In 2014 I wrote a book about what it was like to be an artist in Australia. It was my first book, written from scratch, with a publisher. It was a big deal. Since I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. In my teenage years, the thought of writing a book felt epic. Penning a tome seemed like an intellectual Titanic. I had fear-streaked visions of sinking to the bottom of my subconscious.
In my early thirties, I felt strong enough to sail through the icebergs. I wanted to test the mettle of my artistic work ethic by sitting down at a desk at ten in the morning every day for four days in a row, weeks on end. This wasn’t aspiration camp – it was showtime. I went hard AND I went home. I wasn’t writing a fantasy novel – I was sweating personal stuff about awkward topics like the heartache of my career not turning out how I’d dreamed.
At the end of a days writing, I would sometimes curl up on the lounge room floor, aware of a sensation like the top of my head fizzing. I was using muscles I didn’t know I had.
The year before, I’d made a ‘training book’ made up of tour diaries from my long-running ezine ‘LapTopping.’ I sent this (very blue) book around to various publishers. Only one seemed to show any interest. I pursued the relationship until it led to the pitching of Funemployed. (I just happened to be having a shit-time as an artist. I’d lost a lot of money on my self-produced musical at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and hadn’t had a holiday since I was twelve.)
‘Someone should write about what it’s really like,’ I sighed at Northern Soul Café in Thornbury.
‘Sure,’ replied the publisher. ‘You just don’t want it to seem like you’re whingeing.’ (Australians hate artists, I later learned.)
Initially, I wrote a two page pitch document, followed by a chapter breakdown. The next step was to flesh out three test chapters. The first time round, I only passed one out of three.
Writing is not for the faint of ego. I was under pressure to prove myself while held over the barrel of criticism – all before the project had even begun. Yikes on a biscuit. I sat on the tram, scrolling through a hefty email, heart stinging. At least being uncomfortable is familiar. I accepted the challenge to improve.
After a second pass at the chapters, I got the green light.
The publisher asked how much I might like for an advance. I didn’t have a clue. I guessed a figure. They accepted it. (It had a 4 in it and was under $5k.) The deal was I’d get three-quarters upfront and the rest upon delivery of the manuscript. Woo-bloody-hoo. I signed on a dotted line. I think the real headline was that someone was gonna publish my book. It was a thrilling day. Most of the advance went on paying off debts.
It took me about seven months to write the first draft of Funemployed: Life as an Artist in Australia. Two months were spent conducting interviews and researching, while the next five were spent writing, (conducting interviews all the while).
Here’s me mooching by the pinnies with Patience from The Grates. I launched Funemployed with a show as ‘Justin Heazlewood’ in her cafe Southside Tea Rooms in 2014. They made good milkshakes.
While money poor, I was time rich. At the time I was subsisting on my usual cocktail of Bedroom Philosopher gigs and Centrelink.
(I still paid taxes, Brad.)
It allowed me to work on the book in almost full-time hours. I didn’t know how long it would take, but set myself a January deadline. I was so obsessed with finishing on time that I spent Christmas Day and New Years Eve home alone.
The first draft was hole-punched to confetti. It wasn’t holding together as a book – there wasn’t enough narrative structure, or point. As a reader, the publisher was asking ‘why am I reading this?’ I was devastated. For someone who was used to being their own boss in the recording studio, this was an ego smackdown. I swore into the swimming pool, paced around the block a few times and started on the second draft. This took around two months, from February through April 2013. Although I had more than enough interviews, I disappeared down a rabbit hole of ‘you should interview this person’ and always had a potential subject on the go.
In April, my publisher delivered the news that the book still wasn’t cutting it. As they no longer had time to edit the manuscript, it was hand-balled to a freelance editor. If the first draft was ripped to shreds, the second was melted down for parts. The freelance editor delivered seventeen pages of notes, outlining in compelling detail what was working, but mostly what wasn’t.
The book was too insular, too snarky, too much about me (they made it sound like a bad thing) – I needed to open it up, address the reader, provide solutions (get a haircut and get a real job). Reading my own private criticism file for the first time was like having my soul graded. Here I thought I was being cutting-edge and maverick – recreating the wheel. I was more like the Melbourne Star.
I needed help.
(At least I got a new Boards of Canada album in June. Appropriately apocalypse themed, ominous, crisp, moody and dense.)
In mid-2013 I won a Hot Desk Fellowship at the Wheeler Centre. From July-September I could leave my gloomy apartment (not to mention din from some bloke buzz-sawing over the fence) and commute into the city to write. This boosted my confidence and gave me fresh wind (pardon – sushi and coffee don’t mix). Armed with seventeen pages of notes, I literally had an instruction manual on how to finish the book.
Until this point I’d written mostly 650 word columns. This was 70, 000 words.
I was learning on the job.
The third draft was where it gelled (pardon – new hairdresser). After a year thinking heavily about the subject, I had found my own voice (other than the one doing a Bert Newton impression reading my eulogy at four am). I could now make my own claims and draw my own conclusions rather than relying on outside voices (such as Ben Eltham and Bony from Trapdoor).
The third draft took four months and was delivered in October 2013. During this time I was still gigging heavily – a traumatising challenge as I jammed my gears from introversion to extroversion, like performing during my own operation. (Comedy is actually easy. I make it look hard.)
One massive advantage of my ten years of being a share-household name was that I had a warm, generous fan base to draw from. The idea of typing up 100 odd recorded interviews was comatosing. I was amazed at the volume of keen beans who came to my aid with secretarial assistance. Without the help of these volunteers, there is no way Funemployed would be any kind of book to stand out from the pack (of three) today.
