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.
In high school we’re taught Pythagoras’ theorem and how to use a Bunsen burner – but not life skills like how to end a friendship. Acquaintance Management could have been a three-day tutorial in between sex ed and P.E., including cheeky themes on mental health, self-respect and boundaries; instead it’s outsourced to the “school of hard knocks” of our twenties.
Terminating a romantic relationship is a walk in the park compared to the swimming-with-sharks nebulous of telling a comrade their services are superfluous to requirements. Maybe it was simpler in kindergarten. One minute you’re playing blocks, the next you’re on the other side of the mats sipping milk with someone new. As grown-ups we can’t possibly express ourselves so clearly; squeezing sentiment through an elaborate set of euphemisms, excuses and hoop jumping.
My friend Josh once wrote a song called ‘Friendshit.’ The theme was “if I met some of my friends from school now I’d hate them.” The irony there is Josh and I aren’t great friends at the moment. It’s because I’m holding onto stuff from high school. Hey, I’m a collector and nostalgia is in.
Some friends are complicated. Some friendships don’t stand up to forensic examination. Who are you again? Why are you still on the emotional payroll? Some are due for an audit.
I propose a conscious unmating ritual down at the pub. You enjoy a long handshake, avoid eye contact and share a memory over a brief pot of beer. You turn your backs and walk off into the night like contented cowboys. No harm, no foul.
A few years ago I ended things by email. I told my ex-friend Matt that we’d had a good run but it wasn’t working for me anymore. Perhaps we would catch up for coffee down the road. My friend (of twenty years) never responded. It was a bit of a desperate move in emotionally challenging times. I felt fatigued and threatened. There was a motivation to separate myself from complicated people.
I’m in awe of parents with their “get out of friend jail” card in having a kid who is sick. Recently I’ve witnessed the raw power of the first-time parent who is renovating. Now that’s a David Copperfield-grade ability to disappear from a social circle. I don’t think my friend Hugh is just “taking a break” either. I think this time it’s over. The invite to the pub was declined. Fitting, seeing as I started the cancelling. Four years ago I delayed a dinner plan because I really wanted to go on a date. “There’s a girl I’ve met online who I’m nuts about and she’s only free tomorrow eve.”
Hugh seemed accepting. “Don’t worry about me though, make the most of the date night I reckon.” Thumbs up emoji.
Months later, I realised he was being sarcastic. (Well, I don’t know this for certain). Damn, I thought. You made a mistake back there. I emailed an apology, but I haven’t seen him in person since. Then COVID happened and I moved back to my home town.
No words were ever said about the status of our ten year friendship. I’m pretty sure this would be a time when someone older and wiser – maybe someone called Reg – would tell me that when someone has a child everything changes. In the Reg vacuum, I’m left with an in-house anxiety author compelled to spin elaborate narratives with me as the villain and the victim.
Friendships aren’t forever and that’s fine. They come and go like marvellous adventures. They fill our memories with gold. Give that chum a certificate of merit in your mind and move on. Leave room in your heart for a spectacular second act.
At all. Say anything. Actually fucking talk to them, I would have thought.
M e n t a l i l l n e s s is a desert. Communication is water. You can create water out of air, simply by saying ‘action’ and starring in a scene from your favourite film where the beautiful lead character reaches out and helps a friend. Sound fun? It’s not. It’s quite hard work, which is what actors usually say in interviews – and this movie is silent and in black and white and imaginary – but gosh, the rewards are colourful and the investment in your own hope and sense of wish fulfilment: golden.
Talk. Say words. Anything really. Except not anything because there is a right-ish and squeamish approach, which is why I’m writing this because I feel I can guide you in a general direction while still maintaining the simple rule that the best way to talk to a depressed person is by actually talking to them, if you catch my drift. As in, what use is my advice on what to say if you secretly never plan to push the boat out to water.
You see, I’m quite certain that due to the mild corruption of society (consumerism, the original popularity algorithm) and outsourcing malaise of social media, we have been essentially trained to keep quiet about emotional ailments and self-stigmatise common garden-variety troubles which we are all quietly going about dealing with on a daily basis. Depression, anxiety, mood swings, self-loathing, loneliness. I mean, how embarrassing is loneliness? Imagine actually trying to tell someone you know and respect that you have been feeling lonely and that it is becoming quite a problem lately.
i am cool
I would know, I tried. Well, I wrote about it on my website and that was a big step for me. This is another one. I’d like to involve you, radical magical mr / ms person whoever-you-are – let’s get married in a fiesta of concepts, I’ll let you keep your surname – I’ll permiss you to rely on your instincts, but I will carry a fairly big stick and give you a polite yoga master tap every now and then if I sense you falling into the bad habits that so many of our smart-pants-cynicool generation still do. Bad habits that result in my least favourite sound right now, especially when it comes to mental illness …
silence.
