Author Archives: campbellbanks

I imagine the grass under their feet, their tanned, evenly pigmented feet. They’ve flicked off their thongs, which they wear without pain, without their toes in a death grip, as they settle in to a spot in the summer sun. The tan of their feet sweeps up over their ankles, along their long, leggy legs,Continue reading “One Size Fits, All”

You’re not supposed to remember, I think. Something about the drugs saving you from the formation of memory, your brain soaked in morphine, a flooded library. I do remember, but the memories are a bit lumpy, as if scrawled on soggy paper, with no hard edges. I remember waking up, on my side, jolted outContinue reading “Cared For, Intensively”

This concert has me stumped. My fingers have been poised on the keyboard for ages now, stuck like a sprinter with stage fright, waiting to transcribe any thought that could pass as coherent. It shouldn’t be this hard. I’ve had enough coffee to wake the dead and enough food to kill them again, so it’sContinue reading “Death and the Ravin’”

As published on http://www.cutcommonmag.com A confession: sometimes, when I am moping along a footpath through an oncoming rush of rage-inducing text-walkers, the gaudy jackets of a team of charity fundraisers will appear up ahead and – like the markings on a poison dart frog – warn me of imminent danger. I feel the icy handContinue reading “Still Oblique to the Pathétique”

I’ve been watching the cats for a while, lying in the grooves of a corrugated iron roof I can see from my third-story window in Huanchaco, Peru. Lounging about in the late afternoon sun, I can count three of them in various states of feline elongation. Like the many street dogs that wander amongst theContinue reading “Huanchaco, Barry. Barry, Huanchaco”

As published on http://www.cutcommonmag.com   Play On v_4 Collingwood Underground Carpark, November 25   I couldn’t see the cobwebs in the dark. Even much of the grey concrete that would normally give an underground car park its essence had been swallowed by the night, its mood transformed by soft decorative lighting around a makeshift wineContinue reading “No Parking”

As published on http://www.cutcommonmag.com Let them eat cake. And drink coffee. And let it be free, too. This will help entice them to come to a chamber music concert on a weekday morning. Ah geez, of all the barnacles clinging to our cultural memory bank, I’ve gone for the one with connotations of aristocratic condescensionContinue reading “O Bratsche, Where Art Thou?”

It’s a tough gig being a composer nowadays. Just imagine, a piece you’ve written for string quartet is programmed in a concert at a festival, in this case the Texas-based Mimir Chamber Music Festival in its Melbourne iteration at Melba Hall. That’s brilliant, you think. I hope they enjoy it. What else is on theContinue reading “Stuck In The Mimir With You”

As published on http://www.cutcommonmag.com It had been a rough week, if you remember. On the Monday, Leonard Cohen added his name to 2016’s long list of casualties, a list soon joined by the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe of blue pantsuits and any faith in humanity you’d held onto after Brexit. As the days rolledContinue reading “Don’t Leave Me Alone”

As published on http://www.cutcommonmag.com   The eyes gave him away. They’re hidden on the back wall of the hall, in amongst the cartographic wood panelling of which the warm, red lighting makes you feel like you’re an ember in the cosy heart of a fireplace. But I found them. His grotesque lips and the manyContinue reading “The Sound of One Penny Dropping”