Spencervision* saw us all reaching spectacular new heights on the peaks of Mt Stupid, but it was also kind of miraculous. I never had any doubt that the idea would work, just about everybody Spencer knows was already itching to write and perform a song about him, which is kind of odd when you think about it. What I didn't know was just how far some people would go, like me for instance.
Thinking it might be best to collaborate with someone I coerced The Walk On By into coming over and working on a song with me. Obviously The Rolling Stones were my first choice but they were all in hospital being reconstructed by German engineers so I settled on The Walk On By who are lovely, despite having an alarming fondness for yelling rude words loudly on stages all over Australia and Europe.
When it came time to actually perform the song I was starting to have a few second thoughts. The other contestants included members of The Holy Soul, The Laurels, Psychonanny and The Babyshakers, Quaoub, Madam Squeeze and about twelve times a crazy amount more. Adalita from Magic Dirt showed up and by that time things were getting a bit wild. Spike performed something he was calling a Mexican Rap entitled Gusolino Got Punched in the Eye-o and the non-Spencer members of The Holy Soul performed something akin to the Wu-Tang Clan, disguised as diamond pandas. Photographer Lyndal Irons installed an astonishing exhibition in the Spencer's lounge room title Spencervision: A photographic exhibition.
The Walk On By and I bravely took our places on the small stage, well I bravely took my place, the others are kind of used to it. The bass player kept pushing the microphone closer to my face which made me unhappy because I was hoping to become not only invisible to the eye but inaudible to the ear. We managed what turned out be an award-winning performance, thanks to Solomon, Leah and Dave being actual musicians despite having me as a temporary imposter in their band.
Spencer drunkenly donned a sombrero for the award ceremony which was just about as shambolic and raucous as an award ceremony can be. I proudly accepted a ballet trophy for coming second, Sol, Leah and Dave were decorated with lovely silver-coloured plastic medals. The overall winner was announced, Madam Squeeze, no surprises there, and then Spencer raised a fist in the air and screamed 'let's get fucked up'. I was deafened by the roar of the crowd, who most diligently and immediately began to follow Spencer's instructions.
The party pressed on into the night with an almost terrifying joyful abandon. Just after midnight there were three of us perched at the top of the stairs, we ventured up to go to the toilet but found ourselves unequal to the task of navigating back down the narrow stairway. Soon enough there were about twelve of us all in the same predicament. It is the first time I have ever waited in an 'after the toilet' line.
Spencer's huge and rambling house was filled to overflowing. Darkness didn't stand a chance against that kind of energetic light. They told themselves they came for all sorts of reasons, to witness the stupid songs, to take a chance to make fun of Spencer in song-form, to drink, dance or just stand in a joyful crowd of friends but I knew why they were there. They came because they love him, in whatever form that takes. Some of us have shared years in his good company, others meet him on King St for coffee every once in a while, some first saw him hollering into a microphone and thought 'who in the hell is that?', but all of us were united by the kind of love usually reserved for funerals. If Spencer ever has any doubts about his place in the world, if he ever catches himself in a moment of unexpected worry about falling into isolation, he can sit down, cross those long legs of his, and remember this night when all of those fears were silenced forever.
*Spencervision: A song for Spencer, you can see already how this might work, just imagine Eurovision on King St Newtown. Spencer decided to celebrate his birthday by judging songs written and performed in his honour. The rules were simple, the song had to be about either Spencer's awesomeness or an awesome Spencer-related topic.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query spencer. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query spencer. Sort by date Show all posts
Dividing rages and a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours or both more tender and more violent
It's been about a week since I started answering the question 'how are you going?' with the blunt answer 'I feel like shit, the world tastes like sawdust', or an entire Hamlet soliloquy (III) communicating more elegantly the world-is-sawdust feeling.
My friends now seem to have divided into three distinct categories:
1. The disbelievers
(not the band) but people who see me and hear what I am saying and then dismiss it as flippant word-vomit and carry on talking about their shoes, dog, band, ex-girlfriend or housemate.
2. The ignorers
They seem to listen to what I am saying and receive the information as truth but then decide it is irrelevant and carry on as normal. Spencer is leading the charge in this group (I) with Mr X a close but different kind of second. Mr X may in fact not be an ignorer but just a close-card-holder, it can be difficult to tell with him but then at other times he is jumping around all floppy and winsome like a four-year-old child. He is an odd mixture of warm and aloof.(II)
3. The warm lights in a dark world:
Two of my friends have been cheering me up and making me feel loved and welcome, for some reason this seems to make Spencer angry(I). These are the best kinds of friends, the ones who listen and then respond. I'm fortunate they have chosen a kind response but really any response is better than none.
Footnotes
(I) How do you solve a problem like Spencer?
He's not a complicated man. He thinks a lot, acts inappropriately a lot, occasionally deigns to write a song, plays in a band, drinks too much, deliberately says the wrong things and stays up too late. He's just like everyone else in the Inner West except that he is my friend and I might want to punch him in the face. Just once. Maybe.
You see last Friday night Spencer, R and I were sitting together at an after-party for a record launch. R was being deliberately kind to me but every time she said something Spencer would raise an eyebrow and suppress a smirk. I've known him too long to miss signals like that, to me it was the fair equivalent of a flashing neon sign. Ordinarily I might have just let it go, like the thousand other arch expressions, wry grins and outright sneers that Spencer produces in the course of any conversation, but not this time.
The combination of exhaustion and world-is-sawdust had me feeling vulnerable and raw enough to actually feel all of Spencer's slings and arrows. I am used to him being the first illustrate my shortcomings with an anecdote from his arsenal of my failings. He has a story about me for everything from bad dancing, interpersonal ineptitude, ignorance, bad taste in music, absence of fashion sense, being afraid of things, giving terrible speeches to general hard-hearted and fuckwittedness. I usually endure these stories with humour as most of the time they are not meant to sting.
This time Spencer's raised eyebrow seemed to indicate that R had no idea who she was talking about, that I was much more of a fuckwit than she suspected and that perhaps I wasn't worthy of being taken under her kind wing. This made me want to punch Spencer in the face for R's sake if not mine. R has seen me act appallingly often enough to have made an informed decision.
I wanted to perform a fluid ninjaesque leap across the table and punch him in the face whilst emitting loud volumes of violent yelling but all I did was leave the party. Since then I've been trying to talk with Spencer so I can work out if I do want to punch him or if he was just having one of those moments. I want to explain to him that he must have missed something in all those years of talking with me because I feel both more tender and more violent than he seems to understand. But you know, he's busy...
(II) A beginner's guide to impersonating Mr X.
First make yourself very tall, make your hair very tall, wear black-rimmed glasses and a Rolling Stones t-shirt.
1. Sit down quickly. Cross your long legs haughtily.
2. Ignore DS and stare at your telephone for at least three full minutes.
3.Turn suddenly and fully back to the conversation.
4.Smile disarmingly, reveal something personal, say something generous and kind.
5. Re-cross legs haughtily. Steal cigarette directly out of DS's hand without asking (smile disarmingly or act as though this is normal and everyone does it all the time).
6. Give cigarette back. Re-cross legs haughtily.
7. Ignore DS for at least three full minutes.
Repeat ad infinitum.
(III) An Entire Soliloquy from Hamlet
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
preuent your discouery of your secricie to the King and Queene: moult no feather, I haue of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custome of exercise; and indeed, it goes so heauenly with my disposition; that this goodly frame the Earth, seemes to me a sterrill Promontory; this most excellent Canopy the Ayre, look you, this braue ore-hanging firmament, this Maiesticall Roofe, fretted with golden fire: why, it appeares no other thing to mee, then a foule and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, How noble in Reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seeme to say so. | ||
—The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Scene ii, 285-300)
| ||
Additonal notes to be yelled out loud
A STERILE PROMONTORY!
RICHARD E. GRANT!
NO OTHER THING THAN A FOUL AND PESTILENT CONGREGATION OF VAPOURS!
I AM BOTH MORE VIOLENT AND MORE TENDER!
THIS EXCELLENT CANOPY THE AIR!
QUINTESSENCE OF DUST!
HUG ME YOU FUCKWITS! (because I can not shake of this feeling of doom and I have become afraid)
HUG ME YOU FUCKWITS!
Additional viewing to be watched and also listened to (because I said so)
Subject, object, six month rohypnol
I've been drinking with Spencer, I thought it was gin so we were drinking it lime and tonic but it turns out it was something else. I've been drinking with Spencer and he told me, don't get scared, don't panic and run away which is exactly what I was getting ready to do. I'm not running away from Spencer, its someone else entirely that's causing me to stamp my feet and turn a wide eye towards the horizon.
I've been drinking with Spencer and now I can't work out whether my new heater is on or off or on. The switches don't make any sense to me and the red light glows a constant unhelpful warning. I've been drinking with Spencer but before that there was Alice. We shared a bottle of wine and she turned up the collar on my coat then she held my hand and walked me home.
I've been drinking with Spencer and he said the thing about Alice is that she reminds everyone that's alright to be precisely who you are. I'm trying to think how she might do that but I can't fix on anything. She doesn't do it with words or the way she crosses her legs. She doesn't do it with intentional intentions. I think might be the way she inhabits herself and the air around her.
I've been drinking with Spencer and the words make so much sense inside my head. They are hammering out everything except the essential everything but I've been drinking with Spencer so I'll go to sleep with the exact shape of myself pressed into every corner of my mind. I'll keep the words inside me and I'll unplug the heater from the wall. I've been drinking with Spencer and holding hands with Alice and the world sounds like a song.
I've been drinking with Spencer and now I can't work out whether my new heater is on or off or on. The switches don't make any sense to me and the red light glows a constant unhelpful warning. I've been drinking with Spencer but before that there was Alice. We shared a bottle of wine and she turned up the collar on my coat then she held my hand and walked me home.