Polite silence. Sorry Justin, won’t be checking in on you there – you seem to have it all sorted.
Ah, mate, yeah, I was going to ask you about your Mum but I didn’t want to seem condescending as you are the expert on the matter and I’m only new to having a family member with schizophrenia.
Sure, the last one was a recent, real life example. Bless my friend. He said this by email. And honestly, it’s not even the novel concept of my biggest problem being that someone might appear condescending towards me – the thing that has me rushing out of bed to hammer this down is just the admission of a self-censoring subroutine. I mean, I get the sense that my friend is nowhere near alone. One thing we are probably all united in is a complex myriad of psychological excuses for getting out of doing really basic things like say – uh –
Asking for help.
Asking someone if they need help.
Following up with a friend who is down.
Admitting to being down.
Like, how many times have you maybe thought about toying with any of the above – only to let the faint, tickly trickle of pleasant endorphin based ‘get out of awkwardness jail free’ cards rain down like a hotbed of ghost lawyers dressed as you pouring your favourite cordial promising they can maintain these positive intentions of which you think while not actually placing you in harms way of ever having to carry them out.
👻 👻 👻 I don’t see why we should leave our comfort zone in this instance. I mean, what a week. We are tired and busy and this whole ‘talking about our feelings’ business will just complicate matters and could lead to an untenable situation of creating more work than we had anticipated and even the thought of this hypothetical botheration has us tensing up in the stomach. Nah, best to just pat yourself on the back and give yourself a little nod for being a decent enough person to have at least naturally conjured up the basic desire to help or reach out or connect while also maintaining the dignity, intelligence and street-smarts to not do anything rash like act on these impulses and reveal the pulsating, quivering tangle of nerves, bad dreams and unresolved conflicts that you actually are. 👻
So, now, I’m going to mention AA. No, not that AA.
The two A’s.
Avoidance.
&
Acknowledgement.
They go hand in hand, as far as I’m concerned. They are two peas in a pod and I want you to be aware of them.
When it comes to the job at hand. How do you talk to a d e p r e s s e d nosrep.
Part one – Avoidance
It’s rife. We avoid situations that might make us stressed. We avoid interactions which could embarrass us socially. Fair enough.
If someone we know is depressed or down or not themselves or by themselves or not quite right or recently single or having a hard time, we are likely to sort of, well, avoid them. Not directly, not exactly, but not the opposite either. We siphon them off to a complex friendship ditch in the quarry of our minds. We could ring them but – yeah nah – maybe a text – a quick back and forth and – yeah – that’ll do, right? And distraction and smoke and mirrors and a hundred more tomorrows and nothing really changes.
Right. Or.
You could barge on in and call someone. Yes, I mean type the actual numbers and ring them.
If you fall in the camp that perceives phone calls as anxious concepts then I suggest you try getting over this in any way possible. Why? Because some of us are in a communication connection drought and I am declaring a national emergency. You’ve read the articles, you’ve seen the stats. People are desperately unhappy and / or isolated in the nerve-control-inner-monologue-disaster-manipulation-self-destruct-bunkers of their sonic the groundhog twilight youth. It’s not pretty. I’ve been there. Some days I’m there still. And all I can say is that when someone calls me out of the blue I adore it.
Big Shout Out to all millennials and gen-z who have stopped reading at this point
Yeah, I was born in 1980. If you don’t like talking on the phone then remember that the very a c t i o n of reaching out to someone in a format that you are not completely versed in is in itself a powerful a c t. You can transmit power simply by proving that someone existed in your mind and their name was held by your hand. Words matter but actions rule. In this time of binge communication and lightweight haiku newsletters, how breathtakingly charming and dramatic the notion of a phone call.
Or a text, or a fax, or whatever. You do you.
Part 2 – Acknowledgement
You: How are you?
Person: Terrible.
You:….
This is the point at which many people will baulk and retreat inside themselves. “Oh no,” they flail, “whatever will I say now. I’m not a trained psychologist. I was just eating an ice-cream when this compelling website implored me to phone a friend who has just lost their job and moved back in with their parents, and now here they are putting me under the pump with their gloriously honest answer to my classically mundane question. Quick, author of this post, or “ Justin” (or poor woman’s Tony Robbins) as you seem to go by these days, what would you have me say next wonderboy?”
Dude. It’s okay.
No, that is that you’d say to the person. ‘It’s okay.’
Or, how about ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Cliches are helpful sometimes, especially when they are treated like emergency scaffolding to hold up a tent in the blizzard of this chaotic life we’re all being blown to shit around in. Again, words are water at this point and if you were stranded in the desert I don’t exactly reckon you would be overly fussed about what brand of bottle your friend was bringing to you. Unless you’re Amanda Palmer, she only drinks the melted iceblocks of inuit tears from 1920.
Be brave. Remember love. Think slow.
There’s no rush. You don’t have to solve anyone’s problems.
