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.
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.
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.”
It started off innocently enough. One day, I found him sitting next to a fellow uni student mate of mine. From my glass collecting orbits, I could gather that Pat was a clingy old fullah, who appeared to be doing most of the talking and occasionally reaching for Bruce’s leg. Bruce, the cool customer, stared defiantly at his newspaper, occasionally making a laconical remark about sport or something irrelevant.
‘You’re a real nice bloke,’ Pat slurred from the bottom rungs of his nasal cavities. He had something wrong with his cleft palate, which left his face sort of crooked. His eyes were deep sea moons through powerful glasses.
‘Yeah you’d be really good for social work, you seem like a caring sort of person.’ I’d told him of my desires to enter the field. Then left, for fear he’d want to give me another handshake with the caressing thumb.
My shift finishes. With Pat in the toilets, I go over to Bruce. His lazy eyes roll over the pokie horizon.
‘He keeps on asking me to move in with him. I just keep staring off into the distance, in the hope that it looks thoughtful.’ Bruce demonstrates one of these stares. He does indeed look thoughtful – an expression of one who has done too much thinking.
Pat returns. He is having another beer. I don’t really want him to have another beer. He sings my praises again. And squeezes Bruce’s knee. Bruce does not flinch. Bruce goes to the toilet. Bruce is buying the next beer.
‘I wonder where he is?’ Pat says, checking his watch. I estimate Bruce has probably been gone fifteen minutes. Bruce isn’t coming back.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say in a tone that says I’m not sure about anything. The place smells of cigarette guts. I run my fingers up and down the material of my work pants. There’s hundreds of lint balls to pick off. A blind person could make a story out of them. There’s half a beer. Chit chat. Pat’s eyes are two blue torches in my face.
‘You’re a real nice bloke Justin, I’m so glad to have met you.’
‘I’m glad Pat, you’re a real nice bloke too.’
‘It’s been a year since my wife died.’
‘Oh really? I’m really sorry.’
‘Yeah, I dunno mate. It gets so lonely in the house now.’
‘Yeah, it must be hard.’
Another silence. Pat fills the silences by staring at me with a look of someone who can’t believe what is happening to them.
‘You know what Justin?’ He leans in. Then pulls away, as if in two minds. He shakes his head. It’s all too much. ‘I could very easily love you Justin. You’re the kind of person I could love. But for all the right reasons.’
Yep. My gentle skin is pricked with alarm ripples. From this point on there will be no more small talk between us – ever.
‘I’ve got a secret to tell you mate, and I’m not sure if I should. I’m scared what you’ll think of me.’
‘It’s okay Pat, I’m not going to judge you.’
‘Thanks mate, you’re a real beautiful person, you know that? You are.’
I’m blushing in my uniform.
‘Oh mate, it’s hard to say.’ Pat lights the cigarette he’s offered to me a couple of times. I should have accepted.
‘I’ve been married 38 years, to a really beautiful woman, and I’ve had two kids. And I miss her like hell. But all that time we were married, most of that’s been a lie.’
Nod.
‘I’ve got a thing. And it’s really hard to live with.’
Pause. Breath.
‘I like blokes mate.’
He likes blokes.
‘Does that change what you think of me?’
‘No Pat not at all, why should it? I’m not worried.’
I’m not worried. I have a sip of my beer. My other hand is engaged in a handshake with the thumb.
‘I love you and I respect you Justin. I respect you mate. And I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you.’
I’ve shut down. I’m smiling and nodding. Pat has broken me with his intensity. I’m waiting for my beer to drain and the club to explode me out onto the street. I am hungering the hazy Saturday sun.
‘I’ve really got to go Pat. I’m going to a concert tonight.’
‘Give me a call sometime Justin.’ Those eyes staring at me. Those glass globes.
‘Yeah I will. I’ve really got to go mate.’
At 4:17pm, on February 21st 2002, a youth and a gentleman hugged in the old lounge of the Canberra Labor Club. No one saw. No one knew. No one cared and nothing changed.
Three months later. Today. Pat still says ‘you’re a beautiful person’ to me and ‘I love you.’ Now he has added ‘I only come in here to see you.’
‘Why didn’t you fuckin’ call me?’
‘Pat, I saw you last Saturday.’ My tone is defensive, which it never usually is.
‘I think about you all the time mate. I really want to have a beer and a talk with you.’
A beer and a talk has been promised since February, but so far I’ve dodged it. My heart is turning into a spa bath of blood. Today I am on tray service to the poker machines. As I wait for the barman to get my drink I glare out the side of my glasses. Pat is badly pixilated in the distance. I can make out his red and black bomber jacket and a small head with two giant windows facing me.
