Dear Spencer,
There's been a Bensplosion round these parts since you've been gone. I'm not talking just one Ben but many. There are many Bens. I have spent time with at least one Ben a day for the last week. In my head I refer to them by their surnames so as not to become confused, like I do with Hunter, and Wilson, and Worrad. I suppose you've being seeing a lot of those folk lately, say hi to them for me.
Gemma has been texting me words like 'Benglorious, Benerific and Benutopia'. She said I have Bens on a revolving schedule but it's entirely unintentional.
Diesel not truckers and a long-winded unrelated introduction to the promised Safe As Houses post
Times, they are a blurrin'. A weekend soaked through to the bone with exhaustion and mix'n'match pile of friends. The whole thing finished with a kebab eaten sitting on a plastic chair on Parramatta Rd with Mr X while he told me about his father and the war and the traffic tucked away for the night.
Before the kebab and the talk of war I made an adventure to the casino. Walking down the long guts of the place with Miles Davis on my mp3 player and those old brown lace-up shoes on my feet I looked around the lit calamity of the joint and the frocked up, clean-shirted crowd and wondered just what it in the fuck I was doing. Theoretically I went to write about the absurd 'Rock Lily' venue. Mr X's band has a residency there and the idea intrigued me. He took to the stage and I sat at a long empty table.
Diesel and his bass player asked if they could join me, but I didn't know who they were until they got up later to play. I'm not in the habit of recognising people I know let alone strangers. I made notes, got drunk on free beer handed to me again and again by Mr X and his band's rider. I rambled down a set of back stairs out into the night after an hour of non-stop Diesel. I was trying to shake off the impression that there's something very wrong with the world.
Back in the Inner West under roadside electric lights I gratefully devoured a kebab and conversation. They shut off the lights after a while so I carried home two borrowed books to read and a whole new set of memories.
Better memories than the ones I'm talking about in my houses project over here.
Before the kebab and the talk of war I made an adventure to the casino. Walking down the long guts of the place with Miles Davis on my mp3 player and those old brown lace-up shoes on my feet I looked around the lit calamity of the joint and the frocked up, clean-shirted crowd and wondered just what it in the fuck I was doing. Theoretically I went to write about the absurd 'Rock Lily' venue. Mr X's band has a residency there and the idea intrigued me. He took to the stage and I sat at a long empty table.
Diesel and his bass player asked if they could join me, but I didn't know who they were until they got up later to play. I'm not in the habit of recognising people I know let alone strangers. I made notes, got drunk on free beer handed to me again and again by Mr X and his band's rider. I rambled down a set of back stairs out into the night after an hour of non-stop Diesel. I was trying to shake off the impression that there's something very wrong with the world.
Back in the Inner West under roadside electric lights I gratefully devoured a kebab and conversation. They shut off the lights after a while so I carried home two borrowed books to read and a whole new set of memories.
Better memories than the ones I'm talking about in my houses project over here.
Big happy from small sighting
or hear someone talking about it,
or even just catch a glimpse of a stranger
with a PANmagbag slung casually over a shoulder,
I feel undeniably happy for at least one whole second.
That is a long time to be undeniably happy.
For me.
A very long time indeed.
Usually happiness is at least partially deniable.
Or only partial itself.
Sometimes it is just a hint of what it should or could be
or just smells a vaguely familiar, like artificial fruit flavour.
PAN on Facbook
PAN website
Places you can buy PAN magazine (er, sorry couldn't stop myself)
Safe
I keep forgetting about my project of remembering. This week I vow to not only remember but take action. This week I will visit Catherine Street in Lilyfield, try not to alarm the current residents while I sit outside with my notebook and pen. This week I will remember.
Breaking up is hard to do or a magazine is not a person stupid
I was sitting next to PAN's excellent poetry editor, and good friend, Tim Sinclair when I tipped from relief into sorrow. I told him and he understood. You see Tim is a writer, a poet, a good one. He has lived that moment over and over again.
Last Wednesday night issue #2 of PAN magazine launched. People are telling me they had a good time at the party. I'm glad they did because I didn't. I hated most of it.* You can see how I can't even write a sentence with any sense of flow about this. Not even one. They are short and choppy and make hard little bitter feelings in my chest. I hated the anxiety, the anticipation, the organisation and most of all I hated the moment when I tipped from relief straight into sorrow.
Last Wednesday night issue #2 of PAN magazine launched. People are telling me they had a good time at the party. I'm glad they did because I didn't. I hated most of it.* You can see how I can't even write a sentence with any sense of flow about this. Not even one. They are short and choppy and make hard little bitter feelings in my chest. I hated the anxiety, the anticipation, the organisation and most of all I hated the moment when I tipped from relief straight into sorrow.
