August was poetry month, folks. My piece 13 Ways to Drink Chocolate Milk premiered in the Guardian. and featured in Red Room Poetry’s 30in30. (There’s a video of me reciting it.) In July I dropped a set at MONA as part of a Tasmanian Poetry Showcase.
In my final year of uni I had a column in the University of Canberra mag Curio called Being Justin Heazlewood. I wrote this leavers poem:
Design by Anthony Calvert.
Thinking is Drilling is lifted from my 2018 book Get Up Mum. It was published in the 2022 anthology Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health.
Thinking is drilling
I’m drilling through the walls of silence and confusion looking for clues looking for answers looking for Mum.
I have a lot of work to do.
So I sit and I stare and I think so hard I can cut through the moon because I’m the sun.
Thinking is drilling.
I’m drilling up and out of the rubble. Thinking is making air for myself. A space to survive.
I can think into space into outer space into inner space. I can drill inside deep down and hide. I can drill around in circles so fast that everything’s a blur and I have rings like Saturn.
A drill is a weapon with a pointy tip. I leave it running to rip the black pillows when they come to smother me.
Thinking is drilling.
My mind is always moving. There’s work to be done a maze to be dug a tunnel of fun somewhere deep to bury my time capsule.
My latest book Dream Burnie has an original poem called Truganini Street. I performed it on ABC Hobart breakfast in July.
In grade 12 at Hellyer College I was published in a schools poetry anthology edited by Don College’s Shane Wolfe.
Shane wrote in his forward:
“Now that the idea of assessing specific criteria has come to stalk the halls of education, I’ve always thought it rather a shame that there isn’t a criterion eleven anywhere that states ‘Is able to pull off a decent poem that makes you wonder what the person who wrote it looks like and whether that really did happen to them and whether you’d like them if you met them.’”
I was chuffed to get pole position in the gazette. It would be interesting to revisit the headspace that synthesised Journey to the Six Fold Chamber. It’s a psychedelic time. I would be honoured to have a Boags with my eighteen-year-old self.
Last year I happened upon a notebook belonging to my Pop. It contained my first poem Going Up Hill complete in his handwriting. It has quickly become one of my favourite possessions. I’m intrigued by the events that led to Pop writing the piece down. Perhaps I was coming up with it for the first time and sharing it with him. It makes me think of the excellent movie The Kindergarten Teacher starring Maggie Gyllenhaal where she becomes obsessed with a five-year-old who spouts genius poetry.
The rest of Pop’s notebook is made up of shopping lists and Tattslotto numbers. I carbon dated it by putting “Tattslotto Draw 531” into a search engine. Sure enough, it provided the date of late 1985.
I would love nothing more than to share a chocolate milk with my five-year-old self. (And dear Pop.)
Poetry is an excellent emotional time capsule. Why not bury yours today ; )
Draw a line in the cocaine. This is the moment I exit popular / youth culture. The word is FEELING. Having emotions isn’t funky fresh. I mean, the word vegetables is shortened to veggies, but this is like that process on speed and adrenaline. Don’t get me started on the ISO trend of lockdown. It’s disrespectful to the mental illness community who were experiencing stone cold isolation before and after Covid. Just use normal words around the fundamentals of human psychology so we don’t run the risk of oversimplifying or nullifying them. Feelings aren’t f^%&^g cute, at least not from where I’m cradling them.
DOGGOES / WOOFOS / FUR BABIES
They’re called dogs. We are grown-ups. It’s folksy, it’s hokey, it’s overly familiar and infantilised. It sends a weird message to non-dog worshippers, especially on dating apps. I’m looking at you Dimity, 39.
INTENT
Drinking game: watch the cricket commentary and have a bite of schnapps when Ricky Ponting drops the ‘I bomb.’ You will be morose and plastered by the time Steve Smith has been dismissed for playing some bizarre shot.
LEARNINGS
The language equivalent of a gargoyle who has risen up from the earth to destroy all of mankind. The worst corporate mutation to infect society since the on-sell / thru-connect era of the mid 2000s. Anyone using LEARNINGS should be placed in a vault for retooling. (That said, Max Gawn dropped it on The Front Bar last week and I don’t really fancy taking him anywhere, so free pass for Max if he corners me in a dark alley.)
P.S. The word is LESSONS by the way. P.P.S. I will accept Learnalilgivinanlovin by Gotye.
COSTINGS
See: LEARNINGS. Sounds like it was made up by a small child.
PRESSURE
The AFL would do well to relieve its own ‘commentary pressure’ by pulling the pin and taking a chill pill on the P pill for a pre-set period. If the word pressure was a commodity it would be extracted from a mine in South America by small children, as it has been well over-mined. It undermines what would be an otherwise quite-boring, low scoring modern game.
STRESS
Pressure is to sports commentary what Stress is to TV journalists. Rent stress, food stress, how about syntax stress? Ever considered that hearing the word STRESS every five minutes is, I don’t know … stressful? Lord, get a thesaurus people. Housing concern, food tumult, climate botheration? Those ‘S’s’ are stirring my hypervigilance. Repeating the same word is just bad writing, he said non-pretentiously.
