It seems to me like this might be the place

Yesterday of course I had twelve tantrums in the rain but everyone arrived at all of the meetings and I believe what I experienced was progress with umbrellas, boots and a magazine. Newtown will in the end deliver what you need whether it's a poetry editor, seven and a half burritos or a permission to reprint something already delivered.

I had thought to sit quietly in a bookshop and lay down one convincing argument after another but as usual I ended pretending to tap dance in the doorway of a Mexican takeaway waving my umbrella and shouting at the rain.

Peter, Paul and Mary seemed to have each other

Everyone knows they've been fucking but not everybody knows that he doesn't know her name. I decided to call her Mary. Last week I heard somebody say 'we lost Mary' and there's not one person in Newtown who looks more lost than her. I was clutching ten records to my chest and walking in the rain when she rolled past me on a bus staring at nothing, not even blank space. I imagine she lets her handbag sag in her lap.

There's no one taller, she's got those toothpick legs hooked on to the end of a floating bone pelvis. Black hair hanging clean and straight. I feel like setting obstacles in her path just to see exactly how much those long legs can step over with breaking their elegant stride. I suppose she looks like a model or something but when you see her in a crowd she seems planted from outer space. I've seen her almost everywhere in Newtown, on buses, street corners, bars, pubs, shops and supermarkets. She is always alone. Last month I saw her picking up teaspoons in Vinnies. She would hold one close to her face, turn it over then put it down again. I never picked her as the type to make off with the silver.

I would have assumed that I had imagined her, conjured out of the viable air space in my head but people talk about her. I'm not the only one that sees in corners and out on the street. I'm going to keep calling her Mary but I think I've decided that instead of watching stand hollow and decorative as a crystal vase I might just walk up to her and say hello.

So why are they saying this isn't true?

I've lost that and now it's gone

Newtown can turn on you, offer one of those knife-edge shoulder blades poking out of the backs of things. I knew this but I don't think Newtown knew that I would turn on her. I saw Gemma today and she said she thought I'd been turning on Newtown for a while now, figured out the code while I slept by night.

He started out speaking words and those stupid proclamations people utter before they realise what the worst is and that it sometimes happens to you, it made more sense than I'd care to admit. He rotated a hung apple until the worm hole hit the light.

Two seconds at The Hopetoun

I don't believe this is the end. There is a big grief behind this denial. I don't suppose I've talked about it before but The Hopetoun is one of the places where I suddenly looked down and found that my feet were standing just precisely where I always hoped they'd be. The other moment I don't talk about is the two seconds where one turned back birthed a god.


They come out of the crowd at The Hopetoun, the one standing next to you suddenly stops at the end of your sentence to look up at the stage. They might make a vague gesture with their head or nod at someone already scrambling onstage. There's always this moment; they breathe unaware of the accordion push of their lungs. They'll stare then at walls or the stage or their last chance to run for the green backlit EXIT. Here's the part that breaks my heart, the first step after they pivot and leave you standing in the crowd.  Barely head and shoulders above us but it's enough to get a clear idea of where they're coming from and just where we're likely to send them. It's how we spread our legs and birth our gods, forty centimetres off the floor.

There is a rumour

That The Hopetoun is shutting down. It might be best to panic after I find out if it is true or not, and not before.

Ponies Are Necessary

I've had one of those ideas that feed themselves and now I have a London correspondent, a fashion editor and a sex columnist. Some days you wake up feeling slightly tired and wishing the blender worked well enough to blend a banana but by the time you go to bed you're the editor of a magazine. Weird how that works.

There will of course be more details, in the future.

Pre-breakfast meeting sitting in underpants after all the guests have left but I am yet to moisturise, did I mention that my hair looks good?

Newtown cracked last night or it rolled over on the mattress and I saw her in clear light for the first time. I'm not blaming Spencer but he was definitely involved. There were empty houses where there was supposed to be Gypsies and somebody blamed Elvis for Kylie Minogue.  I can't recommend that you do this. Don't take a clear youth with intellect and use them as your eyes. If it weren't for my imminent breakfast meeting with Madam Squeeze I would have airlifted The Peach over three bridges and into the sea. I think the red dust rose up for a reason.

