Category Archives: Get Up Mum

World Schizophrenia Awareness Week 2025

Posted on by under Get Up Mum, Moods, News
Flowers In Vase by Martin Leman.

It’s Schizophrenia Awareness Week – again! I know, right. Where does a year go? May 18 – 24. The theme is “Rethink the Label: Reclaim the Story.” I’ve updated this post to create a fairly decent resource for those curious to know more about the galaxy’s most misunderstood everyday condition.

There’s just so much stigma around schizophrenia. It’s a life’s work humanising the 30, 000 adults in Australia with the condition. It feels sub-impossible, but utterly worthwhile.

It’s seven years since my book Get Up Mum was released. Today Mum is experiencing the best mental health of her life. Schizophrenia doesn’t have to be a life sentence, but it is hard to spell.

I recently gave an interview for ABC’s Conversations. The producer sent me a link to a previous story concerning Glenn Jarvis who worked for Enron and developed schizophrenia. There are some very insightful links at the bottom of the story. (One of the articles is behind a paywall, so I’ve placed it at the bottom of this post.)

May 24 is WORLD S A D (as it happens.)

(Schizophrenia Awareness Day)

Last year I wrote a piece for Satellite Foundation (of which I am an ambassador). So feel free to have a look at that!

🧠 Schizophrenia: A shadow with a face



Meanwhile, check out this zine vending machine!
Such convenience. 📚



It premiered at Melbourne Art Book Fair / Melbourne Design Week dispensing Satellite Foundation’s zine All the Coloured Glasses – filled with writing and art from young people sharing their experiences of mental health and things.


You can contribute to the zine! Y’know, if you’re a… what are they called – young person.
More info at Satellite Foundation.



And now … a megamix of previous Awareness Week thoughts on the thirteen letter word…





Sometimes I wonder if schizophrenia should not abandon its branding and relaunch as Thoughtism.

It’s rather hard to explain schizophrenia without disturbing people too much. We all know what people are like if they are a bit disturbed. They switch off. Unless it’s a true crime podcast – in which case it doesn’t matter how dark the content is – audiences can’t wait to snuggle down before bed.

I don’t know what the difference is.

But anyway – food for thought.

let’s do lunch.

Previously on World Schizophrenia Awareness Day….













It’s the time of year where you deposit some thought to the gentle complexity of one of existences most cryptic yet vulnerable conditions. Why don’t we talk about schizophrenia more? Ever wondered that? I do, quite a bit. It seems to go under the radar quite effectively. There’s a whole stack of destigmatising to be done – or – to conjure a more handsome phrase – rehumanising.

I mean, I’ve been up close to someone with schizophrenia and honestly, my heart still weeps. I reckon my Mum is brave as all fuck for withstanding the atomic martian wildness of her own mind warping itself to fit through the eye of the needle of life. 

These are real people. On the ground. Suffering. Trying to be good parents. They are gobsmacked by confusion. Their personality has secret mirrors growing like gills. They are x-men and women, able to see through time. Heaven and hell are storybook wonders compared to the cheek-scolding heartbreak of disappearing in plain sight from the people who love you more than anything.

Anyway, big hugs and NDIS support to anyone who is experiencing hard times. 

We can be superheroes, just for one day.

g r o u n d h o g __ d a y ? 


AT A GLANCE (STAT!): 

  • Schizophrenia effects 1 in 100 people. The same ratio as autism. 

  • It comes from the Greek word meaning ‘split mind.’ It’s not multiple personality disorder, it’s about the schizophrenic person having a fractured perception of reality. There is the real world and then there is their world. This results in them convincing themselves that they are not sick. Therein lies the paradox of trying to care for someone with this condition. You’re yelling via cup and string to a rogue astronaut on opposites day.

    “I’ll be alright after a sleep tomorrow, I promise.”

    In response to the comments beneath my Sky News soundbite. No, it’s NOTHING like Trump voters thinking their world view is right and everyone else’s is wrong. That is an extreme political ideology. At least Trump exists in our reality (I never thought I’d say that.) People with schizophrenia have psychosis. They experience auditory and visual hallucinations. This is why using ‘schizophrenic’ as an adjective is problematic. Voting for Trump isn’t a medical condition, it’s a personality trait – as much as the ‘hilarious’ jokes to be made would hint at the former.