CHIPPIES
See: DOGGOS. Never say this around me or at any other time, unless you still enjoy single digit birthdays. Exception: the musician Wilding because he is English and lovable and I fancy my chances encountering him in a Melbourne laneway.
SUPER
The biggest weed word since ‘like.’ People are ‘super something’ instead of the 36 other choices. Super excited? Super grateful? Why not try uber, ultra, unbelievably or bloody turbo. I am like, super-vulnerable to the innate trashiness of this extremely popular adverb.
Super used to be a point of derision. Remember the impression you’d do of a perky Canadian saying ‘that sounds super!’ Super was going the way of Awesome which raised the ire of wordsmiths for conjuring the tone of an evangelised Christian camp.
Adults inevitably appropriate the language patterns of youth subcultures as society is still beholden to its over valuing of youth. Does social media speed the process up? Or, are you actually young. It’s a pity as Iga Świątek is one of my favourite tennis players and every time she is interviewed she pollutes her unforced error count with a barrage of S***r prefixes.
Am I reading too much into this? Should I get a doggo intent on iso and enjoy some learnings pressure?
Sounds like feels stress.
WORDS THAT SHOULD MAKE A COMEBACK AND BE USED IN A SENTENCE BY A COMMENTATOR IMMEDIATELY
Skedaddle
Shemozzle
Kerfuffle
Notwithstanding (a supergroup!)
Curtail
Mesmerising
Crestfallen
Sun-dried tomato (no wait, this is my sandwich order.)
August is poetry month and Red Room Poetry have selected me as one of 30 poets who will be featured each day. I’ll be performing some of my poems as part of the stanza extravaganza August 3 at MONA, 2-3pm. It’s hosted by Daniel J Townsend, who is a good egg.
My poem 13 Ways To Drink Chocolate Milk will also be published in the Guardian at some point during August. Follow my online interactive sharing squares to catch my piece as it drops. More info HERE.
It’s Schizophrenia Awareness Week – again! I know, right. Where does a year go? May 18 – 24. The theme is “Rethink the Label: Reclaim the Story.” I’ve updated this post to create a fairly decent resource for those curious to know more about the galaxy’s most misunderstood everyday condition.
There’s just so much stigma around schizophrenia. It’s a life’s work humanising the 30, 000 adults in Australia with the condition. It feels sub-impossible, but utterly worthwhile.
It’s seven years since my book Get Up Mum was released. Today Mum is experiencing the best mental health of her life. Schizophrenia doesn’t have to be a life sentence, but it is hard to spell.
I recently gave an interview for ABC’s Conversations. The producer sent me a link to a previous story concerning Glenn Jarvis who worked for Enron and developed schizophrenia. There are some very insightful links at the bottom of the story. (One of the articles is behind a paywall, so I’ve placed it at the bottom of this post.)
May 24 is WORLD S A D (as it happens.)
(Schizophrenia Awareness Day)
Last year I wrote a piece for Satellite Foundation (of which I am an ambassador). So feel free to have a look at that!
Meanwhile, check out this zine vending machine! Such convenience. 📚
It premiered at Melbourne Art Book Fair / Melbourne Design Week dispensing Satellite Foundation’s zine All the Coloured Glasses – filled with writing and art from young people sharing their experiences of mental health and things.
You can contribute to the zine! Y’know, if you’re a… what are they called – young person. More info at Satellite Foundation.
And now … a megamix of previous Awareness Week thoughts on the thirteen letter word…
Sometimes I wonder if schizophrenia should not abandon its branding and relaunch as Thoughtism.
It’s rather hard to explain schizophrenia without disturbing people too much. We all know what people are like if they are a bit disturbed. They switch off. Unless it’s a true crime podcast – in which case it doesn’t matter how dark the content is – audiences can’t wait to snuggle down before bed.
I don’t know what the difference is.
But anyway – food for thought.
let’s do lunch.
Previously on World Schizophrenia Awareness Day….
It’s the time of year where you deposit some thought to the gentle complexity of one of existences most cryptic yet vulnerable conditions. Why don’t we talk about schizophrenia more? Ever wondered that? I do, quite a bit. It seems to go under the radar quite effectively. There’s a whole stack of destigmatising to be done – or – to conjure a more handsome phrase – rehumanising.
I mean, I’ve been up close to someone with schizophrenia and honestly, my heart still weeps. I reckon my Mum is brave as all fuck for withstanding the atomic martian wildness of her own mind warping itself to fit through the eye of the needle of life.
These are real people. On the ground. Suffering. Trying to be good parents. They are gobsmacked by confusion. Their personality has secret mirrors growing like gills. They are x-men and women, able to see through time. Heaven and hell are storybook wonders compared to the cheek-scolding heartbreak of disappearing in plain sight from the people who love you more than anything.
Anyway, big hugs and NDIS support to anyone who is experiencing hard times.
We can be superheroes, just for one day.
g r o u n d h o g __ d a y ?
AT A GLANCE (STAT!):
Schizophrenia effects 1 in 100 people. The same ratio as autism.
