A Kite is a Victim
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.
A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the
whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
Leonard Cohen
SLAMMATOWN - What Jack? Quaoub Part Two
'It’s a cheap art. It doesn’t have to be the stage for profound mutterings. It can just be grunting and moaning, for dancing. It has room for that. I like trying to get something special out of something that doesn’t need it.'
I convinced Quaoub, less formally known as Jack Elias, to
let me interview him in his home. This proved to be a giant mistake. Jack lives
in an actual warehouse in the heart of the Inner West, he’s managed to make
himself one of those homes that are both stylish and unkempt. The kind of home
that sends me insane with instant jealousy. He even has one of those vintage
record players that close up and turn into a tiny suitcase.
Jack has a coffee machine unlike anything I’ve ever seen
before. To make coffee he has to pull down a long lever and stand there sort of
hanging off it while the coffee drips out. While he was making me my first
coffee his talk turned backwards and slightly bitter, he insisted this tainted
the coffee saying, ‘this was made with hate and not love’. He threw the coffee
down the sink and made me a new one, with love.
I asked him why he made music. He put down his coffee cup
and stared straight at me, blowing cigarette smoke across the wide table in
plumes as he answered.
“It’s a cheap art. It doesn’t have to be the stage for
profound mutterings. It can just be grunting and moaning, for dancing. It has
room for that. I like trying to get something special out of something that
doesn’t need it.”
I wasn’t expecting an answer like that so I tried moving on
to another question, hoping he’d do what most people do and look at the table
or into their cup, maybe stare at their hands a little but I was hoping in
vain. Jack answered his questions directly, straight at my face, without
hesitation, until all the coffee and his directness had me feeling uneasy.
Jack insists that he has a poor memory but I think he’s
lying, again he spoke without hesitation as he described the first moment music
became his.
“I remember listening to an Auburn radio station at a bus
stop, Auburn closes early, it is desolate at night. I grew up in Auburn and
Bankstown, radio was the only access to cultures outside of mine. I was utterly
shocked when I heard Nick Cave for the first time and I don’t say shocked
lightly. It was quite an uncomfortable thing because it showed me what I didn’t
know. It showed me I was culturally inadequate. I remember thinking I’ve not
heard anything like this before. I remember thinking how scary this is, how
scared I was, but I loved it.”
If you have a quick look at the photo of Jack on Quaoub’s
Myspace page you’ll be looking at something that is Jack but doesn’t resemble
him at all. Jack squirmed a little when I asked why he chose that photo of
himself to plaster on his Myspace and Facebook pages.
“I am quite at odds with my own self-image. I deliberately
pick images which I don’t immediately relate to. My self-awareness and my
vanity chose to make sure I don’t look too good. My way of dealing with it is
denying it, denying self-image.
I stayed for hours, longer than I thought was polite, I
couldn’t help it. Talking with Jack is one of the good rewards for going to all
that trouble of keeping yourself alive, day after day after day.
First published on RHUM...
Oy you lot! Get some Emily Dickinson up ya
Sure everybody is amazing posting all your 'song of the day's on Fspazbook. Songs are great, obviously, but why in the hell is no one doing Poem of The Day? I will start you off, here is an old and out of copyright one, still good though.
| Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair. Be its mattress straight, Be its pillow round; Let no sunrise' yellow noise Interrupt this ground. | |||||||||||||
|
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.
Changing Lanes In Newtown
 |
| Photograph by Ben Campbell |
Got your hair slicked back or pushed forward? Got your tortoiseshell Ray Bans on? Good, now roll up the cuffs of your trousers cause it’s time to change lanes.
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