I can’t see his eyes. I don’t know if he can see mine. I am ignoring him.
My head jeers me. ‘There’s your boyfriend…hey Justin, your boyfriend wants to see you.’If any of the bar staff said that to me I think I’d have a stroke.
Pat says I love you, like others say how are you. His hand reaches out to me whenever I serve him at the bar. His grip traps mine while his thumb stretches around like a faceless worm.
Two days ago, when Pat came up to buy a VB, he asked what my last name was and walked away. The next time he asked where I lived. I said the street. He asked who I lived with. I said my girlfriend and best friend. Then, with the honesty trigger which continues to get me into trouble, I said I was thinking about moving.
‘Move in with me. No, I shouldn’t put that pressure on you. But I’d love it mate. I get so lonely, I’d love to take care of you.’
Beer pouring, head screaming. I don’t need you to look after me. I’m twenty one. Beer comes out. No words.
I am uncomfortable in my own workplace. I am thinking about Pat. His very presence smears my chest with something thick and unpleasant. I am angry.
After almost backing out, I take my lemon lime and bitters and walk towards him. There is another work mate with him, whom I use as a support.
‘You’ve got a break have you?’
‘Yeah, I thought I’d better give myself one.’ I’m desperate to keep things jammed in small talk.
The other worker returns to the bar, leaving Pat and I alone.
Silence. Here comes the handshake.
‘Andrew’s a top bloke. But he’s not very happy here.’
‘No, he hasn’t been since I’ve worked here.’ I’m surprised and ecstatic. I must keep Pat talking about something other than me.
‘The place just wouldn’t be the same without him.’
‘No, he’s a top bloke.’
I take a sip of the bitters. It is all rich fizz and lemon. I am never confident that I’ve made them properly. The silence is too long.
‘I’m sorry mate if I’ve come on too strong. You just tell me, you say ‘Pat, back off’ and I will.’
‘Yeah, well, I think you should.’ Toy guns are blazing.
‘I love you so much Justin. As the song says you’re always on my mind.’ His voice is a brown suitcase stereo.
‘Yes well I’m not necessarily comfortable with that.’
Why use necessarily… don’t hold back.
Pat leans back on his chair. His pursed lips sit a good five centimetres out of line with his nose.
‘I can’t help it. You’re a beautiful person mate. When you’re in the bar I sit here and I can see right into your soul.’
My guts are buzzing. It’s my pager, which means I have to go and get someone a drink.
‘I’ve got an order,’ I say.
Pat is smiling.
‘I know mate.’
I spend the rest of the shift hoping he will leave, otherwise I will have to confront him and avoid having a beer. Half an hour later I check, but he is not there. I am wary and sceptical. He could have gone to the toilet. Fifteen minutes pass and I go inside the toilets to check. There is one cubical that is engaged.
I am still not convinced. I consider peering down to see the shoes, but this day has been extreme enough already. Plus, I can’t think what shoes Pat wears.
With half an hour to go of my shift I check the toilets. All the cubicles are empty. Finally.
As I turn to leave the door swings open, like the final shock in a horror film.
I fully expect it to be Pat, but it’s a Chinese bloke. I see Pat’s empty chair and cannot control the peace and joy in my heart.
Do you have anxiety? If so, I’m sorry to hear that.
So dew eye, for what it’s worth. 👀
[Refer to the mockmarket of the soul and current value of a shitcoin]
2023 – could it be the year of beating anxiety? I’d say ‘war on anxiety’ but that doesn’t sound much fun (or a change). Pillow fight with mental health? Slightly sexy. Passive aggressive standoff with your other half?
Hot.
My point is, Moby has just dropped an ambient album. (Do you ‘drop’ ambient albums or release them as one might release a mist?) He says it’s about helping tackle his anxiety. A donation to the cosmos. Cool. I dig it.
Anxiety, for the record, isn’t just a general state of feeling worried or uptight. It’s a physical thing. Like being softly electrocuted. A black magic chain of thoughts that hijacks your thinking, making you act irrationally. It lives under the skin, like an alien. An agitated immersion in a strange, stricken brew. A cauldron of caution. A maelstrom of malady.
Ambient music is a perfect antidote. It’s slow, for starters. Anxiety travels at the speed of unsound. It doesn’t help that the pace of the world has been increasing (along with the temperature) for the past thirty years. In 1990 we had grunge music with a bpm in double figures. Folks now listen to podcasts at double speed. Cramming data isn’t precisely what consciousness evolved for.
