Ease the squeeze

By Madam Squeeze (Busker Laureate of Slammatown)


At 6:15pm precisely I stumble down the front steps, totter for 50 metres, then hang a hard left and begin my purposeful stomp down King street. The stomping is a bi-product of the Boots of Doom – tall patent leather lace-ups with heels that add intimidating height, yet are sturdy enough to make me feel grounded. With my backpack I feel precariously top-heavy, a gothic ninja turtle, an Atlas on stilts. I must plant my steps firmly in the ground. The stomping is also mental preparation, the rhythm is meditative, calming. I am not suited to conventional work. A day in the office leaves me feeling frazzled, drained and inadequate. By the time I set off to busk I am often in a foul mood. Stomping helps.

I stop outside the Seven Eleven to drop a coin into little Lucas's guitar case, then weave through slow drifting herds of pedestrians to My Spot. I never start busking with an empty case. One must plant the seeds first – one gold, two silver, then strap the beast on and get down to business. Many smiles, positive comments and dancing children ensue. The weather is hot, the street is beginning to fill, and so is my accordion case. Photo Anne and her partner stop for a chat about Dusty Springfield records and I burst into a few bars of 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' in their honour. They leave laughing, heading home for a night in with a good bottle of wine. Friendly goth #1 drops by to lament his imminent dental work. We agree that wisdom teeth are a bad idea. I launch into a Neapolitan tarantella before friendly goth #2 stops for a noisy accordion hug. What has he done to his hair? A member of the Holy Soul strides along the opposite side of the road. I wave spasmodically, but he is all beard and business, glued to his cell phone.

My mood has lifted now. My fingers move of their own accord and I drift in and out of the melodies, watching Sal the gelato man scurrying about his shop like an ant before a thunderstorm. I grin and throw myself into the music. For a few moments I am no longer a nobody. I am a weaver of magic. Newtown is an unfolding film and my soundtrack dictates the course of its plot. I am Easing the Squeeze: bringing smiles to the faces of tired office workers and impoverished students, allowing ordinary folk, if only for a moment, to forget their troubles, to be transported somewhere beautiful. An older Eastern European lady stops and beams. She has no change to give and doesn't speak English, but she nods a thank you and the look on her face is payment enough.

Time expands and contracts. The tide of passers-by ebbs and flows. Tanned, bare-legged girls with short skirts and impossibly perfect hair; track-suited bogans packing long-necks of VB in brown paper bags; pink-haired, corseted cyberpunks of indeterminate gender. I catch sight of a heavy-set spike haired figure in my peripheral vision and for a moment my veins fill with ice. The stranger pauses outside the solarium, then walks on. My heart beats again. I've ceased berating myself for this irrational fear of an irrelevant person, but my hands are shaking with adrenaline and I'm shocked out of my trance and back to my own insecurities and inadequacies. I am no magician. Just an obsessive, anxiety-prone spaz.

Right on cue, Captain Fucktard approaches from the right. He stands close enough that I can smell the beer on his breathe and he inquires loudly if he can touch my tits. I tell him no, but he's welcome to go fuck himself. He seems genuinely offended when I physically shove him away, and skulks off muttering into his dirty top hat. I'm shaking with anger now, the fury of an animal backed into a corner and ready to lash out. My fingers are slick with sweat. I'm flustered and overheated. Time for a break.

I squat on the dirty pavers and scull a bottle of water, reminding myself that 99% of people I come into contact with are amazingly generous, considerate, and compassionate humans. I think about my friends and the many kind words of strangers, and I feel a surge of positive energy, a strange sense of belonging. I stand and squeeze out a searing rendition of my theme song, the Cancer Waltz. The accordion sounds like a carnival, and by the time the last coin lands, Spencer is ready and waiting with open arms, an understanding ear, and a thirst for milkshake.

Black & white photo by Lyndal Irons

The incredible egg: Part I

I am ridiculous enough to require reminding that all kinds of relationship between people are complex, nuanced and wedged into context. Everybody knows all the stories have already been told but that's different from living inside them. There's space for limbo inside your plot points, room for a chair, a bed, a bookcase and a bucket. I've been walking inside one all day pacing from wall to wall pressing my face against the glass. I am beginning to blame Tex Perkins.