  • Statistically they are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. The cliché of the unhinged guy on the bus or (you know, recent events in Sydney) – it’s a worst case scenario and statistically rare. Even at her worst, when we went to the bank, Mum would be quite composed. People with a mental illness generally work twice as hard as the rest of the community just to be themselves. Australians love a hard worker, don’t they?

  • They are likely to be conduits of bizarre behaviour. According to a SANE spokesperson, symptoms can include “hallucinations, delusions, unusual or disrupted speech, disorganised behaviour, low energy, low motivation, or lack of emotional expression.” One friend said his Mum used to communicate with Jupiter. (Jennifer Jupiter?) Another said his Mum would see a little man and woman walking around her flat, an inch tall, shining lights in her face and shapeshifting into animals. This level of psychosis is creative and makes for a fascinating story if you regard it from a neuro-nonnormative perspective.

    Schizophrenia is a lot less threatening when you spend some time up close.


There is love in curiosity.


  • Schizophrenia is not full-time. Mum was well half the time and sick the other. She was still a wonderful individual with autonomy, functioning as best she could and getting me breakfast while navigating the extremities of humanity. Mum used to be ‘Mother’s help’ and visit my primary school and help kids in my class type their stories up on the computer. She worked hard, in many ways.

    As a listener to the radio version of my memoir Get Up Mum emailed to me: “I remember a Mum who would take me to sporting activities, cook dinner, have afternoon tea ready for me after school, and take us for swimming lessons at the beach. I also remember a Mum who would sleep all day, yell and scream, and a Mum who spent months at a time locked up in a high security psychiatric hospital.”

    It’s a split world for everyone.


The Church performing The Unguarded Moment on Countdown, 1981.


  • Caring is full-time. Two words: hyper-vigilance. Part of Schizophrenia Awareness Day can be devoted to carers who are most likely family members and in the most urgent cases – kids. If someone you know has a mental illness and they also have children – I’m telling you – that child, by default, IS a carer. They are most definitely in need of support. If you are unsure about what to do, Satellite Foundation is a great place to start.

  • Hearing voices is more common than you think. Apparently 10-25% of people will hear voices at some point in their lives. Amazingly, it’s not always linked to schizophrenia. This was news to me when I watched the SBS Insight episode. iView currently has the full You Can’t Ask That schizophrenia episode. It’s also a terrific resource.

  • Schizophrenia is devastating. Especially when used in Scrabble. You drop that thing on a triple word score and it’s WALK AWAY RENE!
     




A FEW LINKS TO PAST THINGS I HAVE CONTRIBUTED: 

  • I was interviewed on Sky News during Schizophrenia Awareness Week in 2018, days after releasing Get Up Mum. I don’t get to go on TV much. (Spicks & Specks in 2010 featuring myself and Marcia Hynes together at last and me covering Spiderbait’s ‘Calypso’ on Adam Hills Gordon Street Tonight in 2011). 

  • An interview (with fellow only child Elizabeth Flux) in the Guardian from 2018 which is all about my book and lived experience. 

  • I wrote a column about schizophrenia for The Big Issue in 2019.

  • There aren’t that many movies about schizophrenia. I didn’t watch The Joker but can only imagine it set the empathy cause back miles. Sally Hawkins did a wonderful job in 2020’s Eternal Beauty where she portrayed a colourful character. (Is it interesting how when Sia cast a non-autistic actor in her movie Music everyone went hyper-nuclear but the fact that an actor without schizophrenia represented this community didn’t ruffle a spacebar. It’s almost as if that particular aspect of the mental health spectrum is i n v i s i b l e .

    Do-gooders be like – we’re championing this cause because it’s SO COOL right now, but that one over there is FAAAREAKING US OUT.)

    There’s an article about how schizophrenia is represented in cinema here.

  • Other fine movies about mental illness include Angel Baby (AU 1995), An Angel At My Table (NZ 1990), Sweetie (AU 1989 – probably my favourite Australian movie), Benny & Joon (US 1993), Birdman (US 2014) & Donnie Darko (US 2001). I really enjoyed Girl, Interrupted (US 1999) the other day, even though the reviews are subpar – (who doesn’t love Winona?) I recommend The Sunnyboy (2013 Australian documentary about Jeremy Oxley, lead singer of The Sunnyboys who emerges from a 30 year battle with the illness).

