She said she was twenty-one and I could see that this was half of her problem. She asked me if I was a good writer so I said yes, might as well say yes as no, it was all the same to her. I think she was wearing shorts, with tights, the way I used to wear shorts with tights when I was at high school but she was also sporting one of those haircuts, those Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors haircuts but without the combing, smoothing down and tucking behind the ears. She was dancing with a Greaser girl, Newtown's full of them at the moment. I can't get behind this Greaser girl fashion movement, the men seem to make it work better, they incorporate heavy but short leather jackets into their outfits while the girls have gone mad for white singlets and red high heels while they turn shades of blue and purple in the mid-winter night. If I was going to be a Greaser then I would be a Greaser boy with boots and and socks and a jacket.
The dancing Greaser girl thought too much of herself, even the usually non-judgmental Madam Squeeze admitted this quite freely. They were dancing where the crowd sat not ten minutes before, the young one and the Greaser girl trying their hardest to make sure that every remaining set of eyes turned towards them. I don't care if people dance but it annoyed me that the young one had determinedly sat at the top of the stairs away at the other end of the hall while the writers' read their work. She only appeared in the big room once the crowd had dispersed. She told me that all this writing, sweeping her hand from one side of the room to the other while her cigarette ash fell on the floor, was too self-contained or all wrapped up on itself. She said the ends all finish. I scrawled the letter 'y' on the back of my hand with a piece of white chalk. I nodded at her but I was thinking what kind of idiot doesn't allow a work to be self-contained. I imagined individual letters running loose and wild down King St. Z stabbed A through the heart in a bid to reorder the alphabet.
She snuck down the long hall to listen to a little of Josephine Rowe's final reading of the night, she heard two lines then stomped back down the hallway saying 'AWFUL" in a stage mutter. This is the part where I disagree with her. Josephine Rowe is a fine writer and an astonishing performer. I guess that's why close to a hundred people sat spellbound, leaning forward in the hope of being the one to catch her next word. The twenty-one year old smoked three cigarettes, grabbed her housemate by the arm and marched down the stairs yelling "I'm going to google you!". It sounded more like a threat than a promise. I breathed out only as the top of her head disappeared from view and she stomped out into the street.
Showing posts with label Mona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mona. Show all posts
Don't float
I almost walked over the Harbour Bridge in the dying light. I stood at the bottom of the steps sniffing the expensive north side breeze, rubbing my arms to get the corporate stink off them. I phoned Spencer and he said he was getting drunk for free so I turned around and walked into the station.
I didn't like where I'd been. I sat in a room with fifteen other applicants listening to the managing director rant about his personal excellence and the standard of excellence he expects in everything from fruit to shoes. The recruiting assistant scanned the room and made notes every time somebody breathed, like a robot surprised to be confronted with the living. I filled in the form like I was supposed to, listened like I was supposed to, sat there in my ironed clothes with my brushed hair but I was considering throwing myself under a ferry and featuring on the late news as a floater. The harbour is more beautiful than I can imagine. I let slip every opportunity for splendid rebellion.
Spencer was drinking in the County Clare so I navigated south, using the trains, buses and the soles of my shoes. I found him jammed in a filthy courtyard sitting on an empty beer keg bouncing up and down with excitement over something or other. He only bounces when he's drunk. I rammed myself into the crowd as an antidote to everything but in the end I found I needed to walk so I left the County Clare and wandered up Broadway and City Rd sucking down the city air. I stumbled and turned my ankle on nothing at all.
I was carrying no cash, not a dollar, I sat at the bust stop while my ankle throbbed and swelled, wondering what to do until I remembered about taxis and paying for things with credit cards. Mona found me five minutes later, bought me a bus ticket then a beer. We sat in The Townie swapping sorrows and cigarettes, wondering at the usefulness of friends until Spencer started sending me text messages about how excellent a time he was having at the party, far superior to The Townie. I imagined he was drunker than even I had anticipated but then he stuck his head around the corner holding out his long arms and laughing like a loon.
Spencer spoke about the time he was working in a factory in Bowral putting books in boxes. He said they kept playing the Youth Group* song Someone Else's Dream, the lyrics go something like 'let's go see The Holy Soul in some soulless hole where the restless people go' [The Holy Soul is Spencer's band]. Spencer was bending his back and numbing his mind, stacking books in boxes from 6 in the morning, listening to the factory radio sing out the name of his band. That's when he thought he might move to the city.