I've been drinking with Spencer and he said the thing about Alice is that she reminds everyone that's alright to be precisely who you are. I'm trying to think how she might do that but I can't fix on anything. She doesn't do it with words or the way she crosses her legs. She doesn't do it with intentional intentions. I think might be the way she inhabits herself and the air around her.
I've been drinking with Spencer and the words make so much sense inside my head. They are hammering out everything except the essential everything but I've been drinking with Spencer so I'll go to sleep with the exact shape of myself pressed into every corner of my mind. I'll keep the words inside me and I'll unplug the heater from the wall. I've been drinking with Spencer and holding hands with Alice and the world sounds like a song.
From the phone of Madam Squeeze springs more than I ever imagined
I bring you The Two Spencers. Spencer and Spencer P Jones (guest appearance by Madam Squeeze's thumb).Spencer requested that this photo be made public in order to commemorate a Spencetastic moment in the life of Spencer. Spencer and Madam Squeeze walked into a bar in Melbourne, Spencer P Jones was halfway through a song when he spied Spencer in his Television t-shirt walk in holding a guitar. He stopped playing and said "That's the best t-shirt I've seen in ages, you've got a guitar do you want to come and play?". Spencer could not have been more pleased. Afterwards they went to a tequila bar but they could not afford any of the tequila.
Last night I spent an evening in The Townie with Spencer and Madam Squeeze. They are the opposite of hollow people, they are the antidote. Sometimes an evening can fall into philosophy and the necessary torture of artistic pursuits in such a way that you wake up and feel your locked and narrow path is exactly the right one. You can wake up with the intention of spending a whole day typing and typing your manuscript and feel, for once, surrounded in your isolation. Its ok to be a person that pays attention.
Spencer turned thirty and thought nothing of it
Spencer turned thirty on Saturday. It was about fucking time. He's been in his twenties the whole time I've known him, first he was twenty-one and then a whole year at every age until thirty. It's been a long ride.
Thirty is one of those reflective birthdays where you sit down and have a little think. The first things I thought about were how much he has annoyed me, which is a lot but probably not quite as much as I have annoyed him. Friendship is sometimes a two-way annoyer-annoyee contract. I was thinking about making some notes about the annoying times but that would be easy and a little glib. Then I thought about the moments of support through sorrow, betrayal or ridiculous romantic muddles with hideously inappropriate men. Spencer was there for all of them but that too would be easy.
What is more difficult are moments of friendship and understanding that drop like a mantle pinning you still for just a second while the world glides on your own gentle axis.
Last Saturday I had to read a short story in front of an audience. I did not want to. I was petrified. I was coerced into going through with the deed by a horde of people, Spencer being one of them. I had friends in the crowd, all of them lovely, but Spencer was the one I knew I would go to if I fucked it up royally, made an irredeemable fool of myself and needed someone to make a fast exit with. I shouldn't have been so afraid, writers do this kind of thing all the time, but I was because before that night I've always said no, let my fear guide my answer and just said no.
The reading went with no major hitches, no one was more surprised than me. My next move should have been the bar, but the crowd seemed impenetrable. They were planted wall-to-wall like cross-legged rocks, jagged and unable to be stepped upon. I gave up on the idea of a drink but Spencer went over the back of the armchair he was holed up on and picked his way to the bar.
He strode back towards me, triumphant over the cross-legged crowd, holding two open bottles of beer. I saw he was heading for some difficulty, climbing simultaneously between the red hanging wall partitions and over the back of a sofa. I stood up to help and fell into a five second ballet. He came up suddenly over the back of the sofa rising gracefully as an eagle, passing a bottle into my open hand then placing his empty hand on the top of my head for balance. While he was up there, tall as a rafter, I looked up at the travelling arc of him and realised we were mirroring the same grin, shining and elongated with one long unlit cigarette out of the corner of each of our mouths. I kept looking and grinning as the flat palm of his hand centred his descent and he came to rest feet first on the ground.
It seemed to me that everything was communicated in that five second arc over the back of an old sofa with full beer bottles and unlit cigarettes and stupid grins. It seemed to me like we'd sat for hours talking, me saying how much I had needed him there, him saying of course he was going to be there and that I did alright. Me saying that for years it was him turning his back and taking three tall steps up and onto a stage and that it seemed important somehow that just this once it was me doing the climbing. Him saying that I did it, and he knew all along that I could.
I don't suppose it sounds like much, five seconds of grinning and balancing in the quest for beer but just in that moment it was everything. To be wordlessly understood as the somersaulting mix of fear and relief left me giddy. To know absolutely that his open palm on the top of my head was guiding him safely back down no less than his presence was safely guiding me.
Spencer is one hell of a friend. So happy birthday to him.
note:
I actually received an overwhelming amount of encouraging advice and support about mastering my stage fright and reading my story. From a whole bunch of people like Gemnastics, Geoff Lemon, Anushka, Spencer, Vanessa Berry, Thomas G Watts, my mum and especially Tim Sinclair who came to my house and got all Geoffrey Rush on my Colin Firth arse but right now this is about Spencer.
I am grateful to the people who came up to me afterwards and said they liked my story, especially the people who quoted lines of it back to me, that was odd but nice that you remembered some of my words. And to the woman in the red coat at The Duke thank you for coming up to me and saying you liked my story, days and days and days after the fact. That was kind of great.
Oh and erm, thanks Pip Smith and Penguin Plays Rough for making me do it, giving me free drinks and then paying me money. I hid the money in my sock drawer.
Thirty is one of those reflective birthdays where you sit down and have a little think. The first things I thought about were how much he has annoyed me, which is a lot but probably not quite as much as I have annoyed him. Friendship is sometimes a two-way annoyer-annoyee contract. I was thinking about making some notes about the annoying times but that would be easy and a little glib. Then I thought about the moments of support through sorrow, betrayal or ridiculous romantic muddles with hideously inappropriate men. Spencer was there for all of them but that too would be easy.
What is more difficult are moments of friendship and understanding that drop like a mantle pinning you still for just a second while the world glides on your own gentle axis.
Last Saturday I had to read a short story in front of an audience. I did not want to. I was petrified. I was coerced into going through with the deed by a horde of people, Spencer being one of them. I had friends in the crowd, all of them lovely, but Spencer was the one I knew I would go to if I fucked it up royally, made an irredeemable fool of myself and needed someone to make a fast exit with. I shouldn't have been so afraid, writers do this kind of thing all the time, but I was because before that night I've always said no, let my fear guide my answer and just said no.
The reading went with no major hitches, no one was more surprised than me. My next move should have been the bar, but the crowd seemed impenetrable. They were planted wall-to-wall like cross-legged rocks, jagged and unable to be stepped upon. I gave up on the idea of a drink but Spencer went over the back of the armchair he was holed up on and picked his way to the bar.
He strode back towards me, triumphant over the cross-legged crowd, holding two open bottles of beer. I saw he was heading for some difficulty, climbing simultaneously between the red hanging wall partitions and over the back of a sofa. I stood up to help and fell into a five second ballet. He came up suddenly over the back of the sofa rising gracefully as an eagle, passing a bottle into my open hand then placing his empty hand on the top of my head for balance. While he was up there, tall as a rafter, I looked up at the travelling arc of him and realised we were mirroring the same grin, shining and elongated with one long unlit cigarette out of the corner of each of our mouths. I kept looking and grinning as the flat palm of his hand centred his descent and he came to rest feet first on the ground.
It seemed to me that everything was communicated in that five second arc over the back of an old sofa with full beer bottles and unlit cigarettes and stupid grins. It seemed to me like we'd sat for hours talking, me saying how much I had needed him there, him saying of course he was going to be there and that I did alright. Me saying that for years it was him turning his back and taking three tall steps up and onto a stage and that it seemed important somehow that just this once it was me doing the climbing. Him saying that I did it, and he knew all along that I could.
I don't suppose it sounds like much, five seconds of grinning and balancing in the quest for beer but just in that moment it was everything. To be wordlessly understood as the somersaulting mix of fear and relief left me giddy. To know absolutely that his open palm on the top of my head was guiding him safely back down no less than his presence was safely guiding me.
Spencer is one hell of a friend. So happy birthday to him.
note:
I actually received an overwhelming amount of encouraging advice and support about mastering my stage fright and reading my story. From a whole bunch of people like Gemnastics, Geoff Lemon, Anushka, Spencer, Vanessa Berry, Thomas G Watts, my mum and especially Tim Sinclair who came to my house and got all Geoffrey Rush on my Colin Firth arse but right now this is about Spencer.
I am grateful to the people who came up to me afterwards and said they liked my story, especially the people who quoted lines of it back to me, that was odd but nice that you remembered some of my words. And to the woman in the red coat at The Duke thank you for coming up to me and saying you liked my story, days and days and days after the fact. That was kind of great.
Oh and erm, thanks Pip Smith and Penguin Plays Rough for making me do it, giving me free drinks and then paying me money. I hid the money in my sock drawer.
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.
Pebble theory prevents imaginary umbrella suicide in supermarket without linear or interesting narrative
Walking around the supermarket in Marrickville Metro I thought of five efficient yet whimsical forms of shopping suicide when Spencer telephoned for no reason and said he was coming around. I put down the umbrella I was planning on opening inside my heart and started doing what I was supposed to be doing, helping Grizelda choose waffles.
In-supermarket whimsical suicide is not a unique phenomenon. I strongly suspect every second person picking out a package of pasta is secretly wondering whether they could stab themselves right through the eye and into the brain. Or perhaps if it is possible the stolen almond they are eating tastes not like almond because it is one but like cyanide because it is laced with it. That would be an accidental suicide I suppose, if you inadvertently ate a cyanide-almond in the fresh produce section of a supermarket.
Spencer appeared ten minutes after I did at The Peach. Grizelda made us deliciously repulsive hotdogs followed by an enormous communal plate of waffles with berries, ice cream and real chocolate melted into sauce. Spencer mentioned something about me needing to be a pebble, rubbed along in company, and not a solitary rock all jagged and alone. I guess that explains the supermarket umbrella-opening-in-heart idea.
