Ross Bolleter
Piano Dreaming
Poems and stories accompanied by degrading and ruined pianos.

(C) 2002 WARPS W04

01 Southpaw 13:00

Left handed stories accompanied left-handed on a ruined piano and two loungeroom pianos. One of these, a Gulbransen, was the house piano at the Fremantle Club for thirty years. For Southpaw, this piano was tuned in just intonation. The Ruined Piano from Cue opens the piece and provides its own dark commentary on the shenanigans, thereafter. All pianos are played by one, two or three of my left hands, depending on the availability.

02 Morgan's Country 3:30

Francis Webb's celebrated poem is accompanied by the Ruined Piano from Cue. Francis Webb (1925 - 1973) is on any reckoning one of Australia's foremost poets. For considerable periods of his life he was hospitalised with schizophrenia. How well he knew the country of madness is shown by his 'insider' account of the delusional states of mind of the bushranger Frank Morgan as he's pursued to his death by the law.

03 L'invitation au Voyeur 8:57

For two readers accompanied on a loungeroom piano tuned in Just Intonation. Charles Baudelaire's famous 1854 poem, L'Invitation au Voyage is an address to his lover, urging her to go with him to the land which resembles her.

04 - 11 Track Me Down 39:30

For storyteller accompanied by two ruined pianos, plus a loungeroom piano tuned in just intonation. Track Me Down is a response to this moment of dawning reconciliation where the almost shocking capacity of indigenous people to forgive the unforgivable, meets the bigotry, rapacity and guilt of whitefella culture. This piece deals with theft on many levels: of Aboriginal land by white immigrants, of white property by Aboriginal people (a drop in the ocean by comparison with the huge and destructive larceny perpetrated on them) and so on down to more personal levels. In the mean time, in between time, there's much bumpiness, some humour, and against considerable odds, the occasional breakthrough. The spine of this piece was improvised on a Ruined Globe Piano at the Old Telegraph Station in Alice Springs. This piano is thought to be the first in Centralia. It was transported by camel from the railhead at Oodnadatta to Alice Springs. Legend has it that the camel carried this upright boudoir piano on one side of its hump, and a drum of water to counterbalance it on the other. Only the piano survives. As the Globe Piano was being recorded at the Old Telegraph Station, just beyond its high cyclone wire fences, hundreds of Aboriginal people were living it up and dying it off in the dry bed of the Todd River.