  • I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a way out film from the 1970s. The book was always sitting on the bookshelf at Nan & Pop’s. (The girl on the cover gave me my biggest ethereal crush since The Childlike Empress from Never Ending Story.) Anyway, I read it as an adult and it’s an artistic deep-dive into the psychedelic secret world that I touched on previously. Greenberg writes in the voice of the ‘voices’ which I found thrilling.



I know you’ve got to be in the right headspace for these subjects. Or perhaps you don’t. Maybe there is never a convenient time. Goose step out of your comfort zone, throw some paint around in the studio of understanding and fan your aura to the experimental frequencies of the meek and neurologically diverse.

Schizophrenia is a cause that needs everyone to come together with education, patience and some emotional heavy lifting.

That’s about it. I’ll add links to some of the soft hitting articles I’ve unpacked about my own mental health philosophies. I know you’ve got a toasted sandwich on the go and about six kids and animals to pick up from the mall so I’ll save you time and let you jump straight into:

i Is The Loneliest Letter
Depress Conference
How Do You Talk To A Depressed Person
&
Dream Player


Bonza. Take care. x

ps don’t forget to tag me on linkedin










pps if you are still feeling overwhelmed or frustrated that you simply have no tangible emotional construct of what the heck anyone is talking about when it comes to this specific topic with the word which is even complicated to spell… Well, there happens to be a real easy fix to that one (for a change):

📖 buy my book 📖
( No wait, it’s sold out I think )

carers: empathy through determination




And now the Schizophrenia Awareness Week dancers 💃💃💃👻 … oh no they disappeared.









Encore encore! More More!


Schizophrenia – the lone wolf of mental illnesses

By Gabrielle Carey and Dr Julia Brown



There is someone in Parliament House with schizophrenia.

At least, statistically speaking.

One in every 100 people suffer from schizophrenia. Of the 5000 people working on the hill when parliament sits, it is very likely that at least one has the diagnosis nobody wants to talk about, even in Schizophrenia Awareness Week.

Why has schizophrenia been called the scariest word in the English language? And why – after years of mental health awareness-raising – are we still unable to talk about it? When the word schizophrenia is mentioned the go-to image is usually violence – often first designated as terrorism. In these rare incidents, the focus is seldom on how proper treatment for the illness might have prevented an attack. Instead, it is on how others should have been protected.

Perhaps it’s time to invite schizophrenia in from the cold.


Recovery is possible

What most people don’t know, is anyone diagnosed with schizophrenia, like other mental illnesses, can recover if given the opportunity. Individuals with the diagnosis can be ordinary and high functioning, have families, and go to work every day. We just never get to hear about them. Because while bipolar and autism are household words, schizophrenia is still the disease that dare not speak its name.

Not being able to speak about schizophrenia compounds the condition. Treating people as social lepers makes them sicker. In Australia, up to 70 per cent of people who have a first episode of psychosis will have another episode within two years. More worryingly, the life expectancy of Australians diagnosed with schizophrenia is reduced by 32 years.


The threat to our youth

If any other illness resulted in such a bleak outlook for our young people, there would be a call to arms. That we are letting this continue is the real madness.

Schizophrenia is a young person’s illness: a diagnosis is generally made between the ages of 18 and 30. This is a crucial time in any person’s life – they are just finishing school, just starting university or just going into the workforce. But if you are diagnosed with schizophrenia in this country, within a short time you will not be participating in work or education; you will have a high risk of homelessness; you will be much more likely to end up in jail, and your anti-psychotic drugs will cause physical twitches, weight gain, drooling, loss of libido and loss of memory. As well as that, you will be five times more likely to be the victim of assault.

Headspace can’t help you if you are a young person with schizophrenia because they do not deal with people who are diagnosed with a chronic psychotic illness. The National Disability Insurance Scheme won’t help either. As reported by The Guardian, people with schizophrenia are regularly refused NDIS packages.

One Door Mental Health, formerly the Schizophrenia Fellowship which offers support to sufferers and their families, has had to cut services in some regional locations. Hospital emergency departments are useful if you are mid-psychosis but once stabilised you will be discharged without any after-care or discharge plan. In all, our healthcare system is not designed to instil hope for recovery in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. But neither is our social system.