Spencer and I did nothing much last night. We sat at the kitchen table and drew idly with coloured pencils, drank cider and schnapps and whiskey to use up the tiny bits left in bottles. We talked about nothing and everything and nothing again until three o'clock in the morning. I had chocolate smeared on my face the whole time. Spencer drank cider from tall bottles and preferred to use the lone lead pencil over all the other colours. I crosshatched colours into meaningless colour blobs surrounded by words like 'bonp', a word that sounds as well as any other.
If you thought there was a point to this post you would be right. It is in there, quite obviously floating around from the very first sentence but I'm not going to sum it up. I'm going back to just past the beginning, before the middle. Spencer came striding up the hallway in a long winter coat carrying two big bottles of cider and two identical copies of Kinky Friedman's autobiography. We've done that before, sat somewhere reading the same book at the same time. Everyone has a different way of being a pebble.
The real beginning was the day before. Friday night I sat at the kitchen table watching my housemates bake separate cakes simultaneously. I was drinking butterscotch schnapps out of a Moroccan tea glass, smoking cigarettes and uttering depressing asides to any baker who would listen. Leaning my elbows on a pile of Hemingway's borrowed from Marrickville library. The Hemingways were a result of an email from Abdullah.
You see narratives are interesting things. You can lay out first this, then that, then this is what I was thinking or what it might mean but all readers are just guessing really and I like it that way. I wouldn't want anyone to know just how much my friendship with Spencer or Abdullah or Grizelda really means. It would be like baking a cake using the pumping valves of my real heart then watching the knife slice through the iced and decorated thing. That would be a fine way to end the last story, no conclusion necessary.
In-supermarket whimsical suicide is not a unique phenomenon. I strongly suspect every second person picking out a package of pasta is secretly wondering whether they could stab themselves right through the eye and into the brain. Or perhaps if it is possible the stolen almond they are eating tastes not like almond because it is one but like cyanide because it is laced with it. That would be an accidental suicide I suppose, if you inadvertently ate a cyanide-almond in the fresh produce section of a supermarket.
Spencer appeared ten minutes after I did at The Peach. Grizelda made us deliciously repulsive hotdogs followed by an enormous communal plate of waffles with berries, ice cream and real chocolate melted into sauce. Spencer mentioned something about me needing to be a pebble, rubbed along in company, and not a solitary rock all jagged and alone. I guess that explains the supermarket umbrella-opening-in-heart idea.
Spencer and I did nothing much last night. We sat at the kitchen table and drew idly with coloured pencils, drank cider and schnapps and whiskey to use up the tiny bits left in bottles. We talked about nothing and everything and nothing again until three o'clock in the morning. I had chocolate smeared on my face the whole time. Spencer drank cider from tall bottles and preferred to use the lone lead pencil over all the other colours. I crosshatched colours into meaningless colour blobs surrounded by words like 'bonp', a word that sounds as well as any other.
If you thought there was a point to this post you would be right. It is in there, quite obviously floating around from the very first sentence but I'm not going to sum it up. I'm going back to just past the beginning, before the middle. Spencer came striding up the hallway in a long winter coat carrying two big bottles of cider and two identical copies of Kinky Friedman's autobiography. We've done that before, sat somewhere reading the same book at the same time. Everyone has a different way of being a pebble.
The real beginning was the day before. Friday night I sat at the kitchen table watching my housemates bake separate cakes simultaneously. I was drinking butterscotch schnapps out of a Moroccan tea glass, smoking cigarettes and uttering depressing asides to any baker who would listen. Leaning my elbows on a pile of Hemingway's borrowed from Marrickville library. The Hemingways were a result of an email from Abdullah.
You see narratives are interesting things. You can lay out first this, then that, then this is what I was thinking or what it might mean but all readers are just guessing really and I like it that way. I wouldn't want anyone to know just how much my friendship with Spencer or Abdullah or Grizelda really means. It would be like baking a cake using the pumping valves of my real heart then watching the knife slice through the iced and decorated thing. That would be a fine way to end the last story, no conclusion necessary.
Communal ridiculous celebrates cat AIDS, in her hand
I don't know who's idea it was to start singing but we were all doing it. Spencer was cranking out song after song on the guitar and somewhere along the way we all lost our shit and just sang as loud as we could. Waving around our arms and creating one hell of an unharmonious racket.
It might have been the cold, the hours we spent UFO spotting in the park in the middle of winter, Spencer's idea of an ace birthday party, or the sheer volume of drinking under our belts. After the park where Spencer spotted fifteen UFO's and nobody else any at all we congregated in Spencer's lounge room. There were already people there, drunk as fuck and making little sense to anyone but themselves. One small woman in the corner held up her hand in greeting, showing off a fresh looking graze on the heel of her palm. She said 'I've got cat AIDS' then went back to the bottom of her glass.
Someone explained on the small woman's behalf that she had slipped on some pavers and grazed her hand. She was convinced that there was cat urine somewhere in the mix and now she was telling everyone about her new dose of hopefully imaginary cat AIDS.
Songs turned into time and we sang our way through three more bottles of wine. There were highlights, old favourites, songs nobody at all knew the words for so we all just made noises that kind of sounded like the right words were somewhere underneath the almost melodic synchronised guttural utterances.
Spencer started playing 'Zombie' by The Cranberries. It seemed like we all knew the words, everyone jumping in with;
But you see, it's not me, it's not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying...
In your head, in your head, Zombie, zombie, zombie.
It might have been the cold, the hours we spent UFO spotting in the park in the middle of winter, Spencer's idea of an ace birthday party, or the sheer volume of drinking under our belts. After the park where Spencer spotted fifteen UFO's and nobody else any at all we congregated in Spencer's lounge room. There were already people there, drunk as fuck and making little sense to anyone but themselves. One small woman in the corner held up her hand in greeting, showing off a fresh looking graze on the heel of her palm. She said 'I've got cat AIDS' then went back to the bottom of her glass.
Someone explained on the small woman's behalf that she had slipped on some pavers and grazed her hand. She was convinced that there was cat urine somewhere in the mix and now she was telling everyone about her new dose of hopefully imaginary cat AIDS.
Songs turned into time and we sang our way through three more bottles of wine. There were highlights, old favourites, songs nobody at all knew the words for so we all just made noises that kind of sounded like the right words were somewhere underneath the almost melodic synchronised guttural utterances.
Spencer started playing 'Zombie' by The Cranberries. It seemed like we all knew the words, everyone jumping in with;
But you see, it's not me, it's not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying...
In your head, in your head, Zombie, zombie, zombie.
Then came a pause in the singing, no one remembering the next verse, some of us started just humming and harmonising the right sounds but from the corner a clear voice started ringing out singing.
'I've got cat aids, in my haannd, in my hand, in my hand
I'm still fighting'.
There was a communal shrug then everyone, and I mean everyone, all fifteen of us, fell into the song with enthusiasm so wild it was frightening.
'She's got cat aiiiids in her haaaaand, in her haaaaaaaand, cat aids cat aids, but she's fighting'.
Spencer had his wits about him and started playing us in a loop. The small woman in the corner repeated her solo verse, holding her injured palm out and rising from her chair like she was on wires. Three drummers in the room started banging beer bottles on the table and someone picked up another guitar. The chorus swelled again and again 'She's got cat aiiiids, in her haaaaaand, cat aids cat aids, but she's fighting'.
Spencer played us in a loop for an age but the song only gained momentum. We were for those minutes joined together in the height of a communal ridiculous. Together as one voice of call and response, all of us screaming words through laughter. The night and the songs went until just about dawn with moments so strong you could pen a book about them but that one, the impromptu chorus of cat AIDS, well that was really something.
Devil in a box
The Holy Soul reek of Sydney is one comment I overheard at The Hopetoun tonight after Spencer's gig. Someone else, some young beautiful boy described Spencer's borrowed guitar pedal as a devil in a box. I've never heard them play like that before, they set my fucking head on fire. I don't know what's going on with the guitarist but he's got some fine kind of pain that breaks strings and rearranges atmosphere. If there's only one good band left in Sydney then its them.The Hopetoun was dead tonight when I walked in, dead enough to walk straight through to the bar and not have to steer around one person and I thought oh shit, I dragged my ill self over to Surry Hills for nothing. Sure they would have played but I don't think they would have taken it too serisously. I needn't have worried. By the end of the first song there was a fine jostle going on and someone yelled Fuck that was good and I pulled my chin down and gave a small smile.
After Spencer some boring band played and was mostly ignored. I sat in the tiny courtyard and encountered an unusual man. He had purple sneakers on which was appropriate considering that fine aging rocker Mr Tim Rogers once made a hell of a splendid noise using those same words on those same floorboards. Purple sneakers. The unusual man is called Andy Depressant, Spencer pointed him out as a potential experiment man and at first I vehemently declined and I resorted to using various rude finger gestures which Spencer returned with equal force in an ungentlemanly fashion. Andy Depressant was flippant and other, I have a strange feeling that if I was a man I would be just like him. I greatly admired his glasses, secretly. He told an excellent story about defaecating whilst experiencing the effects of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (spell check anyone?). I have asked Andy Depressant if he would like to be interviewed. He said yes so now I will have to interview him. I will write his portrait and never show it to him. I might pay for his coffee.
Most people were wearing boots, some pointy, some not so pointy, none pointier than Spencer's. I was wearing orange sneakers.
image: We Buy Your Kids
With bullets in their belts
Desperation was descending as I roamed the hallway, sat on the bed and stared at the empty inbox then roamed the hallway again. That's when I said NO! Not bloody likely. I will not become desperate or morose or despondent or frightened. I sent Madam Squeeze a message and behold the response "Spencer and I approaching Newtown. What are your coordinates". Blessed are the accordion players. We convened at the fig sorbet shop at 8.
