As the rally cry ripples throughout the world, another piece of the treasured Franklin Mint is whored again. Diana Spencer, England's rose and recyclable tabloid fodder, remains dead and gone, yet still manages a mark on the global television services. Like the gang bangers with wallets too empty, the networks from one country to another hand along the cascading exclusivity of a once and future Queen of England.
Recorded by her then voice coach, Peter Settelen, in the early 90s when she still could talk for herself, Diana presents a candid affection for the revelations in her life. Operating with a rope down against the cliff-face, thoughts about monarchial conspiracies, side dish affairs with a touch of horse radish and the conceptualisation of cruelty by disdain.
The Wales on one end of the focus turns out whales over on the other. Collecting dolphins along the way, the beaches of King Island and Maria Island in Tasmania and Opoutre near Auckland found themselves with a plentiful supply of lumbering mammalian carcasses. Beached on the beaches and aching for the reach to return to their waters, the sheer timing of it all consists of a homophonic resonance between the dead Wales and the dying whales. Plus dolphins.
Nature's way of rounding out an equation no school child should have to ever grasp an understanding of.
Written on Thursday, 2 December 2004