August was poetry month, folks. My piece 13 Ways to Drink Chocolate Milk premiered in the Guardian. and featured in Red Room Poetry’s 30in30. (There’s a video of me reciting it.) In July I dropped a set at MONA as part of a Tasmanian Poetry Showcase.
In my final year of uni I had a column in the University of Canberra mag Curio called Being Justin Heazlewood. I wrote this leavers poem:
Design by Anthony Calvert.
Thinking is Drilling is lifted from my 2018 book Get Up Mum. It was published in the 2022 anthology Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health.
Thinking is drilling
I’m drilling through the walls of silence and confusion looking for clues looking for answers looking for Mum.
I have a lot of work to do.
So I sit and I stare and I think so hard I can cut through the moon because I’m the sun.
Thinking is drilling.
I’m drilling up and out of the rubble. Thinking is making air for myself. A space to survive.
I can think into space into outer space into inner space. I can drill inside deep down and hide. I can drill around in circles so fast that everything’s a blur and I have rings like Saturn.
A drill is a weapon with a pointy tip. I leave it running to rip the black pillows when they come to smother me.
Thinking is drilling.
My mind is always moving. There’s work to be done a maze to be dug a tunnel of fun somewhere deep to bury my time capsule.
My latest book Dream Burnie has an original poem called Truganini Street. I performed it on ABC Hobart breakfast in July.
In grade 12 at Hellyer College I was published in a schools poetry anthology edited by Don College’s Shane Wolfe.
Shane wrote in his forward:
“Now that the idea of assessing specific criteria has come to stalk the halls of education, I’ve always thought it rather a shame that there isn’t a criterion eleven anywhere that states ‘Is able to pull off a decent poem that makes you wonder what the person who wrote it looks like and whether that really did happen to them and whether you’d like them if you met them.’”
I was chuffed to get pole position in the gazette. It would be interesting to revisit the headspace that synthesised Journey to the Six Fold Chamber. It’s a psychedelic time. I would be honoured to have a Boags with my eighteen-year-old self.
Last year I happened upon a notebook belonging to my Pop. It contained my first poem Going Up Hill complete in his handwriting. It has quickly become one of my favourite possessions. I’m intrigued by the events that led to Pop writing the piece down. Perhaps I was coming up with it for the first time and sharing it with him. It makes me think of the excellent movie The Kindergarten Teacher starring Maggie Gyllenhaal where she becomes obsessed with a five-year-old who spouts genius poetry.
The rest of Pop’s notebook is made up of shopping lists and Tattslotto numbers. I carbon dated it by putting “Tattslotto Draw 531” into a search engine. Sure enough, it provided the date of late 1985.
I would love nothing more than to share a chocolate milk with my five-year-old self. (And dear Pop.)
Poetry is an excellent emotional time capsule. Why not bury yours today ; )
Draw a line in the cocaine. This is the moment I exit popular / youth culture. The word is FEELING. Having emotions isn’t funky fresh. I mean, the word vegetables is shortened to veggies, but this is like that process on speed and adrenaline. Don’t get me started on the ISO trend of lockdown. It’s disrespectful to the mental illness community who were experiencing stone cold isolation before and after Covid. Just use normal words around the fundamentals of human psychology so we don’t run the risk of oversimplifying or nullifying them. Feelings aren’t f^%&^g cute, at least not from where I’m cradling them.
DOGGOES / WOOFOS / FUR BABIES
They’re called dogs. We are grown-ups. It’s folksy, it’s hokey, it’s overly familiar and infantilised. It sends a weird message to non-dog worshippers, especially on dating apps. I’m looking at you Dimity, 39.
INTENT
Drinking game: watch the cricket commentary and have a bite of schnapps when Ricky Ponting drops the ‘I bomb.’ You will be morose and plastered by the time Steve Smith has been dismissed for playing some bizarre shot.
LEARNINGS
The language equivalent of a gargoyle who has risen up from the earth to destroy all of mankind. The worst corporate mutation to infect society since the on-sell / thru-connect era of the mid 2000s. Anyone using LEARNINGS should be placed in a vault for retooling. (That said, Max Gawn dropped it on The Front Bar last week and I don’t really fancy taking him anywhere, so free pass for Max if he corners me in a dark alley.)
P.S. The word is LESSONS by the way. P.P.S. I will accept Learnalilgivinanlovin by Gotye.
COSTINGS
See: LEARNINGS. Sounds like it was made up by a small child.
PRESSURE
The AFL would do well to relieve its own ‘commentary pressure’ by pulling the pin and taking a chill pill on the P pill for a pre-set period. If the word pressure was a commodity it would be extracted from a mine in South America by small children, as it has been well over-mined. It undermines what would be an otherwise quite-boring, low scoring modern game.
STRESS
Pressure is to sports commentary what Stress is to TV journalists. Rent stress, food stress, how about syntax stress? Ever considered that hearing the word STRESS every five minutes is, I don’t know … stressful? Lord, get a thesaurus people. Housing concern, food tumult, climate botheration? Those ‘S’s’ are stirring my hypervigilance. Repeating the same word is just bad writing, he said non-pretentiously.
CHIPPIES
See: DOGGOS. Never say this around me or at any other time, unless you still enjoy single digit birthdays. Exception: the musician Wilding because he is English and lovable and I fancy my chances encountering him in a Melbourne laneway.
SUPER
The biggest weed word since ‘like.’ People are ‘super something’ instead of the 36 other choices. Super excited? Super grateful? Why not try uber, ultra, unbelievably or bloody turbo. I am like, super-vulnerable to the innate trashiness of this extremely popular adverb.
Super used to be a point of derision. Remember the impression you’d do of a perky Canadian saying ‘that sounds super!’ Super was going the way of Awesome which raised the ire of wordsmiths for conjuring the tone of an evangelised Christian camp.
Adults inevitably appropriate the language patterns of youth subcultures as society is still beholden to its over valuing of youth. Does social media speed the process up? Or, are you actually young. It’s a pity as Iga Świątek is one of my favourite tennis players and every time she is interviewed she pollutes her unforced error count with a barrage of S***r prefixes.
Am I reading too much into this? Should I get a doggo intent on iso and enjoy some learnings pressure?
Sounds like feels stress.
WORDS THAT SHOULD MAKE A COMEBACK AND BE USED IN A SENTENCE BY A COMMENTATOR IMMEDIATELY
Skedaddle
Shemozzle
Kerfuffle
Notwithstanding (a supergroup!)
Curtail
Mesmerising
Crestfallen
Sun-dried tomato (no wait, this is my sandwich order.)
August is poetry month and Red Room Poetry have selected me as one of 30 poets who will be featured each day. I’ll be performing some of my poems as part of the stanza extravaganza August 3 at MONA, 2-3pm. It’s hosted by Daniel J Townsend, who is a good egg.
My poem 13 Ways To Drink Chocolate Milk will also be published in the Guardian at some point during August. Follow my online interactive sharing squares to catch my piece as it drops. More info HERE.
I have a new book out! It’s called Dream Burnie. This book is for everyone. From my home, to yours.
Justin Heazlewood’s funny, heart-felt and beautifully designed and illustrated book Dream Burnie is for anyone born or raised in Burnie (or any small town), and every young creative thinking of risking their all.