Spencer was wearing a suit jacket over his clothes and some kind of fancy shoes. Turns out he's been double evicted. The landlord failed to pay the mortgage and the house has been repossessed so the bank is kicking him out. Since the bank owns the house Spencer stopped paying rent so the real estate agent is kicking him out. I am very proud of him. He is the first person I know to get double evicted. House hunting explains the jacket and the fancy shoes but I'm not sure it explains why he had one dry pancake and a glass of water for breakfast.
Madam Squeeze was lamenting her hungry day. She claims to have eaten more junkfood than would seem possible. Spencer recounted the food he had seen her eat that day. He paused to declare the heart attack virtues of twice fried chips from the yeros shop in Marrickville. Twice fried chips? Astonishing. He assures me they are delicious. This is when he divulged his breakfasty secret. What kind of a man has one pancake and a glass of water for breakfast?
Was it a cold pancake? Did he make enough batter just for one then stand over the pan with a spatula in his hand making a sad face and staring at a full glass of water? Once when Spencer was in high school he got ten out of ten in food tech for his pikelet.
After sorbet and much needed connecting with like minds we removed to the pub. All was well enough except we had to share a table with two strangers. The woman had a kind of careless beauty and the man had an interesting scar on his face. Slowly we integrated conversations until we were all chatting happily enough though not with depth or intimacy.
The pub started to fill with a new crowd, the likes of which I don't see in Newtown. They were all differently dressed but in such a way that they went together like artfully mismatched table settings or cushions in a shop window. All the women wore block colours in black and red. Their haircuts were sharp and coloured black or red. Some of them had shaved bits at the back. They all wore dresses, heels and red lipstick. The men were in black, rolled up sleeves, bryll cream sort of hair and had bullets in their belts.
Spencer said "Its Two Tone night" and I thought ah, that explains the limited colour palette. But why there was a there a Two Tone night at Kelly's? I like that pub is because there is not usually anyone on the upstairs terrace, there is no music and it is generally excellent for sitting and chatting. I quite object to tribes. Either that or I am jealous that I am not in one. I am too lazy to be bothered making all my clothes match everybody else's clothes. Besides I am too much of a giant when I stand next to other women to blend with a crowd. What a lot of effort they must all go to. What happens if they decide they suddenly want to own a pink shirt? Do they get voted off the island?
Walking home with my dress and my red lipstick I plugged into my mp3 player and realised its not all that bad. I might have lost a bit of confidence but I'm still walking around looking at things.
Spencer was wearing a suit jacket over his clothes and some kind of fancy shoes. Turns out he's been double evicted. The landlord failed to pay the mortgage and the house has been repossessed so the bank is kicking him out. Since the bank owns the house Spencer stopped paying rent so the real estate agent is kicking him out. I am very proud of him. He is the first person I know to get double evicted. House hunting explains the jacket and the fancy shoes but I'm not sure it explains why he had one dry pancake and a glass of water for breakfast.
Madam Squeeze was lamenting her hungry day. She claims to have eaten more junkfood than would seem possible. Spencer recounted the food he had seen her eat that day. He paused to declare the heart attack virtues of twice fried chips from the yeros shop in Marrickville. Twice fried chips? Astonishing. He assures me they are delicious. This is when he divulged his breakfasty secret. What kind of a man has one pancake and a glass of water for breakfast?
Was it a cold pancake? Did he make enough batter just for one then stand over the pan with a spatula in his hand making a sad face and staring at a full glass of water? Once when Spencer was in high school he got ten out of ten in food tech for his pikelet.
After sorbet and much needed connecting with like minds we removed to the pub. All was well enough except we had to share a table with two strangers. The woman had a kind of careless beauty and the man had an interesting scar on his face. Slowly we integrated conversations until we were all chatting happily enough though not with depth or intimacy.
The pub started to fill with a new crowd, the likes of which I don't see in Newtown. They were all differently dressed but in such a way that they went together like artfully mismatched table settings or cushions in a shop window. All the women wore block colours in black and red. Their haircuts were sharp and coloured black or red. Some of them had shaved bits at the back. They all wore dresses, heels and red lipstick. The men were in black, rolled up sleeves, bryll cream sort of hair and had bullets in their belts.
Spencer said "Its Two Tone night" and I thought ah, that explains the limited colour palette. But why there was a there a Two Tone night at Kelly's? I like that pub is because there is not usually anyone on the upstairs terrace, there is no music and it is generally excellent for sitting and chatting. I quite object to tribes. Either that or I am jealous that I am not in one. I am too lazy to be bothered making all my clothes match everybody else's clothes. Besides I am too much of a giant when I stand next to other women to blend with a crowd. What a lot of effort they must all go to. What happens if they decide they suddenly want to own a pink shirt? Do they get voted off the island?
Walking home with my dress and my red lipstick I plugged into my mp3 player and realised its not all that bad. I might have lost a bit of confidence but I'm still walking around looking at things.
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?
It's like a jungle sometimes
Doorways became impenetrable. All of a Newtown a locked glass corridor showing how it is done how it is done but I was prevented from walking through any doorways. Some silent alarm sounded and I walked and walked without purpose.
My memory, with a wicked flick of her hand, reminded me I had been invited to an exhibition opening and then it stopped. I walked into the bakery and bought some foul and stinking square thing and ate and walked down the backstreets turning left onto Wilson St and counting out the numbers to 191. Spencer and Madam Squeeze saw me approach and they made, in unison, a face of alarm. A pared back grimace and a raising of the chin, a tightened grip on a handbag strap and a bottle of beer. We are all herd, at once I understood, Artboy was in the building.
I talked widely, admiring the shoes and netball dreams of one, placing a hand on others as I walked past with a nod and a word. I circled and circled in that crowd but it wound around me tighter and closer as the rain came and people pushed under the one small awning. I pushed through the crowd and stepped up into the gallery thinking myself safe to listen to the art (sound art) thinking I hadn't seen Artboy in any corner of any eye for ten minutes but there he was crouched beneath a piece wearing gallery cans listening and listening. Thinking Fuck the Art I went back outside.
Retreating to the relative safety of Madam Squeeze and Spencer it was some minutes before sound refocused and I joined the conversation but then it was too late. He was there, two metres to my left talking and talking to the netball one and Petey-O. I told Spencer I have to apologise to him. I sent him an email demanding he become undetectable in life. Spencer said "Be direct. Say what you have to say and get out. Then we'll go get a drink".
Tricky situations call for subtle yet inventive solutions. I hesitated then walked towards him. I paused thinking to wait for a break in the conversation but instead I said "Oy! I have to apologise to you so go over there" pointing round the corner. He came without a word.
Around the corner sheltering under a tree I looked straight at him and apologised. His face, oh god his face. It was all of him. He is hollow yet heavy as a sinking stone. He stood empty and grieving; a man constructed around a black hole. His shoulders pointed inwards sloping towards the opposite of possibility. All the while the rain. I stood like a beacon feeling the solid layers of myself hold me upright and strong. In this terrible comparison I have light. A shadow posing as a man. In this terrible comparison I am whole and well and full of light.
He said "I like your dress". He said "Sometimes there are things that I miss but I don't know if that is right." His face, oh god his face, not a mask not a mask, I was staring at ghosts contorted into pain. I thought he was dying. He should have been dying with insides hollowed out and nothing but racing grief and the shadow shapes of life imitating life. He said "Its good to see you." So I talked and he listened and he asked about my family while the tapes ran reruns in his head.
I thought I had made him into a ghost but I see now he was a ghost all along. Time pushed back and away the night that he left, the loud snap of his mind. I did not imagine nor embellish. These long months in The Peach I have carried guilt, grief and the repeating sound it was me it was me it was me I am not good enough I failed it was me it was me but it was him.
Spencer and Madam Squeeze walked me across a park in the pouring rain and we miraculously appeared on King St. There were pubs and finally a small gathering of six in a cafe. We sat sheltered cupping warm round cups laughing and talking. Spencer breaking into Jitterbug then a finger click every time a Wham Kid walked past. I was waiting for the lightning and torrential rain to make its sudden definite move inside my head. I was waiting for the laughter to die on my lips and cold grief to claim me.
Walking home alone in silence the rain soaking upwards into my shoes and the bottoms of my jeans I was waiting to fall and be unable to stand. Two houses from The Peach striding faster than gravity, my right foot hit a wet leaf and my leg went out from under me completely. This is how I found myself two houses from home standing solid on my left leg, upright, stable and suddenly aware of my own balance and strength.
My memory, with a wicked flick of her hand, reminded me I had been invited to an exhibition opening and then it stopped. I walked into the bakery and bought some foul and stinking square thing and ate and walked down the backstreets turning left onto Wilson St and counting out the numbers to 191. Spencer and Madam Squeeze saw me approach and they made, in unison, a face of alarm. A pared back grimace and a raising of the chin, a tightened grip on a handbag strap and a bottle of beer. We are all herd, at once I understood, Artboy was in the building.
I talked widely, admiring the shoes and netball dreams of one, placing a hand on others as I walked past with a nod and a word. I circled and circled in that crowd but it wound around me tighter and closer as the rain came and people pushed under the one small awning. I pushed through the crowd and stepped up into the gallery thinking myself safe to listen to the art (sound art) thinking I hadn't seen Artboy in any corner of any eye for ten minutes but there he was crouched beneath a piece wearing gallery cans listening and listening. Thinking Fuck the Art I went back outside.
Retreating to the relative safety of Madam Squeeze and Spencer it was some minutes before sound refocused and I joined the conversation but then it was too late. He was there, two metres to my left talking and talking to the netball one and Petey-O. I told Spencer I have to apologise to him. I sent him an email demanding he become undetectable in life. Spencer said "Be direct. Say what you have to say and get out. Then we'll go get a drink".
Tricky situations call for subtle yet inventive solutions. I hesitated then walked towards him. I paused thinking to wait for a break in the conversation but instead I said "Oy! I have to apologise to you so go over there" pointing round the corner. He came without a word.