It comes from the Greek word meaning ‘split mind.’ It’s not multiple personality disorder, it’s about the schizophrenic person having a fractured perception of reality. There is the real world and then there is their world. This results in them convincing themselves that they are not sick. Therein lies the paradox of trying to care for someone with this condition. You’re yelling via cup and string to a rogue astronaut on opposites day.
“I’ll be alright after a sleep tomorrow, I promise.”
In response to the comments beneath my Sky News soundbite. No, it’s NOTHING like Trump voters thinking their world view is right and everyone else’s is wrong. That is an extreme political ideology. At least Trump exists in our reality (I never thought I’d say that.) People with schizophrenia have psychosis. They experience auditory and visual hallucinations. This is why using ‘schizophrenic’ as an adjective is problematic. Voting for Trump isn’t a medical condition, it’s a personality trait – as much as the ‘hilarious’ jokes to be made would hint at the former.
Statistically they are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. The cliché of the unhinged guy on the bus or (you know, recent events in Sydney) – it’s a worst case scenario and statistically rare. Even at her worst, when we went to the bank, Mum would be quite composed. People with a mental illness generally work twice as hard as the rest of the community just to be themselves. Australians love a hard worker, don’t they?
They are likely to be conduits of bizarre behaviour. According to a SANE spokesperson, symptoms can include “hallucinations, delusions, unusual or disrupted speech, disorganised behaviour, low energy, low motivation, or lack of emotional expression.” One friend said his Mum used to communicate with Jupiter. (Jennifer Jupiter?) Another said his Mum would see a little man and woman walking around her flat, an inch tall, shining lights in her face and shapeshifting into animals. This level of psychosis is creative and makes for a fascinating story if you regard it from a neuro-nonnormative perspective.
Schizophrenia is a lot less threatening when you spend some time up close.
There is love in curiosity.
Schizophrenia is not full-time. Mum was well half the time and sick the other. She was still a wonderful individual with autonomy, functioning as best she could and getting me breakfast while navigating the extremities of humanity. Mum used to be ‘Mother’s help’ and visit my primary school and help kids in my class type their stories up on the computer. She worked hard, in many ways.
As a listener to the radio version of my memoir Get Up Mum emailed to me: “I remember a Mum who would take me to sporting activities, cook dinner, have afternoon tea ready for me after school, and take us for swimming lessons at the beach. I also remember a Mum who would sleep all day, yell and scream, and a Mum who spent months at a time locked up in a high security psychiatric hospital.”
It’s a split world for everyone.
The Church performing The Unguarded Moment on Countdown, 1981.
Caring is full-time. Two words: hyper-vigilance. Part of Schizophrenia Awareness Day can be devoted to carers who are most likely family members and in the most urgent cases – kids. If someone you know has a mental illness and they also have children – I’m telling you – that child, by default, IS a carer. They are most definitely in need of support. If you are unsure about what to do, Satellite Foundation is a great place to start.
Hearing voices is more common than you think. Apparently 10-25% of people will hear voices at some point in their lives. Amazingly, it’s not always linked to schizophrenia. This was news to me when I watched the SBS Insight episode. iView currently has the full You Can’t Ask That schizophrenia episode. It’s also a terrific resource.
Schizophrenia is devastating. Especially when used in Scrabble. You drop that thing on a triple word score and it’s WALK AWAY RENE!
A FEW LINKS TO PAST THINGS I HAVE CONTRIBUTED:
In 2022 I wrote a letter to schizophrenia. You can find it on the Satellite Foundation website.
I was interviewed on Sky News during Schizophrenia Awareness Week in 2018, days after releasing Get Up Mum. I don’t get to go on TV much. (Spicks & Specks in 2010 featuring myself and Marcia Hynes together at last and me covering Spiderbait’s ‘Calypso’ on Adam Hills Gordon Street Tonight in 2011).
An interview (with fellow only child Elizabeth Flux) in the Guardian from 2018 which is all about my book and lived experience.
I wrote a column about schizophrenia for The Big Issue in 2019.
There aren’t that many movies about schizophrenia. I didn’t watch The Joker but can only imagine it set the empathy cause back miles. Sally Hawkins did a wonderful job in 2020’s Eternal Beauty where she portrayed a colourful character. (Is it interesting how when Sia cast a non-autistic actor in her movie Music everyone went hyper-nuclear but the fact that an actor without schizophrenia represented this community didn’t ruffle a spacebar. It’s almost as if that particular aspect of the mental health spectrum is i n v i s i b l e .
Do-gooders be like – we’re championing this cause because it’s SO COOL right now, but that one over there is FAAAREAKING US OUT.)
There’s an article about how schizophrenia is represented in cinema here.
Other fine movies about mental illness include Angel Baby (AU 1995), An Angel At My Table (NZ 1990), Sweetie (AU 1989 – probably my favourite Australian movie), Benny & Joon (US 1993), Birdman (US 2014) & Donnie Darko (US 2001). I really enjoyed Girl, Interrupted (US 1999) the other day, even though the reviews are subpar – (who doesn’t love Winona?) I recommendThe Sunnyboy (2013 Australian documentary about Jeremy Oxley, lead singer of The Sunnyboys who emerges from a 30 year battle with the illness).