Social disconnect

The worst loss of all for people diagnosed with schizophrenia is the loss of friends. The fear and avoidance of people with the condition is so damaging that sufferers retreat into what anthropologists call “social defeat”.

People with schizophrenia often appear to isolate themselves from family and friends. This gives the impression that they do not care about others, but their real difficulties began and continue precisely because of their acute sensitivity to judgments and criticisms – because they care too much about what other people think of them. And of course, in almost any situation, what frightens them most is revealing their condition.


A public service

Everyone knows somebody with schizophrenia. If you include the families and friends of those with the illness, there are one million people in Australia affected by the disorder – and almost every one of them is too frightened to say the word. One thing that might help is if high-functioning individuals with the condition were to “come out.”

As Law Professor of the University of Southern California, Elyn Saks, says “we who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources.” The first and most important resource might be social acceptance. And social acceptance begins with being seen.

Those like Professor Saks are in recovery because of the social status and purpose they have. Most Australians with schizophrenia, for now, don’t have this. If you are that person in Parliament House hiding your diagnosis, maybe now is the time to offer your greatest gift of public service. Stand up and dare to say the word. Tell us your story. There are a million Australians who could do with hearing it.


This article was originally published in 2019.

Dr. Julia Brown is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU who has conducted ethnographic research on lived experiences of antipsychotic treatment for chronic schizophrenia in the UK and Australia.

Gabrielle Carey was an Australian author who co-wrote the teen novel, Puberty Blues with Kathy Lette. She died in 2023. At the time of writing this article she was the H.C. Coombs Fellow at ANU and working on a book about the family experience of mental illness.

Surf City ’93

Posted on by under Columns, Get Up Mum

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


Justin Nigel waterslide

c000372-r1-06-7



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.


The ballad of Nan & Pop

Posted on by under Get Up Mum, News

I have a piece published in Cordite Poetry Review. It’s a Get Up Mum spin-off yarn about the blessed-hectic adventures of Edna & Len Heazlewood.

If you are a completist who wants to suss out all the Get Up Mum side-hustles around the ‘net – there’s a piece about Roxy Music’s ‘More Than This’ drifting on Double J I believe.

I wrote about Pop for Frankie magazine once. You can find the column at the top of the Masculinity section.

get up mum is a play 🎢

Posted on by under Get Up Mum, News

Yeesh, not long to go now till the super dupe Get Up Mum show at Theatre Royal Hobart. There’s a piece in TasWeekend in the Mercury today. As well as an interview situation on ABC HOBART i guess.

Check out the ad below.
Disclosure: I am a brand ambassador for Ansett and received a promotional trip to 1992.

And what else – the latest version of my gazette!

Enjoy the full Get Up Mum promo video playlist series….

GET UP MUM LIVE SHOW = 2022

Posted on by under Get Up Mum, News

Forgotten what it’s like to be twelve? Hey hey it’s a-ok – Heazy’s remembered for ya.
It’s not back to the future but we can fast forward the past. Climb aboard the cassette space machine as it rewinds an ocean of time. It’s 1992 and Mum’s up and down like a yoyo. The problem is ” Justabout ” can’t do tricks and his getaway skateboard’s caught in the gutter. Oh well, guess it’s spag bol & Beyond 2000 in the beanbag while patting Blossum.

A one of a kind, twice in a lifetime, triple-threat theatre show is watersliding to a dreampool near you. Premiering in Hobart in March. Based on the acclaimed memoir and radio series. This is the show and tell extravaganza where a never ending story finally gets the beginning it deserves.

Get set 🥉 it’s gonna be GOLD !!!

Stay tuned for updates via the fuzzy logic gazette.

“It’s not a bad sort’ve day.” Pop

“Don’t put your cards out in the wet, that’s what ruins a pack.” Nan

Get Up Mum – Brought to you by Microfreeze Thickshakes.

A right royal commission

Posted on by under Get Up Mum, News

The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System launched today. I gave a statement and interview for it which can be found online. The intention is to build a whole new system from scratch, which could inspire universal change.

The damage has been done, but hope is pretty cool.