Around the corner sheltering under a tree I looked straight at him and apologised. His face, oh god his face. It was all of him. He is hollow yet heavy as a sinking stone. He stood empty and grieving; a man constructed around a black hole. His shoulders pointed inwards sloping towards the opposite of possibility. All the while the rain. I stood like a beacon feeling the solid layers of myself hold me upright and strong. In this terrible comparison I have light. A shadow posing as a man. In this terrible comparison I am whole and well and full of light.
He said "I like your dress". He said "Sometimes there are things that I miss but I don't know if that is right." His face, oh god his face, not a mask not a mask, I was staring at ghosts contorted into pain. I thought he was dying. He should have been dying with insides hollowed out and nothing but racing grief and the shadow shapes of life imitating life. He said "Its good to see you." So I talked and he listened and he asked about my family while the tapes ran reruns in his head.
I thought I had made him into a ghost but I see now he was a ghost all along. Time pushed back and away the night that he left, the loud snap of his mind. I did not imagine nor embellish. These long months in The Peach I have carried guilt, grief and the repeating sound it was me it was me it was me I am not good enough I failed it was me it was me but it was him.
Spencer and Madam Squeeze walked me across a park in the pouring rain and we miraculously appeared on King St. There were pubs and finally a small gathering of six in a cafe. We sat sheltered cupping warm round cups laughing and talking. Spencer breaking into Jitterbug then a finger click every time a Wham Kid walked past. I was waiting for the lightning and torrential rain to make its sudden definite move inside my head. I was waiting for the laughter to die on my lips and cold grief to claim me.
Walking home alone in silence the rain soaking upwards into my shoes and the bottoms of my jeans I was waiting to fall and be unable to stand. Two houses from The Peach striding faster than gravity, my right foot hit a wet leaf and my leg went out from under me completely. This is how I found myself two houses from home standing solid on my left leg, upright, stable and suddenly aware of my own balance and strength.
Take me back to Newtown!
Friday night I ventured over to Kings Cross because of the amazing good fortune of two bands I like, both I confess with friends in them, were playing one after the other in the same venue.
And at first it seemed great, for a mere ten bucks I got a teapot filled with Long Island Iced Tea, there were heaps of familiar faces in attendance, all going very well. So I had another teapot. My housemate didn't like her teapot so I finished that off. Somewhere between the second and third teapots T, one of my sixteen personal enemies showed up. Happily I was sitting on some low cube thing and was the first to notice her pants were unzipped. Nice.
I whispered to Spencer Oh, here's one of my sixteen personal enemies. He crouched low in front of my cube, counting off my known enemies on his fingers, I could only think of two. I cannot speak the comfort offered when I said oh, and D & P and Spencer nodded slowly and said Of course, they definitely deserve to be there. You've got twelve to go! He smiled indulgently, the bastard likes to tease me, I was taking the remembering of personal enemies very seriously, might have had something to do with the teapots, and was getting flustered when I couldn't think of anymore. Spencer just laughed.
Between bands I threaded through the crowd and upstairs to the toilets, T was in there with two of her cronies skulling red wine from a bottle. In the spirit of fake friendliness I struck up a conversation with them and introduced myself to the one I didn't know. She said Oh, I know who you are, you're. Then she stopped with the first syllable of Artboy's name in her mouth. She said I'm Artboy's new flatmate's sister. Oh, I said, nice to meet you. The way she looked at me. I could have shot her. I think it was pity on her face, but I can't be sure. I can't wait for the day when the ghost of Artboy stops following me everywhere I go.
Back downstairs the crowd was unbelievable. I ended up squashed against a half wall overlooking the area in front of the stage. There was a man there. A man with awesome hair and and some sort of giant camera with which he was not taking photographs. He looked like a man with a heart and a brain and a soul. The place was full of my kind of people but all I did was stand and dance and watch transfixed as Spencer transformed into a rock star. I don't know how he does it. The second he steps on stage no one can take their eyes off him. One day I might meet some of these people who come to see the other Spencer, the stage Spencer. One day I might talk with them, click with one of them, but I don't think I'm ready for that just yet. I'm still looking over my shoulder, scared by the ghost of Artboy, I'm still letting people test the truth of my loss by putting their hand in the hole in my side.
The bands
The Holy Soul
Belles Will Ring
And at first it seemed great, for a mere ten bucks I got a teapot filled with Long Island Iced Tea, there were heaps of familiar faces in attendance, all going very well. So I had another teapot. My housemate didn't like her teapot so I finished that off. Somewhere between the second and third teapots T, one of my sixteen personal enemies showed up. Happily I was sitting on some low cube thing and was the first to notice her pants were unzipped. Nice.
I whispered to Spencer Oh, here's one of my sixteen personal enemies. He crouched low in front of my cube, counting off my known enemies on his fingers, I could only think of two. I cannot speak the comfort offered when I said oh, and D & P and Spencer nodded slowly and said Of course, they definitely deserve to be there. You've got twelve to go! He smiled indulgently, the bastard likes to tease me, I was taking the remembering of personal enemies very seriously, might have had something to do with the teapots, and was getting flustered when I couldn't think of anymore. Spencer just laughed.
Between bands I threaded through the crowd and upstairs to the toilets, T was in there with two of her cronies skulling red wine from a bottle. In the spirit of fake friendliness I struck up a conversation with them and introduced myself to the one I didn't know. She said Oh, I know who you are, you're. Then she stopped with the first syllable of Artboy's name in her mouth. She said I'm Artboy's new flatmate's sister. Oh, I said, nice to meet you. The way she looked at me. I could have shot her. I think it was pity on her face, but I can't be sure. I can't wait for the day when the ghost of Artboy stops following me everywhere I go.
Back downstairs the crowd was unbelievable. I ended up squashed against a half wall overlooking the area in front of the stage. There was a man there. A man with awesome hair and and some sort of giant camera with which he was not taking photographs. He looked like a man with a heart and a brain and a soul. The place was full of my kind of people but all I did was stand and dance and watch transfixed as Spencer transformed into a rock star. I don't know how he does it. The second he steps on stage no one can take their eyes off him. One day I might meet some of these people who come to see the other Spencer, the stage Spencer. One day I might talk with them, click with one of them, but I don't think I'm ready for that just yet. I'm still looking over my shoulder, scared by the ghost of Artboy, I'm still letting people test the truth of my loss by putting their hand in the hole in my side.
The bands
The Holy Soul
Belles Will Ring
One more post and then its closing time
I returned from the wedding triumphant. That had a lot to do with Spencer, Grizelda, my family and a few more friends like Ron and Robert and Mr X, and the usual list of suspects.
You see, about a year ago my brother decided to get married. Some time after that he decided to get married in a park, the same park where I was attacked by a man some years ago. The park is located in the town where I used to live with Artboy.
I haven't really been back there, not since I came crawling into The Peach.
I wanted to attend the wedding I just didn't want to go back to that town or that park or that region. I didn't even want to think about it. Spencer and Grizelda both received invitations so we stuffed ourselves into Grizelda's tiny red car and drove and drove and drove.
I packed brandy for the journey. Brandy and painkillers for my broken foot. By the time we narrowed in our trajectory we were one sheet to the wind. Arriving at the park, grass by a lagoon really, the first thing I noticed was the exact spot I crawled away in the mud, undercover of darkness, when I made my getaway all those years ago. The second thing I noticed was the white cat fur on my black dress left there surreptitiously by Oscar the kitten. I decided to focus on the dress.
I saw my brother arrive in a car full of men wearing tuxedos. A familiar sight thanks to his years of playing in big bands. And then my parents and then the ceremony and then nothing but acres of goodwill.
Spencer and I were drunk and chatty with relatives and friends alike. My parents kept ageing and beaming then tearing up and doing it all over again. I performed one good deed. There was the bridal waltz, and her parents walking up to join in, and my father with his wife and there over at a table sat my mother by herself. Her partner nowhere to be seen, I think she was photographing something. I stood a little uncertainly because of the wine and my broken foot but I made to over to her table and held out my hand. I lead my mother to the dance floor. She said "I'm not sure how to do this". "It doesn't matter", I replied. And so we waltzed on that roomy floor in between the tuxedo-clad big band and the hundreds of pair of eyes.
Afterwards my aunts and uncles came surreptitiously one by one to tell me what a good thing I had done asking my mother to dance. I did not disagree with them but I looked at them a little beadily. Its been some time since a relative thought highly of me. I thought for a moment of my dead grandfather and wondered.
After my brother took his new wife away in a car Spencer and I stole all the wine we could and started drinking while Grizelda worked at driving the car. The turn off to my old house came up ahead of us. I felt uneasy but shouted at the very last second 'turn here I want to see the house'.
Grizelda found the old house easily and brought her small car to a stop across the road from it. The new people had ripped out the old weeping cherry tree and chopped down the jacaranda. There was a white metal letterbox in place of the crazy old wooden one my father bought from a man who carved things with a chainsaw.
I remembered the last time I was there. Half mad and convinced I was being followed by a cube of sorrow. This time I was not alone. We got out of the car and crossed the road. Spencer and Grizelda held back but I walked on my broken foot, all dressed up and drunk. I walked right up the driveway smoking a cigarette and taking huge swigs from a stolen bottle of wine.
Memories that house seemed like a huge shadow falling over everything I do. I stared at the front door and waited for something to hit me until something did. I don't need this anymore. I ground out my cigarette on the red brick driveway, shrugged at the idea of Artboy and walked on back to the car.
Half way home Spencer said "You did good tonight". And I thought yeah, I did.
We sang and drank and laughed our way back towards the city. The street lights started growing on every corner and maybe a plane roared overhead or if it didn't it could have. People were walking everywhere on the streets and there was life more than darkness and the big solid feeling of coming home.
Thanks for listening.
That's a full lid.
