast and seeing the ocean and playing my violin and how it spoke to each other - the notes and just hearing.
I didn’t know that world but I must have heard it - so it was there in the Country.
Listening to the Elders and other countrymen grounds me and brings me back [to Culture and Country]. It's a very big world and somehow you manage to find your way through it and it's a gift… being strong in Culture and your Aboriginality. 

[We are] in a Country where there are a lot of human rights abuses of Aboriginal people. So its about remembering Culture and remembering the music, and this violin has spoken to many different cultures about human rights and about human experience and love and all the beautiful things that we must hold onto as humans, as people, and the violin and music that comes with it helps get past all of the things that hurt and to drive forward the best of what a human can be.
That is what inspires me. And that is what inspired me as a little boy.

On the Commission

I use a lot of improvisation, and dreaming and imagery and [so] the memories of being a child and looking at the ocean - parts of Yuin County like Mystery Bay, remembering what that looked like - I can see it now - and remembering the feeling.
I listened to Whale songs and lay down for a long time and just listened to the whales.

Sometimes I have to just get something out of me. The ugly and the beautiful, through a note, so something within me is healed, That is the aboriginal way - feeling something within that needs and is healing.

Eric Avery

#30in30 #Poetry Month