In yet another coincidence of light I was walking home straight into the setting sun while a Radiolab podcast told me the story of a man detained by a cup of tea and bathed in a hot white light. The light was followed by a roar that threw him into a field of potatoes and raked the skin off his body. The white light was filled with gamma rays. The gamma rays shot into the cells of his body, knocked electrons off his water molecules, and created free radicals determined to go after his DNA.
The man was in Hiroshima, I was following a chain link fence down by the railway tracks in a back street of Newtown but I was remembering all those hours I spent riding straight into a winter sunset on the back of an elderly horse named Lady. She was small but rangy with a choppy little stride that could shake your bones out of place. Those days I would ride my bike as fast as I could down the long hill of my street and out past the market gardens and the back gate of a navy base to the stables where I worked after school.
I was eleven years old and already worried it might be too late to be learning how to ride. I saw kids barrelling around the neighbourhood on ponies like they were born in the saddle while I diligently worked mucking out stables, mixing up buckets of feed, stacking bales of hay and wheeling endless barrows of muck up on to the top of the largest pile of shit I'd ever seen. Once or twice a week the stable manager would give the order to bring Lady up to the hitching rail and saddle her up for my lesson. More than anything I remember riding up the long side of the school* straight into the setting sun being terrified and humming "Yellow Submarine" under my breath because it was the best song for keeping time at a trot.
It's no secret that I no longer ride, living in inner city squalor like I do, but I don't suppose many people know that I dream of the horse almost every night of the week. It feels like a muscle mantra, every night in the very middle of oblivion every cell remembers not the thought but the sensation. Walking home this afternoon the big low sun and clear winter air tempted me into remembering but despite hundreds of hours spent riding straight into a winter sunset from the back of a horse it didn't quite work.
Two months ago I started taking what I call crazy pills, the doctor calls them something else, but its been a long time coming. I got so used to feeling suicidal that it was practically my normal state of being. I'm not sure exactly how the medicine works but it does, in more ways than one. I used to feel the stab of a memory or the hook of newly forming story like a physical barb. I would pull in towards me and turn it around and around until I knew just which word should come after the other to make it into a picture for somebody else to read and see. Not anymore.
Now I feel a small mental pulse and know there's a story or a sentence or half a line just waiting there for me but its foggy and unappealing and I'd rather just keep walking along watching the setting sun than follow any thought to see where it leads. I've been worrying about this because I have a December deadline for my manuscript and my progress has slowed to roughly a page a week. A page wrought only with great effort and difficulty and almost no joy. This is a new kind of problem.
Like free radicals coming after DNA I think I've been reconfigured by this medicine. I feel less, I feel better, but I miss those barbs and hooks and threads of thought. They used to lead me somewhere I was free to rearrange the alphabet into stories that made sense of everything but recently they just dangle and fade into nothing but a simple walk, like this afternoon's coincidence of light.
*fenced in rectangular arena used for training horses and riders
Suggested reading - James Bradley's "Never real and always true: on depression and creativity"
Showing posts with label Newtown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newtown. Show all posts
Death by raindrop
One moment somewhere between determination and anger, with my elbows sticking in to my own waist and one foot slipping a little sideways on the wet path, I suddenly and completely surrendered to the rain and the water revealed itself as beautiful.
Knee deep in a cold puddle, witnessing sheets of water pouring down the ordinary front steps of a house, I fell deeper into the thought of submersion and surrender. First I thought about the obvious things, daily landscapes transformed offering a clean perspective, cleansing and redemption through deluge, fluvial geomorphology and rills, concrete, concreteness and the literal and figurative concrete nature of the paths I walk.
Submersion returned as an idea and my thoughts fell first to floating and the sensation of being held by an ocean then drowning and dying and there my thoughts locked. This must be like dying. The wild oscillations between anger, determination and despair, an entire life's landscape transformed and then the surrender and revelation of beauty.
Slamming through The Peach front door in a haze halfway to convinced that I had this dying process pegged Grizelda announced that she 'got heaps wet in the rain!'. And ordered me to stop dripping on the carpet and go and have a hot shower.
Knee deep in a cold puddle, witnessing sheets of water pouring down the ordinary front steps of a house, I fell deeper into the thought of submersion and surrender. First I thought about the obvious things, daily landscapes transformed offering a clean perspective, cleansing and redemption through deluge, fluvial geomorphology and rills, concrete, concreteness and the literal and figurative concrete nature of the paths I walk.
Submersion returned as an idea and my thoughts fell first to floating and the sensation of being held by an ocean then drowning and dying and there my thoughts locked. This must be like dying. The wild oscillations between anger, determination and despair, an entire life's landscape transformed and then the surrender and revelation of beauty.
Slamming through The Peach front door in a haze halfway to convinced that I had this dying process pegged Grizelda announced that she 'got heaps wet in the rain!'. And ordered me to stop dripping on the carpet and go and have a hot shower.
Safari or What kind of cheese can you hide a small horse in?
Spencer waited with me on the corner for Mr X to come and collect me in his car. We stood in the rain, after all those years of drought I still think of the rain as rare. It rains here every day now and there are floods and the dam has overflowed but after living so long with dry bones the rain will remain, in my heart, a rare and beautiful spectacle to be embraced. We drove away leaving Spencer on a back street in Newtown. I never worry about driving away from Spencer every third person in town is someone who wants to sit down and spend time with him.
I don't know how Mr X steered so straight and steady, the rain came in diagonal drifts and all I could though the slanting darkness was freeway markers and pale lights from other cars. We arrived at the venue and I was piled up with stands and bags of leads and one heavy guitar. Mr X went about the business of setting up, plugging things in, turning things on up on stage with the rest of the band. I am used to these kinds of procedures and know the very best thing I can is stay out of the way so I wandered about a little and took in the vast electric rooms.
The venue was a club. The kind with acres of poker machines and an all you can eat buffet. Rooms opened onto other rooms onto more rooms. It was vast and lit with a combination of fluorescent lights and small dim stars meant to add atmosphere. The carpet was a uniform deep dull red but the walls varied from charcoal to beige. I found a cafe in one of the rooms and ordered myself a coffee and a sandwich, busied myself having dinner and making notes from a small table near the stage.
The band played and I intermittently wandered around having little chats with the locals. The gulf between me and the residents of Western Sydney has never seemed greater. I don't understand how this has happened. I grew up in Western Sydney, went to public schools, all my friends lived in the same area, I even went to the University of Western Sydney but there a difference so deep that I am sure it is forensically detectible at every level even beginning with DNA.
I participated in a conversation with two other women. One was dressed head-to-toe in turquoise and aqua tones she insisted on calling aquamarine. She said her eyes were the greatest eyes anyone would ever see, she told they were aquamarine the same as her birthstone and pointed at the cheap looking studs piercing her ears. The stones were aquamarine, like her eyes, but neither were beautiful. The other woman looked to me like an off-duty stripper. Bleached hair rolling over her enlarged brestas, down past her the tail of her painfully thing abdomen, huge black false eyelashes fanning like spiders across a heavily made-up face.
The two women speaking to each other. Instantly, before exchanging names, they entered a competition I have never witnessed before. It was like a prolonged and violent exchange of volleys at a championship tennis match. Each sentence a fired and condensed repor to the very worst moments of their lives.
"My husband died."
"My son is in jail."
"My husband abused me."
"I nearly died in a car crash."
"I've had two major back surgeries because I nearly died in a car crash."
"I've had two car crashes."
I asked if they knew each other because it seemed to me that something more than an introductory conversation was happening but they simultaneously denied it with, "No. Why?".
They continued firing facts at each other like bullets, sizing each other up. It was hard and impenetrable and I was well out of my depth. I have no idea how to interact in that kind of conversation. The talk came to an abrupt halt when the turquoise woman declare she was going to vomit, spilt her glass of lemonade on the floor, she told me she never ever drinks, and took off like a shot through the acres of poker machines.
A man walked up to me as I sat puzzling over what had just happened. He walked right up to me, shoe to shoe, and threw a stick of gum in my handbag. He winked at me and told it was for later. By this time the band had finished their first set and I took refuge backstage with them. I stood leaning against the wall nursing a beer Mr X provided, thinking it all over. The band began remarking on the club and it's patrons and I laughed with them at the strangeness of it all but I have to admit I was a little shaken.