…everyone, it seems, is at least a little scarred by their hometown. There are many positives though, and a common factor in the stories in Dream Burnie are of memorable teachers, who saw young creatives for who they were – and encouraged them to go forth and risk failure in the pursuit of their passions.
NEWS: I was recently a guest on Julian Morrow’s Sunday Extra show on RN. He beamed in directly from Burnie! In fact – it was a themed episode. You can hear my segment or play the whole shebang (including Jim Migonie of Midnight Oil talking about their song Burnie!)
Perhaps Dream Burnie 2 has already been written. It will mainly consist of comments from Hobart bookshop Cracked & Spineless’s farcebook post. I dropped in while on tour and may have forgotten to return their pen. Thanks Richard for the support!
Dream Burnie got a run in the Notable Books section of the Weekend Australian’s Review.
I caressed the airwaves for the duration of February’s East Coast / Tasmanian tour. Most interviews were uploaded to the Dream Burnie YouTube.
Here I am signing books in Burnie. We did a launch at Not Just Books and the Mayor was there and Mum and a few former teachers. I was moved. I’ve been signing books all along the east coast. People are excited to be hearing about Burnie. They dig seeing the Chick-Inn chicken once again.
Dream Burnie is (like) 300 colour pages featuring stories of some of the North-West Coast’s most successful artists. Also, my nostalgic bus-trip and humorous dalliances on life in a small town. An art book, time capsule, memoir. It’s niche. It’s now. It’s 1995.
DREAM BURNIE LAUNCH TOUR (Feb – Mar 2025)
FEB 6 | LAUNCESTON | ASSEMBLY 197 | 5:30PM FEATURING SPECIAL GUEST HEADLINER: TWINKLE DIGITZ
FEB 8 | HOBART | MOONAH ARTS CENTRE | 4PM (Bookings HERE) FEATURING SPECIAL GUEST HEADLINER: TWINKLE DIGITZ
FEB 11 | CANBERRA | SMITH’S ALTERNATIVE | 5PM
FEB 13 | SYDNEY | BETTER READ THAN DEAD | 6:30PM (Bookings HERE)
DREAM BURNIE IS AVAILABLE FROM THESE RATHER NICE BOOKSTORES:
Not Just Books (Burnie)
Devonport Bookshop
Petrarch’s (Launceston)
Fullers (Hobart)
Cracked and Spineless Bookstore (Hobart)
The Hobart Bookshop
Metropolis (Melbourne)
Brunswick Bound (Melbourne)
Avenue Books (Melbourne)
Sun Bookshop (Yarraville)
Stoneman’s Bookroom (Castlemaine)
Gleebooks (Sydney)
Good Earth Bookshop (Wentworth Falls)
Imprints Booksellers (Adelaide)
Matilda Bookshop (Stirling)
Dream Burnie is presented by the Burnie Arts Council. Photos by Tara Palmer.
Lorrae Desmond’s meditation pyramid and why Bowie was such a fan. Explore these topics plus intimate details of my impending tour by reading the current increment of f uz z y l o g i c “bob hawkeye“
It’s Schizophrenia Awareness Week – again! I know, right. Where does a year go? May 18 – 24. The theme is “Rethink the Label: Reclaim the Story.” I’ve updated this post to create a fairly decent resource for those curious to know more about the galaxy’s most misunderstood everyday condition.
There’s just so much stigma around schizophrenia. It’s a life’s work humanising the 30, 000 adults in Australia with the condition. It feels sub-impossible, but utterly worthwhile.
It’s seven years since my book Get Up Mum was released. Today Mum is experiencing the best mental health of her life. Schizophrenia doesn’t have to be a life sentence, but it is hard to spell.
I recently gave an interview for ABC’s Conversations. The producer sent me a link to a previous story concerning Glenn Jarvis who worked for Enron and developed schizophrenia. There are some very insightful links at the bottom of the story. (One of the articles is behind a paywall, so I’ve placed it at the bottom of this post.)
May 24 is WORLD S A D (as it happens.)
(Schizophrenia Awareness Day)
Last year I wrote a piece for Satellite Foundation (of which I am an ambassador). So feel free to have a look at that!
Meanwhile, check out this zine vending machine! Such convenience. 📚
It premiered at Melbourne Art Book Fair / Melbourne Design Week dispensing Satellite Foundation’s zine All the Coloured Glasses – filled with writing and art from young people sharing their experiences of mental health and things.
You can contribute to the zine! Y’know, if you’re a… what are they called – young person. More info at Satellite Foundation.
And now … a megamix of previous Awareness Week thoughts on the thirteen letter word…
Sometimes I wonder if schizophrenia should not abandon its branding and relaunch as Thoughtism.
It’s rather hard to explain schizophrenia without disturbing people too much. We all know what people are like if they are a bit disturbed. They switch off. Unless it’s a true crime podcast – in which case it doesn’t matter how dark the content is – audiences can’t wait to snuggle down before bed.
I don’t know what the difference is.
But anyway – food for thought.
let’s do lunch.
Previously on World Schizophrenia Awareness Day….
It’s the time of year where you deposit some thought to the gentle complexity of one of existences most cryptic yet vulnerable conditions. Why don’t we talk about schizophrenia more? Ever wondered that? I do, quite a bit. It seems to go under the radar quite effectively. There’s a whole stack of destigmatising to be done – or – to conjure a more handsome phrase – rehumanising.
I mean, I’ve been up close to someone with schizophrenia and honestly, my heart still weeps. I reckon my Mum is brave as all fuck for withstanding the atomic martian wildness of her own mind warping itself to fit through the eye of the needle of life.
These are real people. On the ground. Suffering. Trying to be good parents. They are gobsmacked by confusion. Their personality has secret mirrors growing like gills. They are x-men and women, able to see through time. Heaven and hell are storybook wonders compared to the cheek-scolding heartbreak of disappearing in plain sight from the people who love you more than anything.
Anyway, big hugs and NDIS support to anyone who is experiencing hard times.
We can be superheroes, just for one day.
g r o u n d h o g __ d a y ?
AT A GLANCE (STAT!):
Schizophrenia effects 1 in 100 people. The same ratio as autism.
It comes from the Greek word meaning ‘split mind.’ It’s not multiple personality disorder, it’s about the schizophrenic person having a fractured perception of reality. There is the real world and then there is their world. This results in them convincing themselves that they are not sick. Therein lies the paradox of trying to care for someone with this condition. You’re yelling via cup and string to a rogue astronaut on opposites day.
“I’ll be alright after a sleep tomorrow, I promise.”
In response to the comments beneath my Sky News soundbite. No, it’s NOTHING like Trump voters thinking their world view is right and everyone else’s is wrong. That is an extreme political ideology. At least Trump exists in our reality (I never thought I’d say that.) People with schizophrenia have psychosis. They experience auditory and visual hallucinations. This is why using ‘schizophrenic’ as an adjective is problematic. Voting for Trump isn’t a medical condition, it’s a personality trait – as much as the ‘hilarious’ jokes to be made would hint at the former.
