(3) SATURDAY 3^rd MARCH -
BOVINE BILLET 

Fortuna would have me lose the meat raffle for good reason. Any meat no longer living would have fouled beside me as I slept in the Subaru overnight. The Outback as a wagon is not built for efficient airflow in Shepparton's searing night heat.  

Technically homeless for the weekend (no portable camping hygiene facilities = very unhygienic) I shower and sauna at the Aqua Moves aquatic facility. I then get breakfast at a local cafe and afterwards brush my teeth using their sink. My schedule for the first day of the festival is light: two classes in the morning, lunch, then a musical workshop with the same musical virtuosos I discover had played before the opening speeches at the pub courtyard last night. This I am worried about. I play guitar (completely self taught) and know enough about music to know how non-virtuosic I am at playing music. A musical workshop with musical freaks does not excite me at all. 

I worry I will be exposed. 

                                          

                                          ***

10:00am - Class at university campus - We bunker down in an empty Latrobe seminar room. Our lecturer, Sue, tells us we are waiting for Ros Abercrombe—the festival director—to come in for a chat. 

  

10:30am - Ros arrives - Ros comes on time, looking relaxed. She is the senior Red I had seen ask the boys from the pub to leave last night during the speeches.   

10:35am - Despair - I realise there are some people in life who do things and then there are some people in life who do a lot of things. It becomes evident that Ros does a fucking lot of things.  

11:50am - End of class - I leave the class feeling both inspired and very guilty. My poor work ethic makes me feel quietly embarrassed. Ros does an amount of work equivalent to that of about five people. 

12:01 - Hungry - I am looking forward to eating lunch by myself and introspectively reevaluating my life with the view to one day becoming a productive member of society like Ros.  

                                         ***

I arrive at St. Paul's Lutheran church in east Shepparton. The sun at midday means the hood of the Subaru is fit to substitute a chef's skillet in pure searing fry-power. I leave my towel and shorts from the morning swim out to dry on the bonnet and enter the church. The church is air-conditioned. It is my holy saviour from the deathly heat of a hellish day. 

I am here for the musical workshop with The Inventi Ensemble, a group of enthusiastic and freakish young people who make very nice sounds with their instruments. My classmates are already gathered in the church hall waiting to start. At first I cannot see the instruments. No saxophones or trumpets sit on the table, no Farfisa organs sit in the corner nor are there any kora's strung and ready for us dilettante Jalis to embarrass ourselves. There are instead a variety of materials lifted directly from a primary school's art cupboard. The scene reminds me of rainy crafternoons spent with the five other people in my year level at Nicholson Primary School, East Gippsland. 

Here the aim of the workshop becomes clear to me: we have come to this church to play instruments made from craft materials under the supervision of the musical freaks.    

We start, and the afternoon spirals into a frenzy of scissors and ribbons and otherworldly sounds reverberating across the hall. I elect to make a rainstick, borne from the desire to replicate the eerie atmospherics of a certain track by The Doors. With the help of the musical geniuses and classmates it comes together well. The sound of the rainstick's rice allows us to feel as if we are truly Riders on The Storm. 

Looking around I can seen others are constructing a variety of  harp-like instruments made of rubber bands and cardboard. There are also these bassoon-inspired horn abominations some kids are making, which sound to me like nothing other than the cries from a cow. This bovine touch is fitting given Shepparton's prominent love for cows, something made clear by the number of cow mannequins displayed around town.  I cannot decide amongst all the noise whether these bassoons actually replicate the misery from an abattoir bound cow (whose name I always imagine to be Daisy) or perhaps the rising ecstasy a farmer might hear from a heaving bull during an instance of natural bovine insemination. I find this thought to be somewhat interesting and relevant, but decide to keep it to myself.   

I then realise—in either a great coincidence or definite instance of divine intervention—that the collective making of stringed instruments in this particular hall of this particular sect of Christianity would mean we could be known as the Lutheran Luthiers with no fear of inaccuracy or appropriation. 

Here we are. The Lutheran Luthiers. 

We gather once again and test our instruments. The musical geniuses all declare that our crafty instruments sound great, and are well fitted for the public performance scheduled for 5:00pm. 

For the public performance scheduled.

For the public performance scheduled.

For.

The.

Public.

Performance.

Scheduled.

…