What causes two women to lead a social interaction with the very worst moments of their life? Why are they so hard that they converse like battalions of soldiers charging at each other with bayonets? Why was the atmosphere so tense it made sense to me that the very next step would be violence?
On the way back to the Inner West Mr X and I pondered the nature of the town we were just in and each declared it would be impossible to live there, impossible to survive living anywhere at all like that. I panicked a little as though that is exactly what would happen, as though I was being forcefully transferred there and would have to survive as best I could. Mr X snorted when I told him, he said living there, or anywhere like that, was entirely out of the question and to my relief I believed him.
Mascarpone.
I don't know how Mr X steered so straight and steady, the rain came in diagonal drifts and all I could though the slanting darkness was freeway markers and pale lights from other cars. We arrived at the venue and I was piled up with stands and bags of leads and one heavy guitar. Mr X went about the business of setting up, plugging things in, turning things on up on stage with the rest of the band. I am used to these kinds of procedures and know the very best thing I can is stay out of the way so I wandered about a little and took in the vast electric rooms.
The venue was a club. The kind with acres of poker machines and an all you can eat buffet. Rooms opened onto other rooms onto more rooms. It was vast and lit with a combination of fluorescent lights and small dim stars meant to add atmosphere. The carpet was a uniform deep dull red but the walls varied from charcoal to beige. I found a cafe in one of the rooms and ordered myself a coffee and a sandwich, busied myself having dinner and making notes from a small table near the stage.
The band played and I intermittently wandered around having little chats with the locals. The gulf between me and the residents of Western Sydney has never seemed greater. I don't understand how this has happened. I grew up in Western Sydney, went to public schools, all my friends lived in the same area, I even went to the University of Western Sydney but there a difference so deep that I am sure it is forensically detectible at every level even beginning with DNA.
I participated in a conversation with two other women. One was dressed head-to-toe in turquoise and aqua tones she insisted on calling aquamarine. She said her eyes were the greatest eyes anyone would ever see, she told they were aquamarine the same as her birthstone and pointed at the cheap looking studs piercing her ears. The stones were aquamarine, like her eyes, but neither were beautiful. The other woman looked to me like an off-duty stripper. Bleached hair rolling over her enlarged brestas, down past her the tail of her painfully thing abdomen, huge black false eyelashes fanning like spiders across a heavily made-up face.
The two women speaking to each other. Instantly, before exchanging names, they entered a competition I have never witnessed before. It was like a prolonged and violent exchange of volleys at a championship tennis match. Each sentence a fired and condensed repor to the very worst moments of their lives.
"My husband died."
"My son is in jail."
"My husband abused me."
"I nearly died in a car crash."
"I've had two major back surgeries because I nearly died in a car crash."
"I've had two car crashes."
I asked if they knew each other because it seemed to me that something more than an introductory conversation was happening but they simultaneously denied it with, "No. Why?".
They continued firing facts at each other like bullets, sizing each other up. It was hard and impenetrable and I was well out of my depth. I have no idea how to interact in that kind of conversation. The talk came to an abrupt halt when the turquoise woman declare she was going to vomit, spilt her glass of lemonade on the floor, she told me she never ever drinks, and took off like a shot through the acres of poker machines.
A man walked up to me as I sat puzzling over what had just happened. He walked right up to me, shoe to shoe, and threw a stick of gum in my handbag. He winked at me and told it was for later. By this time the band had finished their first set and I took refuge backstage with them. I stood leaning against the wall nursing a beer Mr X provided, thinking it all over. The band began remarking on the club and it's patrons and I laughed with them at the strangeness of it all but I have to admit I was a little shaken.
What causes two women to lead a social interaction with the very worst moments of their life? Why are they so hard that they converse like battalions of soldiers charging at each other with bayonets? Why was the atmosphere so tense it made sense to me that the very next step would be violence?
On the way back to the Inner West Mr X and I pondered the nature of the town we were just in and each declared it would be impossible to live there, impossible to survive living anywhere at all like that. I panicked a little as though that is exactly what would happen, as though I was being forcefully transferred there and would have to survive as best I could. Mr X snorted when I told him, he said living there, or anywhere like that, was entirely out of the question and to my relief I believed him.
Mascarpone.
Geographical facts in numbered list form but not in chronological order
- The IGA on Enmore Rd smells like dill and offers cold comfort from the hot thick air.
- Enmore Rd is swarming with beautiful boys sporting traditional 80's metal hair, bandanas and leather pants. Quite a lot of them are wearing Skid Row singlets, the kind with wide open arm holes exposing skin drawn tight across ribs.
- The best example of the swarming men was one young one in read snakeskin pants.
- One hour ago I was drinking coffee on King St with two people, one of them was more eccentric than I am, and also slightly creepy at times. At one point he mimed throwing a sheet, thousand count Egyptian cotton, over my head and then pressed a finger to my lips saying 'shhh, shhh'.
- Nine hours ago I paid twice for my morning coffee on the way to work, once for today and once for yesterday when I forgot my wallet and they made me coffee anyway. This is the benefit of putting up with inane small talk from cafe owners every day.
- Six hours ago, in my office, I was listening to Mr X's new album when a wasp flew into my dress. I performed the most remarkable dance.
- Robert has performed his last day as a not-for-profit slave worker in Ultimo and will from this night forward be a Writer, he insisted on the capital W. I do not doubt his success.
- Walking home the humidity was so high I feared I might at any moment sweat myself into non-existence. Vanish right into thick air.
Every day there is music
If there was something here like the blowing of horns or the spies and flag boys, if there was something here instead of the shackling wide-walk bound in black denim, if there was something here other than the shrill grating of those fuckers come in on buses for a pub crawl or the students clearing out for Christmas or the untalented begging beer money with shit-out-of-tune guitars. If there was something here other than the stinking concrete corners sending back memory odours of beer and piss and dogshit and the occasional drops of blood then maybe, maybe we could build something. It's not enough to pretend, you got to practice.
A letter to Spencer in Leipzig, Germany
Dear Spencer,
There's been a Bensplosion round these parts since you've been gone. I'm not talking just one Ben but many. There are many Bens. I have spent time with at least one Ben a day for the last week. In my head I refer to them by their surnames so as not to become confused, like I do with Hunter, and Wilson, and Worrad. I suppose you've being seeing a lot of those folk lately, say hi to them for me.
Gemma has been texting me words like 'Benglorious, Benerific and Benutopia'. She said I have Bens on a revolving schedule but it's entirely unintentional.
There's been a Bensplosion round these parts since you've been gone. I'm not talking just one Ben but many. There are many Bens. I have spent time with at least one Ben a day for the last week. In my head I refer to them by their surnames so as not to become confused, like I do with Hunter, and Wilson, and Worrad. I suppose you've being seeing a lot of those folk lately, say hi to them for me.
Gemma has been texting me words like 'Benglorious, Benerific and Benutopia'. She said I have Bens on a revolving schedule but it's entirely unintentional.
How Slamma got her weird back
I got my weird back. For a little while there strange things happened to Grizelda while my days sailed smooth and boring. Grizelda was horrified, she thought we might have swapped, for good. Meanwhile back at The Peach I was like a painted ship, then yesterday happened.
It started on Facebook where I had a brief scare that maybe Alan Jones was the man behind the $1000 grant PAN magazine was awarded from the Awesome Foundation. I discovered, after some investigation, that The Horrible Mr Jones came on board after PAN received the grant, as one of ten trustees but I didn't learn that until today.
Cake-free and worried about Alan Jones* I headed out the Peach Gate onto the street but bumped head first into a neighbourhood friend of mine, who just happens to be Sam Cutler. Sam was talking about talking to Marianne Faithfull about his upcoming book then he offered me a chapter for the next issue of PAN. I said, "Well, if Marianne likes it then I'll take a look". Which was better than the real answer running around in my head that want a little something like this, "Holy fuck yes! WOOO". Elegant, I know.
After Sam and I walked up the street just shooting the breeze I hopped on a bus and delivered the biggest bunch of flowers I could afford to my friend Robert at his office, because I felt like it. I can not afford a really big bunch of flowers but he didn't seem to mind.