In November 2013 the verdict came – I’d nailed it! (As in, nailed myself to a cross, in a good way.) I’d built a strong narrative structure, warmed up my tone and hung my quotes appropriately (like beads on a necklace). I was thrilled. The hard work had paid off.
Upon its release Funemployed was being described as ‘easy to read’ and a ‘page turner’ and ‘what did you say about my mum?’ (enough about Ballarat.) This is due, no doubt, to the rigorous drafting process, long-leash I was given to write and edit the book and years of casual bullying from Sam Simmons.
The greatest things in life are often the hardest work – but well worth the journey.
Now, where’s my house and wife at? I’m lookin’ at you Castlemaine.
Funemployed helped a lot of people. I received a bouquet of messages, like the one from Brisbane poet Zenobia Frost:
The whole sharehousehold (we’re all creatives, usually in creative debt) is passing it around like a joint.
I even got to befriend one of my indie idols (Ross McLennan from Snout) after his partner noticed I’d namechecked him and bought a copy.
When Josh Pyke sends you an email it is usually a good day.
Marketing wise, there were some setbacks. Half of all people insisted on calling it ‘Funemployment.’ A board game with the same name launched in America the year before. It was a book about the arts so the ABC dubbed it controversial.
The critical reviews were mostly positive. Newtown Review of Books had cool things to say and it currently has a rating of one million on Goodreads (give or take 999, 996.2). The only person to lay some All-Stars into it was a bloke from The Lifted Brow. I was pretty sensitive about it. It sort of reads like a compliment today.
One of Oliver’s gripes was that I didn’t break down the numbers of music touring and be more specific about how hard it is to make money. So, I ended up doing exactly that for my chapter ‘Justin Heazlewood’s bouncing reality check’ in the 2015 book Copyfight.
I launched Funemployed at Howler in Melbourne June 1, 2014. I billed the event as ‘Art Day!’ and read the book in its entirety over 13 hours. I rounded up thirty of the artists included to read their quotes live. It was a long day, but successfully executed (as much as anything with your ex dressed as an onion can be.) Frente’s Angie Hart dug it. Bob Franklin wowed the crowd with his comedy short film. 2018 Archibald prize winner Yvette Coppersmith was on hand painting all day.
I was proud, but beyond exhausted. I took the next three years off.
Funemployed was included on a couple of art school curriculums (like Collarts for anyone doing their ‘Industry placement’ course and Melbourne Uni psych students studying the mindset of a depressed person). I wanted it to be something people could read other than ‘The Artists Way’ which was very Americanised and mentioned God a lot. In 2015 I was nominated for the Most Underrated Book which feels like the only award where your career goes backwards by winning.
At risk of tooting my own kazoo, I can only imagine Funemployed has dated well. During the pandemic, vulnerability went mainstream. It was all the rage to talk about the precarious position artists were in. In 2015, such emotional soul-bearing was confronting for some. Australia was like ‘these be peace-times, reign in your victimised pontificating ya hipster pill.’ And I was all like ‘I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.’
But, a thousand bone-dry articles can’t be wrong – the arts are still on life support. Creative people are glorified clown peasants. It’s like, impossible to make money from a career in writing (damn you to hell, showbiz.) Even Iggy Pop can’t make a living off his art. Amy Shark reckons being a musician isn’t worth it for the social media grind. Respect and context are stripped for parts with titles like ‘content creators.’ No-one wants to pay for anything. The older you get, the more sense it makes to pack up your tent and disappear into the night.
Still, we try. Hard.
To be discontinued.
Funemployed is out of print. You can buy very limited copies from me at the moment HERE.
Check out my interview in Broadsheet as well as a spoken interview with ABC Books & Arts. Here is an excerpt from the book about failure.
See more about Funemployed including the full Lifted Brow review, links to the 2015 RN radio series and promotional video ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Doing With My Life.’
Any questions (for Brad?) Blow it out your artshub.
People are wonderfully, disastrously incomplete. Art fills in the blanks with colour. It renovates your soul. In a country that has outsourced all of its manufacturing. Artists are spiritual nation builders, manufacturing truth and beauty. Going down the emotional coal mine of their own pain and turning the shitrocks into electricity with more heart than Don Bradman riding phar lap onto the shores of Gallipoli. Australia needs her artists. Whether she knows it or not. Have you been outside. It’s a capitalist Orwellian neoliberal nightmare. No offence Sydney. Buy this, tweet that – girl dies from status anxiety after being stabbed with newspaper. *
* Quote taken from my tensely received talk at ‘Art After Hours’ at the Art Gallery of NSW, 2014. I had no idea there was a recording of this until just now.
In the documentary Life in Movement, choreographer Tanja Liedtke spoke about the moment she became a dancer. ‘People used to ask me, “What do you want to be when you’re older?” I was three at the time and I used to say, “I want to be a flower.”
I didn’t understand that it wasn’t possible. Then I went to see my neighbour in a school concert. They had tutus and things on their heads and they were flowers and they were dancing. I thought, Oh, all these adults telling me that I can’t be a flower, but I can, I’ve seen it happen.’
I’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.
Most of the things I do are misunderstood. Hey, after all, being misunderstood is the fate of all true geniuses, is it not?”
Howard Stern, Private Parts
I have decided to clear up a few finer points about the condition my condition is in by holding a depress conference. This has been triggered by a reverse microaggression on social media in which I share a more experimental, personal creative piece and the only feedback I get is someone asking me if I’m okay.