Do you know what a sad person needs more than anything? Ice-cream, sure, but… they need understanding – and the golden child of this conversation – acknowledgement.
I can’t tell you how important it is to have your feelings validated by someone.
Me: I feel – lonely.
You: Justin, that must be hard.
Me: Yeah – it is. It’s just my thing.
You: How long has this been going on?
Me: Oh, gee. A long time. It’s just been lately that I’ve really noticed it. I know I’m by myself too much. I don’t know. Often it feels like everyone else has people around them all the time but I’ve ended up by myself and that seems unfair.
You: You know there are a lot of people in your position.
Me: Yeah, apparently.
You: It’s nothing you’ve done. It’s just….how life works out sometimes.
Me: Hmmm.
And so forth. So, my main point is that rather than jump in and …
Me: I’m feeling lonely.
You: Have you joined any sporting teams or gone on facebook and tried to start a bushwalking club?
Me: No. * feels twice as alone *
Like, we’re programmed to live in this quick-fix society where everything has a solution and maybe if I just pressed the right combo of buttons I could defeat this evil ‘self island’ game that seems to be hijacking my waking vibe and ability to feel confident and consistent.
Well, no, because we are people. We are not programs. We are not machines.
We are rainbow scented, space cadet, all-feeling all-fleshy
fancy
monkey
children.
And we are struggling. And we need gentle, thoughtful, nurturing.
Yes, even you gavin. Especially the blokes! (No shit, I know – who knew…..)
And we need acknowledgement.
That means – the simplest, smallest action of all. Showing us that you are listening.
“ dat sounds hard. ” “ i’s sorry to hear dat “ “ ooh dat sux ” “ u poor fing ”
Well, maybe not the last one. Perhaps that could be construed as a bit condescending. Especially when gavin has pulled the mining truck over to tell bernedette that he’s been having panic attacks. I don’t know what kalgoorlie mining co’s policies are on hugs in the superpits, but I would probably suggest that a hug would suffice.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to tell someone that I’m feeling down and all I’ve really wanted is a pat on the head and a ‘there there’ and all I’ve gotten is a hardcore delivery of suggestions of ways I could go and fix my problem and all I’ve wanted to do is reverse myself into a sinkhole of melted soap mattresses and initiate myself into a tribe of sophisticated duck wizards who would tuck me in and quack me a bedtime story.
Failing that. I have my friends. My acquaintances. Many of which have had a crack at connecting with me, and, unfortunately, it seems like (in the pyramid of petty social conventions), left me with the unnerving impression that I will be a lot better suited to life if I can continue with my only-child training and adapt to be a largely self-soothing, self-serving, self-analysing unit of progress and production who occasionally sees a professional psychologist in secret and deals with my complex emotional affairs in a setting that won’t bend the day of my loved ones out of shape.
don’t you open that trapdoor
because there’s something down there
In conclusion, do you know what my favourite question anyone has ever asked me?
It was about five years ago. It was my friend Bruce in Canberra.
“How’s your depression?”
He said it so casually. It was right up there with ‘did you see the carlton game’ and ‘how’s the tour going’ – I was gobsmacked. Truly taken aback. It was a wonderful moment of feeling shame and elation. Shelation.
“Uh, yeah – it’s okay”
I bought myself some time to conjure articulation in a subconscious Atlantis beneath the sea of deadpan humour.
“I think it’s getting a bit…easier.”
Did I say that? I don’t know. Did I mean it? Possibly not. But I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that Bruce asked his question. And even if I didn’t convince myself with the answer, hearing yourself say a hopeful statement, when prompted, is a song that can keep you company through a week of grey thoughts.
It’s communication. It’s action. It’s the vibe.
bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce almighty
Bruce talked to a depressed person. He just barrelled on in there and talked to me.
I know what you’re thinking. You think you’re going to offend the depressed person. You’re terrified that you’re going to, god forbid, make them worse with your incorrectly placed question. You might say the wrong thing? You might, what’s that word the kids like to use… ‘trigger’ them.
I’ll tell you what’s triggering.
Silence.
I’ll tell you what’s offensive.
Fluff.
In a garden of night, be the candle we’ve forgotten how to light. 🕯️
Talk to a depressed person today. You don’t even have to know if they are sad, or lonely. Chances are your instincts are already spot on.
For you are the intelligent dreamer – and I trust you to carry the weight of your own lack of practice.
We can do this. We can train ourselves to be better.
We can reach. For the stars. For the truth inside.
For each other.
maxwell the morose party star of fitzroy sez:
“search for the hero inside yourself”
“ hello there, i just wanted to make the point that depression isn’t something that is with you all the time. It’s not always a fixed state. It’s a broad spectrum. Of course there are people who are experiencing heavy depression as a clinical condition. I would like to think that this advice could apply to everyone, however dark the paints on their particular canvas.