Later in the evening after attending one of those overly hot and crowded exhibition openings at Gaffa Gallery I headed round the corner to Dymocks on George St. I was pleased to escape the gallery. It was loud as in the inside of a firing cannon and seemed to populated by people I am calling Arthouse Bikies. They were head to toe in shades of grey and faded blue denim. Bikie like patches sewn all over their jackets, there were top hats and walnut smoking pipes and various degrees of greasy lank locks. Seriously, there were hundreds of them.
I knew my friends Andrew P Street and A.H. Cayley** were hanging around at Dymocks. Well P Street was doing one of those 'in conversation with' things with Marieke Hardy about her new book "You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead". Poor Marieke was sitting patiently behind a table signing books and being talked at by a man calling himself Edwina. 'Edwina' was sporting a balding bob and what appeared to a miniature safari dress two sizes too small. It seems to me that Ms Hardy is a patient and lovely woman.
I wound up with an invitation to dine with A.H.C, APS, Ms Hardy and her lovely publicist Kate. It was one of those restaurants that I can't afford to eat at. Seriously, I owe the A.H.C and the APS quite a bit of dinner money now. It was mildly delicious but hear this Gemma, not worth the money. The company more than made up for my horror at inadvertently spending so much on dinner. I believe I had what is called a lovely time despite feeling awkward for the poor waiter. I'm not sure how it happened but every time he arrived at our table someone was saying 'anus'.
One day later sitting here thinking about it all, inside my new haircut that makes me look like I'm five years old again, I've come to this conclusion. I've got my weird back. Grizelda, who does not enjoy unexpected events on a daily basis, is certainly glad.
* Alan Jones is the enemy of thinking, the enemy of the arts, the enemy of honest democracies and the enemy of me.
** Listen here APS and A.H.C - can we come to some kind agreement? Either you both have punctuation in your names or neither of you do. It is too hard for a fake intellectual like me to remember who does and who does not have a '.' in their name.
It started on Facebook where I had a brief scare that maybe Alan Jones was the man behind the $1000 grant PAN magazine was awarded from the Awesome Foundation. I discovered, after some investigation, that The Horrible Mr Jones came on board after PAN received the grant, as one of ten trustees but I didn't learn that until today.
Cake-free and worried about Alan Jones* I headed out the Peach Gate onto the street but bumped head first into a neighbourhood friend of mine, who just happens to be Sam Cutler. Sam was talking about talking to Marianne Faithfull about his upcoming book then he offered me a chapter for the next issue of PAN. I said, "Well, if Marianne likes it then I'll take a look". Which was better than the real answer running around in my head that want a little something like this, "Holy fuck yes! WOOO". Elegant, I know.
After Sam and I walked up the street just shooting the breeze I hopped on a bus and delivered the biggest bunch of flowers I could afford to my friend Robert at his office, because I felt like it. I can not afford a really big bunch of flowers but he didn't seem to mind.
Later in the evening after attending one of those overly hot and crowded exhibition openings at Gaffa Gallery I headed round the corner to Dymocks on George St. I was pleased to escape the gallery. It was loud as in the inside of a firing cannon and seemed to populated by people I am calling Arthouse Bikies. They were head to toe in shades of grey and faded blue denim. Bikie like patches sewn all over their jackets, there were top hats and walnut smoking pipes and various degrees of greasy lank locks. Seriously, there were hundreds of them.
I knew my friends Andrew P Street and A.H. Cayley** were hanging around at Dymocks. Well P Street was doing one of those 'in conversation with' things with Marieke Hardy about her new book "You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead". Poor Marieke was sitting patiently behind a table signing books and being talked at by a man calling himself Edwina. 'Edwina' was sporting a balding bob and what appeared to a miniature safari dress two sizes too small. It seems to me that Ms Hardy is a patient and lovely woman.
I wound up with an invitation to dine with A.H.C, APS, Ms Hardy and her lovely publicist Kate. It was one of those restaurants that I can't afford to eat at. Seriously, I owe the A.H.C and the APS quite a bit of dinner money now. It was mildly delicious but hear this Gemma, not worth the money. The company more than made up for my horror at inadvertently spending so much on dinner. I believe I had what is called a lovely time despite feeling awkward for the poor waiter. I'm not sure how it happened but every time he arrived at our table someone was saying 'anus'.
One day later sitting here thinking about it all, inside my new haircut that makes me look like I'm five years old again, I've come to this conclusion. I've got my weird back. Grizelda, who does not enjoy unexpected events on a daily basis, is certainly glad.
* Alan Jones is the enemy of thinking, the enemy of the arts, the enemy of honest democracies and the enemy of me.
** Listen here APS and A.H.C - can we come to some kind agreement? Either you both have punctuation in your names or neither of you do. It is too hard for a fake intellectual like me to remember who does and who does not have a '.' in their name.
Wenceslas
I felt like Mrs Dalloway, or Clarissa Vaughn echoing fictionally around on her way to a dying poet with fistfuls of flowers. I went to steal them from gardens but street after street bore nothing but concrete and the bare bulb-ended green things that play flowers in the hot parts of the year. I think its OK to pay for flowers when the poet isn't dying faster than anyone else so I counted out ten gold coins while the cashier held out half an impatient hand.
Five days ago my father bellowed out words like, strident, abusive, arrogant and smirked while my aged aunt thrust both arms back into memory for the right word. 'Bohemian', she said. They called me bohemian, all those relatives in formal dress. I told Spencer and we scoffed over coffee. I'm the least bohemian person I know, here, in the new town, where I have burrowed out a cave room and set a fire in the corner. There are proper curtains and thread counts and cupboard complete with cups.
Some of the others here still drink whiskey out of jars and play the same crackling old records Joe Lynch might have listened to, if he had the money. Now of course there are crates of them on corners every Saturday morning.
I didn't come here to study them, to take down hasty notes in dark corners while they rollick across perfectly stationary floors. I came here unwillingly, rudder locked eastward, anchor gone screaming into the night. I came here in cardboard boxes and settled heavily into daily clockwork risings, for money, only for the money. The notes started small and scrawling, mystifying untranslated rubbings across self-erected tombs of the wildly living. But they have grown.
Walking across a whole morning with the single purpose of flowers information came to me. Neighbours appeared at my gate on the telephone to Marianne Faithfull, lay down chapters of books for my magazine, the radio spoke with the voice of real friends, in song and story. Two people left for Spain with guitars and tour dates, Spencer and I spoke about which shirt he should wear in Paris. I said purple, he said he'd wear whatever he liked but the point was he's leaving for another overseas tour. The point is I'm sitting in my window looking out where the snow would fall if the world ever flipped and we had a chance at crisp and even.
Five days ago my father bellowed out words like, strident, abusive, arrogant and smirked while my aged aunt thrust both arms back into memory for the right word. 'Bohemian', she said. They called me bohemian, all those relatives in formal dress. I told Spencer and we scoffed over coffee. I'm the least bohemian person I know, here, in the new town, where I have burrowed out a cave room and set a fire in the corner. There are proper curtains and thread counts and cupboard complete with cups.
Some of the others here still drink whiskey out of jars and play the same crackling old records Joe Lynch might have listened to, if he had the money. Now of course there are crates of them on corners every Saturday morning.
I didn't come here to study them, to take down hasty notes in dark corners while they rollick across perfectly stationary floors. I came here unwillingly, rudder locked eastward, anchor gone screaming into the night. I came here in cardboard boxes and settled heavily into daily clockwork risings, for money, only for the money. The notes started small and scrawling, mystifying untranslated rubbings across self-erected tombs of the wildly living. But they have grown.
Walking across a whole morning with the single purpose of flowers information came to me. Neighbours appeared at my gate on the telephone to Marianne Faithfull, lay down chapters of books for my magazine, the radio spoke with the voice of real friends, in song and story. Two people left for Spain with guitars and tour dates, Spencer and I spoke about which shirt he should wear in Paris. I said purple, he said he'd wear whatever he liked but the point was he's leaving for another overseas tour. The point is I'm sitting in my window looking out where the snow would fall if the world ever flipped and we had a chance at crisp and even.
Communal ridiculous celebrates cat AIDS, in her hand
I don't know who's idea it was to start singing but we were all doing it. Spencer was cranking out song after song on the guitar and somewhere along the way we all lost our shit and just sang as loud as we could. Waving around our arms and creating one hell of an unharmonious racket.