I’m not sure if I enjoyed The Fischer King but as my psychologist pointed out it does do a good job of visualising the vivid dynamics of the schizophrenic persons worldview. You may be interested in The 5 Most Accurate Depictions of Schizophrenia in Hollywood.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a way out film from the 1970s. The book was always sitting on the bookshelf at Nan & Pop’s. (The girl on the cover gave me my biggest ethereal crush since The Childlike Empress from Never Ending Story.) Anyway, I read it as an adult and it’s an artistic deep-dive into the psychedelic secret world that I touched on previously. Greenberg writes in the voice of the ‘voices’ which I found thrilling.
I know you’ve got to be in the right headspace for these subjects. Or perhaps you don’t. Maybe there is never a convenient time. Goose step out of your comfort zone, throw some paint around in the studio of understanding and fan your aura to the experimental frequencies of the meek and neurologically diverse.
Schizophrenia is a cause that needs everyone to come together with education, patience and some emotional heavy lifting.
That’s about it. I’ll add links to some of the soft hitting articles I’ve unpacked about my own mental health philosophies. I know you’ve got a toasted sandwich on the go and about six kids and animals to pick up from the mall so I’ll save you time and let you jump straight into:
pps if you are still feeling overwhelmed or frustrated that you simply have no tangible emotional construct of what the heck anyone is talking about when it comes to this specific topic with the word which is even complicated to spell… Well, there happens to be a real easy fix to that one (for a change):
📖 buy my book 📖 ( No wait, it’s sold out I think )
carers: empathy through determination
And now the Schizophrenia Awareness Week dancers 💃💃💃👻 … oh no they disappeared.
Encore encore! More More!
Schizophrenia – the lone wolf of mental illnesses
By Gabrielle Carey and Dr Julia Brown
There is someone in Parliament House with schizophrenia.
At least, statistically speaking.
One in every 100 people suffer from schizophrenia. Of the 5000 people working on the hill when parliament sits, it is very likely that at least one has the diagnosis nobody wants to talk about, even in Schizophrenia Awareness Week.
Why has schizophrenia been called the scariest word in the English language? And why – after years of mental health awareness-raising – are we still unable to talk about it? When the word schizophrenia is mentioned the go-to image is usually violence – often first designated as terrorism. In these rare incidents, the focus is seldom on how proper treatment for the illness might have prevented an attack. Instead, it is on how others should have been protected.
Perhaps it’s time to invite schizophrenia in from the cold.
Recovery is possible
What most people don’t know, is anyone diagnosed with schizophrenia, like other mental illnesses, can recover if given the opportunity. Individuals with the diagnosis can be ordinary and high functioning, have families, and go to work every day. We just never get to hear about them. Because while bipolar and autism are household words, schizophrenia is still the disease that dare not speak its name.
Not being able to speak about schizophrenia compounds the condition. Treating people as social lepers makes them sicker. In Australia, up to 70 per cent of people who have a first episode of psychosis will have another episode within two years. More worryingly, the life expectancy of Australians diagnosed with schizophrenia is reduced by 32 years.
The threat to our youth
If any other illness resulted in such a bleak outlook for our young people, there would be a call to arms. That we are letting this continue is the real madness.
Schizophrenia is a young person’s illness: a diagnosis is generally made between the ages of 18 and 30. This is a crucial time in any person’s life – they are just finishing school, just starting university or just going into the workforce. But if you are diagnosed with schizophrenia in this country, within a short time you will not be participating in work or education; you will have a high risk of homelessness; you will be much more likely to end up in jail, and your anti-psychotic drugs will cause physical twitches, weight gain, drooling, loss of libido and loss of memory. As well as that, you will be five times more likely to be the victim of assault.
Headspace can’t help you if you are a young person with schizophrenia because they do not deal with people who are diagnosed with a chronic psychotic illness. The National Disability Insurance Scheme won’t help either. As reported by The Guardian, people with schizophrenia are regularly refused NDIS packages.
One Door Mental Health, formerly the Schizophrenia Fellowship which offers support to sufferers and their families, has had to cut services in some regional locations. Hospital emergency departments are useful if you are mid-psychosis but once stabilised you will be discharged without any after-care or discharge plan. In all, our healthcare system is not designed to instil hope for recovery in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. But neither is our social system.
Social disconnect
The worst loss of all for people diagnosed with schizophrenia is the loss of friends. The fear and avoidance of people with the condition is so damaging that sufferers retreat into what anthropologists call “social defeat”.
People with schizophrenia often appear to isolate themselves from family and friends. This gives the impression that they do not care about others, but their real difficulties began and continue precisely because of their acute sensitivity to judgments and criticisms – because they care too much about what other people think of them. And of course, in almost any situation, what frightens them most is revealing their condition.
A public service
Everyone knows somebody with schizophrenia. If you include the families and friends of those with the illness, there are one million people in Australia affected by the disorder – and almost every one of them is too frightened to say the word. One thing that might help is if high-functioning individuals with the condition were to “come out.”
As Law Professor of the University of Southern California, Elyn Saks, says “we who struggle with these disorders can lead full, happy, productive lives, if we have the right resources.” The first and most important resource might be social acceptance. And social acceptance begins with being seen.
