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.
Showing posts with label Gecko. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gecko. Show all posts
Insensible
Superman was walking up and down the hallway with a raw egg in a small white bowl first thing this morning. He said "I've got this egg. Do you sometimes wish your surname was Wow?", I do so I nodded and turned left into the bathroom, Superman continued on his way down the hall, this is unrelated to my party.
At one point late on Saturday night I feared for the lives of everybody. Superman and Spencer had linked arms and were dancing in circles at an alarming velocity, jumping over furniture and narrowly missing Robert and his snare drum. Robert, Madam Squeeze and Boli were cranking out some kind of Freylekh on drum, accordion and clarinet. The Peach Deck was in danger of crashing to the ground killing everybody at once or at least horribly maiming people with large splintery bits of wood that poking right through their middles, that would teach them not to stamp their feet enthusiastically to Gypsy music whilst seated drunkenly on The Peach Deck. The stamping was repeated, the music ranged from the bizarre to the sublime but the deck and I survived.
I have never thrown a party by myself before, there has always been someone, a brother, a housemate or a partner. I anticipated that nobody would come, not just for me. I had planned in my mind how I would walk slowly from one end of The Peach Deck to the other packing away chairs and taking lanterns down from the trees. I would put away the clean glasses and plates and lock the front door. I would shower and turn on my electric blanket. I would wake in the morning diminished. I did not anticipate that every single person would turn up with a bottle under their arm and a smile on their face. I did not anticipate that sitting on a cushion on a milk crate under the curved branch of a mulberry tree I could look in any direction and see someone that I loved.
A party is a wondrous thing where it is appropriate to laugh or sing or dance or jump around for no reason and instead of staring at you weirdly people join in. I drew sharks and aeroplanes on the fridge with Ronita, I danced like pirate with Madam Squeeze, I offered round warm things that were thoughtfully provided by Rita, I showed everyone my library, my bedside table and my brand new chair, I talked and laughed and ran around waving my arms with glee.
I wanted to draw bricks in the gaps between the shoulders of my friends until I was fortress. I wanted to spin slowly in the centre of the deck until everyone I love blurred into lines of colour and it was all I could see. I didn't manage any spinning but I'm not sure that I needed to.
At one point late on Saturday night I feared for the lives of everybody. Superman and Spencer had linked arms and were dancing in circles at an alarming velocity, jumping over furniture and narrowly missing Robert and his snare drum. Robert, Madam Squeeze and Boli were cranking out some kind of Freylekh on drum, accordion and clarinet. The Peach Deck was in danger of crashing to the ground killing everybody at once or at least horribly maiming people with large splintery bits of wood that poking right through their middles, that would teach them not to stamp their feet enthusiastically to Gypsy music whilst seated drunkenly on The Peach Deck. The stamping was repeated, the music ranged from the bizarre to the sublime but the deck and I survived.
I have never thrown a party by myself before, there has always been someone, a brother, a housemate or a partner. I anticipated that nobody would come, not just for me. I had planned in my mind how I would walk slowly from one end of The Peach Deck to the other packing away chairs and taking lanterns down from the trees. I would put away the clean glasses and plates and lock the front door. I would shower and turn on my electric blanket. I would wake in the morning diminished. I did not anticipate that every single person would turn up with a bottle under their arm and a smile on their face. I did not anticipate that sitting on a cushion on a milk crate under the curved branch of a mulberry tree I could look in any direction and see someone that I loved.
A party is a wondrous thing where it is appropriate to laugh or sing or dance or jump around for no reason and instead of staring at you weirdly people join in. I drew sharks and aeroplanes on the fridge with Ronita, I danced like pirate with Madam Squeeze, I offered round warm things that were thoughtfully provided by Rita, I showed everyone my library, my bedside table and my brand new chair, I talked and laughed and ran around waving my arms with glee.
I wanted to draw bricks in the gaps between the shoulders of my friends until I was fortress. I wanted to spin slowly in the centre of the deck until everyone I love blurred into lines of colour and it was all I could see. I didn't manage any spinning but I'm not sure that I needed to.