It might have been the cold, the hours we spent UFO spotting in the park in the middle of winter, Spencer's idea of an ace birthday party, or the sheer volume of drinking under our belts. After the park where Spencer spotted fifteen UFO's and nobody else any at all we congregated in Spencer's lounge room. There were already people there, drunk as fuck and making little sense to anyone but themselves. One small woman in the corner held up her hand in greeting, showing off a fresh looking graze on the heel of her palm. She said 'I've got cat AIDS' then went back to the bottom of her glass.
Someone explained on the small woman's behalf that she had slipped on some pavers and grazed her hand. She was convinced that there was cat urine somewhere in the mix and now she was telling everyone about her new dose of hopefully imaginary cat AIDS.
Songs turned into time and we sang our way through three more bottles of wine. There were highlights, old favourites, songs nobody at all knew the words for so we all just made noises that kind of sounded like the right words were somewhere underneath the almost melodic synchronised guttural utterances.
Spencer started playing 'Zombie' by The Cranberries. It seemed like we all knew the words, everyone jumping in with;
But you see, it's not me, it's not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying...
In your head, in your head, Zombie, zombie, zombie.
It might have been the cold, the hours we spent UFO spotting in the park in the middle of winter, Spencer's idea of an ace birthday party, or the sheer volume of drinking under our belts. After the park where Spencer spotted fifteen UFO's and nobody else any at all we congregated in Spencer's lounge room. There were already people there, drunk as fuck and making little sense to anyone but themselves. One small woman in the corner held up her hand in greeting, showing off a fresh looking graze on the heel of her palm. She said 'I've got cat AIDS' then went back to the bottom of her glass.
Someone explained on the small woman's behalf that she had slipped on some pavers and grazed her hand. She was convinced that there was cat urine somewhere in the mix and now she was telling everyone about her new dose of hopefully imaginary cat AIDS.
Songs turned into time and we sang our way through three more bottles of wine. There were highlights, old favourites, songs nobody at all knew the words for so we all just made noises that kind of sounded like the right words were somewhere underneath the almost melodic synchronised guttural utterances.
Spencer started playing 'Zombie' by The Cranberries. It seemed like we all knew the words, everyone jumping in with;
But you see, it's not me, it's not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying...
In your head, in your head, Zombie, zombie, zombie.
Then came a pause in the singing, no one remembering the next verse, some of us started just humming and harmonising the right sounds but from the corner a clear voice started ringing out singing.
'I've got cat aids, in my haannd, in my hand, in my hand
I'm still fighting'.
There was a communal shrug then everyone, and I mean everyone, all fifteen of us, fell into the song with enthusiasm so wild it was frightening.
'She's got cat aiiiids in her haaaaand, in her haaaaaaaand, cat aids cat aids, but she's fighting'.
Spencer had his wits about him and started playing us in a loop. The small woman in the corner repeated her solo verse, holding her injured palm out and rising from her chair like she was on wires. Three drummers in the room started banging beer bottles on the table and someone picked up another guitar. The chorus swelled again and again 'She's got cat aiiiids, in her haaaaaand, cat aids cat aids, but she's fighting'.
Spencer played us in a loop for an age but the song only gained momentum. We were for those minutes joined together in the height of a communal ridiculous. Together as one voice of call and response, all of us screaming words through laughter. The night and the songs went until just about dawn with moments so strong you could pen a book about them but that one, the impromptu chorus of cat AIDS, well that was really something.
The ideal height of a front fence is the same as the height of a good pony
The urge to walk always comes as the sun sinks. I used to walk south-west, down the short hill towards the tall footbridge where a person can stand and think with a proper horizon, one that curves with the world and doesn't end with a building. Lately though the urge to walk comes accompanied by an urge to skim near the homes of friends. Just glide by the entrance to their street or glance up at a window and see a warm glow behind curtains.
I thought it was enough to navigate around just knowing where friends will come back to at the end of each long day but I'm not sure now. Last night I swept under the grim railway line, hollow train sounds, flaking posters and a dankness not justified by the climate push me out the other side, fast. I turn up beside the railway track and follow the cyclone fence along its little journey guarding concrete sleepers bolted into beds of sharp grey rocks and the place where I imagined I once saw a severed finger.
I look hard at the street sign for Baltic St, named I guess for my ancestors. I looked hard at the dinner party guests on the weekend too, no salt from the Baltic detectable in their outlook, only the high sweep of a cheekbone or curve of a nostril would give you any idea at all.
Halfway up the slow hill Robert's Eyrie comes into view. Crazy cube of a building. I can just make out the vase full of knitting needles by the window. I only know what it is because I have a vase like that, on a shelf, full of drum sticks. From a distance they make the same pointed shapes, fat and flowerless stems.
Cutting through the meagre grounds of the old church I see signs everywhere, 'please don't steal our plants'. I wonder who would want to, desperate things hanging on to chlorophyll for dear life. I turn down alleys as it pleases me, heading North towards Spencer's strange house with its unexpected hallways and everywhere bathtubs and purple ceilings.
I come out suddenly on Probert St which sweeps a clear path downhill and back up again. Open and straight like a long wound cut by a scythe. Winter feels almost gone this night. The Frangipanis already ludicrously sprouting leaves from their bulbous ends, like trees drawn in crayon.
Crossing a thin arterial road I make a turn towards Abdullah's. His street offers me the opportunity of dodging the whip of tree branches before opening out onto flat industrial ground where his urban fortress sits in its unlikely locale. If I hadn't been politely ushered through the blank metal door in the flat brick wall I would never have imagined what lies hidden behind. Abdullah with his records and guitars and coffee machine that makes coffee the same way you get blood from a stone.
Finally I come to the banks of the loud metal river they named Parramatta Rd. Wishing as always that I could make this journey on a horse. Somewhere in my youth I became so accustomed to travelling on four legs that I exchanged my rhythm for their own. Every step missing the brother echo of a foot that doesn't exist.
I'm not sure now if navigating around where they come back to is what I'm really doing. If I could I would walk through the pulse of their words and songs. Walk slowly and breathe in something of their work as the words and rhythms float silently down amongst the gutters and fallen leaves. I'm walking through ideas to make myself contemporary, with them, weaving my feet through something bigger than my own words.
I thought it was enough to navigate around just knowing where friends will come back to at the end of each long day but I'm not sure now. Last night I swept under the grim railway line, hollow train sounds, flaking posters and a dankness not justified by the climate push me out the other side, fast. I turn up beside the railway track and follow the cyclone fence along its little journey guarding concrete sleepers bolted into beds of sharp grey rocks and the place where I imagined I once saw a severed finger.
I look hard at the street sign for Baltic St, named I guess for my ancestors. I looked hard at the dinner party guests on the weekend too, no salt from the Baltic detectable in their outlook, only the high sweep of a cheekbone or curve of a nostril would give you any idea at all.
Halfway up the slow hill Robert's Eyrie comes into view. Crazy cube of a building. I can just make out the vase full of knitting needles by the window. I only know what it is because I have a vase like that, on a shelf, full of drum sticks. From a distance they make the same pointed shapes, fat and flowerless stems.
Cutting through the meagre grounds of the old church I see signs everywhere, 'please don't steal our plants'. I wonder who would want to, desperate things hanging on to chlorophyll for dear life. I turn down alleys as it pleases me, heading North towards Spencer's strange house with its unexpected hallways and everywhere bathtubs and purple ceilings.
I come out suddenly on Probert St which sweeps a clear path downhill and back up again. Open and straight like a long wound cut by a scythe. Winter feels almost gone this night. The Frangipanis already ludicrously sprouting leaves from their bulbous ends, like trees drawn in crayon.
Crossing a thin arterial road I make a turn towards Abdullah's. His street offers me the opportunity of dodging the whip of tree branches before opening out onto flat industrial ground where his urban fortress sits in its unlikely locale. If I hadn't been politely ushered through the blank metal door in the flat brick wall I would never have imagined what lies hidden behind. Abdullah with his records and guitars and coffee machine that makes coffee the same way you get blood from a stone.
Finally I come to the banks of the loud metal river they named Parramatta Rd. Wishing as always that I could make this journey on a horse. Somewhere in my youth I became so accustomed to travelling on four legs that I exchanged my rhythm for their own. Every step missing the brother echo of a foot that doesn't exist.