Those like Professor Saks are in recovery because of the social status and purpose they have. Most Australians with schizophrenia, for now, don’t have this. If you are that person in Parliament House hiding your diagnosis, maybe now is the time to offer your greatest gift of public service. Stand up and dare to say the word. Tell us your story. There are a million Australians who could do with hearing it.
This article was originally published in 2019.
Dr. Julia Brown is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU who has conducted ethnographic research on lived experiences of antipsychotic treatment for chronic schizophrenia in the UK and Australia.
Gabrielle Carey was an Australian author who co-wrote the teen novel, Puberty Blues with Kathy Lette. She died in 2023. At the time of writing this article she was the H.C. Coombs Fellow at ANU and working on a book about the family experience of mental illness.
I was watching the tennis as an ad was repeatedly served to me. It comprised of a white void, dressed with smacks of colourful smoke. The ad posed an odd question. The answer it provided took the form of a mass-produced, moulded drink bottle for children.
The next day, I was cycling my emails. I had to find the word ‘unsubscribe’, which had been buried in a drastically reduced font.
The process was not straightforward. A dialogue occurred. Someone, or some … thing, had taken time out from its frenetic non-existence to speak with me directly. It seemed I had upset it somehow.
2025, baby. Pillow-talk with products.
Get into bed with consumerism and make money your god. Buy things like religion. Shake hands with the factory. Unboxing rituals, amassed possessions and the barcode blood rush of Not Missing Out.
Would monkeys do this to themselves? Harass each other with increasingly brash fixtures about which bananas are the sweetest, healthiest and most likely to enhance their chances of sourcing a mate? Advertising has infiltrated almost every last vestige of what being a human is.
In Star Trek, the ultimate poster model for a future society, I don’t see much branding going on. No one is an influencer – the professional job title we have created to replace 2010’s more knowing ‘famous for being famous.’
WHAT DOES $5 FEEL LIKE?
It’s a tagline so disturbingly evocative, it’s gotten under my skin. I am now writing about it, which is the primary objective of any ad: to attach itself to an engaged host and retransmit. A virus of an idea feeding on imagination.
Why does it matter? Isn’t it a bit of harmless fun? A spot of retail therapy in a potentially harrowing year of caring for a person with a disability or living with chronic pain?
I suppose. But… I don’t want five dollars to feel like anything.
I want a poem to feel like something (even though poetry makes me numb). I want a butterfly, a song or a painting to feel like something.
Advertising is filling all the spaces where art used to live. Art exists to tell human stories and enhance emotional capital. Advertising zeroes in to sell products and dam rivers of wealth.
WE’RE SORRY TO SEE YOU GO!
Manipulative words from a faceless company designed to coerce my nameless feelings of doubt and guilt.
Wait! Maybe I’m making a mistake. Perhaps this brand was ‘the one.’
Maybe I’ll miss out on something; a Sliding Doors moment where I’m compromising my future self’s window of prosperity by turning a cold shoulder on the aggrieved message, which is arguably targeting more emotional intimacy towards me than several close friends with kids have all year.
The auto-reply is self-aware. It has feelings. Feelings for me. Hurt feelings.
Perhaps, this is what five dollars feels like; approximately the amount of money I would invest in an email client that could successfully identify such corporate scams of the heart and send them kicking and screaming back through the black jellied tunnels of my fucking junk folder.
I feel enough.
I feel too much.
I don’t feel enough.
I am human and colourful and shifting and furious. My intelligence keeps a Lamborghini running and an electric sword as sharp as the heavens. I slice through the cultural veneer with dashing aplomb and an otherworldly sense of vengeance.
The enemy, unseen, falls prey to the cosmic avalanche of love and hope in my eyes.
There is a loneliness epidemic. Left by themselves, humans will buy things online. There are memes about not being able to feel at ease unless there is a package on the way.
I get it. I really do. I can make a real mess of my savings account on the eBay app.
I want to see ads for groups that encourage isolated people to get together. A “Jmart” social club I’d accept. We could meet for a cut lunch in a caravan park games room. There could be multi-coloured incense and refillable stainless steel drink bottles. We could chat about the dream we had last night and the first album we bought with our own money. After a walk to get ice cream, we would say goodbye to a new friend or two.
I would be sorry to see them go. It would feel priceless.
This was written for the monthly BMA column Struth Be Told. You can read other columns I’ve written this year here.
At all. Say anything. Actually fucking talk to them, I would have thought.
M e n t a l i l l n e s s is a desert. Communication is water. You can create water out of air, simply by saying ‘action’ and starring in a scene from your favourite film where the beautiful lead character reaches out and helps a friend. Sound fun? It’s not. It’s quite hard work, which is what actors usually say in interviews – and this movie is silent and in black and white and imaginary – but gosh, the rewards are colourful and the investment in your own hope and sense of wish fulfilment: golden.
Talk. Say words. Anything really. Except not anything because there is a right-ish and squeamish approach, which is why I’m writing this because I feel I can guide you in a general direction while still maintaining the simple rule that the best way to talk to a depressed person is by actually talking to them, if you catch my drift. As in, what use is my advice on what to say if you secretly never plan to push the boat out to water.