RESOURCES: Amanda FKING Palmer has a self-help book about asking for help, no less.
I wrote a column about my love of arpeggiated synths for music site Mess+Noise in 2011. Since then, I’ve observed the explosion in popularity of what has long been my favourite sound in music. In short, it’s a run of synthesizer notes that groove back and forth – sparkling, colourful, magical and mysterious. The audio equivalent of a palindrome. A mirror image wave form, glowing and sparking on loop like an enchanted roller coaster.
Here’s a quick example – the spritely business partying up the back of Lionel Richie’s Dancing On The Ceiling as demonstrated:
The most popular example of recent times is the Stranger Things opening theme which dropped in 2016. A good example of the slower, more agitating end of the arpeggiator spectrum.
Like the show (set in 1984), the theme was a throwback to a time when pop songs like The Never Ending Story and The Riddle (both released in ’84) and There Must Be An Angel (’85) had a melancholic sonic blowwave wafting ephemerally through the back of the mix.
In 2013 my favourite band Boards of Canada utilised their biggest batch of arpeggiated synths to date in a 1980s John Carpenter soundtrack tribute Tomorrow’s Harvest. Like Stranger Things, they took the warm cosmos of the Popcorn sound and reduced it to a steely, robotic chill.
To me, arpeggiated synths are the sound of infinity. The glorious, cascading, expanding universe of my imagination. The spiritual projection of what I imagine an all-star all-flying glittering afterlife to be. The Never Ending Story’s Fantasia meets Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road.
A frosted, pulsing rainbow run.
Echo nebulas, rebounding through the galaxy.
Fireflies of sound, synchronised like hexagons.
In 2011 arpeggiated synths were thin on the ground in alternative music. There was my favourite song of all time Infinity by Guru Josh, in which he synth-bombed a whole decade with his audacious lyrics and a (count it) two minute piano solo. In grade ten I requested Infinity as part of my ‘Hi 5’ favourite songs of all-time played by Michael Tunn on Triple J! For a long time the only copy I had of the extended mix (which wasn’t on the CD album) was the cassette recording from the radio, including the bump where I accidentally pressed record.
Infinity contains what I believe to be the best 20 seconds of recorded music, ever. [2:06 – 2:25 of the 12” version]
For the rest of the nineties the only place to find arpeggiated synths was in remixes of obscure techno songs like Pizzaman’s Happiness. 2000 marked an indie-rock retro explosion as Grandaddy brought the arpeggiator love on their landmark album The Software Slump. Tracks such as Crystal Lake were striking for the juxtaposition of synth used in a rock song. (The origins of which could be traced back to 1972’s landmark single Virginia Plain by Roxy Music, the same year that Popcorn was released. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon would appear the following year). Radiohead, having successfully married computers on Kid A were soon joined by Wilco with Heavy Metal Drummer and in five years LCD Soundsystem would take the dance/rock fusion full circle.
If xylophone is “the music you hear when skeletons are dancing” (Homer Simpson) then arpeggiators are the sound of a unicorn galloping.
Sometimes I’m asked whether I’ve ever wanted to make my own synth music. Unfortunately I’ve never afforded my own machine to play with. It’s a sweet dream with a long tail. I picture myself locked away in a strawberry-lime studio with lava lamp, buggy posters and velour robe, crafting my own downtempo ambient electronica like a sporty Tasmanian Jean-Michel Jarre.
In 2012 I made an unreleased album working with Melbourne cult-electro wildman SPOD (Brent Griffin) and my favourite psychedelic songwriter Richard Cartright of Sydney’s Richard In Your Mind. SPOD had a vintage Micromoog, the kind of which Popcorn was no doubt composed on. It looks like the dashboard of Dr Who’s Tardis and is about as abstract to operate.
No ‘demo’ button here. You twist knobs and dials, squashing and squelching the soundwaves like a lightsaber manipulator. I watched SPOD with awe reserved for the Level 20 teenagers at my kiddie video arcade. This trucker-capped wizard of rhythm flounced and flocked the unit until it was growling and flanging with the savageness of Tom Morello’s guitar amp.*
Richard had an Oberheim synth with 100 prebuilt effects. He was soon able to recreate the impossibly warm sounds of everything from Take My Breath Away to Great Southern Land. It was exciting just to be in the same room as the equipment responsible for the friendly radio ghosts of my childhood. These unsung studio sentinels evoking the underlying longing and lunar loneliness that make up the soft padded bed of my eighties nostalgia.
Oh yeah, I got to play with synths on my 2009 album Brown & Orange. Hanna Silver had a retro Korg with some delightful presets. The most notable use was this track, which was always a bit of a messy record favourite.
And now, the original column from 2011 followed by some recent examples of my favourite arpeggiated synth based tunes, featuring the likes of Daft Punk, Beach House and Gorillaz. You can make your own arpeggiated sequences on this Online Sequencer if you wish. Dig.