Anti-mashwoman at The Kill Devil Hills

It's the wrong side of midnight and I have to be up at 7, I left before the band finished playing but I'm not happy about it. I started the night out as a civilian but as soon as I discovered that The Annandale has installed soap dispensers in the ladies' toilets I decided to turn my notes into a review (which will theoretically be published sometime soon). I think I'm starting to love The Annandale, I used to think it was adequate with periods of shithouse sound but tonight there was soap and a chair with wheels. I managed to suffer only one mild disgrace when talking to members of bands such as Crow and The Mess Hall. I have a feeling The Annandale has taken pity on me, spread her beer-stained legs and offered me some shelter. I had nothing to do with the poor woman who tripped and fell down the stairs and lord knows if I was going to trip over anyone it would have been a Fenton or two. I had an awkward but passable conversation with John Fenton about kitchen stools and family photographs. He is using a scanner from 2001 but his computer is fairly new. I muttered strangely at Jed Kurzel who was interrupting my note-taking, I had to stuff my pen into the pockets of my jeans to shake his hand. I have no idea what he was saying to me, I was trying to grab the tail of a sentence as it flew through my head. I didn't manage to catch that sentence and I've been mourning its loss ever since. I suppose I should console myself with the fact that both he and I were rocking the double denim but mine slightly more stylish because I had made the addition of a silk tie.

Oh yes and the bands were quite good too.



For those people that like information the bands were:
Loene Carmen (solo)
The Holy Soul
The Kill Devil Hills

I have a feeling

That pine green will be making a come back in poetry book spines next year. Oh yes, it will be amazing.

PS or Ra! Accidental in-lift rudeness

Check out my "review" of the instore gig to begin the launching of Damn You, Ra. One of these days I'll sit down and write a proper review, like a grown up, just not today. In other news I have developed the exciting skill of accidental in-lift rudeness.

Dear Woman from Level 4 of that building I was in for a bit today,

I am terribly sorry. I did not mean to repeat aloud what you said when you declared 'god damn' into your mobile phone. It came out of my mouth with no warning at all, I think I was wearing a red dress. I did not mean to make the other ten people in the lift laugh with careless abandon so that their access passes bounced and clacked on their little corporate chests. I can assure you that I was secretly writing poetry while they were thinking about money. I might as well mention they were laughing at me and not at you, unknown woman from level 4. You may be consoled that I felt a kind of burning awkwardness and a little bit like an accidental arsehole as I walked across the beige tiles of your lobby. Later that afternoon Aleksandr considered my conundrum, he said that he didn't think you would take it the wrong way, if you were a person with a sense of humour. I have no idea if he will be right, I don't have that kind of information about him yet but I am slowly learning the contents of his ipod and that he likes to wear my hat. I hope this information will assist you.


DS

Holy Fucking Hell

Here's a thing not to do. Don't go running around town getting drunk on a Monday night with young Aleksandr because he might take you to a bar where a jug of snakebite is real cheap and the backpackers from upstairs come down to race crabs. I have the feeling the light shades were covered in hula skirts and most people were wearing shorts. I don't recall an occasion where I have cheered for a small crab with a number painted on its back, lifting my beer glass in chorus with a dense crowd of international men. My crab was beaten by a crab named "Tradesmen Entrance". I suspect that crab belonged to a group of men wearing bike shorts, rubber truncheons and handcuffs.

I ran away in the end, made a break for it up the stairs and back out onto the street. I was surprised to find myself on George St and close to Central Station. I was quite sure that my geography took leave at the same time as my senses and that I was located somewhere brand fucking new. I met up with Spencer on King St in one of those same old pubs where the locals are local and the sausage sandwiches are free. Spencer took his time laughing at me for running away and into the night. I guess next time I see him I'll try and explain that sometimes when I find myself somewhere new I just need to run until I stop.

Damn You, Ra

I kept staring at Rusty from You Am I not for any other reason than he is a man that knows Tim Rogers. Spencer told me to stop it then I realised that Spencer is also a man that knows Tim Rogers, not as well as Rusty but still there you go. Next time I might stare at Spencer. I was jammed into Repressed Records like a sunburnt sardine with Newtown's finest unwashed. Today was the first day in Spencer's album launch juggernaut. It was an instore album launch, Spencer and Mr Hunter worked out that if they continued to sell records at the rate they sold during the instore gig then they would be earning 36 million dollars a month. I double checked their calculations, they are correct but the likelihood of this happening is just about the same as me returning to my international modeling career. If it does come true then Spencer can start paying for my coffee. To help my free coffee dreams come true go and buy the album.


For those people who like information the album is called "Damn You, Ra" by The Holy Soul.


Did I mention that I am on this album?