Oh, don’t think this is the first time. There was a period in the mid 2010s where I was appearing on Dave Graney’s show on Triple R and it would always follow the same pattern. For twenty minutes I maintained my riffing vibe of Bedroom Philosophy central with gags, self-deprecation and kitchen sink kookiness people have expected / tolerated from me for the past fifteen years.
Then I’d fatigue. No longer able to maintain my irony forcefield, I’d open the Trapdoor about how things were hard and how vulnerable I probably felt. In the shadow of such stark honesty my self-deprecation tended to…say…depreciate in value. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be pretty witty – especially compared to the earnest world of online ‘confessionals.’ As far as I was concerned I was just mixing it up a bit by dropping a freestyle monologue from my inner self. I was in control of my domain. I wasn’t blacking out and reading animal poetry in fur voice.
Yet.
The audience never seemed to hear it that way. Once the segment was over the producer would declare “i’ve just had three people call up asking if you’re alright.”
Sigh. I’m sure this didn’t happen to Dan Sultan. He got like fifty numbers from girls and sold about a hundred albums from sneezing out a soundbite. I was Tony Martin crossed with Steven Wright but with low energy and no one in on the joke.
I was still a bit cursed from Melbourne Comedy Festival 2oo4 in which my manager forced me to hand out flyers on the street before the show. The display of a withdrawn, round-shouldered nerd scowling at their own leering mugshot on a glossy pamphlet while mumbling ironic reviews of their untested show was enough for ticketed customers to march off to the box office and swap my subscription out for Lawrence Leung’s puzzle flashmob.
Was I alright. Really Triple R?
What kind of alright? Like did I need milk and eggs before popping home? Had I recently experienced a head trauma? Was I aware of the cultural ramifications of my starsign and like to align myself with Cancerians before a live séance at Ceres? Had I been diagnosed with ‘gloominess’ and in need of crisis uppers from the doctor off Channel 10s breakfast show?
Awareness of the nature of these calls coincided with a sharp downturn in spirits. Say, if someone had rung up to pass on that I was hilarious and honest and where could they get tickets to my show or the GPS coordinates to my bedroom, then I guarantee my mood would be emboldened. But no, I was faced with the embarrassing reality that I was (once again) personally responsible for someone’s day being objectively worse than it was due to my double robbery of stealing jokes from under their noses while leaving them with the upturned mindset of having to worry about me.
All those honours in the sick milky afterglow of having just revealed myself in public.
A) I was kinda fine (by my standards).
B) I hadn’t asked them to.
C) I was just being me.
(Christ, imagine if I really WAS out of sorts. Fantasise darkly what manner of entertainment crimes I’d be committing….oh wait, except I wouldn’t – you know why – because I wouldn’t be within like, a 10km radius of a studio microphone which I’d be avoiding like the proverbial emotional plague of depression being ridden out from the safety of my rumpus den AKA the cardboard box with blankets I keep in the garage.)
“Gee…” I thought. (Then and now.)
“…if I’m being myself (the real one – as in, the one Joni Mitchell warns you not to show anyone in Both Sides Now) and people are ringing up with a level of concern that feels completely out of step – the conclusion to this emotional maths equation is that I must be…wait for it…(depressed…..NO, something far more permanent with no known cure… misunderstood.)
Shit. Please don’t.
Perhaps I didn’t spend enough on publicists over the years with the press releases I’d written myself prepping people on how to receive my art. And here I thought I was in control of how people saw me. Oh no, wait, that’s right. I did technically spend thousands of dollars I couldn’t afford on publicists and media managers while coming to the slow, creeping realisation that it didn’t really matter how much I yelled and flapped my hands – people were going to stick me in whatever category they saw fit and at times (surely) have little to no idea who I was or what I was on about.
May you not feel the injustice of your myspace genre dropdown box.
Yes, just like Boards of Canada feeling short-changed in the mid 2000s that they were ending up in the ELECTRONICA section of the record shop when they saw themselves as a group that should sit alongside Badly Drawn Boy and Blur – so I saw myself as a legitimate artist who happened to play music, or a writer who told jokes or things of the like. When (and to this day it still rings true) the majority of people saw me as ‘Rodney Rude’ (rhyming slang for funny dude) of Triple J who sang one of two songs full of one liners and caricatures.
A point being that even under the name The Bedroom Philosopher I recorded and released heaps of songs that hinted at a darker, deeper side to myself and laced these sentiments of alienation and melancholy throughout my banter as well. Thing is: this material, exclusively, sat at the bottom of my itunes sales tallies. A macabre metadata diorama of the way in which society judiciously and meticulously edits out, overlooks, bypasses, supresses and ignores any negative references to emotions or anything that might make them sad or uncomfortable.
Fair enough – paying comedy punters and Triple J listeners are well within their rights to be fickle.
In the same way, I, as the independent artist, am obliged to be wilful in persisting with my ideals. In my defence, I’ve parked myself under my own name and regularly release things that have nothing to do with BP and everything to do with Justin Heazlewood. Confused? Compromised? So you should be – I haven’t even mentioned the fact that my own name was a Siamese twin the entire time I was trying to establish a comedy persona under a moniker, a stunt that upset a belt of rusted on gen-x stand-ups who would narrow their eyes and give me advice after the show that ‘perhaps you should start wearing jeans and use your own name and people will warm to you a lot more’ – the only warmth I felt was the defensive puddle of urine I was spraying on their legs in the obligatory post Comedy Festival psycho-sexual anxiety dream. (But who’s counting Charlie?)
END OF PART ONE
Bookers prefer to go through managers and agents rather than deal with the artists themselves. Artists tend to be confused and emotional.
A manager, circa 2010
Hey, here’s a thing™. And I know this might sound a bit harsh or controversial but….when people write ‘are you okay’ messages on new work I’ve posted on social media, I find it quite patronising.