A letter to Spencer in North-West France (you told them you'd be back)
Dear Spencer,
You know how pineapple is the king of all fruit? Well I mentioned that last night, in a conversation about artificial fruit scents whilst smelling a scratch'n'sniff sticker. Nobody understood what I meant. The sticker-giving woman thought I meant pineapple was my favourite fruit, Mr X was just puzzled but he leant over a little and said "I like pineapple, it's a good fruit." but quietly, like you might say to a child who got something wrong by mistake. He only said anything at all because he is a kind interlocutor. He is kind in a lot of ways. Today he came to The Peach and drove me and some boxes of magazines to a shop so I wouldn't have to carry them, but then he said he had to do laundry and went home. So you can see it was one of those real kindnesses and not the fake kind, which is actually a little disappointing.
You know how pineapple is the king of all fruit? Well I mentioned that last night, in a conversation about artificial fruit scents whilst smelling a scratch'n'sniff sticker. Nobody understood what I meant. The sticker-giving woman thought I meant pineapple was my favourite fruit, Mr X was just puzzled but he leant over a little and said "I like pineapple, it's a good fruit." but quietly, like you might say to a child who got something wrong by mistake. He only said anything at all because he is a kind interlocutor. He is kind in a lot of ways. Today he came to The Peach and drove me and some boxes of magazines to a shop so I wouldn't have to carry them, but then he said he had to do laundry and went home. So you can see it was one of those real kindnesses and not the fake kind, which is actually a little disappointing.
Yes
The more I think about it the more monumental it seems. With one simple act my brother has physically redefined my sense of family. I never thought anything of marriage or weddings. Never pondered what the significance of what one in my immediate family might be, until last night. My brother telephoned to tell me he asked his girlfriend to marry him. I shouted a long stream of joyful words for some minutes before uttering the hushed question, "She said yes, didn't she?"
For me it began again with Delia Falconer's book "Sydney", though I have always felt it pushing
I can feel it gathering, we, the writers of Sydney have found our inward eyes leaching out into our geography and now it is coming. The next age of writing our existence, here.
The very short story of how I became an accidental creepy woman
I telephoned Kirin J Callinan to confirm a few things for the PAN issue #2 launch party. While we were chatting business I thought I'd have a little look at his Myspace page.
It was the kind of thing that could happen to anyone really, staring at a photograph of a young man posing naked with a cat while talking to him on the telephone.
It was the kind of thing that could happen to anyone really, staring at a photograph of a young man posing naked with a cat while talking to him on the telephone.
Flogged
Kate Britton from FBI stopped by and asked me a few questions about PAN magazine. That was quite nice of her really. It's pretty standard interview stuff, literature, red pens, self-loathing, shining beacons.
Clarity and focus - I hear you knocking but you can't come in
Everyone's off the booze, grinding out last cigarette butts on sun-warmed footpaths and walking away home, away from the bar, home to sit down and think out their sins. Fuck that.
It's taken me years to work up to being able to drink three whole beers in one night. It took me years to work up the courage to throw thinking to the wind and ram my head against fogged logic with joyful steps. It's taken me years to work up the stamina to be able to drink not even half what the rest of Slammatown throws down the hatch on an average Wednesday night. Now everyone's staring at me like I stood up in a mosque with a bottle of whiskey in my hand and poured out a blessing to the infidels. Fuck them.
It's taken me years to work up to being able to drink three whole beers in one night. It took me years to work up the courage to throw thinking to the wind and ram my head against fogged logic with joyful steps. It's taken me years to work up the stamina to be able to drink not even half what the rest of Slammatown throws down the hatch on an average Wednesday night. Now everyone's staring at me like I stood up in a mosque with a bottle of whiskey in my hand and poured out a blessing to the infidels. Fuck them.
He's back
Spencer is playing with Damo Suzuki again, tonight in Newcastle, last night here in Sydney, last weekend in Melbourne. This time round Gareth Liddiard from The Drones joined them onstage to add some noise. I was thinking of writing something about it but then I remembered I am lazy.
Here's something I wrote last time Damo was in town, or maybe it was the time before that. I can't remember because my memory is also lazy.
Here's something I wrote last time Damo was in town, or maybe it was the time before that. I can't remember because my memory is also lazy.
This weekend wasn’t my first time standing in front of Damo
Suzuki. I once started a review of Damo Suzuki with The Holy Soul like this: “Damo
Suzuki is committed to the emitting of sound. He spares nothing, throwing his
whole self into the grand wordlessness of Damo Suzuki's Network experience. He
dances like a one-sided Axl Rose, hands gripping the microphone, long hair
hanging in dusty curtains. Suzuki is enigmatic yet humble, as though the music
moves involuntarily through his body.”
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