Kate Hennessy : Freelance Writer

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Brian Eno built his career by being patient with music and impatient with its confines. The former saw him pioneer ambient music in the 70s while the latter freed him to explore production, visual art, festival curation, writing and other oddball projects.

Enjoying a high strike rate of acclaim, Eno came to occupy an enviable realm where he’s recognised by most, accessible to many, yet answerable to no-one. So when he casually resumes a series 37 years after starting it, barely anyone blinks.

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First published at Smarter Business Ideas magazine, here.

The world of Olympic-level sport and the realities of running a small business have more similarities than differences according to Australian Olympic swimming coach Laurie Lawrence.

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First published in The Big Issue, here.

To tourists, The Blue Mountains region is a must-do day  trip from Sydney. Fifty kilometres from the capital, it offers spectacular vistas draped in blue mist and a fair chance of seeing an echidna. Conveniently, this area can also sate urbane yearnings to browse antique shops and recline in cafes.

To residents, ‘the Blueys’ is a place of contradictions. While the air is bright and fresh, a persistent thread of dysfunction darkens it, evidenced by higher than state average rates of psychological distress, self-harm and domestic violence. But, in this place of shadow and light, one thing is true: it’s a great place to create music. The region is spacious enough to make noise without aggrieving the neighbours, the pace is slow so inspiration can flow, and it’s close enough to Sydney to gig there.

Photo c/o Angelo Kehagias - www.akfotography.net

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First published on Mess+Noise, here.

‘Il Futuro Fantastico’

I am out on a limb. Way out, in fact, head in foliage. I’m convinced I’ve divined the source of Ned Collette’s inspiration for the first song, ‘Il Futuro Fantastico’, on his new record, 2.

When I call Ned in his Berlin apartment, the album is still a couple of weeks from being released. Had I been the type who scours the internet for other people’s interpretations (I’m not), no insight could have been gleaned on the song’s meaning. It’s too new. This is one of the pleasures of being a music writer. We hear music fresh and three-dimensional, when the meat of it still throbs perceptibly with its original muse; before the weight of the world and the written word bears down and flattens it onto a page.

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This is not how I imagined my Namib Desert tour would begin. Myself, three Germans and an English couple are held captive in our guide’s Land Rover as he flips through a booklet of disturbing aerial photographs of the yellow sand dunes we’re here to see.

The car is stationary, poised to cross the Swakopmund River. It’s not clear when the tour will resume, at least in a locomotive sense. It appears first we must learn some facts about the vast ocean of sand before us that in December 2010 became part of the largest national park in Africa and the eight-largest protected area in the world: The Namib Skeleton Coast National Park.

Yellow Dunes. Translucent palmato gecko. Image: Kate Hennessy

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