The first time I arranged with Superman to meet somewhere I honestly did not care whether he showed up, canceled or simply failed to materialise and I wish, some of the time, to return to that point of independence because Superman has gone away.

In his leaving Superman has impressed twelve separate impressions at once like a multi-faced cookie cutter madly rotating through Christmas shapes, gingerbread men and animals. We went to see Black Francis at The Metro which is tolerable so long as you don't go outside and stand like an island in the flow of people that illustrate your difference and isolation.

Superman was unexpectedly and abominably rude to a man both of us are acquainted with but do not know. The man did not appear to feel the barbs. It was the worst kind of rude, the veiled, coded, intellectual equivalent of dropping poison into a goblet. My level of discomfort was such that I was ashamed of him and wish that I had walked away instead of attempting to summon trapdoors, loud interruptions or the clarity of thought whilst drunk to do something to stop it. I am equally ashamed of myself for not discussing this with Superman the next morning when I was weary and worse for wear but sober.

Foto was there and I quickly tired of the dynamics between him and Superman. They have the kind of friendship that seems to require them to adopt the roles of commanding and fearless private philosophers, each questioning the other's every thought, action and deed from a safe and lofty perch marked benevolence.

I did not enjoy the concert but it wasn't because of the music. Foto moved out into the foyer and was later joined by Superman. I was left standing down on the floor looking over my shoulder wondering where everybody had gone. Superman was, he assured me, about to come and find me. Foto declared that he would not go back in and I thought then that Foto must consume art like it was television but immediately blamed this on a mid-week dinner because I was remembering Foto's disparaging remarks about a woman. She had her wrists tattooed, I stared down at my plate while Foto expressed his disgust that she had had to wear bandages on her wrists for two weeks, "like a person that had slashed their wrists". I stared down at my plate and held my hands in my lap to hide the very old and faded but undeniably visible scars.

We drank more and more until we were in some fluorescent burger shop then a taxi and my eyes were closed and motion strange and exaggerated. Foto declared that we should take the taxi to the station and walk our separate ways. It rained as we walked and it was not unpleasant but for the ridiculous and as yet unfounded thought that this was the last time I would see Superman.

I stared at the back of Superman's head first thing the next morning and thought of nothing but rolling over and regaining the grace of sleep until I remembered that he was leaving and I became furious at myself for allowing the sight of Superman and the cat curled in sleep to become as Saturday as newspapers.

To be continued.

Feeling painty?

Graffiti walls open for artists upon completion of construction on site on 7th February 2009.

For info please email northbank@fareast.net.au

Sometimes

I once wrote a song called "Sometimes" that was largely about farting and blowing pants apart, in my defence I was a child at the time. The chorus went "Sometimes when I fart I blow my pants apart, I split them at the seams and Mum can't get them clean, cause sometimes when I fart I follow through". At the time it was hilarious but tonight my song nearly came true.

I'd been wandering around Newtown with Spencer and Madam Squeeze. We had sorbet sitting on the steps of a church then moved to a cafe for milkshakes (mine with soy milk so I guess it was a soy shake). Just before we left I began to feel terrible so I took the faster back way home along the railway tracks. I was in some dark back street when it hit. My stomach started tying itself in knots, I was hot and cold and white as a ghost. I didn't know what was going to come out of which end and that's when I took a look around and realised there was nowhere to go. If it was going to happen it was going to have to happen in my pants. I thought that if I was discovered in the act I would simply say "I'm terribly sorry but I'm not feeling very well".

I looked for dark enough places, I looked for abandoned buckets, I looked for holes in the walls of old factory units but there was nowhere and nothing but a steady flow of fellow pedestrians to potentially witness my demise so I put one foot in front of the other and pretended I was a marathon runner, they have a tendency to go in their pants or so I've been told.

I made it all the way home with clean pants, a modicum of decorum and plans to invent a portable fold up toilet, complete with privacy screens, small enough to carry in my pocket, just in case.

Think in shapes

Think of me as your noble savage ranging perimeters in place of remembering.

Painting fish

Like a cartoon coyote I put my back against it and pushed with all my might until I had a square of silence.

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.

Rapid Improvulation

Provided that my friends show up and do not leave me sitting with alone with the cat there will be a gathering on The Peach Deck.