I’m honoured to be able to contribute to this brave new world. I hope the report can make waves from butterfly wings and pour light on the darkest hours of the human mind and the systems that govern our hearts.

In the spirit of the vibe, you can carouse a package of my mental themed columns here (there) everywhere.

IMG_8578

 

IMG_7020

That’s good Justin how are you going?

Oh alright I think. The usual baseline of atomic stress endurance and a horizon line of potential difficulties to high jump over.

Yep.

I have a lot of dreams where everyone is sitting down and participating in something like school or a gig but I’m unable to participate as there is some huge dilemma like a conflict or haphazard preparation and I’m in a total panic.

Gotta love dreams.

At least dreams tell it how it is. Honesty overrides platitudes.

Did you like high jump as a kid?

Not so much. It’s a bit like backstroke in that you can’t see where you’re going. Still, I fared better than javelin. There was one day in PE where I threw it and the back of the pole smacked me in the head.

Did everyone laugh?

They’re still laughing.

GET UP MUM SIDE STORIES

Posted on by under Get Up Mum, News

To mark two years since the release of my childhood memoir, I’ve made there be a soundtrack album on Bandcamp. For bonus amusement, here are some beside the scenes tales of nostalgic and emotional interest.

747

In primary school I clocked my transition into maturity as switching over from ABC cartoons (repeating Wizard of Oz for the 10th time)  to the Southern Cross antics of Monty the weatherman and Roscoe the newsreader. The Today Show with Steve Lieberman and Liz Hayes had a clock in the corner which helped me track my timing to leave for school. I had a game where if it read 7:47 I’d sing the line ‘riding along in a 747’ in my head. It was from some country song Uncle Ken must have played when I visited his place in Canberra in grade four.

I wanted to include this detail in my book (I’ve probably been singing the line ever since). As you can imagine, I was pretty keen to hear the song again – the first time in 30 years. Thing is, I had no way of tracking it. I googled the lyric in many variations but there were no matches! (Not you Beatles 909! I’d be late for school.) I wasn’t in touch with my Uncle, so asking him was moot.

Over the time spent writing, this was the white whale of nostalgia trips, which is saying something considering the most obscure Commodore 64 games are on YouTube these days (you mean Trapdoor did have gameplay, you didn’t just wander around aimlessly opening and closing the door?)

Late in the piece I had another cheeky search ‘riding along on a 747’ and found a hit! It seems the Australian singer/songwriter Kevin Johnson (no, not the Phoenix Suns point guard) had launched a new website which included the lyrics to Man of the 20th Century. He was a bit of an unsung Australian JJ Cale type best known for Rock and Roll I Gave You The Best Years of my Life. The song and album are fantastic. Do yourself a favour. 

Deep Deep Trouble

My favourite moment of ‘constructive procrastination’ was listening to one of my many tape recordings from the 1992/93 childhood season. In the one marked SLIDES with NIGEL POP JUSTIN – Pop, Uncle Nigel and I (funnily enough) spent an evening in the summer before grade seven clicking through the family slide collection. We’re up late being silly and eventually wake up Nan! Uh-oh. Uncle Nigel is pretty funny and pins the blame on the infamously placid Pop. “We might be able to get away with it, with a few swingin’ words,” he jokes, “but not you pal, you’re in big trouble.”

You then hear squeaky lil’ me sing “you’re in Deep Deep Trouble.” When I searched I was pleasantly reminded that The Simpsons put out the single in 1991. Do The Bartman gets the attention and reruns on r a g e (it was written by Michael Jackson you know?) but I’d completely forgotten about the difficult second single. From this discovery I was able to reference the ‘Bart in hell’ scenes as a reference point for my childhood understanding of the afterlife. So, within that session you could surmise that twelve year old me was helping with the writing of his own story. Coolness!

My Friend Jenna

At the Fitzroy Writers Festival launch of Get Up Mum in 2019 I met a fellow only child with a Mother with schizophrenia. This ultra rare combo match twin was exciting for a lonely Gemini. Consider that until this point I was only friends with about two other only-children (we’re quite rare in my generation) and I knew of only two other people who had a Mum with a mental illness. Between striking up a friendship with Jenna and the several other mental health organisations such as Satellite Foundation who reached out to me (all of which I wasn’t previously aware of), Get Up Mum really did act as a distress paper firework of light and hope.