Statistically they are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. The cliché of the unhinged guy on the bus or (you know, recent events in Sydney) – it’s a worst case scenario and statistically rare. Even at her worst, when we went to the bank, Mum would be quite composed. People with a mental illness generally work twice as hard as the rest of the community just to be themselves. Australians love a hard worker, don’t they?
They are likely to be conduits of bizarre behaviour. According to a SANE spokesperson, symptoms can include “hallucinations, delusions, unusual or disrupted speech, disorganised behaviour, low energy, low motivation, or lack of emotional expression.” One friend said his Mum used to communicate with Jupiter. (Jennifer Jupiter?) Another said his Mum would see a little man and woman walking around her flat, an inch tall, shining lights in her face and shapeshifting into animals. This level of psychosis is creative and makes for a fascinating story if you regard it from a neuro-nonnormative perspective.
Schizophrenia is a lot less threatening when you spend some time up close.
There is love in curiosity.
Schizophrenia is not full-time. Mum was well half the time and sick the other. She was still a wonderful individual with autonomy, functioning as best she could and getting me breakfast while navigating the extremities of humanity. Mum used to be ‘Mother’s help’ and visit my primary school and help kids in my class type their stories up on the computer. She worked hard, in many ways.
As a listener to the radio version of my memoir Get Up Mum emailed to me: “I remember a Mum who would take me to sporting activities, cook dinner, have afternoon tea ready for me after school, and take us for swimming lessons at the beach. I also remember a Mum who would sleep all day, yell and scream, and a Mum who spent months at a time locked up in a high security psychiatric hospital.”
It’s a split world for everyone.
The Church performing The Unguarded Moment on Countdown, 1981.
Caring is full-time. Two words: hyper-vigilance. Part of Schizophrenia Awareness Day can be devoted to carers who are most likely family members and in the most urgent cases – kids. If someone you know has a mental illness and they also have children – I’m telling you – that child, by default, IS a carer. They are most definitely in need of support. If you are unsure about what to do, Satellite Foundation is a great place to start.
Hearing voices is more common than you think. Apparently 10-25% of people will hear voices at some point in their lives. Amazingly, it’s not always linked to schizophrenia. This was news to me when I watched the SBS Insight episode. iView currently has the full You Can’t Ask That schizophrenia episode. It’s also a terrific resource.
Schizophrenia is devastating. Especially when used in Scrabble. You drop that thing on a triple word score and it’s WALK AWAY RENE!
A FEW LINKS TO PAST THINGS I HAVE CONTRIBUTED:
In 2022 I wrote a letter to schizophrenia. You can find it on the Satellite Foundation website.
I was interviewed on Sky News during Schizophrenia Awareness Week in 2018, days after releasing Get Up Mum. I don’t get to go on TV much. (Spicks & Specks in 2010 featuring myself and Marcia Hynes together at last and me covering Spiderbait’s ‘Calypso’ on Adam Hills Gordon Street Tonight in 2011).
An interview (with fellow only child Elizabeth Flux) in the Guardian from 2018 which is all about my book and lived experience.
I wrote a column about schizophrenia for The Big Issue in 2019.
There aren’t that many movies about schizophrenia. I didn’t watch The Joker but can only imagine it set the empathy cause back miles. Sally Hawkins did a wonderful job in 2020’s Eternal Beauty where she portrayed a colourful character. (Is it interesting how when Sia cast a non-autistic actor in her movie Music everyone went hyper-nuclear but the fact that an actor without schizophrenia represented this community didn’t ruffle a spacebar. It’s almost as if that particular aspect of the mental health spectrum is i n v i s i b l e .
Do-gooders be like – we’re championing this cause because it’s SO COOL right now, but that one over there is FAAAREAKING US OUT.)
There’s an article about how schizophrenia is represented in cinema here.
Other fine movies about mental illness include Angel Baby (AU 1995), An Angel At My Table (NZ 1990), Sweetie (AU 1989 – probably my favourite Australian movie), Benny & Joon (US 1993), Birdman (US 2014) & Donnie Darko (US 2001). I really enjoyed Girl, Interrupted (US 1999) the other day, even though the reviews are subpar – (who doesn’t love Winona?) I recommendThe Sunnyboy (2013 Australian documentary about Jeremy Oxley, lead singer of The Sunnyboys who emerges from a 30 year battle with the illness).
I’m not sure if I enjoyed The Fischer King but as my psychologist pointed out it does do a good job of visualising the vivid dynamics of the schizophrenic persons worldview. You may be interested in The 5 Most Accurate Depictions of Schizophrenia in Hollywood.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a way out film from the 1970s. The book was always sitting on the bookshelf at Nan & Pop’s. (The girl on the cover gave me my biggest ethereal crush since The Childlike Empress from Never Ending Story.) Anyway, I read it as an adult and it’s an artistic deep-dive into the psychedelic secret world that I touched on previously. Greenberg writes in the voice of the ‘voices’ which I found thrilling.
I know you’ve got to be in the right headspace for these subjects. Or perhaps you don’t. Maybe there is never a convenient time. Goose step out of your comfort zone, throw some paint around in the studio of understanding and fan your aura to the experimental frequencies of the meek and neurologically diverse.
Schizophrenia is a cause that needs everyone to come together with education, patience and some emotional heavy lifting.
That’s about it. I’ll add links to some of the soft hitting articles I’ve unpacked about my own mental health philosophies. I know you’ve got a toasted sandwich on the go and about six kids and animals to pick up from the mall so I’ll save you time and let you jump straight into:
pps if you are still feeling overwhelmed or frustrated that you simply have no tangible emotional construct of what the heck anyone is talking about when it comes to this specific topic with the word which is even complicated to spell… Well, there happens to be a real easy fix to that one (for a change):
📖 buy my book 📖 ( No wait, it’s sold out I think )
carers: empathy through determination
And now the Schizophrenia Awareness Week dancers 💃💃💃👻 … oh no they disappeared.
Encore encore! More More!
Schizophrenia – the lone wolf of mental illnesses
By Gabrielle Carey and Dr Julia Brown
There is someone in Parliament House with schizophrenia.
At least, statistically speaking.
One in every 100 people suffer from schizophrenia. Of the 5000 people working on the hill when parliament sits, it is very likely that at least one has the diagnosis nobody wants to talk about, even in Schizophrenia Awareness Week.
Why has schizophrenia been called the scariest word in the English language? And why – after years of mental health awareness-raising – are we still unable to talk about it? When the word schizophrenia is mentioned the go-to image is usually violence – often first designated as terrorism. In these rare incidents, the focus is seldom on how proper treatment for the illness might have prevented an attack. Instead, it is on how others should have been protected.
Perhaps it’s time to invite schizophrenia in from the cold.
Recovery is possible
What most people don’t know, is anyone diagnosed with schizophrenia, like other mental illnesses, can recover if given the opportunity. Individuals with the diagnosis can be ordinary and high functioning, have families, and go to work every day. We just never get to hear about them. Because while bipolar and autism are household words, schizophrenia is still the disease that dare not speak its name.
Not being able to speak about schizophrenia compounds the condition. Treating people as social lepers makes them sicker. In Australia, up to 70 per cent of people who have a first episode of psychosis will have another episode within two years. More worryingly, the life expectancy of Australians diagnosed with schizophrenia is reduced by 32 years.