Now, I’m not saying for a second that the whole ‘r u ok’ movement isn’t legit. (That particular campaign is problematic for how reductive it is, but I guess it’s a start.) If someone in your life appears to be struggling in their mental health or going through traumatic stuff, then I am literally trying to position myself as an advocate encouraging folks to check in on the isolated and overwhelmed among us. It’s just that, and you might find this ironic or darkly ‘fitting’ or just plain appropriate; high achieving mr so & so here is not immune to having it asked of him – but I have to make the point that it isn’t the message I take issue with but the timing and manner in which it’s ‘deployed.’
If I did a post that said something along the lines of ‘I’m really struggling with stuff at the moment…’ then sure, ask me if I’m okay. But, if all I’m doing is posting a link to a youtube of some startlingly honest sound art / performance podcast I made as a tribute to my 40th birthday, (c’mon Justin, why didn’t you think to take a photo of yourself every day for ten years and then you could have two hundred million views like this instant epilepsy) well, look, here’s a suggestion – if you feel compelled to give some feedback then perhaps make it about the material itself.
Sure, the lines are blurred when I make something personal and honest, but if you’re a follower of what I do, especially the work under my own name, is it really such a stretch or a surprise or a shock that I would be putting it all out there in this way, with a clear-heartedness I have chosen to watermark my work with for many years?
Exaggerating my mental state for comedic purposes was often my modus operandi. A psychological Cirque du Soleil for someone with ten years of therapy under their hat and an emotional intelligence at a cruising attitude of five years ahead of its time. “
not a quote i just don’t know how to turn off the hardcoded marks
A video of me slurring to my belly button with title in capitals (and misspelled) – perhaps a cause for concern and out of character; (says the guy who gave us Pup!) But a nuanced twenty minute audio track with sound edits and guitar laced through? If that isn’t the creative outpourings of a lovingly ‘mad’ larrikin then sure, but an actual, legitimate cry for help – I mean, anyone who knows me (which is last count, about three people. no wait…..two), knows that if I actually did need to or want to reach out for help – the last source of wellbeing, inspiration and support would be Times Square of my anxiety and self-loathing, or as you might know it ‘facebook.’
I’d be just as likely to run to a Fitzroy bar, scrawl HELP IM HORNY and fly a paper plane towards a barrel of hipsters.
(Don’t worry, I’m getting to the helpful section where I give you examples of things you could write which wouldn’t compromise proceedings) – you could say things like ‘I reckon I prefer your comedy songs.’ Or ‘not quite sure where you are going with this Justin’ – except um…don’t, because I guarantee it will make me feel shit and that’s why I don’t read the comments anymore.)
Sigh. I really felt like we were getting somewhere.
Oh Justin, but aren’t you supposed to be able to handle anything we say once you put your art out there – isn’t that the unwritten contract of artists and audiences that has been going on since Geocities?
Well, maybe, but I adhere to the principals that suggest the only law I follow is that of my own personal boundaries and what I’m willing and not willing to subject myself to as an underpaid emerging song & dance legend. In this case, as someone who has had a hundred people take a thousand pot shots at them over the past fifteen years – forgive me if I really don’t feel like absorbing another lukewarm, subpar bit of review shrapnel to clog up my spiritual innards.
It’s not that I have low self esteem. It’s just that my high self esteem does an alarmingly good impression of low self esteem, especially while being hypnotised by the high grade anxiety I’m filtering at any given time of my life.
I saw an ad on TV a couple of years ago raising awareness about anxiety.
I was taken aback. I’m someone who thought he was well educated in mental illness. Yet, even in 2017 I hadn’t put two and two together that anxiety wasn’t just about the prickly, electro static in my guts – it was also contributing to the negative self-talk in my head and almost medical grade paranoia that a lot of people, including my own friends, didn’t really like me.
I’ve been battling that for….ever? I have a memory right now of sitting at the lunch table in grade twelve in the cafeteria at Hellyer College and wondering if my cool band of alternative friends would notice how quiet I was. (As in, I was letting them down and the pressure of that mounting like radioactivity from a malfunctioned sun.) I have a similar memory of ‘hiding out’ in plain sight while panicking about my stagnant ocean of worry from say, university until uh, f u c k i i i i n, every year after that. It’s not all the time, sure, but once you experience that level of anxiety it’s not something you ever forget.
Not only do I have this panic-static, which is almost certainly corrupting my world view in its own insidious way (as we speak), for which I am as diligently self-aware and combative of as I can be, but I also have an unfortunate collection of actual, concrete evidence that I have offended people with my art – largely via the great Tall Poppy Backlash of 2010 when everyone seemed to flip a switch from ‘Justin is alright that sexy nerd scallywag’ to ‘Oh look at bigshot hitting the bigtime and thinking he’s so good’ – and even if that was say, a smaller percentage of my audience or friends (and the entire Mess+Noise message board), the loaded arrows fired were so laden with toxic barbarity that my supple, (I assure you) mostly defenceless sensitivities are not only still healing, but will, I must confess – simply never recover.
I wasn’t built for that shit. And yes, a lot of people were mean to me. Online or real life. Ex girlfriends accusing me of being arrogant. Friends accusing me of name dropping. Photographer frenemies painting me as a prima donna. (Oh wait, he’s Asperger’s, scrap the last one.)
Maybe half of it was true. Maybe half of them were joking. Maybe half of it should be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe I’m half wrong. It doesn’t matter which half. Which half of the grenade blew half your leg off? Hearts are slow like snails. Salt is poison.