TREBLE TREBLE // POPCORN AND INFINITY (2011)
illustrations by Leigh Rigozzi
My first memory of music is listening to Popcorn by Hot Butter. I’m standing beside Nan and Pop’s ‘Stereo Sonic’ entertainment deck with black sponge headphones wrapped around my noggin. I load a cassette into the deck and press down on the chunky metallic button. The oceanic tape hiss fills with a sci-fi whine, followed by a warbly synth waddle of baroque alien ducks and the novelty combustion of a robotic, whistle-ready melody.
I sit mesmerised, staring at a yellow and brown swirl print cushion. These sounds are colour to a blind man. An aurora to a caveman. A Christmas and birthday imagination sandwich. Cerebral sorcery that fits like a tshirt and springs like a trampoline. Music was shaking hands and asking to be my friend.
The song continues, the pad chord bed hitting the profound F#m. The vibrations enter my ears like molten fireworks then vapourise, leaving puffs of awe. Popcorn, at once silly and profound, is a Moog minstrel with a weeping heart. The jaunty lead tickles my chin while the broody rhythm of the bridge places a steady hand on my chest. The song is trying to tell me something.
At 1:08, something incredible occurs. The carriage of the song slips off its rails and sails into the air, gliding on a glitteringly gorgeous magic carpet of harpsichord and arpeggiated minor chords. The chords are broken down to their base notes and knitted back together to form a musical spine which flexes and flickers, like the tail of an electric dragon. The sonic flux swings and snakes, mirroring the waves and mountain tops of a stereo equaliser. The luck dragon cycles its way through the dazzling axis of my mind. Lava coated flowers burn red, blue then yellow. My LCD creature zips and darts, spelling mathematical shapes before exploding into rainbows and lightning rods.
After this uplifting bridge the song breaks down into the tribal simplicity of tom drum and tambourine. An anxious two-note timer synth creeps in, adding a sense of urgency. Each layer of instrumentation is cleared, leaving only the ticking of a laser clock, soon blotted out by the squelch of Martian flatulence. It is at once comical and menacing. The sound of a spaceman being obliterated in a Commodore 64 game.
I take off the headphones and gaze at the rows of tapes and photo frames, my head slowly morphing back into shape like ear plug foam. What is this “music?” This kaleidoscope of sounds. I am caught hook, line and syncopation.
My second memory of music is listening to I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. For this six year old, the song is trumped by the micro-single which opens the tape. The XDR Test Toneburst that sits at the beginning of cassette albums from the era. An audio distress flare sounding out the basic spectrum of tones from sub bass to high treble. An arpeggiated fantail for my brain to decode.
The song plays. I am drawn to the warmth of the synths, blending sweetly with the early 80’s compression and Wonders rich voice. Listening back, I detect lightly arpeggiated notes in the mix, adding a mystical, tinkling ambience – crystal rain on glass. (A similar effect to The Never Ending Story.) The song has a lightweight of melancholy I am drawn to, and while my emotional palette is primitive, my synaesthesiac instincts associate the thick pad of the minor chords with a quiet internal warmth, as my heart increases the blood flow around my body, sending a rainstorm of thoughtfulness to my tummy.
Being a child of the 80’s, it’s little wonder my earliest memories of music are mostly synthesiser based. A glance at the children’s programming of the time shows cult classics such as Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold using the kind of synth-heavy soundtracks that Gary Numan could take back to his laser pyramid. I recently rewatched Mysterious Cities of Gold and found to my delight that not only had the animation aged gracefully, but the soundtrack was a full bodied tremolo dreamscape.
One of my first cinema memories was the opening credits to The Never Ending Story, featuring the title track playing while the camera tracked over dreamy clouds. While the single already contained brilliant melodic structure and a rousing chorus, my brain was excited by the arpeggiated bed, sublimely oscillating in the background like robo piano roll. Coupled with the epic adventure of the film, The Never Ending Story made me want to melt from happiness and sadness all at once. Add the prettiness of the childlike empress, the savagery of the wolf and ARTAX! and you have an original sex and death soundtrack with training wheels.
A few years later, in 1990, I would accidentally bump into the greatest arpeggiated synth sequence of all time. The song was called Infinity by the UK artist Guru Josh. The song revolved around a melody played on saxophone utilising a stirring F-C-G chord sequence similar to that found in Manic Street Preacher’s If You Tolerate This, Live’s Lightning Crashes and Scatman John’s Scatman.
Behind the sax are heavenly orchestral pad synths punctuated by a subtle oscillation of notes, brilliantly complimenting the chord sequence but not yet fanning all the hues to its peacock tail. It’s an ambitiously anthemic and acutely ambient opening, especially when listened to through earnest young ears.