This is not a review of the Damo Suzuki gig and Dale's Fake Birthday Party. Do you want a guitar and a petty job?
Tex Perkins is alive right now because my brother used to deliver pizza for a shop that owned a fleet of race cars. He also used to run fish from the airport but that's another story.
Ben Byrne and Ivan Lisyak opened the night with some laptop noise. It brought back memories of a thousand nights spent sitting on concrete gallery floors watching boys, including those boys, crouched behind laptops making noise and art while my back bent and butt froze. I whispered to Ron & Rita "I had eight years of this stuff". Rita made a face.
I want to be The Captain of Noise is what Tex Perkins must have thought to himself one day and now behold, he is. He stood in front of the Bumhead Orchestra in a tuxedo waving a knitting needle like a madman. The idea is he points at one of them and they make some kind of noise based on the wildness of his gestures and face. The overall effect is somewhat startling if lacking a little something in terms of noise art. Between songs he turned around to address the audience, this is where the swooning happened. Unfortunately it was me doing the swooning.
The Annandale is sticky at the best of times but Friday night they outdid themselves in the sticky department. Every time I wanted to move my feet I had to curl my toes and grip my shoes or one of two disastrous things would happen. Disaster one; my feet do not move but the rest of me does in a swan face plant. Disaster two; my feet come out of my shoes and step unprotected onto the stickiness.
Dear The Annandale,
Get a mop.
Dale
This is the part where my musical knowledge does its own faceplant. What happened was large in a monument to Superman kind of way. Damo Suzuki, Spencer with The Holy Soul (plus Petey-O, Andrew Gaddo and some other guy I don't know) walked onto stage set up their equipment and cracked open my ribs one at a time until the noise broke like the ocean. I hear that the Melbourne gig was a quiet affair but in Sydney the rock escaped and raged round inside the big room at The Annandale until even Spencer was dancing on stage. I was standing in the crowd cracked wide open and pulsing like a bird on a wire.
Tex Perkins was in the crowd right in front of me, luckily for me I was so distracted by what I was witnessing onstage that I only nearly swooned seven times. Not too bad really.
A woman in a white dress came up to me and said she liked my dress. She put her hand on my waist and said something that I didn't hear. I felt odd, it felt odd, it felt like she knew me but I didn't her. She smiled every time she saw me. She was a leitmotif.
Afterwards Gecko came back to The Peach and we sat on The Peach Deck drinking cups of tea. He's a walking cupboard of discombobulation opening and closing his internal drawers and hidden panels sometimes brandishing a shining swatch or an orb of darkness. He seems dangerous and frightening but only after he goes away. When I sit by him with mug in hand it feels like a conversation lifted from my blueprint. I'm not sure what to make of him really.
At the end of the night lying in bed staring at the sticky shoes on my bedroom floor I felt the music come back through me in spectacular waves of noise, light and fury. I just closed my eyes and smiled.
Ben Byrne and Ivan Lisyak opened the night with some laptop noise. It brought back memories of a thousand nights spent sitting on concrete gallery floors watching boys, including those boys, crouched behind laptops making noise and art while my back bent and butt froze. I whispered to Ron & Rita "I had eight years of this stuff". Rita made a face.
I want to be The Captain of Noise is what Tex Perkins must have thought to himself one day and now behold, he is. He stood in front of the Bumhead Orchestra in a tuxedo waving a knitting needle like a madman. The idea is he points at one of them and they make some kind of noise based on the wildness of his gestures and face. The overall effect is somewhat startling if lacking a little something in terms of noise art. Between songs he turned around to address the audience, this is where the swooning happened. Unfortunately it was me doing the swooning.
The Annandale is sticky at the best of times but Friday night they outdid themselves in the sticky department. Every time I wanted to move my feet I had to curl my toes and grip my shoes or one of two disastrous things would happen. Disaster one; my feet do not move but the rest of me does in a swan face plant. Disaster two; my feet come out of my shoes and step unprotected onto the stickiness.