END OF PART TWO
When you go on a long rant on your computer now Microsoft word eventually pulls up a dialogue box and asks you if you’d like to save. Awwww, thanks technology – at least someone’s looking out for me.
Little Justin (open mic)MR PUZZLESCaptain FreelanceFull Time Writer JustinMr Heazlewood (boss man)Musician & Comedian JustinCREDITS: Black and white photos by Telia Nevile, writer photo by Shane Bell, tram boss photo by James Penlidis, comedy photo by Alex Shoelcher
The seven Justin Heazlewood’s, as identified by The Lifted Brow in their 2014 review of my book Funemployed. (These are ones that have been discovered so far but there are believed to be more.)
When you ask me if I’m okay. Ask yourself, what are you really trying to communicate? Are you sure you’re not saying ‘change your behaviour Justin.’ ‘Don’t post lo-fi abstract recordings of yourself, we only like you when you’re shiny and glamorous and obvious.’ Are you absolutely certain it isn’t you who isn’t completely okay, with me, in that moment?
If your intentions are good and you were genuinely concerned and are now quite taken aback bordering on offended that you’ve elicited such a jovial backlash, then at least sit back comfortable in the knowledge that you are part of the rich tapestry of misunderstanding that has strip-mined the wellbeing and context of thousands of convict descendants, bitter nerds, white types and men throughout the millennia.
And as far as being misunderstood. Are you sure you know who I am and what I’m about?
I think I have a three pronged chip on my shoulder:
I’m a child carer of a Mum with a mental illness. The fallout from the trauma is my baseline emotional makeup. Sure, I’m strong and intelligent and talented and funny – I’m also – a flat packed house of cards covered in coffee rings and tear stains.
I feel a bit ripped off by fame. Bear in mind no-one is more aware than me of how bemusing anyone complaining about fame is – in fact it’s arguably my favourite genre of documentary – (I think Naomi Osaka is the benchmark, I especially love the bit where she’s just bought a new mansion but can’t sleep because it makes noises.) Thing is, I’m famous enough in certain circles to have this perceived power which makes others act a bit different around me (or jealous of) and puts me on a pedestal I never asked for and can lead to a sense of alienation (let’s call this, the worst part of fame) but not enough to have a huge following that lifts everything I do into the sky and makes me cash money to afford to live in my favourite suburb of Thornbury (let’s refer to this as the best part of fame).
Just doing a quick life maths add-up – I, Justin Marcus have accumulated most of the worst parts of fame without virtually any of the best parts. That’s my beef. Organic, sure, grass-fed – but still beef. La beef if you will – (Matt Damon’s Texas Ranger in one of my favourite movies True Grit. (Which is definitely spelt LaBoeuf.) Not that I would ever coat my steak in spelt flower no matter how gluten free I was. (Not that that is the correct spelling of flour even though last time I went to Naturally On High they were charging $8 for a punnet of edible flowers.) *
The third and final exciting genetic anomaly in the Escher staircase Rorschach test of my ouroboros Never Ending Story Being Justin Heazlewood movie within a movie postmodern psychedelic only child Gemini ego freakout? Oh yeah, I can’t really stand the modern world. It’s too bright, too loud and everyone is addicted to their smartphones and I have no meme game and I’m not a dog person or that into hip-hop and that’s before you factor in the fact Melbourne is a bit of a shitshow at the moment I just turned 40 and my knee is playing up.
Fair dues, review and recap the above trifecta of complexity and perhaps the most warm-hearted and emotionally generous of you will conclude that any ONE of these chiperoos would be enough emotional fuel to power ones angsty disposition and / or make them particularly sensitive to blow-in, deconstructed, thinly-veiled sideswipes and criticisms leeching into the comments field of your internet feed. I mean, I’ve seen how others do on Instagram – one breakfast shoutout and cute husband humble brag and the lovehearts and hand claps are raining down like alphabet soup on LSD. Good ol’ silver fox Heazlewood takes to the stand to offload his perpetual musings from the safespace of his off-grid autobiotocracy and suddenly it’s like a horse and carriage has been plopped into the middle of a Grimes concert. HOW DARE YOU IMPRISON THAT ANIMAL! As I am dragged and chastised in a slightly sensual manner by a sea of millennial girls donned in cullotes and shapeless cardigans.
WHY ARE YOU ALL DRESSED LIKE MY FRIENDS MUMS IN HIGH SCHOOL?
I cry, backwards.
Being in a popular band, there’s such a lot of garbage that goes with it. People pissing in your pocket and saying stuff they don’t mean. I don’t enjoy that side of it. The bullshit around limited fame is so hollow. It doesn’t even give your ego a boost.”
Andy Kent, You Am I, Juice, 1998
You did that book, the one about where you complain about being famous.”
University friend Deb at my ex’s wedding in 2020, referring to Funemployed
It’s not fair. For your work you have an audience literally clapping and laughing and supporting what you do. For me I have to sit in a dark room on my own with no-one around in complete silence.”
Argument presented to me by a girlfriend, near the tail end of her PHD (and our relationship)
If you don’t know me by now, you will never never never know me.”
SIMPLY RED
* NOTE: Yes, the worst parts of fame as I’ve just mentioned is technically the best part because that perceived power dynamic surely instigated icebreakers that led to every sexy encounter I ever had in my twenties and thirties BUT – um…ok this is going to be a hard sell…imagine, say, I’m going on a date now as my humble writer self and people think I’m this Northcote hipster bigshot and to be honest the last girl I dated was so self-conscious about showing me her book collection because she thought I’d judge her that I became offended because, as I keep telling anyone who’ll listen, I see myself as a bit of a bogan from Burnie who’s punching above his weight. Anyway….this is a postscript to a footnote in a rant about fan engagement, not my hinge profile.
“CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS CUNT!”
Heckler cogging around my desk in a micro machine. (Also the sound of my anxiety – I think his name’s Glen)
DEPRESS CONFERENCE 2022
For the next seven days I will be taking questions in the comment fields of all social media with the exclusion of ‘Are you okay’ and ‘Have you seen Nanette?’ You are welcome to email anything through and I shall update this post in time. In the meantime, here’s a couple of easy training questions to get you started.
FAQ
Q. Yes yes Justin very good but dude, seriously, are you ok?
A. If I can answer a question with a question young buck, I would ask – are you ok with my artistic direction lately? Are you so very anti-war that my truth bombs have you feeling existentially compromised? No wait, don’t answer that with your words, do a meme or gif of Shirley Temple twirling infinitely or Steve Urkel falling down and getting up again or whatever contextless shit you infantilised avoidance enablers communicate in. 😊 xx
Q. Why are you Justin Heazlewood sometimes and The Bedroom Philosopher also. It’s confusing.
A. Here a rule. The Bedroom Philosopher is for the humorous songs I do and comedy material and so forth. Justin Heazlewood is for all my writing and pretty much every single other thing – especially the stuff that isn’t comedy.
Q. Not good enough, I’m going to tear you a knew one like that punk Oliver Mestitz from The Lifted Brow did when he reviewed Funemployed. (Scroll to the bottom of link page to see full review. It was saved from the Lifted Brow website, which is toast these days – someone needs to put more twenty cents in the meter…)
“But who is Justin Heazlewood? Is he the same person as The Bedroom Philosopher?
There are at least seven Justin Heazlewoods in Funemployed. First is Justin Haezlewood [SIC]* the “full-time writer” who, through writing, is attempting to “unpack the layers of ceaseless adrenalin and ruthless self-management … to back my memories up”. He’s written articles for frankie and had a long career in the arts and wants to take some time out to become self-sufficient. This may or may not be the same person as the second-year student who, years earlier, “spewed like a volcano of self” in an opinion column for the campus magazine, CUrio (the name of his article was “Being Justin Heazlewood”).
* as in FULY SIC
Next is Justin Heazlewood the comedian and musician, who most people know as The Bedroom Philosopher: when talking about this review with my friends, I told them I was writing about a book by The Bedroom Philosopher. As the introduction states, this Justin Heazlewood “represents the category of ‘mid-career artist’” who has come to think of The Bedroom Philosopher “as a character”. This Justin Heazlewood is obsessed with his career, his audience, and himself. He reads all of his reviews and the YouTube comments on his film clips and agonises over the fact that, as a comedian and a musician, his art is often too cutting-edge for a mainstream audience. He’s the kind of person Steph Brotchie has sympathy for when she says, “if you use your name on stage, then you have to talk about yourself like you’re a bottle of milk”. He’s often reflected upon and scorned by the first Justin Heazlewood.
The other Justin Heazlewoods play minor roles. There’s “Little Justin”, who plays as many open mic and poetry nights and comedy and folk festivals as he possibly can; “Mr Puzzles”, who peddles jokes and word games in the campus newspaper; “Captain Freelance”, who publishes stories in Voiceworks and writes reviews for BMA and MUSE; “Mr Heazlewood”, the self-employed performer’s “boss who doesn’t know what’s going on”; and “Indie Justin”, who books his own national tour and pops a button on his cardigan when someone refers to him as “emo”. Add to these the metaphors that are used to describe an artist’s ego (a “little creature living inside their chest”), depressive moods (“The Black Dog”) and jealousy (“The Black Cat”) and you begin to understand what Jean Cocteau meant when he referred to Victor Hugo as “a madman who believed he was Victor Hugo.”
That’s pretty great Oliver. That might be the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about me since the random online commentator: “He seems a lot more comfortable onstage when he’s playing a character.”
“Heazlewood’s decision to focus on how art is used rather than how art is made paints a skewed portrait of what the book’s subtitle promises: Life as an Artist in Australia. While I was reading Funemployed I assumed that its subtitle was “My Life as an Artist” (I once wrote a song with the same name) and it wasn’t until I sat down to write this review that I realised the mistake. Either way, Heazlewood’s life as an artist is far from the definitive one.”
If I can just say like a couple of things in response to that…..*becomes bob dylan in that press conference where he snaps ‘would you ask the beatles that?’*
Yeah but I interviewed 100 other artists and feature their quotes throughout the entire book.
If the memoir was just my voice for 60, 000 words, then ‘my life as an artist’ would make heaps of sense. I conducted 100 interviews for the sole purpose of getting other perspectives and voices in the mix. Okay?
Well, cool beard and how is the girlfriend now and I hope your band The Finks is going okay and honestly, I’m pretty honoured by how thorough your review is, even if I don’t understand most of your arguments and would probably dismiss it as overly pedantic which is the skinny white inner-north of Melbourne equivalent to walking up to you in a bar and shoving you and saying ‘what did you say c_nt?’
Last week I dreamt that my girlfriend left me. In the dream she said that Neil Young had convinced her to do it. To be a great artist, he’d told her, there has to be great heartbreak.”