You see, I’m quite certain that due to the mild corruption of society (consumerism, the original popularity algorithm) and outsourcing malaise of social media, we have been essentially trained to keep quiet about emotional ailments and self-stigmatise common garden-variety troubles which we are all quietly going about dealing with on a daily basis. Depression, anxiety, mood swings, self-loathing, loneliness. I mean, how embarrassing is loneliness? Imagine actually trying to tell someone you know and respect that you have been feeling lonely and that it is becoming quite a problem lately.
i am cool
I would know, I tried. Well, I wrote about it on my website and that was a big step for me. This is another one. I’d like to involve you, radical magical mr / ms person whoever-you-are – let’s get married in a fiesta of concepts, I’ll let you keep your surname – I’ll permiss you to rely on your instincts, but I will carry a fairly big stick and give you a polite yoga master tap every now and then if I sense you falling into the bad habits that so many of our smart-pants-cynicool generation still do. Bad habits that result in my least favourite sound right now, especially when it comes to mental illness …
silence.
Polite silence. Sorry Justin, won’t be checking in on you there – you seem to have it all sorted.
Ah, mate, yeah, I was going to ask you about your Mum but I didn’t want to seem condescending as you are the expert on the matter and I’m only new to having a family member with schizophrenia.
Sure, the last one was a recent, real life example. Bless my friend. He said this by email. And honestly, it’s not even the novel concept of my biggest problem being that someone might appear condescending towards me – the thing that has me rushing out of bed to hammer this down is just the admission of a self-censoring subroutine. I mean, I get the sense that my friend is nowhere near alone. One thing we are probably all united in is a complex myriad of psychological excuses for getting out of doing really basic things like say – uh –
Asking for help.
Asking someone if they need help.
Following up with a friend who is down.
Admitting to being down.
Like, how many times have you maybe thought about toying with any of the above – only to let the faint, tickly trickle of pleasant endorphin based ‘get out of awkwardness jail free’ cards rain down like a hotbed of ghost lawyers dressed as you pouring your favourite cordial promising they can maintain these positive intentions of which you think while not actually placing you in harms way of ever having to carry them out.
👻 👻 👻 I don’t see why we should leave our comfort zone in this instance. I mean, what a week. We are tired and busy and this whole ‘talking about our feelings’ business will just complicate matters and could lead to an untenable situation of creating more work than we had anticipated and even the thought of this hypothetical botheration has us tensing up in the stomach. Nah, best to just pat yourself on the back and give yourself a little nod for being a decent enough person to have at least naturally conjured up the basic desire to help or reach out or connect while also maintaining the dignity, intelligence and street-smarts to not do anything rash like act on these impulses and reveal the pulsating, quivering tangle of nerves, bad dreams and unresolved conflicts that you actually are. 👻
So, now, I’m going to mention AA. No, not that AA.
The two A’s.
Avoidance.
&
Acknowledgement.
They go hand in hand, as far as I’m concerned. They are two peas in a pod and I want you to be aware of them.
When it comes to the job at hand. How do you talk to a d e p r e s s e d nosrep.
Part one – Avoidance
It’s rife. We avoid situations that might make us stressed. We avoid interactions which could embarrass us socially. Fair enough.
If someone we know is depressed or down or not themselves or by themselves or not quite right or recently single or having a hard time, we are likely to sort of, well, avoid them. Not directly, not exactly, but not the opposite either. We siphon them off to a complex friendship ditch in the quarry of our minds. We could ring them but – yeah nah – maybe a text – a quick back and forth and – yeah – that’ll do, right? And distraction and smoke and mirrors and a hundred more tomorrows and nothing really changes.
Right. Or.
You could barge on in and call someone. Yes, I mean type the actual numbers and ring them.
If you fall in the camp that perceives phone calls as anxious concepts then I suggest you try getting over this in any way possible. Why? Because some of us are in a communication connection drought and I am declaring a national emergency. You’ve read the articles, you’ve seen the stats. People are desperately unhappy and / or isolated in the nerve-control-inner-monologue-disaster-manipulation-self-destruct-bunkers of their sonic the groundhog twilight youth. It’s not pretty. I’ve been there. Some days I’m there still. And all I can say is that when someone calls me out of the blue I adore it.
Big Shout Out to all millennials and gen-z who have stopped reading at this point
Yeah, I was born in 1980. If you don’t like talking on the phone then remember that the very a c t i o n of reaching out to someone in a format that you are not completely versed in is in itself a powerful a c t. You can transmit power simply by proving that someone existed in your mind and their name was held by your hand. Words matter but actions rule. In this time of binge communication and lightweight haiku newsletters, how breathtakingly charming and dramatic the notion of a phone call.
Or a text, or a fax, or whatever. You do you.
Part 2 – Acknowledgement
You: How are you?
Person: Terrible.
You:….
This is the point at which many people will baulk and retreat inside themselves. “Oh no,” they flail, “whatever will I say now. I’m not a trained psychologist. I was just eating an ice-cream when this compelling website implored me to phone a friend who has just lost their job and moved back in with their parents, and now here they are putting me under the pump with their gloriously honest answer to my classically mundane question. Quick, author of this post, or “ Justin” (or poor woman’s Tony Robbins) as you seem to go by these days, what would you have me say next wonderboy?”