You see, about a year ago my brother decided to get married. Some time after that he decided to get married in a park, the same park where I was attacked by a man some years ago. The park is located in the town where I used to live with Artboy.
I haven't really been back there, not since I came crawling into The Peach.
I wanted to attend the wedding I just didn't want to go back to that town or that park or that region. I didn't even want to think about it. Spencer and Grizelda both received invitations so we stuffed ourselves into Grizelda's tiny red car and drove and drove and drove.
I packed brandy for the journey. Brandy and painkillers for my broken foot. By the time we narrowed in our trajectory we were one sheet to the wind. Arriving at the park, grass by a lagoon really, the first thing I noticed was the exact spot I crawled away in the mud, undercover of darkness, when I made my getaway all those years ago. The second thing I noticed was the white cat fur on my black dress left there surreptitiously by Oscar the kitten. I decided to focus on the dress.
I saw my brother arrive in a car full of men wearing tuxedos. A familiar sight thanks to his years of playing in big bands. And then my parents and then the ceremony and then nothing but acres of goodwill.
Spencer and I were drunk and chatty with relatives and friends alike. My parents kept ageing and beaming then tearing up and doing it all over again. I performed one good deed. There was the bridal waltz, and her parents walking up to join in, and my father with his wife and there over at a table sat my mother by herself. Her partner nowhere to be seen, I think she was photographing something. I stood a little uncertainly because of the wine and my broken foot but I made to over to her table and held out my hand. I lead my mother to the dance floor. She said "I'm not sure how to do this". "It doesn't matter", I replied. And so we waltzed on that roomy floor in between the tuxedo-clad big band and the hundreds of pair of eyes.
Afterwards my aunts and uncles came surreptitiously one by one to tell me what a good thing I had done asking my mother to dance. I did not disagree with them but I looked at them a little beadily. Its been some time since a relative thought highly of me. I thought for a moment of my dead grandfather and wondered.
After my brother took his new wife away in a car Spencer and I stole all the wine we could and started drinking while Grizelda worked at driving the car. The turn off to my old house came up ahead of us. I felt uneasy but shouted at the very last second 'turn here I want to see the house'.
Grizelda found the old house easily and brought her small car to a stop across the road from it. The new people had ripped out the old weeping cherry tree and chopped down the jacaranda. There was a white metal letterbox in place of the crazy old wooden one my father bought from a man who carved things with a chainsaw.
I remembered the last time I was there. Half mad and convinced I was being followed by a cube of sorrow. This time I was not alone. We got out of the car and crossed the road. Spencer and Grizelda held back but I walked on my broken foot, all dressed up and drunk. I walked right up the driveway smoking a cigarette and taking huge swigs from a stolen bottle of wine.
Memories that house seemed like a huge shadow falling over everything I do. I stared at the front door and waited for something to hit me until something did. I don't need this anymore. I ground out my cigarette on the red brick driveway, shrugged at the idea of Artboy and walked on back to the car.
Half way home Spencer said "You did good tonight". And I thought yeah, I did.
We sang and drank and laughed our way back towards the city. The street lights started growing on every corner and maybe a plane roared overhead or if it didn't it could have. People were walking everywhere on the streets and there was life more than darkness and the big solid feeling of coming home.
Thanks for listening.
That's a full lid.
I'm sick of myself when I look at you
I'll fill my shoes with powdered glass, that's all part of the deal. I'll walk you bloody as though I was always a typewriter. Spencer gave me Spencer P Jones on a flat disc with track listing handwritten on a white paper sleeve. He gave me a reason to glance sideways at the glass panel on the upstairs French doors in the cafe on Glebe Point Rd. I glanced at the glass panel fighting the urge to lurch my head through it. It wasn't cause Spencer's landed some astonishing people to record a spot or two on his new album.
Jagged teeth are tearing at my tongue, this is all part of my aphasia program, verb, transition. Tug Dumbly stood backlit like a monument but the microphone was shithouse and I lost inflections through electricity and trees. He was standing there holding his opaque decades like a frame but I'll sit through it. I'll sit through his time-frozen-yesterday's-decade Sydney vision humour to feel the molecular necessity of his breathing Yahweh poem and witness the tipping point of his verb, transition. He's a man on the edge of brilliance, if he dares.
I was sitting in the cafe fighting the urge to crash my head through the glass panel on a French door sucking down cigarettes and cradling coffee. Spencer keeps opening his mouth and the words are falling out. His words, other's words, its the way he arranges them, a stone fountain spitting out the absurd, the profound and the necessary. He's the most like a typewriter out of any man I know. Spencer said something and I was struck like a bell by my own lack of genius. I leaned back in my cafe chair blowing out cigarette smoke and cradling coffee, fighting the urge to lurch my head through the glass panel and pushing down the wordstorm.
I've wrapped myself in scarves and all the draping things I can find. I'm walking the hallway and eating mandarins. I'm washing dishes and changing the order of words in my head. I'm making piles of dirty clothes, talking at the cat, I'm putting on another pair of socks. I'm wondering at the order of things in my cupboards and counting newspapers in a pile. I'm cooking and eating eggs and toast, I'm putting pieces of broken glass in the bin. I'm wandering this house like a museum and calling it busy but what I'm really doing is investigating to see if I'm in a state of grace.
Jagged teeth are tearing at my tongue, this is all part of my aphasia program, verb, transition. Tug Dumbly stood backlit like a monument but the microphone was shithouse and I lost inflections through electricity and trees. He was standing there holding his opaque decades like a frame but I'll sit through it. I'll sit through his time-frozen-yesterday's-decade Sydney vision humour to feel the molecular necessity of his breathing Yahweh poem and witness the tipping point of his verb, transition. He's a man on the edge of brilliance, if he dares.
I was sitting in the cafe fighting the urge to crash my head through the glass panel on a French door sucking down cigarettes and cradling coffee. Spencer keeps opening his mouth and the words are falling out. His words, other's words, its the way he arranges them, a stone fountain spitting out the absurd, the profound and the necessary. He's the most like a typewriter out of any man I know. Spencer said something and I was struck like a bell by my own lack of genius. I leaned back in my cafe chair blowing out cigarette smoke and cradling coffee, fighting the urge to lurch my head through the glass panel and pushing down the wordstorm.
I've wrapped myself in scarves and all the draping things I can find. I'm walking the hallway and eating mandarins. I'm washing dishes and changing the order of words in my head. I'm making piles of dirty clothes, talking at the cat, I'm putting on another pair of socks. I'm wondering at the order of things in my cupboards and counting newspapers in a pile. I'm cooking and eating eggs and toast, I'm putting pieces of broken glass in the bin. I'm wandering this house like a museum and calling it busy but what I'm really doing is investigating to see if I'm in a state of grace.
I'll be drinking til we meet again
I'm not going to walk you through this. The inbox inside my telephone is empty, that's the only thing that's empty. The bathtub is full of DVD's there are office chairs on wheels in my kitchen, the table is piled higher than the top of my head with books. I tried and failed to access my kettle and there is nowhere to have a little sit down. I am sharing my bed with two boxes, one basket, seven books and a plate with the corners of toast, I ate the rest of that toast on Friday morning.
I still don't know what happened really. I know that it definitely started with condiments and now everything is upside down or in the wrong room, this is a not a metaphor. The cat is confused and somebody put their sneakers in the pantry. Last week I decided I would write cover versions of poems in short story form. I am sick of the musicians and their freedom, Grizelda made herself pasta bake for dinner and The Spatula ate cereal for breakfast every morning. This week I decided to sit sensibly in my warm jumper and write my essay and The Peachettes systematically dismantled my carefully assembled still life.
Superman canceled cause he's sick and I was disproportionately upset, somebody has filled the hallway with chests of drawers. I was on my way home from an emergency trip to Ikea, I was pushing a trolley with my impulse purchase white steel locker, two lampshades and one scented candle. I was trying not to vomit a one dollar hotdog and lingonberry soda in the carpark. I was disproportionately upset and wishing it was possible to wind back two days and stand in a house without a wardrobe in the middle of the bathroom.
My brother arrived and he smirked at the chaos, said he definitely did not want to be helping with this shit so we walked to a cafe and waited for Boli. Boli told me he wondered what in the hell I was thinking when I first told him I was moving into a sharehouse in the Inner West. He looked at me and he was thinking about the horizon. There are pillows in the kitchen sink.
The Hoptoun, geological anomaly, guaranteed to be at least thirty degrees in there, no matter how cold it is outside. Fault lines and lava. Spencer took to the stage and three songs in I thought I have had enough of this shit. They've got everything we ever needed, songs, presence, skills, magic, they even have the fucking trousers.
I'll tell you about my bias. I expect more from my friends, I expect rooms to explode and audiences set on fire or I cringe and that is why I am sick of this shit. Gig after gig after gig Spencer's band, The Holy Soul, cancel sentences in my brain. They shake out reason and my arm rises unconsciously with the heel of my hand pressed out in reverent salute while the crowd surges around me calling for more. I'm sick of this shit where Spencer packs venues and rolls light and the hard edge of rock right through the middle of every fucking person there then wakes up on Monday morning and goes to his shit job.
So I'm standing on the footpath outside The Hopetoun sucking down cigarettes and pink lemondae with Boli and my brother. Up walks Artboy and fuck me if this day just didn't get worse. This is how it used to be me, my brother, Boli and Artboy at Spencer's gig but that was before The Holy Soul were good and Spencer was just trying on his rock face to see how it fit, that was in The Swamp Bar at uni, that was before I lived in a house with filing cabinets and oil paintings on the front verandah.
Something's shaken loose and I'm rattle walking in circles again. My essay seems fucked beyond redemption, fail this and I have to pay back the grant money. My home has vanished and I'm living in that junkyard from The Labyrinth, Artboy has pulled off my permanent bandages and I'm a walking, shaking, heartbeat away from panic. I sent Artboy a text message as I watched him cross the road and walk down some dark street. I was pressed against the wall of The Hopetoun standing next to Madam Squeeze, surrounded by friends, flanked by friends, I was standing in the middle of my very own Roman Turtle formation but the words still came out and now the inbox in my telephone is empty and there's six mugs in my sock drawer.