The threat to our youth
If any other illness resulted in such a bleak outlook for our young people, there would be a call to arms. That we are letting this continue is the real madness.
Schizophrenia is a young person’s illness: a diagnosis is generally made between the ages of 18 and 30. This is a crucial time in any person’s life – they are just finishing school, just starting university or just going into the workforce. But if you are diagnosed with schizophrenia in this country, within a short time you will not be participating in work or education; you will have a high risk of homelessness; you will be much more likely to end up in jail, and your anti-psychotic drugs will cause physical twitches, weight gain, drooling, loss of libido and loss of memory. As well as that, you will be five times more likely to be the victim of assault.
Headspace can’t help you if you are a young person with schizophrenia because they do not deal with people who are diagnosed with a chronic psychotic illness. The National Disability Insurance Scheme won’t help either. As reported by The Guardian, people with schizophrenia are regularly refused NDIS packages.
One Door Mental Health, formerly the Schizophrenia Fellowship which offers support to sufferers and their families, has had to cut services in some regional locations. Hospital emergency departments are useful if you are mid-psychosis but once stabilised you will be discharged without any after-care or discharge plan. In all, our healthcare system is not designed to instil hope for recovery in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. But neither is our social system.
Social disconnect
The worst loss of all for people diagnosed with schizophrenia is the loss of friends. The fear and avoidance of people with the condition is so damaging that sufferers retreat into what anthropologists call “social defeat”.
People with schizophrenia often appear to isolate themselves from family and friends. This gives the impression that they do not care about others, but their real difficulties began and continue precisely because of their acute sensitivity to judgments and criticisms – because they care too much about what other people think of them. And of course, in almost any situation, what frightens them most is revealing their condition.
A public service
Everyone knows somebody with schizophrenia. If you include the families and friends of those with the illness, there are one million people in Australia affected by the disorder – and almost every one of them is too frightened to say the word. One thing that might help is if high-functioning individuals with the condition were to “come out.”
As Law Professor of the University of Southern California, Elyn Saks, says “we who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources.” The first and most important resource might be social acceptance. And social acceptance begins with being seen.
Those like Professor Saks are in recovery because of the social status and purpose they have. Most Australians with schizophrenia, for now, don’t have this. If you are that person in Parliament House hiding your diagnosis, maybe now is the time to offer your greatest gift of public service. Stand up and dare to say the word. Tell us your story. There are a million Australians who could do with hearing it.
This article was originally published in 2019.
Dr. Julia Brown is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU who has conducted ethnographic research on lived experiences of antipsychotic treatment for chronic schizophrenia in the UK and Australia.
Gabrielle Carey was an Australian author who co-wrote the teen novel, Puberty Blues with Kathy Lette. She died in 2023. At the time of writing this article she was the H.C. Coombs Fellow at ANU and working on a book about the family experience of mental illness.
I was watching the tennis as an ad was repeatedly served to me. It comprised of a white void, dressed with smacks of colourful smoke. The ad posed an odd question. The answer it provided took the form of a mass-produced, moulded drink bottle for children.
The next day, I was cycling my emails. I had to find the word ‘unsubscribe’, which had been buried in a drastically reduced font.
The process was not straightforward. A dialogue occurred. Someone, or some … thing, had taken time out from its frenetic non-existence to speak with me directly. It seemed I had upset it somehow.
2025, baby. Pillow-talk with products.
Get into bed with consumerism and make money your god. Buy things like religion. Shake hands with the factory. Unboxing rituals, amassed possessions and the barcode blood rush of Not Missing Out.
Would monkeys do this to themselves? Harass each other with increasingly brash fixtures about which bananas are the sweetest, healthiest and most likely to enhance their chances of sourcing a mate? Advertising has infiltrated almost every last vestige of what being a human is.
In Star Trek, the ultimate poster model for a future society, I don’t see much branding going on. No one is an influencer – the professional job title we have created to replace 2010’s more knowing ‘famous for being famous.’
WHAT DOES $5 FEEL LIKE?
It’s a tagline so disturbingly evocative, it’s gotten under my skin. I am now writing about it, which is the primary objective of any ad: to attach itself to an engaged host and retransmit. A virus of an idea feeding on imagination.
Why does it matter? Isn’t it a bit of harmless fun? A spot of retail therapy in a potentially harrowing year of caring for a person with a disability or living with chronic pain?
I suppose. But… I don’t want five dollars to feel like anything.
I want a poem to feel like something (even though poetry makes me numb). I want a butterfly, a song or a painting to feel like something.
Advertising is filling all the spaces where art used to live. Art exists to tell human stories and enhance emotional capital. Advertising zeroes in to sell products and dam rivers of wealth.
WE’RE SORRY TO SEE YOU GO!
Manipulative words from a faceless company designed to coerce my nameless feelings of doubt and guilt.
Wait! Maybe I’m making a mistake. Perhaps this brand was ‘the one.’
Maybe I’ll miss out on something; a Sliding Doors moment where I’m compromising my future self’s window of prosperity by turning a cold shoulder on the aggrieved message, which is arguably targeting more emotional intimacy towards me than several close friends with kids have all year.
The auto-reply is self-aware. It has feelings. Feelings for me. Hurt feelings.
Perhaps, this is what five dollars feels like; approximately the amount of money I would invest in an email client that could successfully identify such corporate scams of the heart and send them kicking and screaming back through the black jellied tunnels of my fucking junk folder.
I feel enough.
I feel too much.
I don’t feel enough.
I am human and colourful and shifting and furious. My intelligence keeps a Lamborghini running and an electric sword as sharp as the heavens. I slice through the cultural veneer with dashing aplomb and an otherworldly sense of vengeance.
The enemy, unseen, falls prey to the cosmic avalanche of love and hope in my eyes.
There is a loneliness epidemic. Left by themselves, humans will buy things online. There are memes about not being able to feel at ease unless there is a package on the way.
I get it. I really do. I can make a real mess of my savings account on the eBay app.
I want to see ads for groups that encourage isolated people to get together. A “Jmart” social club I’d accept. We could meet for a cut lunch in a caravan park games room. There could be multi-coloured incense and refillable stainless steel drink bottles. We could chat about the dream we had last night and the first album we bought with our own money. After a walk to get ice cream, we would say goodbye to a new friend or two.
I would be sorry to see them go. It would feel priceless.
This was written for the monthly BMA column Struth Be Told. You can read other columns I’ve written this year here.
In 2014 I wrote a book about what it was like to be an artist in Australia. It was my first book, written from scratch, with a publisher. It was a big deal. Since I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. In my teenage years, the thought of writing a book felt epic. Penning a tome seemed like an intellectual Titanic. I had fear-streaked visions of sinking to the bottom of my subconscious.
In my early thirties, I felt strong enough to sail through the icebergs. I wanted to test the mettle of my artistic work ethic by sitting down at a desk at ten in the morning every day for four days in a row, weeks on end. This wasn’t aspiration camp – it was showtime. I went hard AND I went home. I wasn’t writing a fantasy novel – I was sweating personal stuff about awkward topics like the heartache of my career not turning out how I’d dreamed.
At the end of a days writing, I would sometimes curl up on the lounge room floor, aware of a sensation like the top of my head fizzing. I was using muscles I didn’t know I had.