The verses comprise of Guru Josh staking audacious claim to the entire decade “1990’s – time for the guru” backed by some industrial Terminator-esque effects and scattershot house beats. A looming three note bass line keeps the track in check while Guru Josh scats some ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ landing somewhere between Max Headroom, Kraftwerk and David Koresh.
At the two minute mark of the extended mix we are treated to a twenty second burst of what I have, for most of my life, accepted to be the greatest section of music ever recorded. The chorus chords are reprised with an arpeggiated lead running brightly over the top. The stirring ambience of angelic electro wash, flush with a dramatic major to minor chord change are punctuated with a constellation of digital train tracks whose rise and fall evoke the exotic quasars of my spatial awareness. It’s like a squadron of effervescent sprites line my kinetic pathways, waving brilliant sonic pom poms as I run a victory lap around my swirling fantasia – the music shining a neon blacklight on the dream bursts of my mind’s eye – a cross between the last rainbow level in Mario Kart, the time travel scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey and a Flaming Lips concert.
The reverb on the mix evokes an underwater dream – the audio equivalent of bubbles bursting as they rush to the surface. It is not dissimilar to Caribou’s Sun at the 3:40 mark, from a house album he wanted to sound organically underwater. Infinity creates a magic speedway inside my imagination where natural and synthetic are one. Circuits become veins and stars turn to pixels. I am the king of colours – flying through a psychedelic utopia, smelling the freshness and licking tears from my lips.
For a period of my teenage years, Infinity was my drug. I would slip on the earphones, press play on my walkman and escape. I lived for the arpeggiated section, and thankfully, after an astoundingly lengthy (2:05!) piano solo, Infinity offers a sixty second outro of the enchanting sequence, spiralling skywards before dipping and dissipating into a mushroom cloud of ambience.
I was finding my own non-druggy relationship between electronic dance music and hallucinating. During car trips, I’d disappear into deep trances, triggering the stained glass screensaver of my mind. In grade ten I fully explored this concept with a short film I wrote called Infinity. The story revolved around a DJ who believed that if you took the live speaker wires and inserted them directly into the brain, while high on a certain drug, you could physically transform and “become the song.” (It was not long after The Lawnmower Man where the protagonist became pure energy via virtual reality). In the final scene two investigators burst into the DJ’s compound (bed-sit) to find he has been successful with his experiment. On his bed burns the infinity symbol, rendered in blue flames.
What I was expressing was my deep desire to completely connect with electronic songs like Popcorn, The Never Ending Story, Infinity and whatever was happening on my Strictly Techno 2 cassette. I wanted to trip as hard as I could, powered by my imagination and a box of Nerds. Like in the book Gillian Rubenstein’s Space Demons where the characters are trapped inside a video game, I wanted to be sucked inside these songs – able to fly along the sonic dimension they existed within. I could hear and see music, I wanted to be able to touch, taste and smell it as well. I don’t think many other people my age wanted to smell anything to do with Guru Josh. He had a goatee and always looked sweaty. (I later discovered he fell out of favour after publicly supporting Thatcherism).
My love of arpeggiated synths continues to this day, and I’ve been drawn to it in recent alt-rock tracks such as Grandaddy’s The Crystal Lake, Wilco’s Heavy Metal Drummer and the music of Ratatat. I’ve used it on one of my own songs For The Love I Have For You, to moderate success, but have resisted the urge to buy my own keyboard. I fear that once I find the arpeggiation settings and put on the cans, I’ll swim down a sonic wormhole of no return.
FURTHER LISTENING — A PHOENIX DOUBLE HELIX
The Gorillaz Plastic Beach features an arpeggiator drop so satisfying that the comments reference the 0:41 point of the song!
When you’re sleeping and your body does that fake fall thing
When you’re playing Rock paper scissors in the mirror and you win.
Gorillaz // Plastic Beach
Slow Meadow // Artificial Algorithm
DIG ON THE FULL PLAYLIST…
* Rage Against The Machine made their guitars sound like electronic effects, and each album contained in the liner notes “no samples, keyboards or synthesizers used in the making of this record.”
I have a piece published in Cordite Poetry Review. It’s a Get Up Mum spin-off yarn about the blessed-hectic adventures of Edna & Len Heazlewood.
If you are a completist who wants to suss out all the Get Up Mum side-hustles around the ‘net – there’s a piece about Roxy Music’s ‘More Than This’ drifting on Double J I believe.
I wrote about Pop for Frankie magazine once. You can find the column at the top of the Masculinity section.
I’m not always reading. I wrote a piece for Meanjin about this. I also gave anecdotes to the ABC about self-doubt recently. I answered these questions for Hobart’s Weekend of Reading festival last year. Dig.
Q: What is a book that everyone should read?
Maus by Art Spiegalman. It’s a graphic novel about the holocaust by the cartoonist who used to do the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards from the 1980s. It teaches you about everything that is relevant in our modern world – in case you need some perspective – which you probably do (no offence).
Q: If you could save one book in a fire, what would it be?
