Excerpt from a personal letter to Mr. Huan-tzin Goh
Friday, 26 February 1999australian culture is one huge pool of potting mix just waiting for ideas to be planted and take seed in it. so far we only have some straggling weeds, a few shoots, but nothing with much depth, tapping the soul of our cultural condition. i think some themes to work on, both personal and i believe, entirely social, are latent desires for recognition, an awareness of isolation, which leads to travel or the search for some certainty that is never specific, and thus always points back home, or destroys any notion of it. hows that for a manifesto? hahaa i think australia is a bit like you at this point in time, shallow and poor, culturally speaking, but trying ever so hard to learn itself. i think the only way this zeitgeist can be achieved is for the creators of culture, like filmmakers, writers, artists, to return to very personal locations, influences, statements. the sum result will be the national, but the observers may only describe not define it, they must take it or leave it, because it will no doubt be outside of unification, of being any one thing besides a word - australian.