The year before, I’d made a ‘training book’ made up of tour diaries from my long-running ezine ‘LapTopping.’ I sent this (very blue) book around to various publishers. Only one seemed to show any interest. I pursued the relationship until it led to the pitching of Funemployed. (I just happened to be having a shit-time as an artist. I’d lost a lot of money on my self-produced musical at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and hadn’t had a holiday since I was twelve.)
‘Someone should write about what it’s really like,’ I sighed at Northern Soul Café in Thornbury.
‘Sure,’ replied the publisher. ‘You just don’t want it to seem like you’re whingeing.’ (Australians hate artists, I later learned.)
Initially, I wrote a two page pitch document, followed by a chapter breakdown. The next step was to flesh out three test chapters. The first time round, I only passed one out of three.
Writing is not for the faint of ego. I was under pressure to prove myself while held over the barrel of criticism – all before the project had even begun. Yikes on a biscuit. I sat on the tram, scrolling through a hefty email, heart stinging. At least being uncomfortable is familiar. I accepted the challenge to improve.
After a second pass at the chapters, I got the green light.
The publisher asked how much I might like for an advance. I didn’t have a clue. I guessed a figure. They accepted it. (It had a 4 in it and was under $5k.) The deal was I’d get three-quarters upfront and the rest upon delivery of the manuscript. Woo-bloody-hoo. I signed on a dotted line. I think the real headline was that someone was gonna publish my book. It was a thrilling day. Most of the advance went on paying off debts.
It took me about seven months to write the first draft of Funemployed: Life as an Artist in Australia. Two months were spent conducting interviews and researching, while the next five were spent writing, (conducting interviews all the while).
Here’s me mooching by the pinnies with Patience from The Grates. I launched Funemployed with a show as ‘Justin Heazlewood’ in her cafe Southside Tea Rooms in 2014. They made good milkshakes.
While money poor, I was time rich. At the time I was subsisting on my usual cocktail of Bedroom Philosopher gigs and Centrelink.
(I still paid taxes, Brad.)
It allowed me to work on the book in almost full-time hours. I didn’t know how long it would take, but set myself a January deadline. I was so obsessed with finishing on time that I spent Christmas Day and New Years Eve home alone.
The first draft was hole-punched to confetti. It wasn’t holding together as a book – there wasn’t enough narrative structure, or point. As a reader, the publisher was asking ‘why am I reading this?’ I was devastated. For someone who was used to being their own boss in the recording studio, this was an ego smackdown. I swore into the swimming pool, paced around the block a few times and started on the second draft. This took around two months, from February through April 2013. Although I had more than enough interviews, I disappeared down a rabbit hole of ‘you should interview this person’ and always had a potential subject on the go.
In April, my publisher delivered the news that the book still wasn’t cutting it. As they no longer had time to edit the manuscript, it was hand-balled to a freelance editor. If the first draft was ripped to shreds, the second was melted down for parts. The freelance editor delivered seventeen pages of notes, outlining in compelling detail what was working, but mostly what wasn’t.
The book was too insular, too snarky, too much about me (they made it sound like a bad thing) – I needed to open it up, address the reader, provide solutions (get a haircut and get a real job). Reading my own private criticism file for the first time was like having my soul graded. Here I thought I was being cutting-edge and maverick – recreating the wheel. I was more like the Melbourne Star.
I needed help.
(At least I got a new Boards of Canada album in June. Appropriately apocalypse themed, ominous, crisp, moody and dense.)
In mid-2013 I won a Hot Desk Fellowship at the Wheeler Centre. From July-September I could leave my gloomy apartment (not to mention din from some bloke buzz-sawing over the fence) and commute into the city to write. This boosted my confidence and gave me fresh wind (pardon – sushi and coffee don’t mix). Armed with seventeen pages of notes, I literally had an instruction manual on how to finish the book.
Until this point I’d written mostly 650 word columns. This was 70, 000 words.
I was learning on the job.
The third draft was where it gelled (pardon – new hairdresser). After a year thinking heavily about the subject, I had found my own voice (other than the one doing a Bert Newton impression reading my eulogy at four am). I could now make my own claims and draw my own conclusions rather than relying on outside voices (such as Ben Eltham and Bony from Trapdoor).
The third draft took four months and was delivered in October 2013. During this time I was still gigging heavily – a traumatising challenge as I jammed my gears from introversion to extroversion, like performing during my own operation. (Comedy is actually easy. I make it look hard.)
One massive advantage of my ten years of being a share-household name was that I had a warm, generous fan base to draw from. The idea of typing up 100 odd recorded interviews was comatosing. I was amazed at the volume of keen beans who came to my aid with secretarial assistance. Without the help of these volunteers, there is no way Funemployed would be any kind of book to stand out from the pack (of three) today.
In November 2013 the verdict came – I’d nailed it! (As in, nailed myself to a cross, in a good way.) I’d built a strong narrative structure, warmed up my tone and hung my quotes appropriately (like beads on a necklace). I was thrilled. The hard work had paid off.
Upon its release Funemployed was being described as ‘easy to read’ and a ‘page turner’ and ‘what did you say about my mum?’ (enough about Ballarat.) This is due, no doubt, to the rigorous drafting process, long-leash I was given to write and edit the book and years of casual bullying from Sam Simmons.
The greatest things in life are often the hardest work – but well worth the journey.
Now, where’s my house and wife at? I’m lookin’ at you Castlemaine.
Funemployed helped a lot of people. I received a bouquet of messages, like the one from Brisbane poet Zenobia Frost:
The whole sharehousehold (we’re all creatives, usually in creative debt) is passing it around like a joint.
I even got to befriend one of my indie idols (Ross McLennan from Snout) after his partner noticed I’d namechecked him and bought a copy.
When Josh Pyke sends you an email it is usually a good day.
Marketing wise, there were some setbacks. Half of all people insisted on calling it ‘Funemployment.’ A board game with the same name launched in America the year before. It was a book about the arts so the ABC dubbed it controversial.
The critical reviews were mostly positive. Newtown Review of Books had cool things to say and it currently has a rating of one million on Goodreads (give or take 999, 996.2). The only person to lay some All-Stars into it was a bloke from The Lifted Brow. I was pretty sensitive about it. It sort of reads like a compliment today.
One of Oliver’s gripes was that I didn’t break down the numbers of music touring and be more specific about how hard it is to make money. So, I ended up doing exactly that for my chapter ‘Justin Heazlewood’s bouncing reality check’ in the 2015 book Copyfight.
I launched Funemployed at Howler in Melbourne June 1, 2014. I billed the event as ‘Art Day!’ and read the book in its entirety over 13 hours. I rounded up thirty of the artists included to read their quotes live. It was a long day, but successfully executed (as much as anything with your ex dressed as an onion can be.) Frente’s Angie Hart dug it. Bob Franklin wowed the crowd with his comedy short film. 2018 Archibald prize winner Yvette Coppersmith was on hand painting all day.
I was proud, but beyond exhausted. I took the next three years off.