I still don't know what happened really. I know that it definitely started with condiments and now everything is upside down or in the wrong room, this is a not a metaphor. The cat is confused and somebody put their sneakers in the pantry. Last week I decided I would write cover versions of poems in short story form. I am sick of the musicians and their freedom, Grizelda made herself pasta bake for dinner and The Spatula ate cereal for breakfast every morning. This week I decided to sit sensibly in my warm jumper and write my essay and The Peachettes systematically dismantled my carefully assembled still life.
Superman canceled cause he's sick and I was disproportionately upset, somebody has filled the hallway with chests of drawers. I was on my way home from an emergency trip to Ikea, I was pushing a trolley with my impulse purchase white steel locker, two lampshades and one scented candle. I was trying not to vomit a one dollar hotdog and lingonberry soda in the carpark. I was disproportionately upset and wishing it was possible to wind back two days and stand in a house without a wardrobe in the middle of the bathroom.
My brother arrived and he smirked at the chaos, said he definitely did not want to be helping with this shit so we walked to a cafe and waited for Boli. Boli told me he wondered what in the hell I was thinking when I first told him I was moving into a sharehouse in the Inner West. He looked at me and he was thinking about the horizon. There are pillows in the kitchen sink.
The Hoptoun, geological anomaly, guaranteed to be at least thirty degrees in there, no matter how cold it is outside. Fault lines and lava. Spencer took to the stage and three songs in I thought I have had enough of this shit. They've got everything we ever needed, songs, presence, skills, magic, they even have the fucking trousers.
I'll tell you about my bias. I expect more from my friends, I expect rooms to explode and audiences set on fire or I cringe and that is why I am sick of this shit. Gig after gig after gig Spencer's band, The Holy Soul, cancel sentences in my brain. They shake out reason and my arm rises unconsciously with the heel of my hand pressed out in reverent salute while the crowd surges around me calling for more. I'm sick of this shit where Spencer packs venues and rolls light and the hard edge of rock right through the middle of every fucking person there then wakes up on Monday morning and goes to his shit job.
So I'm standing on the footpath outside The Hopetoun sucking down cigarettes and pink lemondae with Boli and my brother. Up walks Artboy and fuck me if this day just didn't get worse. This is how it used to be me, my brother, Boli and Artboy at Spencer's gig but that was before The Holy Soul were good and Spencer was just trying on his rock face to see how it fit, that was in The Swamp Bar at uni, that was before I lived in a house with filing cabinets and oil paintings on the front verandah.
Something's shaken loose and I'm rattle walking in circles again. My essay seems fucked beyond redemption, fail this and I have to pay back the grant money. My home has vanished and I'm living in that junkyard from The Labyrinth, Artboy has pulled off my permanent bandages and I'm a walking, shaking, heartbeat away from panic. I sent Artboy a text message as I watched him cross the road and walk down some dark street. I was pressed against the wall of The Hopetoun standing next to Madam Squeeze, surrounded by friends, flanked by friends, I was standing in the middle of my very own Roman Turtle formation but the words still came out and now the inbox in my telephone is empty and there's six mugs in my sock drawer.
God has a handlebar moustache
This was confirmed at the seance Spencer went to on Saturday night. Turns out a seance can freak the fuck out of a fully grown man. Turns out a man can be walking home chased by bats, spirits and demons until he's not sure anymore about anything. Turns out Spencer won't be going to another seance.
I went to meet Henry Rollins tonight. I was hoping for something but the only thing that happened was that three separate people on Glebe Point Rd told me to fuck off then I wound up in a cafe with Spencer drinking coffee and watching his eyes go wide every time he remembered the seance. He said the bat was huge, it flapped right out, right in his face and for days he's been wondering if he knows anything at all. There was a spirit and it wanted him to die. This was before we were walking up some road in Glebe and I noticed something important.
There are things that will revolutionise your life. Things like an electric toothbrush, a tub of pawpaw ointment sticky and good, one nice tea cup just for you or a friend like Spencer. He revolutionsises my life every time I see him. I know he writes a damn good song, he owns that stage, the force of his personality will knock you off your feet but that's not what's important.
I've been talking to Spencer for some years now and I feel like I've only just begun. This man is awake. In other news I just ironed a shirt for the first time in years.
I went to meet Henry Rollins tonight. I was hoping for something but the only thing that happened was that three separate people on Glebe Point Rd told me to fuck off then I wound up in a cafe with Spencer drinking coffee and watching his eyes go wide every time he remembered the seance. He said the bat was huge, it flapped right out, right in his face and for days he's been wondering if he knows anything at all. There was a spirit and it wanted him to die. This was before we were walking up some road in Glebe and I noticed something important.
There are things that will revolutionise your life. Things like an electric toothbrush, a tub of pawpaw ointment sticky and good, one nice tea cup just for you or a friend like Spencer. He revolutionsises my life every time I see him. I know he writes a damn good song, he owns that stage, the force of his personality will knock you off your feet but that's not what's important.
I've been talking to Spencer for some years now and I feel like I've only just begun. This man is awake. In other news I just ironed a shirt for the first time in years.
SLAMMATOWN: Talking 'bout last night
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| Illustration by Onnie Cleary |
He ran across the square yelling, ‘I fucked her face! I fucked her face!’*. Try watching a man do that then tell me how you feel.
Earlier in the night, before the face-fuck yelling, I was at a show reviewing three bands I had no interest in, none at all. I went outside for a little sit down when my left foot became mildly itchy. A small itch can be happily ignored but I scratched anyway. A stranger sitting beside me leant over, pushed my hand away and started scratching my foot with his own fingernails. My foot, his hand, you get the picture.
Earlier in the night, before the face-fuck yelling, I was at a show reviewing three bands I had no interest in, none at all. I went outside for a little sit down when my left foot became mildly itchy. A small itch can be happily ignored but I scratched anyway. A stranger sitting beside me leant over, pushed my hand away and started scratching my foot with his own fingernails. My foot, his hand, you get the picture.
Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Foot Scratching Man photographed me against my will, made inappropriately familiar conversation, offered me terrible student-style cheap cigarettes he was too old to be smoking, declared he would pine when I decided to walk away and was generally quite strange. He was sitting with a woman who seemed like his girlfriend.
He wasn’t flirting, not by any normal definition of the word, but there was something odd going on there. I wouldn’t have minded too much if this was the only thing that happened last night but shit just went down a weird hill after that. One man pulled at my shirt to peer at my breasts and another poured his drink over my feet to help by anointing me with spirits.
The sense of relief after leaving a venue packed full of stupid men was profound. Later on I was sitting peacefully on the ground drinking longnecks with Spencer and friends when Fuck Face Yelling Man walked right up to us and asked to join us. I said he could if he told me a good story.**
He swayed drunkenly but steadied himself into a low crouch by hanging on to my shoulders. His story was this; he shagged a woman, took photographs of her, sent them to all his friends and then denied it to her face. All the while he was pushing his face right up into mine, wrapping his arms around me, crawling on his knees to get closer to me. If Spencer hadn’t jumped to his feet and demanded that this horrible man unhand me at once I don’t know what I would have done.***
Spencer looked serious as a heart attack standing there all tall and commanding telling him to take his hands off me and leave. Fuck Face Yelling Man leapt to his feet and started to run away yelling this: “I photographed her and I lied! I fucked her face! I grabbed her ears and fucked her face! I fucked her face!”
Might be there’s something in the water, or the power of my fuckwit magnet spontaneously tripled. Either way things are not coming up roses. There is something wrong the men of the Inner West. Please send me some new and better men, so I don’t end up murdering somebody.
He wasn’t flirting, not by any normal definition of the word, but there was something odd going on there. I wouldn’t have minded too much if this was the only thing that happened last night but shit just went down a weird hill after that. One man pulled at my shirt to peer at my breasts and another poured his drink over my feet to help by anointing me with spirits.
The sense of relief after leaving a venue packed full of stupid men was profound. Later on I was sitting peacefully on the ground drinking longnecks with Spencer and friends when Fuck Face Yelling Man walked right up to us and asked to join us. I said he could if he told me a good story.**
He swayed drunkenly but steadied himself into a low crouch by hanging on to my shoulders. His story was this; he shagged a woman, took photographs of her, sent them to all his friends and then denied it to her face. All the while he was pushing his face right up into mine, wrapping his arms around me, crawling on his knees to get closer to me. If Spencer hadn’t jumped to his feet and demanded that this horrible man unhand me at once I don’t know what I would have done.***
Spencer looked serious as a heart attack standing there all tall and commanding telling him to take his hands off me and leave. Fuck Face Yelling Man leapt to his feet and started to run away yelling this: “I photographed her and I lied! I fucked her face! I grabbed her ears and fucked her face! I fucked her face!”
Might be there’s something in the water, or the power of my fuckwit magnet spontaneously tripled. Either way things are not coming up roses. There is something wrong the men of the Inner West. Please send me some new and better men, so I don’t end up murdering somebody.
* He was not talking about my face. He did not fuck my face.
** Spencer told him no, as I was saying yes. For the record Spencer was right and I was terribly, horribly wrong.
*** I was planning unmitigated violence, not helpless surrender.
Sham civilian drinks free beer with the band then writes a boring post about it or Gareth Liddiard might be something more than an ordinary man but I'm not quite sure about that yet
Image by Chris Familton
The other night I was sitting as a civilian at The Annandale watching bands and rubbing at the stamp on my wrist. It's been a while since I bothered to go to a gig I had to pay for. I pulled out my notebook out of habit, taking down the sentences music pushes through my head when I realised the whole rock'n'roll civilian feeling was a sham. Sure I paid like everyone else to get in to the venue but that's where the similarities ended.