I'm not sure now if navigating around where they come back to is what I'm really doing. If I could I would walk through the pulse of their words and songs. Walk slowly and breathe in something of their work as the words and rhythms float silently down amongst the gutters and fallen leaves. I'm walking through ideas to make myself contemporary, with them, weaving my feet through something bigger than my own words.
Maroon Pants Man discovers the ability to cause genuine shock on the streets of Newtown
Last night I dined with Tim Train, The Baron, Mitzi G Burger and Nails . I have never met any of them before so the experience was awkward and partially surreal. I can't help but feel that a good splash of whiskey might have eased discussion along. There were several interesting points and one surprising connection. It seems Ms Burger is acquainted with Abdullah. I am always disturbed by the discovery of mutual friends.
Afterwards I was sitting in a cafe with Spencer, attempting to describe the experience, when a man in tight maroon pants and tweed jacket appeared. The crotch of his pants was alarmingly low despite the glove-like grip of the trousers on his legs. It was an odd pair of trousers but not as odd as the man himself. He was hopping about from one foot to the other or crouching down to table-level. Constantly moving, adjusting, hopping, crouching and talking yet he was calm and lyrically coherent.
Maroon Pants Man was on his way home from Star Wars Burlesque at The Vanguard, please take a moment to think about that, when he came across an abandoned pram. If I had come across an abandoned pram nothing at all would have happened but MPM seized the handle and commenced a wild careening down the road.
Noticing the high volume of alarmed looks by pedestrians MPM took to wheeling past restaurant windows and 'accidentally' tipping the pram over with a shocked look on his face. He said the simultaneous reaction of all onlookers was consistent from restaurant to restaurant. Every person half-standing, ready to pounce to his assistance, all of them alarmed for the safety of the invisible baby.
MPM repeated the performance at several locations on the street, after each one holding up the pram to show it was empty. MPM's impromptu pram performance was genius. There is so little left for us to do that will genuinely shock.
Afterwards I was sitting in a cafe with Spencer, attempting to describe the experience, when a man in tight maroon pants and tweed jacket appeared. The crotch of his pants was alarmingly low despite the glove-like grip of the trousers on his legs. It was an odd pair of trousers but not as odd as the man himself. He was hopping about from one foot to the other or crouching down to table-level. Constantly moving, adjusting, hopping, crouching and talking yet he was calm and lyrically coherent.
Maroon Pants Man was on his way home from Star Wars Burlesque at The Vanguard, please take a moment to think about that, when he came across an abandoned pram. If I had come across an abandoned pram nothing at all would have happened but MPM seized the handle and commenced a wild careening down the road.
Noticing the high volume of alarmed looks by pedestrians MPM took to wheeling past restaurant windows and 'accidentally' tipping the pram over with a shocked look on his face. He said the simultaneous reaction of all onlookers was consistent from restaurant to restaurant. Every person half-standing, ready to pounce to his assistance, all of them alarmed for the safety of the invisible baby.
MPM repeated the performance at several locations on the street, after each one holding up the pram to show it was empty. MPM's impromptu pram performance was genius. There is so little left for us to do that will genuinely shock.
Storm in a paper cup
The Peach is situated in a position equidistant from two IGAs, one in Stanmore and one in Enmore. For almost five years my IGA of choice has been in Enmore, not that it is superior, it is just located in a place of greater possibility. There are at least seven thousand cafes, shops and people on Enmore Rd at any point in time and of course it is a short walk down to Newtown where most of my friends, my PO Box and the world at large resides. It was never a difficult choice to turn and left and head to Enmore, not until Paper Cup opened its doors.
I once had a coffee at Paper Cup that was so good I sat in astonishment, holding the steaming cup against my heart as an offering to my internal gods, who had never before that moment been satisfied with anything. It was a perfect cup of coffee, the kind of flavour that other cups have hinted at but never actually delivered. I have drunk nine cups of coffee from Paper Cup since that first moment and am yet to be disappointed, in fact I have begun to experience constant cravings.
Lately I have chosen to turn right and walk to Stanmore, purchase any necessary items at the IGA and then cross the road and once again experience the satisfaction of delivering my inner gods the perfect coffee. What comes next is the main problem. Stanmore, on that side of the tracks, is a terrible place to be, there is a meth clinic masquerading as a doctor's surgery, a pharmacy both ancient and over-stocked with lavendar powders, a primary school full of screaming children running about randomly like behatted fish in a barrel and the distinct absence of everyone I know. There is nothing to do there, nothing new to observe, there is no one to talk to and it is double the distance to my PO Box and collecting my letters begins to feel like a chore.
Every time I leave the house in search of coffee or supplies I stop at the front gate and face a minor crisis. Should I turn left and top up an inferior coffee drink with the delights of the world or should I turn right and once again experience transcendence with the ritual satisfaction of inner gods? It is an existential crisis that needs to be experienced to be believed.
SLAMMATOWN: Talking 'bout last night
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| Illustration by Onnie Cleary |
He ran across the square yelling, ‘I fucked her face! I fucked her face!’*. Try watching a man do that then tell me how you feel.
Earlier in the night, before the face-fuck yelling, I was at a show reviewing three bands I had no interest in, none at all. I went outside for a little sit down when my left foot became mildly itchy. A small itch can be happily ignored but I scratched anyway. A stranger sitting beside me leant over, pushed my hand away and started scratching my foot with his own fingernails. My foot, his hand, you get the picture.
Earlier in the night, before the face-fuck yelling, I was at a show reviewing three bands I had no interest in, none at all. I went outside for a little sit down when my left foot became mildly itchy. A small itch can be happily ignored but I scratched anyway. A stranger sitting beside me leant over, pushed my hand away and started scratching my foot with his own fingernails. My foot, his hand, you get the picture.
Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Foot Scratching Man photographed me against my will, made inappropriately familiar conversation, offered me terrible student-style cheap cigarettes he was too old to be smoking, declared he would pine when I decided to walk away and was generally quite strange. He was sitting with a woman who seemed like his girlfriend.
He wasn’t flirting, not by any normal definition of the word, but there was something odd going on there. I wouldn’t have minded too much if this was the only thing that happened last night but shit just went down a weird hill after that. One man pulled at my shirt to peer at my breasts and another poured his drink over my feet to help by anointing me with spirits.
The sense of relief after leaving a venue packed full of stupid men was profound. Later on I was sitting peacefully on the ground drinking longnecks with Spencer and friends when Fuck Face Yelling Man walked right up to us and asked to join us. I said he could if he told me a good story.**
He swayed drunkenly but steadied himself into a low crouch by hanging on to my shoulders. His story was this; he shagged a woman, took photographs of her, sent them to all his friends and then denied it to her face. All the while he was pushing his face right up into mine, wrapping his arms around me, crawling on his knees to get closer to me. If Spencer hadn’t jumped to his feet and demanded that this horrible man unhand me at once I don’t know what I would have done.***
Spencer looked serious as a heart attack standing there all tall and commanding telling him to take his hands off me and leave. Fuck Face Yelling Man leapt to his feet and started to run away yelling this: “I photographed her and I lied! I fucked her face! I grabbed her ears and fucked her face! I fucked her face!”
Might be there’s something in the water, or the power of my fuckwit magnet spontaneously tripled. Either way things are not coming up roses. There is something wrong the men of the Inner West. Please send me some new and better men, so I don’t end up murdering somebody.
He wasn’t flirting, not by any normal definition of the word, but there was something odd going on there. I wouldn’t have minded too much if this was the only thing that happened last night but shit just went down a weird hill after that. One man pulled at my shirt to peer at my breasts and another poured his drink over my feet to help by anointing me with spirits.
The sense of relief after leaving a venue packed full of stupid men was profound. Later on I was sitting peacefully on the ground drinking longnecks with Spencer and friends when Fuck Face Yelling Man walked right up to us and asked to join us. I said he could if he told me a good story.**
He swayed drunkenly but steadied himself into a low crouch by hanging on to my shoulders. His story was this; he shagged a woman, took photographs of her, sent them to all his friends and then denied it to her face. All the while he was pushing his face right up into mine, wrapping his arms around me, crawling on his knees to get closer to me. If Spencer hadn’t jumped to his feet and demanded that this horrible man unhand me at once I don’t know what I would have done.***
Spencer looked serious as a heart attack standing there all tall and commanding telling him to take his hands off me and leave. Fuck Face Yelling Man leapt to his feet and started to run away yelling this: “I photographed her and I lied! I fucked her face! I grabbed her ears and fucked her face! I fucked her face!”