Set your position to pause. Mood quake serenade.
Ambient music (also known as new age) may be an acquired taste. It might not be your cup of herbal tea. ☕
Ambient is spacious. It doesn’t have beats or lyrics, much. It’s a space, man. It doesn’t ask much from your mind. You can slip on your life cancelling headphones and soak in the sound. Let your thoughts play host to singular, spaced notes. Slow honey for a blow up head.
It’s a gentle suggestion. I’m a fan of Brian Eno and Harold Budd and Radiohead. The latter had a crack at ambient with ‘Treefingers’ from Kid A. It was pretty (chime) ballsy of them. That album was popular. This is probably my first ever experience with ambient music. YouTube comments suggest ‘Treefingers’ is “the one everyone skips.” Honestly, I would be included in that. Young men are not famous for their patience – but it wouldn’t surprise me if it made a comeback. The world is much more electronic instrumental savvy than it was in 2000.
Don’t worry if you don’t know where to start (or end). The beauty of Spotify is you only need one song to connect with and then select the radio for that song. That’s all I’ve been doing for five years really – unboxing a pandora’s pantheon of timestretched permusations.
Stockpiling chillout I can access in the fraction of a migraine. 🧠
Heck, sometimes technology works in favour of mental health. Maybe this is the only time. Perhaps you find success with meditation apps? Personally I can’t stand someone lecturing me. Having said that, Lemon Jelly do have a song called ‘Nervous Tension’ which is basically a self-help tape set to music.
From my new years meanderings I see there’s a recently released The Art Of Meditation by Sigur Ros. Electronic dude Jon Hopkins put out a Meditations single in 2020 & Music For Psychedelic Therapy in 2021 (the latter is a bit rich for my blood). Meanwhile, my good friend Conrad Greenleaf released the ambient album Dreamtape last year – so it’s in the zeitgeist, surely.
There’s even Tasmanian based ambient artists such as Leven Canyon & All India Radio.
Chillout was huge in 2000, so it might be experiencing a twenty year ambiversary.
If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air
Quaint little villages here and there
Groove Armada – At The River
There are other strategies to combat anxiety:
A sleep routine.
Talking to a psychologist.
Lying in a dark space with a weighted blanket.
Repetitive movements such as playing an instrument, walking, swimming or massage.
It’s worth trying everything. Make it your hobby – discovering pockets of air within your dark cloud. 🫧
Unrest is the best that life can offer, sometimes.
Make the most of finding a way to live with it.
The
brain
is
a
funny
alien.
Welcome
to
the
animal
that
chose
you.
Half the fun is remembering how to train it.
Finding the time to take it for walks.
Perhaps ambient music acts as a holodeck, allowing you to return to a home planet green and purple and blue and grey – where the days stretch out like dreams and the atmosphere is so gentle you find it easier to float.
You don’t have to meditate to listen to ambient music. You don’t need ambient music to meditate. Both are notoriously niche and slippery to appreciate. I file them under exercises for exhausted people. Or, there are 200k worse things you can do on your phone.
Take care in there.
Justin, 2023. *
please see my little playlist elbow, I mean below.
“Just take those old records off the shelf. I sit and listen to them by myself.”
Old time rock ‘n’ roll by Bob Segar. It’s a song about being by yourself. Solitude. This poor bloke, just wanting to listen to his nostalgic music collection. It’s uncanny that this song is one of my standout memories from primary school. As juniors we would sit in a circle as our music teacher put it on.
“Now, just listen to it as an example of recorded music. What can you hear?”
Some funky low-end. That breakbeat drop out bit. A curmudgeonly old rocker that seems to have stayed the same age as I caught up. Thirty years later and I’d be the one taking old records (and old CDs) off the shelf. I’d also be in fair agreement that today’s music ‘ain’t got the same soul’ – caught in the double-bind that simply admitting that is some kind of cultural own goal – basically advertising your own irrelevance to the younger, hipper generations. But then, who needs words to do that when I have my colourless hair?
(Bob Seger is considered the godfather of belligerence. He was the first Boomer to slag off the generation after him, a sentiment now carried in alarming numbers across every second youtube comment on any song released before 1980. Is it fitting that the music he’s dissing is probably the very early 80s soft-rock that I now commandeer?)
There aren’t enough cool, tough songs that casually mention being by yourself. (“Maybe he’s born with it….maybe it’s Radiohead.”) 90% of songs are about love and 90% of those are propaganda for couples, basically saying ‘being alone is the price you pay for fucking up love. So… love…don’t fuck it up!’