Spencer walked when he moved to the city, missing the horizon, mapping out the lack of spaces but that's another story.
* You probably know this Youth Group song if not the one I'm talking about.
I didn't like where I'd been. I sat in a room with fifteen other applicants listening to the managing director rant about his personal excellence and the standard of excellence he expects in everything from fruit to shoes. The recruiting assistant scanned the room and made notes every time somebody breathed, like a robot surprised to be confronted with the living. I filled in the form like I was supposed to, listened like I was supposed to, sat there in my ironed clothes with my brushed hair but I was considering throwing myself under a ferry and featuring on the late news as a floater. The harbour is more beautiful than I can imagine. I let slip every opportunity for splendid rebellion.
Spencer was drinking in the County Clare so I navigated south, using the trains, buses and the soles of my shoes. I found him jammed in a filthy courtyard sitting on an empty beer keg bouncing up and down with excitement over something or other. He only bounces when he's drunk. I rammed myself into the crowd as an antidote to everything but in the end I found I needed to walk so I left the County Clare and wandered up Broadway and City Rd sucking down the city air. I stumbled and turned my ankle on nothing at all.
I was carrying no cash, not a dollar, I sat at the bust stop while my ankle throbbed and swelled, wondering what to do until I remembered about taxis and paying for things with credit cards. Mona found me five minutes later, bought me a bus ticket then a beer. We sat in The Townie swapping sorrows and cigarettes, wondering at the usefulness of friends until Spencer started sending me text messages about how excellent a time he was having at the party, far superior to The Townie. I imagined he was drunker than even I had anticipated but then he stuck his head around the corner holding out his long arms and laughing like a loon.
Spencer spoke about the time he was working in a factory in Bowral putting books in boxes. He said they kept playing the Youth Group* song Someone Else's Dream, the lyrics go something like 'let's go see The Holy Soul in some soulless hole where the restless people go' [The Holy Soul is Spencer's band]. Spencer was bending his back and numbing his mind, stacking books in boxes from 6 in the morning, listening to the factory radio sing out the name of his band. That's when he thought he might move to the city.
Spencer walked when he moved to the city, missing the horizon, mapping out the lack of spaces but that's another story.
* You probably know this Youth Group song if not the one I'm talking about.
In Z Block's final hour a man spilled red soda into my shoes
Spencer finished art, last night. He did it with guitars, two drummers, an occasional accordion and the raising of his right arm but right now I’m in Penrith RSL watching a big band. The women are dancing together, men all dead.
I avoided Z Block for a while, a year or two, feeling that it belonged to all the things I left behind when the great tide moved me East and away from this RSL with big band afternoons, shopping malls and heat haze. I came back for the last hurrah, the night the University of Western Sydney shut its art school doors.
Most of the time I think of Western Sydney in the frame of mind I reserve for being stung by bees, undergoing chemotherapy or being pulled out to sea in a rip but I have to tell you this big band is very good.
Z Block is a rat maze warehouse with toilets and one kind of ceiling higher than ladders. Whole glass walls fold and raise like sails with insides worse than weather like, greenhouse, submarine, Western Sydney maybe that’s why they’re shutting it down.
It is important to note that the trombone section just spelled out a giant letter ‘E’ using four trombones, this made the audience clap.
I cut beats with tennis balls in some sort of miniature satellite dish, the balls tracked by cameras, projected onto walls and generating sounds. I drank wine from a popular interactive fountain, saw brains floating in tanks, stood on a platform wearing headphones and a vest heavier than lead. I walked in spirals through diaphanous curtains, a jelly fish forest and the space where once there was a giant walk through vagina. Student art is always precisely what it should be but this is isn’t about the art its about the artists.
We all went, all except Boli who was tired from Jazzercise, the long haul west to where we first came across each other, in Z Block, O Building or the Swamp Bar or on the hills in Werro. The catering at the last ever Grad Show defied the temptation to go out with a bang and instead supplied us with baskets of sandwiches and two bath tubs full of beer. The big band is now playing Jump by Van Halen.