The Kid and the Whip

DSCF0927

I liked the Sydney book launch because not only was the effervescent Benjamin Law hosting but a lady came up afterwards and said that Jon Faine was really unfair to me during the notorious Funemployed interview from 2014, which was one of the nicest (and most accurate) things anyone had said to me in a while.

IMG_0083

It was one of the few launches where small children were present. These weren’t just small kids but restless ADHD-ish youngsters. Towards the end they were running around getting glasses of water and being a bit nuisance. I drew them in by holding up a blank tape and describing in detail how magical it was that this brown ribbon could trap magnetic particles and turn them into sound. The kid had a good look before peering up and asking “could you use it as a whip?”

In a troubling snapshot of the post-Fortnight generation’s mindset, the kid had managed to weaponise a TDK 90 cassette. Ha ha! A whip, I dunno mate, maybe torture someone to death with Michael Bolton.

Amanda Palmer’s Post

[Now, just because I am preternaturally conscientious and self-aware doesn’t mean I’m not immune to some straight up ego-shooting and name-dropping, as I am well within my rights to do as my jaded friend Jo accused me of in 2005 after returning from tour with Tripod and daring to refer to them by name in answer to the question ‘so how did the tour go?’ No sheepishness present from the presence of excommunicated friends at this juncture, just an alarmingly unguarded and unsolicited outburst of conscious rationalising, for which you can assume a psychologist would be all like ‘you go girl.’]

[[Think what you like but as Kurt Rambis said ‘you miss 100% of the shots you never take.’ Kurt, Kurt he’s our boy, if he can’t do it no one….will.]]

kurt rambis
my dad (approx)

[[[Rest assured that being me, I will still manage to self-deprecate my social standing to its lowest possible ebb. Cover up that light people – COVER!]]]

Amanda Palmer posted out of the gates early, having been given an advanced copy. It was a rather confronting time as I contemplated sharing my secret life story with the cosmos. From my furtive glances betwixt the slits in my pillow case, I noted there were what seemed like hundreds of comments below her post which almost entirely consisted of impassioned confessions of American experiences of mental illness. The only comment mentioning me said that my promo photo (sans glasses) made me look like Paul Dano (which is true). This was mildly exciting in that it was the first time I had been assigned a famous person I look like without glasses. (For the record I used to like to think I had a Christian Slatery vibe.) Oh, I have been assigned about (last count) 102 people I look like with glasses. Austin Powers anyone?

NOTE: Paul Dano’s 2012 film Ruby Sparks is pretty close to a documentary on me. Although I’d attest that if I was ever invited to Annette Bening’s house and had a hot girlfriend like Zoe Kazan there, there’s no way I’d just sit around reading a book while everyone played in the pool. NO WAY!

Honesty Training

Being such an intensely personal book, I was shaky about the thought of doing interviews. To assist me with this my publisher Affirm set about preparing me. (Cue Rocky style montage with More Than This and me pushing myself on a swing at Burnie Park laughing and crying.) This was the first time I’d been given any kind of media training in my life. My publicist Laura transmitted me a set of practise questions to cut my heart on. I found the support helpful.

There was an eclectic spectrum of emotional niceness from journalists. “You should have expected being asked about that,” was fired at me accusatorily a couple of times. Journalists desensitise themselves as an upskill. It sure was weird being trapped in my favourite restaurant on a blind date digesting invading personal questions about my Nan. (Did you know I have a secret conspiracy theory that media goes harder on me because I’m a comedian and because I’m a boy but there’s no way to prove this until the next life?)

Others like Myf Warhurst were especially warm. This approach coaxed no lesser potency of frankness out of me. Arguably more. “Warmth will get you further than shock” as Charlie Pickering once told me. Would I do it all again? Shit no. Justin 2.0 I’m going straight into advertising and learning to drive.

Read my Age Lunch Feature interview about Get Up Mum if you like candidness to the apeshit.

Metallica Email

We were trying to get permission for using lyrics to popular songs included in the manuscript. I was actually sending an email to Metallica’s management at one stage (unforgiven_2@hotmail), which is a pretty rock and roll thing to do on a Wednesday. I was trying to imagine James Hetfield flicking through my book about caravan trips and Nan going on about the mossies. In the end there wasn’t really much time or budget so we just did a bit of paraphrasing.