Oliver Mestitz reviewing a book while leaving his ego at the door
LOVE JUSTIN
But now it’s just another show And you leave ’em laughing when you go And if you care, don’t let them know Don’t give yourself away
Joni mitchell, both sides now
🌋
Give it away, give it away, give it away now
Red hot chili peppers, give it away
CLOSING REMARKS
If we’re going to take the ‘media’ element of social media seriously, then the audience are by default, citizen journalists. If the artist (or as some might call them these days, the truly dystopian ‘content creators’) are going to buy into the perceived right that by putting themselves out there they must then be prepared for whatever ‘constructive’ criticism blows back their way, then so to the fans or ‘consumers’ may want to uphold a certain respect and integrity for the dialogue box of the comments field – in the same way that journalists have certain morals and ethics which they must abide by.
Remember in school when you’d be just sitting there and you’d have ‘sad resting face’ and someone would bound up and go ‘What’s Wrong?’ and they would literally make you feel a bit worse by even asking that? Truth is, nothing was wrong, you were just doing a bit of contemplative day dreaming, utterly disconnected from the vanities and self-consciousness of your facial muscles for a few delicious seconds.
Justin: Justin, what were you hoping to achieve with Funemployed?
Justin: I felt backed into a corner, like an injured possum, during 2012. The whole Northcote hipster thing kind of backfired, and I felt pigeonholed. There really is power in obscurity for a control-freak artist, believe it or not. You can dictate how you are perceived a little more. Anyway, I basically wanted to be a social suicide bomber, strapping a truth-bomb to myself and detonating it – essentially destroying the professional ‘façade’ of my Bedroom Philosopher name. I felt I was being misunderstood on two fronts. A) people thought I was some judgmental coolsie, when in fact I’m also a semi-sweet-natured, oversensitive mental from Tasmania and b) people thought I’d ‘made it’ when in fact I was $20, 000 in debt and in a terrible rut from over-performing.
Funemployed acted as an emotional audit to both give my own side of the story (a memoir is essentially a self-interview) and hopefully create a document that could empower artists and educate society at large about the maelstromic labyrinth of volatile, fragile ingredients that goes into an art practice in Australia. Or thereabouts.
Justin: Ha ha (laughs.)
Justin: Quiet, minion.
Justin: Did you just call me an onion?
Justin: Typo.
Justin: So, did Funemployed feel dangerous to write?
Justin: Oh, most definitely. I felt like I was breaking several taboos. This included things like ‘you’re not allowed to complain as an artist.’ I guess this is part of why I was feeling disempowered. It’s like, okay, now you’ve made it, you’re on Triple J, your head is everywhere, so like, shut up now! You’ve had your time. Fame felt like a taboo subject – and when I was interviewing other artists, I could tell they were uncomfortable talking about fame and even said “you sound like a wanker talking about it” – which is the ultimate catch twenty-two. (You’re arrogant if you acknowledge it, ungrateful if you don’t). Writing about bitterness was especially exciting. We often hear about artists being depressed, but rarely explore the violently competitive parts of our nature. The Australian arts scene is negative and bitchy – well, I’ve often perceived it that way. I thought if I volunteered myself at ‘Snarkaholics anonymous’ it might liberate others to do the same.
I think the general public aren’t ready for the concept that being an artist is actually a lot of quite dull, hard work and often not particularly “fun”. Reality TV really slams that Hollywood idea of ‘overnight success’ and other fairytales we know and grew up with. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth, so I really felt like I was writing a kind of anarchists manifesto on the arts. You know how Lars Von Trier started the Dogme 95 collective, which had their own set of rules of how movies should be made? I was applying my own ‘ultimate truth’ doctrine. I feel like in Australia we’re often so damn worried about what people think of us that it discourages people from saying what they really think. We also have an aversion to being ‘too serious’ – so as someone who is mostly seen as a comedian, it felt satisfyingly edgy to be as earnest as I saw fit.
Justin: Do you think irony has come so full circle that earnestness is the only natural conclusion?
Justin: (Laughs) Yeah, I do in a way. I think irony has kind of lost its meaning – or we’ve gone so far past the feedback loop that we’ve lost our moral compass or something. Funemployed is a kind of artistic ‘reset’ button. Reminding us that we’re just blood and guts and water and sadness and happiness. You can have all the gifs and hashtags and apps and distractions you like – but at the end of the day we have terrifying dreams and we cry with the fleeting beauty of our own improvised, imprisoned lives.
Justin: It seems like Funemployed is about celebrating failure, in a way.
Justin: Certainly. It’s protesting against the tyranny of glam and positivity on the internet. As theatre-maker Tim Spencer says in the book, “Failure is something we have to live with. As artists, I think we exist outside the dominant paradigm of our society.” Being an artist is a philosophy, or almost a religion as much as it’s a job. It comes with its own set of ideals. Art has crawled into bed with advertising. We are being called brands. Neoliberalism is trying to strip-mine us of our context and our identity. We’re under threat of being snubbed out or made irrelevant! It’s time to fire up and fight back. Funemployed is my little warcry, with jokes.
I was fortunate to interview John in 2015 for my RN series Funemployed. He was an intimidating fountain of sparkling integrity. He said some cool things about being creative. You can hear the full interview HERE.
“If you’re going to be in the sort of work I do then you need to work out a self that can be promoted, which may not be the you that lives in your house. It seems to me that you are your project. You are in charge of your attitude. One of the key things in my field that people I’ve observed and liked when I was young, they’re all people who worked out who they are. If there’s a message in what they did it’s ‘be yourself.’ Don’t try and copy me, be you.
I started off as a performer. I only began to write as a way to generate material for myself to perform. I’ve learned so much from having to do that. It’s marvellous. There’s nothing I like more than a blank page and a phone ringing….and where is it?
If I weren’t being paid to do this I’d be doing it anyway. There are periods of what other people would call unemployment in which I call development. There’s a great deal of haphazard about all this. You need to be happy to do it, it needs to be a pleasure. A day without some mischief is a wasted day.