Dude. It’s okay.
No, that is that you’d say to the person. ‘It’s okay.’
Or, how about ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Cliches are helpful sometimes, especially when they are treated like emergency scaffolding to hold up a tent in the blizzard of this chaotic life we’re all being blown to shit around in. Again, words are water at this point and if you were stranded in the desert I don’t exactly reckon you would be overly fussed about what brand of bottle your friend was bringing to you. Unless you’re Amanda Palmer, she only drinks the melted iceblocks of inuit tears from 1920.
Be brave. Remember love. Think slow.
There’s no rush. You don’t have to solve anyone’s problems.
Do you know what a sad person needs more than anything? Ice-cream, sure, but… they need understanding – and the golden child of this conversation – acknowledgement.
I can’t tell you how important it is to have your feelings validated by someone.
Me: I feel – lonely.
You: Justin, that must be hard.
Me: Yeah – it is. It’s just my thing.
You: How long has this been going on?
Me: Oh, gee. A long time. It’s just been lately that I’ve really noticed it. I know I’m by myself too much. I don’t know. Often it feels like everyone else has people around them all the time but I’ve ended up by myself and that seems unfair.
You: You know there are a lot of people in your position.
Me: Yeah, apparently.
You: It’s nothing you’ve done. It’s just….how life works out sometimes.
Me: Hmmm.
And so forth. So, my main point is that rather than jump in and …
Me: I’m feeling lonely.
You: Have you joined any sporting teams or gone on facebook and tried to start a bushwalking club?
Me: No. * feels twice as alone *
Like, we’re programmed to live in this quick-fix society where everything has a solution and maybe if I just pressed the right combo of buttons I could defeat this evil ‘self island’ game that seems to be hijacking my waking vibe and ability to feel confident and consistent.
Well, no, because we are people. We are not programs. We are not machines.
We are rainbow scented, space cadet, all-feeling all-fleshy
fancy
monkey
children.
And we are struggling. And we need gentle, thoughtful, nurturing.
Yes, even you gavin. Especially the blokes! (No shit, I know – who knew…..)
And we need acknowledgement.
That means – the simplest, smallest action of all. Showing us that you are listening.
“ dat sounds hard. ” “ i’s sorry to hear dat “ “ ooh dat sux ” “ u poor fing ”
Well, maybe not the last one. Perhaps that could be construed as a bit condescending. Especially when gavin has pulled the mining truck over to tell bernedette that he’s been having panic attacks. I don’t know what kalgoorlie mining co’s policies are on hugs in the superpits, but I would probably suggest that a hug would suffice.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to tell someone that I’m feeling down and all I’ve really wanted is a pat on the head and a ‘there there’ and all I’ve gotten is a hardcore delivery of suggestions of ways I could go and fix my problem and all I’ve wanted to do is reverse myself into a sinkhole of melted soap mattresses and initiate myself into a tribe of sophisticated duck wizards who would tuck me in and quack me a bedtime story.
Failing that. I have my friends. My acquaintances. Many of which have had a crack at connecting with me, and, unfortunately, it seems like (in the pyramid of petty social conventions), left me with the unnerving impression that I will be a lot better suited to life if I can continue with my only-child training and adapt to be a largely self-soothing, self-serving, self-analysing unit of progress and production who occasionally sees a professional psychologist in secret and deals with my complex emotional affairs in a setting that won’t bend the day of my loved ones out of shape.
don’t you open that trapdoor
because there’s something down there
In conclusion, do you know what my favourite question anyone has ever asked me?
It was about five years ago. It was my friend Bruce in Canberra.
“How’s your depression?”
He said it so casually. It was right up there with ‘did you see the carlton game’ and ‘how’s the tour going’ – I was gobsmacked. Truly taken aback. It was a wonderful moment of feeling shame and elation. Shelation.
“Uh, yeah – it’s okay”
I bought myself some time to conjure articulation in a subconscious Atlantis beneath the sea of deadpan humour.
“I think it’s getting a bit…easier.”
Did I say that? I don’t know. Did I mean it? Possibly not. But I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that Bruce asked his question. And even if I didn’t convince myself with the answer, hearing yourself say a hopeful statement, when prompted, is a song that can keep you company through a week of grey thoughts.
It’s communication. It’s action. It’s the vibe.
bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce almighty
Bruce talked to a depressed person. He just barrelled on in there and talked to me.
I know what you’re thinking. You think you’re going to offend the depressed person. You’re terrified that you’re going to, god forbid, make them worse with your incorrectly placed question. You might say the wrong thing? You might, what’s that word the kids like to use… ‘trigger’ them.
I’ll tell you what’s triggering.
Silence.
I’ll tell you what’s offensive.
Fluff.
In a garden of night, be the candle we’ve forgotten how to light. 🕯️
Talk to a depressed person today. You don’t even have to know if they are sad, or lonely. Chances are your instincts are already spot on.
For you are the intelligent dreamer – and I trust you to carry the weight of your own lack of practice.
We can do this. We can train ourselves to be better.
We can reach. For the stars. For the truth inside.