Funemployed was included on a couple of art school curriculums (like Collarts for anyone doing their ‘Industry placement’ course and Melbourne Uni psych students studying the mindset of a depressed person). I wanted it to be something people could read other than ‘The Artists Way’ which was very Americanised and mentioned God a lot. In 2015 I was nominated for the Most Underrated Book which feels like the only award where your career goes backwards by winning.
At risk of tooting my own kazoo, I can only imagine Funemployed has dated well. During the pandemic, vulnerability went mainstream. It was all the rage to talk about the precarious position artists were in. In 2015, such emotional soul-bearing was confronting for some. Australia was like ‘these be peace-times, reign in your victimised pontificating ya hipster pill.’ And I was all like ‘I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.’
But, a thousand bone-dry articles can’t be wrong – the arts are still on life support. Creative people are glorified clown peasants. It’s like, impossible to make money from a career in writing (damn you to hell, showbiz.) Even Iggy Pop can’t make a living off his art. Amy Shark reckons being a musician isn’t worth it for the social media grind. Respect and context are stripped for parts with titles like ‘content creators.’ No-one wants to pay for anything. The older you get, the more sense it makes to pack up your tent and disappear into the night.
Still, we try. Hard.
To be discontinued.
Funemployed is out of print. You can buy very limited copies from me at the moment HERE.
Check out my interview in Broadsheet as well as a spoken interview with ABC Books & Arts. Here is an excerpt from the book about failure.
See more about Funemployed including the full Lifted Brow review, links to the 2015 RN radio series and promotional video ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing With My Life.’
Any questions (for Brad?) Blow it out your artshub.
People are wonderfully, disastrously incomplete. Art fills in the blanks with colour. It renovates your soul. In a country that has outsourced all of its manufacturing. Artists are spiritual nation builders, manufacturing truth and beauty. Going down the emotional coal mine of their own pain and turning the shitrocks into electricity with more heart than Don Bradman riding phar lap onto the shores of Gallipoli. Australia needs her artists. Whether she knows it or not. Have you been outside. It’s a capitalist Orwellian neoliberal nightmare. No offence Sydney. Buy this, tweet that – girl dies from status anxiety after being stabbed with newspaper. *
* Quote taken from my tensely received talk at ‘Art After Hours’ at the Art Gallery of NSW, 2014. I had no idea there was a recording of this until just now.
In the documentary Life in Movement, choreographer Tanja Liedtke spoke about the moment she became a dancer. ‘People used to ask me, “What do you want to be when you’re older?” I was three at the time and I used to say, “I want to be a flower.”
I didn’t understand that it wasn’t possible. Then I went to see my neighbour in a school concert. They had tutus and things on their heads and they were flowers and they were dancing. I thought, Oh, all these adults telling me that I can’t be a flower, but I can, I’ve seen it happen.’
I have a piece in The Monthly. It is about Julian Lennon and the ozone layer. It is also about Burnie and sometimes Captain Planet. It is about male emotions and men crying. It is for the ‘Life Sentences’ column in which writers riff on a catchphrase, lyric or quote that has loomed large in their life. John Safran has done it also. Check out the March edition with Kim Williams on the cover.
FUN FACTS:
My piece contains research from a forthcoming book I’m writing about Burnie.
I always assumed George Harrison played the solo on Saltwater. Not true! It’s actually Steve Hunter. George played a demo, which Steve replicated. George was busy consoling Eric Clapton whose son had just died.
Saltwater debuted on the Australian charts in late 1991 and went to number one in March 1992, (knocking off Euphoria’s Love You Right.) It was a slow-climb, eleven weeks in all. (It peaked at #6 in the UK and barely charted in America.) Saltwater held the top spot in Oz for four weeks (impressive!) before being ursurped by….wait for it…
The 12th Man (featuring MCG Hammer) with Marvellous. Super effort that.
This is my Monthly debut. My previous appearance in Schwartz media was when Get Up Mum was reviewed by The Saturday Paper.
Water divining is also known as ‘water dowsing.’ It’s making a comeback according to this ABC story.
I bought the Saltwater cassingle in 2020 as research for the Get Up Mum theatre show. (If you leave me in a room and give me an arts grant I will go online and purchase cassettes.) The tape is good value as it acts as a ‘Greatest Hits EP’ – mirroring a gag from Northcote (So Hungover).
The Monthly doesn’t allow single quote marks, as a rule. I originally intended for the word ‘blue‘ to appear as so.
If you would like more information about the status of the ozone (courtesy of Tas. artist Sarah Howell), this article talks about the 2018 CFC emissions from Chinese factories. This article acknowledges the effects of the Hunga Tonga eruption from January 2022. Finally, this 2019 ABC story speaks specifically about the hole in the ozone myth and the sun’s vibes in Tasmania.
Illustration by Leigh Rigozzi
Why should one baby feel so hungry she cries? Fair point. Babies do tend to cry when hungry, as a rule, but pedantics over songlyrics is a fraught exercise in long-bow drawing and goal-post shifting.
I know what Julian means. How is that huge famine going in Yemen anyway? In 2024, over 18 million people (half the population) will need humanitarian assistance. Much of the food insecurity was caused by war. So – to site Julian’s Dad – all we are saying / is give peace a chance is still a valid mantra.
Anyway, I’ll stay in my lane. Hyper-local non-fiction with witty puns from the nineties. Please follow this wordpress site (bottom right-hand corner) and subscribe to my mailing list HERE.
Julian Lennon update: Having lived for love (and a rockstar career), he’s known as more of a photographer these days. He received so much grief about aping his Dad’s upper register that he didn’t pick up the guitar for seven years. (Tame Impala gets away with it, but has the advantage of biological independence.) Unfortunately, Our Julian went through a bit of an ‘anti-vaxx’ phase along with Eric Clapton. *sigh* Never meet your heroes (online).
He released a new version of Saltwater in 2016 called Saltwater 25. He said things like ‘it’s still relevant, now more than ever’ which, as you know, is ‘true.’
Burnie had a mini oil-spill in the sea only a few days ago! As per the Burnie Council’s FB post: “The polluted water advisory from Council follows an incident involving a delivery truck at Target, resulting in diesel fuel entering the Council’s stormwater network. In consultation with the EPA and TasFire, to ensure the public’s safety, the affected drain was flushed, resulting in the discharge of contaminated water at West Beach – just on the Western side of the playground.” Yikes. There just happens to be a major Little Penguins rookery there. Saltwater wells in my….well, you get the picture.
Actually, I haven’t cried since I watched All of Us Strangers at Westgarth Cinemas – but that was only because I was a on a date going nowhere slow (much like the film).
(NOTE: In two thousand and three (aged 23) I wrote a monologue predicting what an Australian future would look like in twenty twenty three for a spoken word event mouth off. I reopened the file recently. Here is an edited transcript).
I’m an accountant from the future. I have come to deliver a message.
It’s 2023. The world is a very different place…
Right now I’m riding along on my flying bicycle. Cars are too heavy to make fly, but bikes and skateboards are fine. Back to the Future got it about right.
I’m listening to Triple J Mix FM. All the greatest hits from the nineties, the zeroes, the tens and today. Every song in their Interactive Top 10 was from the new supergroup Boogie Sugar and the Flufftones featuring Madonna’s kid and the Minogue twins going at each other with inflatable mallets. Every song has the same four chords in a different order and lyrics out of an English as a second language book. No more maybe’s / the babies got rabies.