Might be there’s something in the water, or the power of my fuckwit magnet spontaneously tripled. Either way things are not coming up roses. There is something wrong the men of the Inner West. Please send me some new and better men, so I don’t end up murdering somebody.
* He was not talking about my face. He did not fuck my face.
** Spencer told him no, as I was saying yes. For the record Spencer was right and I was terribly, horribly wrong.
*** I was planning unmitigated violence, not helpless surrender.
A most interviewed year
I hate interviews, hate interviewing people and hate being interviewed by other people so it's a little mysterious how I managed to be interviewed so much in the one year. I like mysteries so to balance out things out I will now solve the mystery of the interviews.*
Interview 1 - Cleo Magazine
At the time I agreed to this interview it seemed too ridiculous to be true. I am not a fan of this kind of magazine, broader cultural harms and that sort of thing, but in this instance I knew the journalist to be a good one, a woman of integrity with genuine journalistic intent and also the topic was about being independent and happy despite being terribly old. Too weird a chance to pass up, almost like being an anti-girl-mag topic. Take them down from the inside. I think it was the April one, can't really remember.
Interviews 2 - 5 million - Newspapers, Blogs, Websites & Radio
These interviews were all about PAN magazine. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a magazine editor will subject themselves to multiple interviews for the good of the magazine.
It did feel a tad awkward when I had to interview myself but fortunately my friend Spencer came over and pretended to be me, the interviewer me, so that I could answer myself. None of us, not me, Spencer, Spencer pretending to me or the other way around uttered the words 'Willy Wonka' but they did somehow end up being in the title of the interview. You can read it here if you can be bothered...
Interview 5 million and 1 - ABC Radio National
I am terribly fond of the Olympia Milkbar on Parramatta Rd but that alone is insufficient to convince me to go on the radio. I am petrified of going on the radio. Every single time I go slightly odd with fear on the walk there and nearly get run over or walk into large objects like buildings and public sculptures.
There are two reasons I recently agreed to risk being run over and head down to the ABC. The first was the radio man informing me that the 'V' in the middle of his email address was for his middle name, Vince. The second reason was that he sounded kind and slightly amused rather than annoyed by my phone call demanding to know if this was in fact a strange prank.
I had planned to say all sorts of things about the importance of the geography of sound, my larger project of map making through public memory and the texture of this city. Instead I blurted my usual mixture of incomprehensible prattle interspersed with statements surprising to both the interviewer and myself which is one of the reasons I have decided to become sophisticated next year but more of that later.
The very best part of the interview was when Radio Man Middle Name of Vince first sat me down in one of those tiny rooms full of strange electrical equipment. He produced several pieces of paper on which he had written responses to my ponderings about why he wanted to interview me. I can now reliably inform you that he is not secretly in love with Vanessa Berry, he does not want to yell in my face, bring back the dinosaurs and is not the illegitimate love child of Milkbar Man. Nor had he heard about my imaginary submarine but he does now want to blow it up with imaginary battle ships.
It is a great shame that he does not live in Newtown. I have the feeling that if he was walking down King St I would not only nod hello but also raise a hand and wave. It is probably best if I did not attempt to speak with him because who the hell knows what is likely to come out of my mouth, it could be anything from 'Happy Christmas' to 'Your shoes are peculiar why are you wearing them?' or even worse, of course it wouldn't be on purpose but not everybody understands that.
Despite my input I will encourage everybody to listen to the Radio National documentary about the Olympia Milkbar when it goes to air next year. You never know, they might edit me out entirely.
* I am only solving the mystery of why I was interviewed and not the mystery of why I interviewed other people. It is safe to assume I interviewed people when an editor told me to and not for any other reason, except maybe the Quaoub interview. I think I had a small urge to try and share his good music with the world. I've done my part, the rest is up to him really. Can't make people listen to a record that doesn't exist yet.
Interview 1 - Cleo Magazine
At the time I agreed to this interview it seemed too ridiculous to be true. I am not a fan of this kind of magazine, broader cultural harms and that sort of thing, but in this instance I knew the journalist to be a good one, a woman of integrity with genuine journalistic intent and also the topic was about being independent and happy despite being terribly old. Too weird a chance to pass up, almost like being an anti-girl-mag topic. Take them down from the inside. I think it was the April one, can't really remember.
Interviews 2 - 5 million - Newspapers, Blogs, Websites & Radio
These interviews were all about PAN magazine. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a magazine editor will subject themselves to multiple interviews for the good of the magazine.
It did feel a tad awkward when I had to interview myself but fortunately my friend Spencer came over and pretended to be me, the interviewer me, so that I could answer myself. None of us, not me, Spencer, Spencer pretending to me or the other way around uttered the words 'Willy Wonka' but they did somehow end up being in the title of the interview. You can read it here if you can be bothered...
Interview 5 million and 1 - ABC Radio National
I am terribly fond of the Olympia Milkbar on Parramatta Rd but that alone is insufficient to convince me to go on the radio. I am petrified of going on the radio. Every single time I go slightly odd with fear on the walk there and nearly get run over or walk into large objects like buildings and public sculptures.
There are two reasons I recently agreed to risk being run over and head down to the ABC. The first was the radio man informing me that the 'V' in the middle of his email address was for his middle name, Vince. The second reason was that he sounded kind and slightly amused rather than annoyed by my phone call demanding to know if this was in fact a strange prank.
I had planned to say all sorts of things about the importance of the geography of sound, my larger project of map making through public memory and the texture of this city. Instead I blurted my usual mixture of incomprehensible prattle interspersed with statements surprising to both the interviewer and myself which is one of the reasons I have decided to become sophisticated next year but more of that later.
The very best part of the interview was when Radio Man Middle Name of Vince first sat me down in one of those tiny rooms full of strange electrical equipment. He produced several pieces of paper on which he had written responses to my ponderings about why he wanted to interview me. I can now reliably inform you that he is not secretly in love with Vanessa Berry, he does not want to yell in my face, bring back the dinosaurs and is not the illegitimate love child of Milkbar Man. Nor had he heard about my imaginary submarine but he does now want to blow it up with imaginary battle ships.
It is a great shame that he does not live in Newtown. I have the feeling that if he was walking down King St I would not only nod hello but also raise a hand and wave. It is probably best if I did not attempt to speak with him because who the hell knows what is likely to come out of my mouth, it could be anything from 'Happy Christmas' to 'Your shoes are peculiar why are you wearing them?' or even worse, of course it wouldn't be on purpose but not everybody understands that.
Despite my input I will encourage everybody to listen to the Radio National documentary about the Olympia Milkbar when it goes to air next year. You never know, they might edit me out entirely.
* I am only solving the mystery of why I was interviewed and not the mystery of why I interviewed other people. It is safe to assume I interviewed people when an editor told me to and not for any other reason, except maybe the Quaoub interview. I think I had a small urge to try and share his good music with the world. I've done my part, the rest is up to him really. Can't make people listen to a record that doesn't exist yet.
Gilded carnival chariots, six lanes of traffic, an intimate drunken embrace and Algeria
On the bus I was momentarily overtaken by the memory a gilded carnival chariot. I was reading Camus, The American Journals. My remembered giant cart was nightly towed around the festival grounds at Woodford, by the Hari Krishnas I think. One clear memory of unfettered delight. It was a heavy thing, decorated wildly in a style from last century, towed with great braided ropes by clamorous groups heaving through the thick air. A heavy air made tolerable only by the setting of the sun. I think of it as painted shining and white, several stories high with no practical purpose. A machine built for joy.
Camus slapped me with his spare prose. Every clean sentence the tip of an iceberg. I should always return to books like these, writers' notebooks of observations and ideas, like a dancer returns to the barre.
It has been about a month since I last saw Leif. I think I call him Leif here, or Leaf or Tree or River or some such name but there he was at Central Station striding towards me to wait for the same train. His beard seems incredulously long. He wasn't staggering or ginger of stride but his immediate confession, as he fell into one of his intimate embraces, was that he was quite probably still drunk from last night and running hideously late for work.
I have now the urge to leave the cafe where I sit to cross the road and be tattooed with something ill-advised. This is the same urge to write. Make visible marks representing an interior feeling.