My original pressing of Grug and the Rainbow. Ted Prior made only five copies with an actual rainbow inside. That guy is next level.
Q: What are you currently reading?
The blurbs of several books in my friends’ bookcase including Extinction. Seriously, who would read a book that’s all internal monologue and no paragraphs (sorry Tom Doig x). Gee you ‘readers’ are suckers for punishment. I got the Karl Ove Knausgaard cookbook and it was 1000 pages of his memories of soup. I don’t read so many books these days but I do like settling into middle age by enjoying the weekend papers.
Want more fun? I delivered further witted insights about my bookish behaviour to Brunswick Bound here. I read out my grade seven diary in the seventh episode of the Get Up Mum radio series. What have you!
“On my bed is a new pillow case and matching doona cover which has lots of crazy padded squares in green and white and pink paisley. I have a dark brown wood veneer bedhead with bedside table and three drawers attached. On the bedside table is an old style silver reading lamp and my ‘P’Jammer’ clock radio that used to be Mum’s. There’s also my new Korg guitar tuner and the book Michael and the Secret War which I have to finish and return to the library by next week. I’m really enjoying it.
It’s about a boy whose mirror cracks and from then on his life is in turmoil. Strange creatures come and visit him and he unintentionally gives them his help. He gets messages from the ‘enemy’ asking him to stop helping. In the end he helps the friends to win the secret war. I reckon I’ll give it nine out of ten.”
Taken from the first draft of Get Up Mum.
MY REVIEW FOR ONE OF THE LAST THINGS I READ: KENNETH COOK’S WAKE IN FRIGHT
204 pages – feels like a short read.
School teacher goes on a dark bender in an Australian desert town.
Mood: Hot, dark and claustrophobic. The hazy mash of inebriation. Trapped in a car with foul men. Face to face with a stabbed kangaroo.
Best sentence: Things half remembered and terribly feared, shrieked at him; tears of mystic terror rimmed his eyes.
Original review: “A classic novel which became a classic film. The Outback without the sentimental bulldust. Australia without the sugar coating.” Robert Drewe
Funfact: A keen amateur lepidopterist, Cook established the first butterfly farm in Australia on the banks of Sydney’s Hawkesbury River in the 1970s.
Best Australianism: “What the blazes…”
Suggested food pairings: Overdone steak from a hot bonnet. Lashing of cold beer.
SOME OF THE BEST BOOKS I CAN REMEMBER READING
A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius // Dave Eggers
Came through the uni magazine pigeon hole when I was twenty and basically influenced how I write.
Space Demons // Gillian Rubinstein
Came through the primary school library pigeon hole and took me inside an Amstrad and influenced how I problem solve.
A Confederacy Of Dunces // John Kennedy Toole
Gotta be the funniest book I’ve ever read. Cannot look at a hotdog the same again.
Lolly Scramble // Tony Martin
Followed closely by Sir Tone. Fab book cover!
On Chesil Beach // Ian McEwan
Freedom // Jonathan Franzen
He was like the new Eggers for me. Who knew Twitter had Tall Poppy Syndrome.
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden // Hannah Green
A brill book about schizophrenia which was always sitting mysteriously on the bookshelf at Nan & Pop’s. The girl on the cover gave me my biggest ethereal crush since The Childlike Empress.
Life After God // Douglas Coupland
Catherine Duniam recommended this. I cried massively at one point. One of those big ones that taps into your locked up late 20s melancholy.
Maus // Art Spiegelman
Similarly. That last page panel reduced me to liquid form. It didn’t help that the girl in it was called Anja.
The Sense Of An Ending // Julian Barnes
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time // Mark Haddon
1984 // George Orwell
A documentary, non?
Lolita // Vladimir Nabokov
I did think at the time it was the best written book I’d ever read.
Bridge To Terebithia // Katherine Paterson
Also one of the last books I had read to me. There was much talk at Parklands High School about how much Miss Stones cried when she got up to that bit.
The Journey // John Mardsen
Read to us by Ms Moore in Grade Nine. She refused to vocalise the infamous ‘barn scene’ and said we had to read pages 57-59 ourselves. (A young man gets in touch with himself.) Incidentally, I absolutely dug the Tomorrow When The War Began series but forgot to read the last one and now I can’t remember what happened. Shit. (Sorry John, who signed my first edition ‘The Journey’ in 2018 and said it was probably his favourite of his own books.)
Chronicles, Volume One // Bob Dylan
The Big Sleep // Raymond Chandler A lovely gift! I really dig the writing style. Probably my favourite book cover.
Tess of the d’Urbevilles // Thomas Hardy
Did I enjoy it? They made us read it in high school. Essay hint: The weather reflects her outlook.
To Kill a Mockingbird // Harper Lee
It’s a yessum from me.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close // Jonathan Safran Foer
Grug and the Rainbow // Ted Prior
A metaphor for…everything. I used to read this at the end of gigs during the mid 2010’s.