May your banana stay with you

Yes, may your banana stay with you.

Medicininal Gatorade and Spencer loses his outtakes

I have nothing of interest. Anything interesting was forcibly removed from my body at high speed by all manner of crampings and convulsions. I am almost shiny with absence of interest. Raw, meek and frightened after my ordeal. Any moment now a team of previously invisible holy persons will walk through my walls, wrap me in robes and say I am ready for what lies ahead, this will not be true as I am slightly unsteady on my feet still but I don't suppose they know that. I will of course be surprised at being the chosen one but not a little miffed at being made to vomit and shit all over the place. I see this as an archaic and unnecessary part of the mystical process of which I now belong, historically, as the chosen one.

Spencer popped in this afternoon for a cup of tea which was exceptionally brave of him. I could have been hanging from the rafters ready to vomit and shit all over him the minute he walked in the door considering the last information he had on me was that it was coming out both ends at once. Brave Spencer walked right in through my front door holding aloft a cd and this time it was the rough mix of his new album, not someone who rhymes with Mex Perkins or a band that rhymes with the Trones but Spencer's very own brand new album. It was of course excellent but in my restless listless state I was very disappointed when we got to the end and Spencer promised me outtakes but then could not find them. I am the chosen one and I demand outtakes (and also some assistance with spelling- surely 'outtakes' is incorrect'?).

I am still waiting for the previously invisible holy persons. Sometimes if a person feels raw, meek, frightened and shiny with disinterest the best thing to do is wear silk pyjamas and sit in front of the fire, like Humphrey Bogart.

Table strangers

I've been holed up in here stinking of shit and vomit. It hasn't been a choice. I've been shitting and vomiting, at the same time. The first time it took me by surprise and I had no choice but to vomit on the floor between my feet. The next time I was ready and brought along a bucket, so it continued through the night and into the next day. Each time I was left shaking, drenched with sweat and stinking worse than I had before until eventually I could sleep in fitful bursts of an hour or so.

I've been waiting on kindness but ended up with strangers. The Peachettes are both on holiday in Queensland and nobody else is anywhere that I can see. I telephoned a few key people just to let the world know that I was having a problem here, they were kind but the hallway is dark here tonight and nobody has phoned to see if I'm still alive.

Before all of this vomiting began I put an ad up on gumtree for a table I want to sell, this evening I've been replying to people who've emailed to enquire about the table telling them I'll get back to them in a few days because I have food poisoning. The emails sent in reply were instantaneous and plentiful so I'm sitting here consoling myself with table strangers, its much worse than nobody at all.

Ahh horrible!

I have just vomited nine times. The salad I made for dinner came back out undigested but transformed into a foul tasting salad soup. I can not convey the depth of my horror, this feels like the worst thing that has ever happened. I was utterly helpless bent over the toilet bowl spraying high volume high speed disgusting vomit into the refulgent toilet bowl. My whole body fell victim to the convulsions.

It is a thorough action, vomiting, everything from my feet to my scalp unwillingly unified in performing the action. Rita, with her morning sickness, is my newest world hero. I am curled in my chair shaking, white and in fear that it will happen again. I feel terrible (dreadful, causing fear and alarm - just in case you needed reminding of the definition).

Shapes for sound

I want to be almost but not quite struck by lightning. I long for the blue of electricity or to be suspended over the deep water. It is the opposite of unimaginable, infinite depth reversing gravity with swelling upward thrusts. There are limitations in action and this was made abundantly clear when they all stared and saw only a small row of rubber-coated paper clips.

I'm not sure what I saw, it was the paper clips, that was the beginning. I saw a blue gradient remarkable yet flat and bent like wire on a cheap desk. It can echo anything, a blue gradient, a row of useful invention or that old arc we all know. I sat bent over the paper clips, arranging and rearranging them until the blue gradient was perfect. I would like to thrust my hands into jars of blue pigment but all I had was the evidence that pigment exists mixed through rubber, attached to wire and bent into the useful shapes of invention.

I wanted my discovery of a blue gradient good as any sky scattered on a cheap office desk to resonate like song butI have no sounds, only the shapes for them
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z.
You can rearrange them if you like.