I was on my way to a job interview when I ran into Leif. He has been having difficulty securing a lease on somewhere new to live. He said he is good on paper, same good job for years and years, steady rental history. I should have remarked that he is good off-paper as well. Though he is sometimes petulant the source is always love. I often suppress the urge to build a good fence around him, not to contain him but to provide him with an impenetrable place of safety. Most people build their own borders but either he does not know how or he is so used to being invaded he has discarded any notions of sovereignty.
He was a companionable distraction on what might have been an anxious journey. I briefly became lost on the way to the office but in a fit of calm adulthood I telephoned for directions. I was violently reminded about the land of cars as I walked around the business park in North Ryde. Six lane roads and not a fellow pedestrian in sight. As I made note of the directions I was desperately hoping not to be sucked out of the poor shade a of a young eucalypt and into the screaming traffic by the jet wash of a passing truck.
I know almost nothing about Algeria. Some places I imagine dusty and hot. I am content with a vague notion of white walls and outside, in sparse shade, some scratching chickens.
The man who interviewed me was undoubtedly delectable. He shifted between consciously projecting a businesslike charm and inadvertently revealing something of his true nature. I imagine his childhood home was solid and well-furnished. The same good curtains hanging in windows for most of his life. He has a steadiness about him, whether recently constructed or an innate feature of his person I have no idea. I have developed a curiosity about him. It itches at me to be left with only the imaginary texture of his life.
Camus slapped me with his spare prose. Every clean sentence the tip of an iceberg. I should always return to books like these, writers' notebooks of observations and ideas, like a dancer returns to the barre.
It has been about a month since I last saw Leif. I think I call him Leif here, or Leaf or Tree or River or some such name but there he was at Central Station striding towards me to wait for the same train. His beard seems incredulously long. He wasn't staggering or ginger of stride but his immediate confession, as he fell into one of his intimate embraces, was that he was quite probably still drunk from last night and running hideously late for work.
I have now the urge to leave the cafe where I sit to cross the road and be tattooed with something ill-advised. This is the same urge to write. Make visible marks representing an interior feeling.
I was on my way to a job interview when I ran into Leif. He has been having difficulty securing a lease on somewhere new to live. He said he is good on paper, same good job for years and years, steady rental history. I should have remarked that he is good off-paper as well. Though he is sometimes petulant the source is always love. I often suppress the urge to build a good fence around him, not to contain him but to provide him with an impenetrable place of safety. Most people build their own borders but either he does not know how or he is so used to being invaded he has discarded any notions of sovereignty.
He was a companionable distraction on what might have been an anxious journey. I briefly became lost on the way to the office but in a fit of calm adulthood I telephoned for directions. I was violently reminded about the land of cars as I walked around the business park in North Ryde. Six lane roads and not a fellow pedestrian in sight. As I made note of the directions I was desperately hoping not to be sucked out of the poor shade a of a young eucalypt and into the screaming traffic by the jet wash of a passing truck.
I know almost nothing about Algeria. Some places I imagine dusty and hot. I am content with a vague notion of white walls and outside, in sparse shade, some scratching chickens.
The man who interviewed me was undoubtedly delectable. He shifted between consciously projecting a businesslike charm and inadvertently revealing something of his true nature. I imagine his childhood home was solid and well-furnished. The same good curtains hanging in windows for most of his life. He has a steadiness about him, whether recently constructed or an innate feature of his person I have no idea. I have developed a curiosity about him. It itches at me to be left with only the imaginary texture of his life.
Fist City
I had some interesting information from a friend of mine tonight. Originally him and his group of friends were Artboy's classmates at uni. My friend was telling me tonight that he was glad we are friends now, he said he didn't think he would ever be a friend of mine because of what Artboy told him way back when, all those years ago. Apparently Artboy's uni friends thought I was pretty awesome when they first met me and they told Artboy so but here's the interesting part.
Artboy told his friends that he was surprised I even talked to them, that I was prepared to be polite to them but I'd never let any of them in, not really. I think its time for some rule breaking, seeing as I am The Captain of What I Do and also it is three in the morning and I have just arrived home from The Townie (no one tell my mother).
Fuck you Artboy. Retrospectively fuck you.
Just as a side note I have discovered a new way to dry my hands with those loud air-blaster thingy-whatsits they have in public toilets. A foolproof method for actual hand dry-making rather than just standing in an unpleasantly loud and gusty place for twenty seconds but leaving with wet hands despite best efforts. All things considered this evening was triumphant.
Artboy told his friends that he was surprised I even talked to them, that I was prepared to be polite to them but I'd never let any of them in, not really. I think its time for some rule breaking, seeing as I am The Captain of What I Do and also it is three in the morning and I have just arrived home from The Townie (no one tell my mother).
Fuck you Artboy. Retrospectively fuck you.
Just as a side note I have discovered a new way to dry my hands with those loud air-blaster thingy-whatsits they have in public toilets. A foolproof method for actual hand dry-making rather than just standing in an unpleasantly loud and gusty place for twenty seconds but leaving with wet hands despite best efforts. All things considered this evening was triumphant.
I will now chew my vegemite toast vigorously
The taxi driver smelt like penis but he drove me home so my feet could be silent. Earlier this evening I caught the bus to Glebe. I hate Glebe but I went anyway because Geoff Lemon was doing a spoken word gig at the Friend in Hand. I don't hate Geoff Lemon, not yet.
Geoff performed admirably but offstage he was incoherent with jet lag and exhaustion so I wandered over to Spencer's house and yelled about the internal violence of words. Spencer deserves some kind of medal, in fact he proposed that someone should pay him money for being my 'keeping it real person'. I'm not entirely sure what that job would entail, I assume part of the role is to sit with me in a cafe while I yell about things and accidentally knock over water glasses and ashtrays.
Spencer has a habit of keeping large pieces of folded paper about his person. He will produce one from time to time and let me read over whatever he is working on. There is no greater privilege than seeing a song half-written, before even the song itself is sure of what it should sound like. Though perhaps I would like to rifle through another writer's desk. Uncurl the edges of all of those bits of paper and watch the words crawling towards each other, in the way that words on curled bits of paper do.
After the spoken word gig, after giving up on the possibility of having anything within the realms of a normal conversation with the valiant but sagging Geoff. After walking through the backstreets of Glebe where my feet flashed like imaginary fish and I remembered most of yesterday in slow motion. After Spencer came out of his gate and talked with me about the violence of words, and the taxi driver who smelt like penis, I made two pieces of toast. Spring is the best season for the vigorous chewing of toast, it has none of winter's demands for warm cups and the laying on of blankets.
In other news if you search using the words 'age of adz review', my review is the first result. In your face other people without toast. In your toastless face, is what I would say if I was that way inclined but I'm not so forget about it.
Arse about
First of all this. I'm tired, I'm drunk, but I did not fuck my shit up. For this may we be truly thankful. Secondly, there was talk at a party tonight, between musicians, of the reviews I have written about them. Some of them seemed mildly pleased, one of them was sort of quite pleased, Spencer bless his stupid heart, doesn't give a crap one way or the other which is good considering the amount of times I've typed his name but there was one man talking about the bad review I gave him two years ago.
He was sitting by the fire and shaking his head a little from side to side like a fast forward ship in the wind, telling a small circle how he'd been playing in bands for fifteen years and I am the only person who ever singled him out for some bad news. He said it with a fond sort of pride and patted me on the shoulder in an absent-minded manner.
I didn't know him when I wrote that review, not that it would have changed my words in any way. It was one sentence.
'The not-Simon guitarist has a habit of muddying up the sound, someone give that man a slide, some pedals and the instructions to not play the same thing as Simon at the same time.'
It would be stupid to say I have never thought about something I wrote being remembered by the person I wrote it about, because I have thought about it. I suppose I just didn't think that one sentence would make such an impact as to have become a story to tell at parties, which is a little stupid when I think about the number of sentences I remember that have been about me.
The most obvious sentences to remember are the ones uttered by men as they beat their retreat or run screaming into the night but there are none so memorable as this.
'You're just like Sarah Blasko, the only thing you are good for is fucking.'
There are several problems with that sentence as far I'm concerned. The man in question has never met Sarah Blasko, I have and I can assure you we are not at all similar. Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about the fucking. The man in question fucked like it was the 80's. I can assure you there are better decades to fuck like. The last and most crucial point might be the part where fucking is the only thing I am good for. As might be expected I have a tendency to disagree with the man on that matter.
