Monte John Latham

“House Fandango” is a phenomenon – the product of an exuberant creativity, a mind ever restless, fluid, alert to manifold possibility, uncontained. Such an intelligence might change the world. We need to listen to Monte John Latham, then. His is a wisdom that roams wide and free, at the same time as it focuses down upon the most urgent question of our age: how should we live, how should we dwell, how should we be? Here is the dance of people and place – a veritable house fandango, and its dancemaster steps us forth from the very earth, its magic, the bedrock on which civilisation rests, to the place-nurturing, self-nurturing, self-constructing activity that is nothing less than making a home on earth. Come with Monte John – dance his dance of life-affirming love.

Pete Hay, POET, ESSAYIST AND PHILOSOPHER OF PLACE

EXCUSE ME PALE FACE …

WHAT YOU MEAN YOU SAY HOUSE?”

On the inside of her cerebral temple, Bobby's fellow passenger, like the Building Inspector, is crossing a threshold in search of a domestic future. Yet she is locked into her own preconception of what a house can be – glossy magazine, leading trendy architect. Her word is ‘vogue’. It may well be correct for her purpose. But, like a soaking of oil into a parched, sun-bleached door, her concepts may become enriched with new awareness and that which she had forgotten or overlooked. For many a soul has been unaware of even the air between us, despite its weight on our bodies, the sparkle it gives to stars and the way it carries our voices. Until reminded, say, by some persanal wind in a bus or small perfect room. There will most certainly be foul air with the fragrant, armpits and off-key psychologies. Because; the house is our product. Our useful rooms and streets are our product. It will take more than this chapter to explain what a house really is. Much is subliminal. Man's doings are people's – brilliant but on average, not sublime. His architecture, in the generic sense, is little better than his politics. You may wish to ventilate. Your medicine is coming up.