Of
Wheels and Wires
Of Wheels and Wires
Originally Released Oct 1996 as Larrikin LRF 467 Through Festival
Records Australia
Re released 1999 as
Shoestring SR-14
Primarily, 'Of Wheels
and Wires' is an album of worksongs. If 'Laughter Like a Shield'
(Larrikin LRF 294) was about the things that we, as Australians,
believe; then this album is about the things that we actually do;
about the ways in which we choose to spend the precious years of our
working lives. Written between 1994 and 1996, the songs were based on
interviews with transport workers, writers, timbermillers, dancers,
officeworkers, farmers, nurses and others. They focus on the way in
which work may give, or fail to give, meaning and dignity to our
existence.
The images within the
songs were selected to deal thematically with the linear nature of
Time and the seasonal cycles of Life and Work that overlay it. The
star wheel of the universe, spoken of in 'The Colours of the Cross'
and the 'Cable and the Wheel', is mirrored, in microcosm, by the
turning of the engine pulley; the spinning of the sawmill blade and
the moving hands of a wristwatch; elements that surround us in our
daily lives. The passage of Time is reflected in the recurring linear
elements; the run of the ferry cable, the span of the tightrope wire
and the arrow straight line of a beckoning country highway. Lines and
circles, clocks and cables, wheels and wires; it is by such as these
that our working lives are lived.
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