But let's get back to the party. For a moment they were doing everything but thanking me for writing about them, that is just fucking stupid because it is the wrong way around. I mean that's really arse about. I'm the one silent in the corner with a notebook and a pen, I'm the one sitting still and solitary making no more noise than the good clacking of keys while they are standing bodily on broad pedestals taking thought out of language and turning it into sound. They're using their arms and legs and lungs to make something so indefinable that already, before I hit the middle, I know I'm going to need a lifetime to write about this.
This all might be making more sense if I wasn't drunk but at this point you'd need an army and seven helicopters with coffee-filled water canons to do anything about that problem. I'm trying to think of one moment to describe. One sentence to illuminate the meaning of music, but this is where Science wins with the battle with Art. Contrary to popular belief most writers are completely fucking useless when they are drunk. You need brain to be working on the same team as fingers to write anything in the same solar system as good. There's not going to be one sentence here that illuminates the meaning of music for me, not tonight. I'll be satisfied if I say this - we have words because we wanted to tell each other what was happening over there or when someone wasn't looking, to steer clear of tigers and say 'that snake over there bites'. We don't have a reason for music the same way we don't have a real reason for air.
Wait, no, that's a big stupid lie. I'm not at all satisfied with saying that. I'll probably think of something better but first I'm either going brush my teeth, eat a licorice allsort or vomit.
He was sitting by the fire and shaking his head a little from side to side like a fast forward ship in the wind, telling a small circle how he'd been playing in bands for fifteen years and I am the only person who ever singled him out for some bad news. He said it with a fond sort of pride and patted me on the shoulder in an absent-minded manner.
I didn't know him when I wrote that review, not that it would have changed my words in any way. It was one sentence.
'The not-Simon guitarist has a habit of muddying up the sound, someone give that man a slide, some pedals and the instructions to not play the same thing as Simon at the same time.'
It would be stupid to say I have never thought about something I wrote being remembered by the person I wrote it about, because I have thought about it. I suppose I just didn't think that one sentence would make such an impact as to have become a story to tell at parties, which is a little stupid when I think about the number of sentences I remember that have been about me.
The most obvious sentences to remember are the ones uttered by men as they beat their retreat or run screaming into the night but there are none so memorable as this.
'You're just like Sarah Blasko, the only thing you are good for is fucking.'
There are several problems with that sentence as far I'm concerned. The man in question has never met Sarah Blasko, I have and I can assure you we are not at all similar. Now that that is out of the way, let's talk about the fucking. The man in question fucked like it was the 80's. I can assure you there are better decades to fuck like. The last and most crucial point might be the part where fucking is the only thing I am good for. As might be expected I have a tendency to disagree with the man on that matter.
But let's get back to the party. For a moment they were doing everything but thanking me for writing about them, that is just fucking stupid because it is the wrong way around. I mean that's really arse about. I'm the one silent in the corner with a notebook and a pen, I'm the one sitting still and solitary making no more noise than the good clacking of keys while they are standing bodily on broad pedestals taking thought out of language and turning it into sound. They're using their arms and legs and lungs to make something so indefinable that already, before I hit the middle, I know I'm going to need a lifetime to write about this.
This all might be making more sense if I wasn't drunk but at this point you'd need an army and seven helicopters with coffee-filled water canons to do anything about that problem. I'm trying to think of one moment to describe. One sentence to illuminate the meaning of music, but this is where Science wins with the battle with Art. Contrary to popular belief most writers are completely fucking useless when they are drunk. You need brain to be working on the same team as fingers to write anything in the same solar system as good. There's not going to be one sentence here that illuminates the meaning of music for me, not tonight. I'll be satisfied if I say this - we have words because we wanted to tell each other what was happening over there or when someone wasn't looking, to steer clear of tigers and say 'that snake over there bites'. We don't have a reason for music the same way we don't have a real reason for air.
Wait, no, that's a big stupid lie. I'm not at all satisfied with saying that. I'll probably think of something better but first I'm either going brush my teeth, eat a licorice allsort or vomit.
Spencer lodges complaint number 42367262868275083270 but this time he might have a point
Spencer once said to me 'never trust a writer, they know how to make things sound just how you want to hear them'. I paused my milkshake drinking just long enough to stick my tongue out at him but then on Sunday he lodged a complaint and this time I think he might have a point.
Sunday afternoon, walking down Enmore Rd on the way to the Changing Lanes Festival, I told Spencer all about my Saturday night. Later that afternoon I relayed the same story to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies over coffee. Spencer protested at the telling of the story, saying 'it's all in the telling, you wouldn't sound so good if you gave them the same version you gave me'.
Saturday night as told to Spencer:
DS: I had to go to my brother's girlfriend's birthday party at her parents' house. I didn't want to go because I was dead tired but I went, cause I like her.
S: How was it?
DS: Brother had some of that lemon stuff my crazy old relative makes then I got a lift home from a friend of the girlfriend's brother, which was nice.
S: Told you would end up having a good time.
DS: I hate Western Sydney but food was nice. I was starving. Free food is good but I hate trains. They are stupid. Do you think my hair looks stupid? [pauses to look at hair in reflection of shop window]
S: Not more stupid than normal. [rolls eyes] I had a $2.50 stick thing on a roll.
DS: Those are good. How was your gig last night?
S: All right I spose. What's this festival going to be like.
DS: Dunno. Don't want to go but the editor is kind of making me.
Saturday night as told to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies:
DS: Last night I traveled West to a convict settlement and drank moonshine Limoncello at a party where most people were speaking French and sometimes Cajun.
PN's: You're always doing stuff like that.
DS: The food was amazing and I got a ride home from a 6'2'' racing car driver.
PN's: Racing car driver!
DS: She was awesome and kind of beautiful. She's about six foot two and has long red hair that hangs to her waist. I got home in record time.
PN's: Is she single?
DS: Doubt it.
PN's: Are you going to Changing Lanes?
DS: Sure am, just picked up my media pass.
Sunday afternoon, walking down Enmore Rd on the way to the Changing Lanes Festival, I told Spencer all about my Saturday night. Later that afternoon I relayed the same story to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies over coffee. Spencer protested at the telling of the story, saying 'it's all in the telling, you wouldn't sound so good if you gave them the same version you gave me'.
Saturday night as told to Spencer:
DS: I had to go to my brother's girlfriend's birthday party at her parents' house. I didn't want to go because I was dead tired but I went, cause I like her.
S: How was it?
DS: Brother had some of that lemon stuff my crazy old relative makes then I got a lift home from a friend of the girlfriend's brother, which was nice.
S: Told you would end up having a good time.
DS: I hate Western Sydney but food was nice. I was starving. Free food is good but I hate trains. They are stupid. Do you think my hair looks stupid? [pauses to look at hair in reflection of shop window]
S: Not more stupid than normal. [rolls eyes] I had a $2.50 stick thing on a roll.
DS: Those are good. How was your gig last night?
S: All right I spose. What's this festival going to be like.
DS: Dunno. Don't want to go but the editor is kind of making me.
Saturday night as told to Abdullah and some of the Psychonannies:
DS: Last night I traveled West to a convict settlement and drank moonshine Limoncello at a party where most people were speaking French and sometimes Cajun.
PN's: You're always doing stuff like that.
DS: The food was amazing and I got a ride home from a 6'2'' racing car driver.
PN's: Racing car driver!
DS: She was awesome and kind of beautiful. She's about six foot two and has long red hair that hangs to her waist. I got home in record time.
PN's: Is she single?
DS: Doubt it.
PN's: Are you going to Changing Lanes?
DS: Sure am, just picked up my media pass.
SLAMMATOWN - No Guns For You
Four years ago two things happened, I moved to Sydney and my friend Spencer banned me from owning a gun. Spencer's announcement came out of the blue. We'd been sitting in his lounge room, which was on the front lawn at the time, drinking bad red wine and talking about nothing at all when he announced, 'out of all the people I know you are the one person who should never own a gun'.
Spencer's announcement puzzled me exceedingly. I have never wanted to buy a gun. I don't even know how to get a gun, apart obviously from joining Team Zissou on the Belafonte where all team members are supplied with uniforms, wetsuits and glocks.
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