I still think of myself as learning so much about what I’m doing I still think of myself as quite young in the sense of developing. I think I’m pretty slow. I’m a pretty slow developer. I think about things pretty slowly. And I very slowly to an understanding of them. I haven’t got through the heats yet.
I always thought there was an interesting difference in the ways Paul McCartney and John Lennon dealt with the breakup of the Beatles in creative terms. Paul did a whole lot of stuff that was very good but appealed to the audience that they’d had in the first place and John wrote stuff for his own age as it got older. And that was sometimes much more difficult to sell because he was not fitting into the pop music mould.
Perhaps both those things are in your head as well. Whether what you’re trying to build is an audience or an interesting life. You’re very, very lucky if you have an audience. I’ve always liked my audience because with any luck I’m in it.
One of the reasons we like the arts is not that we’re looking at people who are creative and we’re not, it’s that they’ve done something that makes us creative. By appreciating it, it resonates against all sorts of things in our memories and we’re thinking creatively. We’re taken away from all the other ways in which we’re taught to think in order to have a functional life. I think that’s a privilege to be in a role where you’re part of that engagement with the public.
The last thing you’d want to listen to as an authority on what you’re doing is whatever’s being said. Have a look at it by all means, but don’t waste too much time. Get the lawns done, would be my advice. You need to have good people around you who tell you the truth.
It doesn’t get easier over time. The bureaucracy has fresh troops.”
By popular demand (mine), I once again ended music conference Bigsound with an action packed panel discussion. Featuring Jen Cloher & Ben Salter in hot form.
My first proper job (not counting head chef at Burnie KFC) came in late 2001, the day I handed in my last uni assignment and graduated from seventeen years of school. I stepped into the conditioned air and screaming carpets of the Canberra Labor Club. The ‘Labes’ was a superclub that Uni of Canberra students had been frequenting for years, drawn to their schnitzel burgers and beer at warehouse prices. It was IKEA for drunks.
Armed with a BA in Professional Writing, I was just qualified to wipe out ashtrays and call bingo. My professional communication skills had me fraternising effortlessly with regulars, such as the girl who asked for a shot of raspberry in her beer, or the old man with a cleft palate and magnified glasses who would shake my hand while sliding his thumb over the top whispering, “I could take care of you, Justin.”
Being a writer who wanted to pursue a career in music, there were times when my position in the service industry didn’t feel as though it was fully utilising all of my skill set. One neon Wednesday, I dumped an ash bomb in my cart and watched disgusted as a public servant blew a semester’s worth of course fees in twenty minutes. I’d recently secured a weekly songwriting segment on Triple J, and begun my career as The Bedroom Philosopher. I tied this win to my uniform, the excitable balloon keeping my spirits above sea level.
My fear was that I’d be swallowed up by my casual job and lose sight of my artistic dream. To protect (and protest) against this I’d workshop songs while carrying out drinks to the pokies (it stopped people sipping from their coin cups – the service, not my songs). I’d lurk behind ‘Queen Of The Nile’ and jot lyrics down on a Keno ticket. If I found a melody, I had to protect it from the jingle jungle by humming on loop until I could deposit a haunting message into my sharehouse message bank.
To alleviate the light horror of spending eight hours doing mundane and potentially meaningless activities while not having anyone telling me to write, I started a blog. I’d offload 2000 words every three days on my laptop — harvesting my experience by writing about work as if it were my own personal sitcom. It became so intense that for a while whenever anyone spoke to me, their words would appear in Times New Roman twelve point. My misadventures with the old man who kept asking if I’d like to move in with him became one of my first published pieces in the literary mag Voiceworks.
After six months I qualified to call bingo. This was big city bingo – a far cry from the quaint, country love-in of my retirement fantasies. Mean old ladies stabbed their sheets with puce fury, scowling every time I strayed from the script.
“One – the loneliest number.”
“Zero wearing a belt – eight.”
“Life begins at – 70!”
To make matters sadder, they didn’t even shout ‘bingo’ – they simply blurted ‘here’ in a business-like tone, arm raised.
H-E-R-E
H-E-R-E
H-E-R-E
And HERE-O was his name-NOT!
This wasn’t what the first Heazlewood to go to uni went to uni for.
What the ‘Labes’ gave me was a comfy stool in the real world, at a time when my own life was bingo barrelling. The low pressure of no more school met the high pressure of a national radio gig, leaving flashes in my dreams and thunder in my blood. Regular shifts gave my week structure and cash flow (a gap year from Centrelink), while pulling beers was a meditative escape from existential crises in front of The Simpsons. (I practiced mindfulness; the members practiced blindfulness.)
Crucially, my first job prepared me for life in the public glare. Being the only employee with mid-length hair and glasses I was told I looked like every person in history with mid-length hair and glasses. I earned the nickname Shaggy (from Scooby Doo), which quickly got its own nickname: Shags. (Shagster if you were feeling cheeky and Shagadelic for special occasions, fusing it with my pet hate: Austin Powers). At no extra cost they threw in Harry Potter, The Guy From Oasis, The Guy From Weezer, The Guy From The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Guy From The Seekers, The Guy Out Of Pulp, Keith Richards, John Lennon, George Harrison and The Security Guard In A Clockwork Orange.
Secretly, I was The Bedroom Philosopher, but in 2002 I was the barroom philanthropist – donating my time in return for $20 an hour, half-price meals, and all the lemon, lime & bitters I could handle (made with lemonade, not lemon squash for god’s sake). It wasn’t such a bad place to be.
Q: What is a book that everyone should read?
f u z z y ⚡ l o g i c 