Dear The Annandale,
Get a mop.
Dale
This is the part where my musical knowledge does its own faceplant. What happened was large in a monument to Superman kind of way. Damo Suzuki, Spencer with The Holy Soul (plus Petey-O, Andrew Gaddo and some other guy I don't know) walked onto stage set up their equipment and cracked open my ribs one at a time until the noise broke like the ocean. I hear that the Melbourne gig was a quiet affair but in Sydney the rock escaped and raged round inside the big room at The Annandale until even Spencer was dancing on stage. I was standing in the crowd cracked wide open and pulsing like a bird on a wire.
Tex Perkins was in the crowd right in front of me, luckily for me I was so distracted by what I was witnessing onstage that I only nearly swooned seven times. Not too bad really.
A woman in a white dress came up to me and said she liked my dress. She put her hand on my waist and said something that I didn't hear. I felt odd, it felt odd, it felt like she knew me but I didn't her. She smiled every time she saw me. She was a leitmotif.
Afterwards Gecko came back to The Peach and we sat on The Peach Deck drinking cups of tea. He's a walking cupboard of discombobulation opening and closing his internal drawers and hidden panels sometimes brandishing a shining swatch or an orb of darkness. He seems dangerous and frightening but only after he goes away. When I sit by him with mug in hand it feels like a conversation lifted from my blueprint. I'm not sure what to make of him really.
At the end of the night lying in bed staring at the sticky shoes on my bedroom floor I felt the music come back through me in spectacular waves of noise, light and fury. I just closed my eyes and smiled.
Two coffees, two eggs, four pieces of toast, some greens with balsamic vinegar and five small glasses of water
Transformer is the perfect album for walking when the air is thicker than honey and the population is shiny with sweat. Lou Reed, the gaps in your synapses come in handy. I was walking towards coffee, coffee with Robert, his fabulous partner and the unknown quantity of his friend Gecko. There were orders, Robert interjecting with conducting hands saying " I brought you two together to talk about rock. Discuss."
Everyone has hard edges but when the people are not intertwined into your context the edges have points. It was not a barbed occasion in fact overall it was quite pleasant but all the edges were unexpected and me without my navigation equipment.
I've been thinking that I might not have a hard edge. It is true that there is someone in my office that I have not warmed to but I repent and repent after unpleasant thought. The people with coffee said Sufjan was wet and fey and I tried to think about this but my heartbeat is still fluttering with his wings.
One day, a long day, I remember it well. It was the day I sat on the floor and filed off my points revealing holes all over my armour; this is where the joy pours in.
Roaming the hallway this afternoon with long fractious strides I examined the texture of the carpet with the soles of my feet. Eventually I settled into the last half hour of a television movie but unknown to me my phone was ringing in the front room. I discovered the missed call like a doctor arriving to find his wife two minutes dead with no hope of resuscitation. The phone said the call was from no number. No way to know who on this planet thought of me this evening at half past six. There was no message. I am still carrying the phone tucked into the top of my underpants, just in case.
Everyone has hard edges but when the people are not intertwined into your context the edges have points. It was not a barbed occasion in fact overall it was quite pleasant but all the edges were unexpected and me without my navigation equipment.
I've been thinking that I might not have a hard edge. It is true that there is someone in my office that I have not warmed to but I repent and repent after unpleasant thought. The people with coffee said Sufjan was wet and fey and I tried to think about this but my heartbeat is still fluttering with his wings.
One day, a long day, I remember it well. It was the day I sat on the floor and filed off my points revealing holes all over my armour; this is where the joy pours in.
Roaming the hallway this afternoon with long fractious strides I examined the texture of the carpet with the soles of my feet. Eventually I settled into the last half hour of a television movie but unknown to me my phone was ringing in the front room. I discovered the missed call like a doctor arriving to find his wife two minutes dead with no hope of resuscitation. The phone said the call was from no number. No way to know who on this planet thought of me this evening at half past six. There was no message. I am still carrying the phone tucked into the top of my underpants, just in case.
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