Dye

Driving and taking express trains in recent days through the Clifton Hill area we have noticed posters, flyers, tags, and other media with the letters D.Y.E.

Photographs of D.Y.E. at the running ground near Merri Creek Bridge in Clifton Hill

Photographs of D.Y.E. on the south wall of the squash courts near Ivanhoe Railway Station

What is D.Y.E.?, asks Bridie at the car window. Guesses start up. Guesses get out of control.

Did You Ever

Dazzling Yippity Evergreens

Dozen Yoga Exercises

Descry Yonder Emu

Dangerous Yorker Executed

Dark Yarn Endings

Dollar Yuan Empires

Darebin Yuck Effluent

Dye Your Ear

Dead Yuppie Expenses

Dastardly Yeomen Explode

Dressy Yves-Saint-Laurent Egos

Demonstrable Yeast Extract

Decorated Yurt Entrance

Deus Yes Exclamations

Darken Your Eyelid

Delicate Yolky Eggs

Desktop Youthful Efforts

Drippy Years Elongate

Desperate Yemeni Extremists

Do Yetis Everest

Doggie’s Yard Excrement

Decades Yesterdays Ever

Don Your Earring

Delicatessen Yoghurt Excellent

Dollar Yuan Empires

Diamonds Yonks Eternity

Dense Yewtree Exfoliations

Dreamy Ylang-ylang Euphoria

Daisy Yoke Extras

Deafening Yodelling Everywhere

Dark Yellow Elephants

Detail Your Errors

Demimonde Yes-men Evaporate

Delirious Yobbos Expectorate

Damp Yacht Equipment

Designing Y-shaped Egyptians

Didgeridoo Yells Eureka

Delightful Young Eucalypts

Detox Yuletide Excesses

Deadpan Yugoslavian Elections

Downtown Yen Expenditure

Dangerous Yaks Exercise

Despite Yawns Even

Dusty Y-chromosome Ethiopia

Dante’s Yearning Exits

Dam Yam Eatery

Delicious Yabby Edibles

Dated Yearbook Events

Dumb Yank Entertainment

Drear Yarrow Evidence

Dry Yang Environment

Darling Yarra Eddies

Donuts Yep Eight

Dirty Yakka Education

Danish Yggdrasil Emblems

Daring Yo-Yo Escapades

Driving and taking express trains in different cars and trains through Clifton Hill, we come up over a few days with this list. We, being Philip Harvey, Bridie Harvey, Carol O’Connor, and Donna Ward. Mainly Philip and Bridie. Donna fixated on Egyptians. But what is D.Y.E.? Googling we find it is more prosaic, a Melbourne hip-hop band. Two links explain:

http://www.triplejunearthed.com.au/TheDYE

http://www.itsthedye.com/

These people must spend a lot of time in the Clifton Hill area. Maybe they live in Clifton Hill, or Fairfield, or Ivanhoe. They expend as much time on street promotion as music, that’s for sure. The sites explain nothing about the initials. Perhaps it’s the real names of the band members, rather than their contrived American hip-hop pseudonyms (Slam Master D, MHZ, and DJ Marshall).  Maybe they are Dave, Yuri, and Eric.

Photograph of D.Y.E. on the north wall of the squash courts near Ivanhoe Railway Station

Untitled (Philip Hunter)

Waking The land is covered in titles. In fact, all the land has been titled and there is not any land that is not titled. If this is how we wish to regard facts, though one person’s fact may be someone else’s temporary assertion. A title to land may be someone else’s mere piece of paper. Since settlement the land has been settled and settled, and in the process, titled and titled. Another word for settlement is titlement. If you are not with the title-makers then your idea of the land is different, since settlement. Titlement infers entitlement, but they are not the same. This sounds like semantics, until the boundaries are drawn, the fences built, the buildings realised, the roads reinforced. Places themselves are given titles and soon the process of naming has changed everyone’s perception of everywhere, even an innocent lake, even a line in the earth. Those who title the land give the same to their personal names. Mock crusaders who had claimed the land for a foreign monarch were, by that monarch, knighted. Rash dashers quarried the lot and landed themselves a gong. Square on posts to the horizon are fixed titles. Facts are facts, according to the latest opinion. Though any amount of assertion could change that by tomorrow morning. New titles in fancy new lettering could be posted, by special decree, and never mind those who cannot spell. But what if everyone and everywhere was still untitled? 

Dreaming Sleep was sized-up. Words of explanation were summoned. Approximate, but still words that helped toward a definition. Words of explanation became the definition. They started to determine the meaning of the sleep. Thus titled, they were hung in a large hall called a gallery. Although artist’s name, dates, materials used, centimetre edges, and other details were included with the title, far from make a distinction, they became part of the title. Brave exhibitors tried to buck this formality by calling their size-up ‘Untitled’. This was a futile farce, as people of all ages could see that ‘Untitled’ was a title. It didn’t stop these sleepers, who turned ‘Untitled’ into an approximation for any hanging to which they didn’t wish to give a name. Soon the approximation became a convention. Red dots started showing up. Visitors saw these as kiss marks, like the lipstick O’s found on cased relics of saints. Other visitors thought they were outbursts of a disease that any moment could become contagious. Whether a sign of adoration or fear, there was going to be a cost. Not that sleep is at all like this. It is more like a landscape, or cityscape, or housescape, or fire escape that is come across and could lead across those places without a signpost in sight. All dreams go untitled.

