..a priority for humankind since the year dot. Wikipedia tells us that: 'The first mirrors used by people were most likely pools of dark, still water, or water collected in a primitive vessel of some sort. The earliest manufactured mirrors were pieces of polished stone such as obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Examples of obsidian mirrors found in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) have been dated to around 6000 BC.'
It therefore may not be totally crazy to suggest that some sort of polished stone mirror was in common use by cave persons, (perhaps to adjust the birdsnest hair style before visitors arrived), even before fire was appropriated from Nature to warm the cave hearth and cook the odd mammoth steak - and certainly before the invention of the wheel. Well, maybe not certainly then, but you get where I’m coming from. The tale of Narcissus says a mouthful about human nature and why we’ve arrived in the 21st century with every second person on the planet broadcasting their own precious image to every other second person on the planet – ‘Pete Scurvy has updated his profile picture’ must be the most common message on FaceBook.. (Don’t bother sending me your tiresome dredged-up factoid that contradicts my perfectly interesting theory).
Last March I accompanied my good friend Maria to the Love and Devotion from Persia and beyond exhibition at the Victorian State Library. There was a lot of historical information to absorb along with the fantastical works of Persian miniatures and poetry that I previously knew virtually nothing about and, while I don’t have the precise details of this particular story, (or I may have dreamt the whole thing up I suppose), I think you’ll appreciate the journey at least as much as navigating a deviated septum for instance.
Another extract from Wikipedia states: 'In China, people began making mirrors with the use of silver-mercury amalgams as early as 500 AD'. Perhaps it was this development in reflective technology that caught the eye of the Persian court, but for whatever reason, probably trade, an artist paint-off was arranged between a Persian court painter and a visiting Chinese ‘artist’. The painter began to paint, presumably in his typically detailed and fantastically illuminated Persian style – while the Chinese gentleman simply stood behind him with his latest invention and reflected it to the assembled audience, apparently to general acclaim.
There’s a strong and surprising whiff of the Da-Da-esque to this tale, like patchouli oil at a classical concert, but also something that is painfully familiar to us in the 21st century, where the serious artist is sidelined by the latest in-yer-face gadgetry and the great unwashed are again seduced into believing all the glisters is indeed gold.
Smoke and mirrors indeed.

There’s a worthy program on ABC1 TV called Big Ideas which I can generally recommend. When I remember I record various episodes and dip into them later at my leisure. I dropped into this particular episode of Big Ideas by chance as it was being broadcast and I’d already missed the first two-thirds. A fierce looking fellow wearing a pin-stripe suit jacket over a red T-shirt was delivering a diatribe that immediately had me pinned to the back of my off-pink modular sofa quivering in trepidation – and this is despite my getting the overall impression that he was actually on my side, if I can be considered as an Australian musician, which I’m happy to claim when asked my occupation.
The fierce gentleman in question turned out to be Michael Kieran-Harvey, whose name I’ve heard often enough on ABC Classic Radio. He was delivering the annual New Music Network Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and the talk was entitled ‘What Would Peggy Do?’ (I’ve heard of Peggy Glanville-Hicks too, but I know very little about her).
I’ve subsequently visited the ABC Big Ideas site and so I’m now aware that in company with Alison Morgan he presented an extract from Peggy’s opera, Sappho and played a very impressive rendition of Piano Sonata No.1 written by Australian composer, Nigel Westlake before he began his speech.
Michael’s principal target was music competitions against which he made several compelling arguments. I was once struck by the very same thing with poetry competitions, which I thought even more patently ludicrous. That anybody famous (like TS Elliott) actually won or was involved with these competitions doesn’t lend these sorts of competitions credence, although it might properly lead you to re-evaluate their work.
In my area of music, or perhaps more correctly, entertainment, the Australian Idol phenomenon (or competition by any other name) is largely understood to be the dying gasp of the doomed and moribund recording industry. Funding of the Arts will always carry a heavy price. Whether classical music, living or dead, will ever be ready to be cut loose from public funding is perhaps another question, but it’s agitators like MKH who keep on probing and criticising and generally biting the hand that feeds them that may terrify somebody or some body into ensuring there’s something vital and Australian worth supporting in the meantime.

I almost forgot. Nothing much has happened with actual mirrors since the 16th century, so I’m presenting you, my discerning reader, with a priceless innovative idea that will forever revolutionise the mirror industry on the one hand and make it conform to 21st century social norms on the other. I don’t know about you, but in fact I do, because we all must’ve wished we could see ourselves as others see us instead of back-to-front as the mirror would have us.
The solution is to replace the bathroom mirror we use to shave, put on our lipstick etc. with a TV screen and camera. We can see ourselves on the screen in reverse as with a mirror, but with the press of a button we see our face the same as the camera does or as others do. Of course you’ll be able to zoom in on trouble spots, watch the news and send e-mails etc. This idea will catch on so quickly that my name will be forgotten, that’s if it were ever known, as the miracam’s inventor almost instantly.