It’s all owned by McMicrosoft (everything’s owned by them…except Big Kev’s Goo Remover). Thank god Big Kev clung on with all the might he could squeeze out of his stumpy little fingers. “I’m excited,” he said, “but I’m no bloody sell out! I’m wearing this big silky Australian flag close to my heart.”
The computer generated film clips look like stuff we used to watch on SBS after 11pm. This morning I woke up to my ten year old trying to hump the beanbag. She says Cher told her too. When I rang up to complain, the NBC, sorry, the BBC, I mean the ABC put me on hold and made me listen to an entire episode of The Vicar of Dibley. An automated voice response operator told me in polite terms to get off the fuckin’ phone.
Cinemas come with sick bags. I’ve seen Terminator 8, Austin Powers 7, Star Wars 6, Star Trek 5, Shrek 4, Mission Impossible 3 and how did they get a sequel out of Kindergarten Cop?
There’s a hidden camera in every home for that show ‘Closed Doors.’ You can switch on to any family in Australia and just watch. It’s great. There’s a special feature on the remote control. Usually I hit ‘random.’ Last night I saw these kids in Toowoomba playing Uno. It was nice…relaxing…like the show says, now you really can see what goes on behind “Closed Doors!”
Centrelink of the future! The lines are twice as long. Everyone smokes twice as many cigarettes. There’s half as many jobs. The touch screens take twice as long. Instead of a diary you’ve got to keep a small novelette: It was the best of times…fuck. They want to know how many evil thoughts you had in a day and how many times you touched yourself while thinking about your allowance.
In 2006 they bring in the Edible Produce Factory Engineer Scheme. (EPFAS.) Read: Centrelink sweatshops. Scientists finally persuade the global economy that the world’s population is getting too big. There’s not enough food to go around.
George Bush orders Australia to accept refugees from around the world. We don’t like to say no. It means we have to produce vast quantities of food, quickly. Giant factories are erected in every capital city. If you’re unemployed for more than six months, it’s off to sweatshops: picking spuds, washing spuds, cloning spuds, genetically modifying turnips into spuds. A lot of the workers wear Nike’s made of leather spuds.
Refugees come from every corner of the globe (even though scientists have since proven the earth is round). Large housing commission blocks are plonked on the suburban landscape like a kid making sandcastles.
No one gets angry anymore. Like a man who has lost his house and his wife, we are dark and silent. America has broken us. Ideas of democracy and freedom have been so blatantly ridiculed, that our hearts cake together like moist ash.
Depression doesn’t evolve very much in twenty years. Sitting at home in a dark flat by yourself smoking the last cigarette is still shit. Beyond 2000 couldn’t predict that.
Schools are all on the internet. They’re still studying Dr Seuss in Grade Three. Teachers carry guns (of chalk). Kids know how to use a search engine before their times tables.
Those lollies that used to be 1c, then became 2 for 5c? Well…they’re more.
It’s $10 for a schooner of New. ($11 if you want it in a glass.)
$20 for a packet of smokes.
$10 of petrol costs $13.50.
Where were you when Dolly Parton died? Did you cry? Did you think ‘hey, we made fun of her big bosoms but she was a real person.’ Where were you when the Pope died? The Queen? The drummer from Queen? Angela Lansbury…Mal Meninga…John Farnham? (But they found him five years later confused in a South American farmhouse.) Dame Edna. Shane Porteous. Adriana Xenides (the first celebrity death in the Big Brother house).
Where were you when Tasmania declared war on Japan? (A price war over woodchips.) When man landed on the moon? (I mean really landed on the moon.) When Michael Jackson cloned Macaulay Culkin? The grainy photos, the seven fingered airbrushed shadow. When they painted Heath Ledger black for the controversial film about an Aboriginal Jesus, directed by Russell Gilbert.
Where were you when they trialled ‘rainbow swirl’ Vegemite to promote the new colour of M&M’s? Or when Dick Smith did that publicity stunt and strapped dynamite to himself and pretended to hijack the biggest supplier of yeast in Australia so he could start producing his own ‘Dick Mite.’
And the revelation that Y2K was a Microsoft hoax. Everyone was cranky and it was in the news for a while before everyone realised – they couldn’t do anything.
America made that earthquake by mining Antarctica (for water). The vibrations forced Mrs Clark in Devonport to spill her cup of tea. The puddle looked like the Virgin Mary. It got in all the papers. My daughter did a project on it.
I can’t believe my grandkids will never see a real dingo…or Ernie Dingo. No whale, penguin or koala. All they’ll have is haunting footage of one sitting up a tree looking dopey and chewing gum leaves.
Have you noticed how the radio doesn’t play ‘Imagine’ anymore?
There ‘s so many war movies on TV.
Are they trying to tell us something?
END OF PART ONE
Don’t go outside between nine and five.
All the bus companies are private.
Every shop charges like a wounded cinema.
PART TWO
In Woolies every carrot looks the same and tastes like broccoli. There’s a capsicum every colour of the spectrum, but the only song they play is ‘Piano Man.’ If you don’t wash apples properly your mouth starts fizzing. Where the hell did bananas go?
Everyone’s smoking KFC’s new Chicken Bone Ultra Mild’s and drinking Purple Cola to promote the Barney movie. Mount Franklin lets out a hiss when you open it – excess consumption may cause you to have an early period. You don’t have to be a girl.
Corn flakes look like Twisties. Twisties come in Sarsaparilla flavour. Milo Pops are great.
There’s only one newspaper. The ABC gets commercials. If nothing else, you can go to the toilet while watching Dylan Lewis’ wallaby documentaries.
Tommy Emmanuel has a pasta sauce. You can get an ‘E’ on Ebay.
It hasn’t rained in five years, but Ian Thorpe’s son…isn’t he a dear boy? Did you see him win that under sevens race at the surf club carnival?
Waterproof laptops are great. I like reading in the bath.
All the high school kids look like Boy George and are getting into the ghetto line dancing scene. They talk like Don Lane and constantly scratch their armpits to ward off cancer from their deodorant.
No one cares in school because uni’s are just for doctors and they know they’ll end up looking after their parents anyway.
In the country, nothing changes. Nothing much ever does in the country. Self mutilation reaches an all time low. Youth suicide climbs to an all time high. Regional areas are full of old people (as are churches).
Self is the new religion. Diaries are the new bible. People like listening to themselves, especially when it’s told by someone else.
Children are taught not to talk to strangers, or certain family members. They learn to fear Santa and like Jesus more when he’s made out of chocolate. Don’t trust priests, question your teacher but obey your parents or there’ll be no more Nutella toothpaste.
Easter Bunny doesn’t exist anymore – he ate all the farmers grass and they poisoned him. The tooth fairy is alive (along with Elvis). It’s transgender and transrace and has very little political persuasion. It leaves mobile phone credits under your pillow.
Coke is in the dictionary, but Mabo isn’t.
No one can spell reconciliation.
Kids talk about The Strokes like they’re The Beatles. They sneer at Crowded House and think Radiohead were taking the piss. They’ve never heard of Jeff Buckley and for some reason they think Keith Richards is dead.
People are getting fatter. Babies are getting smaller. No one owns Scrabble.