I remember feeling haunted by music in the wake of my relationship strike in 2009. Music became a surveillance ghost as tunes trailed me onto the bus.
“I can’t live if living is without you.”
“I know I’ll never find another you.”
“How am I supposed to live without you?”
I fought back with my first purchase of over-ear headphones and a predilection towards ambient electronic music. Boards of Canada, Four Tet, early Caribou – they had no words. I didn’t have any songwriters’ agenda being pushed onto me – like a liquified diary spray-painted on my garden wall.
Now, I’m sort of enamoured by mid 80s ballads that so brazenly and eloquently declare a stoically melancholic mood.
“Look at me standing / here on my own again / up straight in the sunshine No need to run and hide, it’s a wonderful, wonderful life No need to laugh or cry, it’s a wonderful, wonderful life.”
Black, Wonderful Life (1987)
From the inappropriately boppy cover by Ace Of Base at my high school social*, to truly comforting black velvet cloud of nostalgia and ambience in my ballads playlist – this song has had a journey. I love that it’s by an artist known simply as Black.
* no wait, I’m thinking of the Ace Of Base song Beautiful Life – but then they did do a cover of Wonderful Life but not until 2002, when I heard it somewhere other than a high school social – you’d hope.
As a member of the solitude community, I deeply respect its acknowledgement of the simple truth that human life can be played out in relationship exile, through no particular design or fault of anyone. It’s a slight change from the default whitewash of families and couples that the large proportion of recorded advertising media is concerned with.
It has been suggested recently that there is still an obvious bias against single people. For example, theatre tickets are usually sold as pairs and sometimes single seats can’t be bought towards the end. (See: victory for spinster theatregoers)
Single people are assumed in deficit.
I’ve often thought, if you are by yourself and your main impression of this position is a sense of being incomplete, then how problematic is that?
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
French philosopher Blaise Pascal (in the 1600s)
When there’s nothing to lose and there’s nothing to prove Well, I’m dancing with myself
British philosopher Billy Idol (in the 1980s)
‘All By Myself’ ruined Christmas. It’s such a crass take on the quiet, moving, wryly sophisticated juxtaposition of ‘Wonderful Life.’ Lately I’ve thought that Cat Stevens’ ‘Another Saturday Night’ also does justice. It humanises the lonely characters’ plight.
Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody I got some money ’cause i just got paid How I wish I had someone to talk to I’m in an awful way.
SAM COOKE, another saturday night (1964)
As an aside, I don’t think I ever knew this was a cover.
A hit that was largely background to me now plays as a doom-pop appraisal of a sometimes weekly predicament. For most of my 20s and early 30s, Sunday afternoons were the hardest part of the week to trawl through. Something changed in my mid 30s. As I began to make peace with my childhood blues, I realised that a social deadzone for making plans with pals was Saturday night. And so, a sense of foreboding and pressure built up, so that each Saturday afternoon felt like a mini New Year’s Eve without the parties or fireworks.
It was as if I had a weekly reminder that I was single. ‘Just think Justin,’ the cruel checklist insisted, ‘all those lovely young things out there on dates, together. All those long-term couples, meeting up with the other couples. And you, buddy, here, in this room, by yourself – as proof you exist.’
Ah, but see, I was never alone. How can I be truly lonely when I have music? Music is magic. Straight up.
It’s a message in a bottle full of oxygen I can dream.
And if music outstays its welcome then there’s always some kind of movie. And if that isn’t what the doctor ordered then surely beer rounds everyone up and wraps them in a team huddle and gives them enough of a pep talk to convince all the moving parts of the generous, loving, hope-drenched, melancholic_ambient person to crack on and forget about the flim-flam of the dickheads outside, that yabbering on is overrated and we have all the low-lighting and controlled-volume environment we could ever want right here.
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life with old time rock ‘n’ roll.
JJ Cale, he’s my man. The guy isn’t even alive anymore. What’s the point of meeting anyone, if I can’t even tell him how in awe I am of his music?
Related reading: i is the loneliest letter (2022)
Thanks: Will Hindmarsh for suggesting 'Dancing With Myself.'
This is an album I made when I was eighteen and my nickname was Phonze! I’ve reimagined / remixed it with never released tracks and field recordings from the era.
Kurt Cobain, Shane Warne, stoners and skaters – girlfriends and god references – it’s a rough and tumble time capsule from the late 90s by a dude right into Beck and Radiohead exploring his own internal cosmos while honouring friends and Volkswagens with whatever means necessary. Brought to you by Sony Walkmans, Washburn guitars & Windows 95.
f u z z y ⚡ l o g i c 