Untitled No. 4 Acheron (Philip Hunter)

 

Zličín (Prague Metro)

Because this head won’t leave you alone. Because the past lets loose its bombs, crude as that. Because the inners turn noisome, if not nauseous. Because the noise itself is an unrelent. Because you cannot do anything for them now. Because you must not do anything for them. Because who is to blame but you and they and another. Because the city withholds its care. Because of because. You will want to go away for a while. You know you should stay, or someone tells you that, but the only way out is out. It is more than a hint. Is it just the internet overload does it? The indifference, even of humans, that clicks a switch? Rather than speeches, it’s small words take out the energy? Time to take time out. You go to Zličín, at the end of the line. Zličín, yes Zličín indeed. Of all places, Zličín. Logically and instinctively, Zličín. You go in a daze more than an expectation. You step onto the floor of the carriage as if in a trance, a dream almost not felt since schooldays. Or earlier. The seat beneath you is restful. The carriage and its three strangers is a balm. They look at one another in silence, as if waiting were the norm. It is like going out beyond the end of the alphabet, where there are no more words. There should be more places in your life like Zličín. If only they could be accessed at will. Every day there are troubles. Every day some quirk to flip composure. Sure as the sun rises in all its glory, there will be some business you have to sort out. It can override. It can become every thought. It can take over. It takes over. Places like Zličín, you wish you could remind yourself they are there. And when you arrive you keep going. Out past the Zličín of Ikea and Metropole and Globus and Tesco. Out past the buses and mad motorists of Zličín. You walk into the countryside, by the side of the road, or through a park. The roads are clear and bright. A few strangers are out working for their living in the sun. Three, four, five… They must have their troubles too. You walk out into the green countryside, along old laneways, through woodlands where birds work on their nests. Not that you have ever been to Zličín, or ever will, it is simply there at the end of the Zličín line. It is there to travel to. Writing can make it seem that you have been to Zličín, knowing it is there, which doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Zličín is solid enough, terminus of not pretending. It means too you can dream of Zličíns of the soul, terminus of Line B (Yellow), knowing it is there. Go to places where you are accepted for who you are. To places where you are accepted for who you were and will be. To places where they see and hear and understand. To places where you are newly understood. Not Zličín but more than Zličín. Places you knew of already but could only reach via Zličín. Even places you could never have imagined that only exist out beyond Zličín.

Písnice (Prague Metro)

If the European money comes through they will commence construction of Line D in 2017. Such words trip off the tongue of the documentary maker. This is the proposed line to Písnice. It will travel south. It will be up to the Non-Russians this time, to make it run. It will be the Blue Line. Just as the river flows north in a languorous curve, so the metro will go south in a comical reversal. The fish swim through the pools of translucent water in this remarkable drawing made by a leaky biro. That’s what we see. But Písnice does not turn into Piscine except on the page. Písnice does not mean woodland pools and smooth patterned carp. Písnice means bus depots and supermarkets and schools and medium highrise and squarish houses with swimming pools, and pathways and ponds and parks of ashes and beeches and elms, and dogs and dandelions and lavender and snails to the Czechs. The odds are high the station will always be called Písnice, if it is built. We imagine a station of black-and-gold interiors lined on whitewashed walls with select portraits in oil of great railway men of Prague. A station of constantly changing musical vibrations set up by hundreds of chimes dangling from the roof that are tuned to different frequencies each hour and as each new train comes into the platform, replacing muzak and public announcements. A station, we imagine, of underwater wonder in which features of the Great Barrier Reef that will no longer exist are reproduced in replica for the nautical commuters. A station in which record highs and lows in world temperature are registered on a running digital screen of blue lines. A station unimaginable to either czarists or bolsheviks. They, Prague, must have mixed views about a metro line to Písnice. Who has the money to buy a railway line? Why does it go to their neighbourhood and not ours? What if it never gets finished? That the Prague City Council has not finalised the preferred route would not improve confidence in some quarters. Two options are still under review. The first involves constructing Line D as an eight kilometre seven-station branch off Line C near Pancrác Metro, at a cost of around 24.7 billion crowns (in Australia, $1.3 billion). Alternatively, D could be constructed as an independent route from the city for 29 billion crowns (A$1.5 billion). These figures trip off the tongue of the finance minister. They trip, they slur, they get out of control and inflate. But then, it could all get washed away by 2017 as the river rises, again. Or remain derelict, as economic forces cross the border in the middle of the night. Or stay unbuilt, if a war starts or the climate escalates or the computers collapse. There are plans for Line E, or Line [E], as well. E will be the Purple Line and is said to be a Circle Line. Details are sketchy. Yet the trains will travel to Písnice all going well, and barring better offers, by 2022. Slowly the reality will sink in.