Funfact: The song Unforgiven is h e a – v y.

That Question

Everyone (everyone) wanted to know what Mum thought of the book.

So what does your Mum think of the book?

“I’m not sure what Mum thinks about anything” was the preferred reply (come up with months after the event.) Thanks media training! Look at me go like a swimmer at the Olympics just taking it one lap at a time.

Mum read the book, which was a lot for her considering she may not have read a whole book since Mozart’s biography. (To which I found her in her room laughing more than anyone in history over the reference to his brisk walking style as ‘old scissor legs.’) Laughter is contagious and the memory is beautiful.



Mum thinks my book was well written. Of course there was a pause when we finally met up and spoke about it. She said, in as many words as she was comfortable with, that she was happy if the book was going to help others. You may want a neat little answer to put in your compartment (sorry ‘you’, I know you’re a card-carrying individual with rights to a separate autonomy, I was just amalgamating the last few women and Auntie staff I’ve met), but almost nothing in my life works that way. Please assemble pieces into an esoteric hexagon.

To be honest I’d say that there was a little guy inside me secretly disappointed that not a single person thought to ask ‘so what do you think about the book’ but that would be saying a lot more about me than it would about the audience which is beside the point and out of bounds on the full.

Izzy from Art School

Way back in the day Mum was friends with Izzy from Art School. They lived together in a sharehouse in Hobart when Mum was working in the Miss Fitz & Co shop (at Fitzgeralds, a Tasmanian department store) and training to be a Mothercraft nurse. They used to push each other around in shopping trolleys and have paper sailboat races along the sodden streets. In the chapter in the book which gives an overview of Mum’s history I made sure to name drop Izzy.

The two had long since lost touch and Mum wasn’t even sure of her surname so there was no way of tracking her down. Izzy ended up reading Get Up Mum and reached out to me by email. It was from there that I was able to set up a reunion lunch between the two in Burnie. Paper firework to the rescue! Seriously, write a book – it’ll do cool things.

Love Graffiti

There’s an iconic bit of graffiti along the beige cement walls as you head to Wynyard after passing Burnie Park (the best way to see Burnie haha). During my childhood the thick paint always read 1981 ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE with a peace sign.

For NYE 2001 Someone ‘updated’ it artfully (not) turning the 1981 into a 2001. Disastrously, this only drew untoward attention towards the freshly complicated missive triggering the wrath of the local council who covered it up like a streaker at the football.

The unnecessariness of this maneuver was matched only by its lack of execution. The graffiti wasn’t hidden. All they did was leave a scar of the love, a lighter shade of beige. I referenced the message in my book, going to the trouble of using Windows 95 Paint spray can feature to render the original as authentically as I could. (Thanks Mr Badcock.)


A few months after the release of Get Up Mum someone spray painted over the words in white paint! I chose to assume that my book, which had been received surprisingly passionately and positively in Burnie, had somehow shone a light on the cultural significance of the artefact. All you need is John Lennon.

There’s no year this time. The message is timeless. Love is for all ages.
Check out the Google Map reference to the graffiti pre-2019 makeover.

Thanks old mate Dion McCall for this pic

LYNX

Get Up Mum is available from Booktopia.

Check out the RN radio series and freshly minted soundtrack.

You can hear some more tape samples and promotional videos here, here & here.

BONUS: Man of the 20th Century (or 7:47 as it can be known) was released in 1976 and came during a very cool era for smooth rock dudes penning songs about air travel. See also JJ Cale’s Travelling Light (1975) and Steve Miller Band’s Jet Airliner (1977).

Weekend of Reading Hobart

Posted on by under Get Up Mum, Misc, News

JH Backyard shot 2019 LO RES Shannyn Higgins

photo: shannyn higgins
  • Get Up Mum is discussed at length in this Readings Bookshop podcast.
  • I’ll be yarning up a storm with good pal Elizabeth Flux about mental health and Get Up Mum biz at the Weekend of Reading festival in Hobart Oct 12.
  • I’ll make a cameo at the Mental Health Week Comedy Roadshow Oct 11 at the Hobart Brewing Company
  • Get Up Mum is discussed at length on cool new 90s TV Show THE BOOK ZONE! Cool dude.