The woman who fell out the window with Spencer, Mona and Mr Hunter made some noises. Freddie Mercury Guy took to the stage with his band Numea, he was breaking for cigarettes in the middle of his set, rolling on the floor and screaming like Damo Suzuki.
It is difficult to define the feeling of a university exhaling, memory confined to memory.
I might have been eight years old when they opened the University of Western Sydney. My father took us, my brother and I, to the grand opening. There were free balloons, sausage sandwiches and the biggest library I had ever seen. Dad stood above us on the big set of stairs with the light looming behind him. He told us about the necessity of this university, the great hope for the future, access to education for everyone no matter where you live. He talked about the tyranny of distance and explained the concept of elitism then looked up at the ceilings with a kind of reverence muttering about brutalist architecture. I stood three steps down clutching my balloon and staring about with a sort of wonder.
Fourteen years later I walked down those same set of steps and took my place in the queue outside the co-op bookshop, clutching my first ever compulsory book list, a small sense of hope and a free balloon. Nine years after that I stood there holding half a sandwich, a free can of beer and a mobile phone.
The problem is that this university is mine, I belong to it. I have belonged to it since that day on the stairs but it is very difficult to define the feeling of a university exhaling. At the end of the night a man pulled down the folding glass wall, the lights went off and there was nothing left to do but leave.
(article about shutting down Z Block)
I avoided Z Block for a while, a year or two, feeling that it belonged to all the things I left behind when the great tide moved me East and away from this RSL with big band afternoons, shopping malls and heat haze. I came back for the last hurrah, the night the University of Western Sydney shut its art school doors.
Most of the time I think of Western Sydney in the frame of mind I reserve for being stung by bees, undergoing chemotherapy or being pulled out to sea in a rip but I have to tell you this big band is very good.
Z Block is a rat maze warehouse with toilets and one kind of ceiling higher than ladders. Whole glass walls fold and raise like sails with insides worse than weather like, greenhouse, submarine, Western Sydney maybe that’s why they’re shutting it down.
It is important to note that the trombone section just spelled out a giant letter ‘E’ using four trombones, this made the audience clap.
I cut beats with tennis balls in some sort of miniature satellite dish, the balls tracked by cameras, projected onto walls and generating sounds. I drank wine from a popular interactive fountain, saw brains floating in tanks, stood on a platform wearing headphones and a vest heavier than lead. I walked in spirals through diaphanous curtains, a jelly fish forest and the space where once there was a giant walk through vagina. Student art is always precisely what it should be but this is isn’t about the art its about the artists.
We all went, all except Boli who was tired from Jazzercise, the long haul west to where we first came across each other, in Z Block, O Building or the Swamp Bar or on the hills in Werro. The catering at the last ever Grad Show defied the temptation to go out with a bang and instead supplied us with baskets of sandwiches and two bath tubs full of beer. The big band is now playing Jump by Van Halen.
The woman who fell out the window with Spencer, Mona and Mr Hunter made some noises. Freddie Mercury Guy took to the stage with his band Numea, he was breaking for cigarettes in the middle of his set, rolling on the floor and screaming like Damo Suzuki.
It is difficult to define the feeling of a university exhaling, memory confined to memory.
I might have been eight years old when they opened the University of Western Sydney. My father took us, my brother and I, to the grand opening. There were free balloons, sausage sandwiches and the biggest library I had ever seen. Dad stood above us on the big set of stairs with the light looming behind him. He told us about the necessity of this university, the great hope for the future, access to education for everyone no matter where you live. He talked about the tyranny of distance and explained the concept of elitism then looked up at the ceilings with a kind of reverence muttering about brutalist architecture. I stood three steps down clutching my balloon and staring about with a sort of wonder.
Fourteen years later I walked down those same set of steps and took my place in the queue outside the co-op bookshop, clutching my first ever compulsory book list, a small sense of hope and a free balloon. Nine years after that I stood there holding half a sandwich, a free can of beer and a mobile phone.
The problem is that this university is mine, I belong to it. I have belonged to it since that day on the stairs but it is very difficult to define the feeling of a university exhaling. At the end of the night a man pulled down the folding glass wall, the lights went off and there was nothing left to do but leave.
(article about shutting down Z Block)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)