We still eat at the dinner table but I know parents who smack their kids and make them watch the news and hold their vomity faces close to the screen. I saw it on ‘Closed Doors.’
People say hello with their eyebrows.
They kiss with their eyes open.
Dentist chairs have seat belts.
Everyone is suing their lawyer.
The rich kid in class has one of those bananas that play a song when you peel it. (That’s where all the bananas went.)
A bush fire victim who lost everything has a vision of what it is like to be truly free. It is so profound he starts up a small but influential cult telling people to burn their houses to the ground and feel truly liberated. He does have a point. It gives A Current Affair something to talk about.
To make the election more ratings worthy, politicians stand along the edge of a pool. Voters ring up and they are pushed in one by one by bikini clad Kim Beazley lookalikes.
An urban myth begins that the graphic designer that made the ‘Australian Made’ logo was actually American. Each time a product uses that logo they have to pay an American company ten cents.
(It’s actually true…)
The baby boomers get older, yet still manage to maintain control of pretty much everything. Gen Xers get bald and fat and less enthused than they are now. Generation Y, thus dubbed because of how many questions they asked and how post-modernly they looked at the world, ask less questions, have more kids and earn less money, except those with IT jobs.
Generation Text comes along. They are the grand canyon where ways of the old world have been lost. They laugh at the eighties and the seventies and the sixties; they talk like cartoons, they don’t have time for irony. Their memories are digital; their eyes filled with flavour beans.
Their minds work in episodes. Their dreams have fine print that they don’t bother reading. They hate and love in spurts and are not sure why. They are angry and sleepy and sick and laughing and shiny. (They are made in Australia.) They talk without listening; they listen without watching, they like movies with pictures and pamphlets with popcorn.
Sex is all there is. Real families are out of story books. Politics is for the over fifties, history is for over forties. The past isn’t worth it. Wars are boring. So is lotto. Life is okay but why would anyone want to live mine? Hey Mum, I can’t believe Astro Boy was set in 1995!
Generation Text are to be feared. They are to be despised. They are to be manipulated, patronised, blown out of all proportion, categorised, stereotyped, distorted like a photocopy of a TV screen. They are to be made to feel like they have no home without a credit card and someone who can reply to their questions within three working days.
They are to be admired, chastised, worshipped, beaten, hugged, stripped of their security and self esteem, stamped on the hand and sent through the revolving elevator to the nature-park casino of life, like a character out of The Sims.
Generation Text will be raised by parents who hate their lives, taught by teachers who hate their jobs and governed by men who love money and hate women.
Everyone will generalise
all the time.
Just like we did when we were that age.
.
IN CONCLUSION
When I was
twelve I made
a pact with
myself to never
forget what
it was like
to be twelve.
I think I forgot.
This is the future.
It will happen the other day.
It will happen so gradually that no one will notice,
e x c e p t y o u
T h a n k g o d B e r t ‘ s s t i l lo nt h e T V.
The Summer school holidays were turning out to be cool. For starters, Uncle Nigel had rocked up from the mainland to visit Nan & Pop for six weeks. He was the family member I knew the least but was growing to like the most. He was friendly, sporty and above all: a crack up. With my own popcorn humour undulating, we cackled and sputtered over impressions of cricket commentators and family bloopers while fostering a mutual appreciation for T-bone steaks and Pearl Jam’s Ten cassette.
Meanwhile, come Christmas morn, there was a bag of happy spuds at my feet. Santa always left his ‘sack’ in the form of an empty pillowcase which by morning was filled with all manner of toys, treats and trinkets. My 7am ritual was to sit up and savour the radically logoed array of bouncy balls, cricket cards, furry friends and glow-in-the-dark anything. This time there was a mothership in the middle – a hefty box with a flying child on the front. Cowabunga dudes! It was my very own waterslide!
Last summer, a backyard waterslide meant Pop rustling up a huge sheet of black tarpaulin from the garage while Nan applied a combination lather of laundry powder and hose water. Plusses were Nan and Pop’s naturally sloping keyhole-shaped lawn while minuses included “scratchiness.” A backstop was notably absent. Instead of ending up in a pool I commando rolled into Nan’s marigolds.
Man, this was a ramp UP. Santa had delivered. A sun kissed, professional fun kit! The state of the art ‘Surf City’ waterslide system. Like any board game, you knew it was guaranteed fun from the picture of the kid getting serious air via the Wahoo Bump™ (a long inflatable cushion halfway down the slide). Liquefying the graffiti-art mat was the Bonzai Pipeline™ sprinkler system. By golly, my pulse was racing, and not just from the gold chocolate coins I’d scoffed.
Waterslides (along with computers and fireworks) had always been one of my favourite things. I lived in the industrial township of Burnie on the North-West coast. Half an hour away was the colossal twisty tower of the Ulverstone waterslide. This landmark tubeway filled my chest with static thrill whenever our yellow Beetle approached. I went with best friend Nick. We wore our silky Adidas ‘Enforcer’ shorts for extra speed and sailed in pairs, slalom style, affording maximum height in the turns.
With only a few days left of the already memorable Summer holidays, Uncle Nige and I set up Surf City. My fingers met the thick, smooth factory plastic, packed as crisp as Nan’s bedsheets. The fly in the sunscreen was the Bonzai Pipeline™ – a tangle of petite, flimsy yellow hoses obsessed with kinking. The impatience of tangled Christmas lights met the improbability of stretching a water bomb over the fat nozzle of Nan and Pop’s rainwater tank. After busting Nigel’s smokers lungs blowing up the Wahoo Bump™, we finally had the chequerboard fluro orange and yellow F R E E S T Y L E slide assembled.
It was officially “Time to Boogie®”
As sprinkler mist cast rainbows over roses, I removed my glasses and began sprinting for the sleek Hammer Pants runway. This test pilot was wearing nothing but Piping Hot parachute shorts and a squint-eyed smile. I buckled my knees and sailed my arms as tum met runway with a playful “oof.” My face burst the spray like Kernahan through a Carlton banner as my legs floated skywards like a tailfin on a Lamborghini Countach.
For a moment I was air born. Like my fave TV helicopter, Airwolf. Justin Marcus! Only child of Mum (still lying on the bed). A thoughtful, clever Gemini, about to start high school. So much worry on those shoulders, but here I was shirtless and sun surfing – just another blond kid on the box.
Uncle Nigel stripped off and even though he was a fully grown man with a hairy chest and equally poor vision, he transformed himself to brilliant-kid level, scampering in with the focussed glee he brought to spin bowling.
With Nan yelling gentle encouragement from the swing seat, we tag teamed the backyard strip, self-awarded the undisputed champions of radical water sports, 1992. Only when our slap-happy stomachs could take no more did we stroll in under the translucent blue afternoon. With feet cooling on bathroom tile, I towelled off the goose bumps.
It was the end of holidays and I’d had my fill of play.
The Big Issue, 2020
GRAMMAR ADVICE: ‘Blond’ VS ‘Blonde’
The word originally came into English from Old French, where it has masculine and feminine forms. As an English noun, it kept those two forms; thus, a blond is a fair-haired male, and a blonde is a fair-haired female.
f u z z y ⚡ l o g i c 