I'm pretty sure most people don't make notes at gigs. I made a lap of the venue and spotted exactly no other notebooks so I gave up the sham and walked over to Gareth Liddiard to say hello. He said, "Come on Dale let's go upstairs for a durry". We were talking about taxes, new songs he's writing for his solo album and knock knock jokes when Spencer walked through the band room and out to the balcony where we were all sitting. He threw himself across a lounge. I kept hitting at the side of my head hoping to shake whatever was plaguing my ears out of my head. There was meandering and pointless conversation, free beer, I solved the mystery of The Faz* and of course there's always a photographer trying to get photos of Gareth sitting out on the balcony. Spencer is the only man I know who'll walk towards whoever is trying to take a shot to make it easier for them.
There was a formal party happening upstairs so we pushed our way down the hallway to get downstairs to watch Gareth do his solo set. I wanted to be standing right there, side of stage so I could watch to see if I could spot the moment this time. I've been trying to work out what happens when someone walks on stage and settles in front of the microphone. In between the time they turn their back on me and place one foot at the bottom of the stairs to go onstage and when they open their mouth to let the first sung syllable out something happens. I've seen it happen to Spencer hundreds, possibly thousands of times. I used to wonder if he'd come back, if it would be my friend that descended the stairs back down to ordinary floor space or if he'd remain transformed.
I've never seen anyone more transformed than Gareth Liddiard but it's not as simple as it sounds. He'll talk, tell stories, make jokes and then drop suddenly into song as though the devil got hold of him and every person standing in the room knows they're witnessing something more than music. I saw the moment again and again as he switched between banter and song. He was dropping in and out of his ordinary being without any hint of effort. I tried making notes, watching closer then closing my eyes but I came no closer to solving the riddle.
After the gig I was sitting over a cheeseburger with Spencer across the road from The Annandale. I could see the others still up on the balcony talking and drinking beer like nothing just happened. On reflection I suppose it's just the state of reverie made visible. This is the advantage that musicians, real ones and not just people who play music, have over the rest of us writers. It's just not very interesting to watch somebody type.
* All night Spencer and Worrad had been talking about 'The Faz' as though he was a mystical being but they refused to tell me who he was. When Luke from The Laurels came into the room I asked him if he was The Faz and he said yes. Not very interesting to read about but still I am pleased that I managed to solve the riddle so easily.
Click here to read one of my reviews of The Drones, if you can be bothered...
Bumble bees and toast are both kind of fuzzy and yellow
Superman sits to my left strumming the guitar and singing admirably, I am propped against the headboard typing. Last night Spencer's band had agreed to play at some mad warehouse party in Marrickville. Superman made the trek to The Peach and we set out to locate this warehouse at around 11pm. This is the part where my age pops and unfurls in a cloud of unkind streamers. I am too old to stand in a rough concrete courtyard between warehouses listening to shit bands whilst posing my limbs artistically under the deliberate architecture of my hair. Most others in attendance were clearly not too old, their sliding eyes travelled over my physical form with less than casual disinterest; these are The Callow Youth.
They were two hours behind schedule so coffee was sought back out in the real world and the electric daylight. Spencer, Madam Squeeze and Superman and I charted a course for Newtown. Here's the part where four people at a corner table sip at coffees with elbows wide and open, throats arced back in the ease of laughter and conversation. Spencer demonstrated classic frontman dance moves in a cafe format cabaret history of rock. Madam Squeeze drank her third vanilla milkshake of the day.
Meanwhile back at the warehouse The Callow Youth were disagreeing with the local constabulary. When we arrived everything was being shut down. A small mob of Callow Youth stood arguing with the police. A tall pale one towards the back called them fascists, that's when Superman and I sniggered in unison. Spencer's band did not play. The Callow Youth started some band up but it was feeling nasty in that hot metal warehouse with the uneven concrete floor and the pools and puddles of Callow Youth.
I was wearing Superman's hat but this did not help. It did not help when I introduced Superman to Artboy. It did not help when The Callow Youth swarmed in a doorway and I became stuck. It did not help when we could not get out of the complex because the gates were locked. It did not help when Spencer's band decided it was no good thing and did not play. It did not help when I realised Superman had come all this way and would not hear even one band, but I don't think it looked too bad.
The reason my sentences are stubborn and artless is simple. Superman and I headed back to The Peach. We drank wine on The Peach Deck for hours. Conversation folded into natural pleats, words rose in patterns and the cat sat quiet on the striped lawn chair under the stars. Conversation turned to hats and ear size versus face suitability for hat wearing. There was only one thing to be done. We moved inside and had a hat parade, we talked past dawn then slept until midday.
Superman is a woven thing, he is threaded and cross-threaded. There are tangles, dropped stitches and a great miraculous unfolding. Held to the light his patterns are intricate and stretch clear to the horizon impossibly large yet definite in shape. He's a tall stick of limbs spiking out heart and precisely the right amount of raw intellect and humanity.
Sylvia pounced on the bed midmorning waking me with a gentle swat of a gloved paw. She walked the length of Superman three times, placing each paw with slow precision before settling at my elbow, folding into herself with a contented breath.
Grizelda miraculously poached us eggs. The day gently turned behind shaded windows and a merry veil of happy exhaustion. I believe I had a stupendously, ridiculously good time driving, walking, drinking, talking, hat parading, sleeping, breakfasting, sitting and song writing with Superman. I sure hope we can do it again some time.
An awesome song of joy and goodness by Superman and Dale Slamma:
Bumble bees and toast are both kind of fuzzy and yellow
All the little flowers smile at me and say hello
Cutesie little bunnies bouncing all around look at them go
Sunshine, yeah sunshine
Over on the hill with a pen and pad was Rimbaud
Furiously writing something nice look at him go
Butterflies fluttering by in the meadow
a pony, yeah a pony
Optional Bridge
And then there was a thunderstorm
And I turned into Nick Cave
And I constructed a murder ballad in a lime tree arbour
Bumble bees and toast are both kind of fuzzy and yellow
All the little flowers smile at me and say hello
Cutsie little bunnies bouncing all around look at them go
Sunshine, yeah sunshine
Over on the hill with a pen and pad was Rimbaud
Furiously writing something nice look at him go
Butterflies fluttering by in the meadow
a pony, yeah a pony
Comfortable pyjamas floating by in a rainbow
A kitten in a crocodile suit playing flute in a window
Folk with guitars, peaches and stars dancing real slow
This is the best place
This is the best place
This is the best place
Yeah
They were two hours behind schedule so coffee was sought back out in the real world and the electric daylight. Spencer, Madam Squeeze and Superman and I charted a course for Newtown. Here's the part where four people at a corner table sip at coffees with elbows wide and open, throats arced back in the ease of laughter and conversation. Spencer demonstrated classic frontman dance moves in a cafe format cabaret history of rock. Madam Squeeze drank her third vanilla milkshake of the day.
Meanwhile back at the warehouse The Callow Youth were disagreeing with the local constabulary. When we arrived everything was being shut down. A small mob of Callow Youth stood arguing with the police. A tall pale one towards the back called them fascists, that's when Superman and I sniggered in unison. Spencer's band did not play. The Callow Youth started some band up but it was feeling nasty in that hot metal warehouse with the uneven concrete floor and the pools and puddles of Callow Youth.
I was wearing Superman's hat but this did not help. It did not help when I introduced Superman to Artboy. It did not help when The Callow Youth swarmed in a doorway and I became stuck. It did not help when we could not get out of the complex because the gates were locked. It did not help when Spencer's band decided it was no good thing and did not play. It did not help when I realised Superman had come all this way and would not hear even one band, but I don't think it looked too bad.
The reason my sentences are stubborn and artless is simple. Superman and I headed back to The Peach. We drank wine on The Peach Deck for hours. Conversation folded into natural pleats, words rose in patterns and the cat sat quiet on the striped lawn chair under the stars. Conversation turned to hats and ear size versus face suitability for hat wearing. There was only one thing to be done. We moved inside and had a hat parade, we talked past dawn then slept until midday.
Superman is a woven thing, he is threaded and cross-threaded. There are tangles, dropped stitches and a great miraculous unfolding. Held to the light his patterns are intricate and stretch clear to the horizon impossibly large yet definite in shape. He's a tall stick of limbs spiking out heart and precisely the right amount of raw intellect and humanity.
Sylvia pounced on the bed midmorning waking me with a gentle swat of a gloved paw. She walked the length of Superman three times, placing each paw with slow precision before settling at my elbow, folding into herself with a contented breath.
Grizelda miraculously poached us eggs. The day gently turned behind shaded windows and a merry veil of happy exhaustion. I believe I had a stupendously, ridiculously good time driving, walking, drinking, talking, hat parading, sleeping, breakfasting, sitting and song writing with Superman. I sure hope we can do it again some time.
An awesome song of joy and goodness by Superman and Dale Slamma:
Bumble bees and toast are both kind of fuzzy and yellow
All the little flowers smile at me and say hello
Cutesie little bunnies bouncing all around look at them go
Sunshine, yeah sunshine
Over on the hill with a pen and pad was Rimbaud
Furiously writing something nice look at him go
Butterflies fluttering by in the meadow
a pony, yeah a pony
Optional Bridge
And then there was a thunderstorm
And I turned into Nick Cave
And I constructed a murder ballad in a lime tree arbour
Bumble bees and toast are both kind of fuzzy and yellow
All the little flowers smile at me and say hello
Cutsie little bunnies bouncing all around look at them go
Sunshine, yeah sunshine
Over on the hill with a pen and pad was Rimbaud
Furiously writing something nice look at him go
Butterflies fluttering by in the meadow
a pony, yeah a pony
Comfortable pyjamas floating by in a rainbow
A kitten in a crocodile suit playing flute in a window
Folk with guitars, peaches and stars dancing real slow
This is the best place
This is the best place
This is the best place
Yeah
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