Strawberry Hills Forever // Vanessa Berry My favourite Australian author and retro-genius. Seek out her recent output Mirror Sydney!
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories // Etgar Keret
A very funny, clever dude. Recommended to me by Vanessa.
Honourable mentions to Christopher Pike, Anna Krien, J.D. Salinger, Enid Blyton, Nicole Krauss, the Fighting Fantasy series & David Foster Wallace (Mainly for his essay Ticket To The Fair in which the greatest writer of our time reviews the US equivalent of the Burnie Show.)
Last book I technically read? Maybe The Circle by Dave Eggers. I thought it was fine. Or Follyfoot Farm by Monica Dickens as part of my Get Up Mum research (Mum always had it lying around). Research also included Where’s Morning Goneby Barney Roberts, the only other memoir I know set in the north-west coast of Tasmania. I remember it was a big deal for Nan and Pop in the late 1980s. Someone had come along and painted their childhood.
Hey, I’m not the only one not reading!
(Taken from Guardian interview with Etgar Keret 2019):
What’s the last really great book that you read?
I’m usually honest in my writing and less honest in interviews, but I can tell you that for the past year, I didn’t read any book, which is the first time since I went to first grade.
Why was that?
My wife and I were working on a very demanding TV series, a project that demanded relocation and that we direct in French, when we don’t speak French, so all in all it was a very overwhelming experience. It took a lot of my inner space.
This year, I’ve been doing something that – if we talk about changes in humanity – all humanity’s been doing, but I guess I gave myself a very good alibi. Whenever I wanted to delve into a book, I would go and watch a Netflix series instead; I must say for pure laziness, because I think the big difference between a TV or film and reading a book is that reading a book demands creativity from you, because you need to imagine things and you need to create them in your mind. And I felt so drained at the end of the day that I wanted somebody else to think out how the characters look.
As a child, were you a keen reader?
From the moment I started writing, I read less. I think reading was a way of widening the world in which I lived, and that the moment I started writing I found a different way to widen it. So I would alternate between writing such a reality or reading such a reality.
Ahoy, May 24 is World Schizophrenia Awareness Day.
Be aware. Be very aware. I’m reposting my action-packed article simply brimming with insightful and heartfelt material so that you can better acquaint yourself.
Sometimes I wonder if schizophrenia should not abandon its previous branding and relaunch as Thoughtism.
What do you reckon? Thoughtism.
It effects 1 in 100 people. It is a disorder of the thought organ. It is a sort of misfunction of the personality cortex. See, 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 troubling the content is – audiences can’t wait to snuggle down with dark tales before bed.
I don’t know what the difference is.
But anyway – food for thought.
let’s have lunch.
Previously on World Schizophrenia Awareness Day….
To mark the occasion I wrote a letter to schizophrenia. You can find it on the Satellite Foundation website. (I’m an ambassador for them.)
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 very 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 whatever – it’s a worst case scenario or its comic book fiction mate. When we went to the bank Mum would be very composed, even at her worst. 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. Talking to themselves, nervous tics, agitated, scattered, paranoid thinking; things of the like. One friend said his Mum used to communicate with 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. My Mum once told me she was ‘on the line’ to Mozart. This level of psychosis is creative at least and makes for a fascinating story.
Like a creature in captivity, schizophrenia is a lot less threatening when you spend some time up close. There is love in curiosity and I spent a lot of time observing my Mum. She would be laughing to herself as if having a tea party with her voices. I would have liked to have been invited. It’s a malfunction pantomime and who are we to judge the mind unknown and its methods to cope. There are worse contributions to the universe.
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.
As a listener to my radio version of Get Up Mum wrote: “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.
Caring is full-time. Two words: hyper-vigilance. Part of Schizophrenia Awareness Week 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 now – that child is a carer by default and most definitely in need of support. If you are unsure about resources, Satellite Foundation is a great place to start. Don’t be shy!
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.
(If you can track down 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:
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 dressed as a cat on Channel 31 in 2017).
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 will not watch The Joker but can only imagine it has set the empathy cause back miles) but Sally Hawkins did a wonderful job in 2020’s Eternal Beauty where she portrays a colourful character. (Is it interesting how when Sia cast a non-autistic actor 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), 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 schizophrenia).
I’m not sure if I enjoyed The Fischer King but as my counsellor 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 dramatically 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 a most 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. Fire up lovely, I know you have it in you.
That’s about it. If you keep scrolling down this page you’ll see some of the soft hitting articles I’ve unpacked in the past six weeks 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: Depress Conference Liquid Mental How Do You Talk To A Depressed Person & i Is The Loneliest Letter
Bonza. Take care. x
ps don’t forget to tag me on linkedin
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):
Q: What is a book that everyone should read?
justin heazlewood's fuzzy logic 