For each other.
maxwell the morose party star of fitzroy sez:
“search for the hero inside yourself”
“ hello there, i just wanted to make the point that depression isn’t something that is with you all the time. It’s not always a fixed state. It’s a broad spectrum. Of course there are people who are experiencing heavy depression as a clinical condition. I would like to think that this advice could apply to everyone, however dark the paints on their particular canvas.
RESOURCES: Amanda FKING Palmer has a self-help book about asking for help, no less.
The lady in front of me was resting her head on some yarn. A good tip for first time travellers! Captured on a gorgeous day on Tasmania’s own Redline Coaches. It marks the final episode of my radio series The Heart Of The Bollocks. I recorded the secret life of buses for Triple J’s Morning Show.
My playful docu-radio series from 2003 has been unearthed from the vaults. I’m not a has been, I just had early success at a time before social media, so a lot of my output aired once and never surfaced again. Can you imagine? Appointment radio. You’re either listening at 10:30 AM on a Wednesday or you’re toast as far as being an early adopter of visionary pioneer rapscallion Justin Heazlewood’s unique take on the vibe goes.
In 2003 I was keen to follow up my songwriting segment on Triple J’s Morning Show. There was a new team onboard and they didn’t have a lot of budget. I ended up doing a bit of work experience. I’d just moved to Sydney for a girl and was finding it all a tad overawing. To break the ice with my new city I felt like running around with a DAT recorder and using the authority of being ‘Justin from Triple J’ to create some casual, whimsical vignettes.
The Heart of the Bollocks features my original music and poetry – honed from regular appearances at Tug Dumbly’s alternative poetry night Bardfly’s at the Friend In Hand pub in Glebe. One of the punters there heard my segment and said he liked how it just washes over you.
Here is it, twenty years later – still sounding fresh i guess.
There were four in all. I will post a new one each week under this link so watch this space and subscribe to my channel, buster.
Happy banking.
Produced by Justin Heazlewood in Sydney, 2003. Hosted by Steve Cannane. Commissioned by Kyla Slaven. Cover photo by Tammy Winter.
Banks! contains a sample of Benito Di Fonzo’s poem “I’m frightened, and I want my money.” Streets! contains a lyrical sample from “Feather In Your Cap” by Beck.
My current existential crisis is a fascinating one. I feel original in my contempt for modern circumstances.
I was always on the outside, feeling like something spectacularly unusual and formidable was occurring. The parallels between my twelve year old and forty two year old selves are intriguing as well as comforting. I can handle calamity, especially the internal interference kind.
IF (and it’s a big if) there is some semblance of context or continuity to it.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Let’s say it’s a full-time job trying to make sense of my own life. My ‘predicament’ if you like. Less a lifetime than a social experiment playing out in semi-real mind-time.
(I am) So utterly alive, yet, disconnected from the safety of the social grid. A community outlier. Self-exiled sounds a little too convenient. ‘Post-romantic’ perhaps.
My early life could be divided into a youthful Romantic phase. When I believed that A led to B and that I might be participating in a rough and ready fantasy kingdom where all my toil and anguish was for a greater good. A time when there was surely something fantastic in store, just around the corner. Some brilliant future where talent and hard work would be rewarded by a wise, kind, vigilant industry.
Then, there is now. The post-romantic era.
The bit / part where I don’t believe in anything. I’m like John Lennon’s God song where he doesn’t believe in the Beatles or Dylan or God. He does, however, have a girlfriend. This is a palpable step up from me. John is an activist for love. The kind of love generated by a long-term relationship. An emotional business arrangement that makes each living, laughing day an investment in your shared future.
I am more like the Solo Man in the Solo Man ads from the 1980s. I’m kayaking down a hill for some reason. I’ve made sure to bring along my favourite can of lemon drink. I scull it passionately at the end, mugging for the universal camera that I believe still holds a vested interest in the forensic follies of my introverted outback existence.
The camera is inside my dreams.
Only last night I continued a recent trend of a dream category I would dub conversational.
The premise: I am so bereft of interactions with my own people that my subconscious has taken to synthesising realistic social situations in which I find myself nattering away about subjects of high interest and little consequence.
Last night I was on a bus with two college kids, a boy and a girl.*
* In the interests of the authors reputational dignity, I’ll omit any psychosexual anecdotes that present themselves. Suffice to say, there’s definitely an aftershock of ageing which ricochets through the lion’s share of one’s conscious fabric on a near bi-daily basis.
The boy and girl were laughing about something. The boy said “no one is called ‘bad’.”
I sprang to life.
“There is someone called ‘bad’ – the WWF wrestler Bad News Brown.” I then leant on my bank of childhood wrestling knowledge to impart the few wrestlers of colour from the ’80s. I’m thinking Koco B. Ware (who had a parrot on his shoulder), Mr T, Akeem the African Dream and Virgil (the bodyguard of ‘Million Dollar Man’ Ted DiBiase).
So, this dream – as weird and as cryptic and as recognisable as any other, had me simply telling these kids about this bit of trivia.
Something something. Maybe I had an erection.
Look. The point is (‘I can see your point. No, it’s just the way my trousers ruck up’ – now I’m quoting Rik Mayall from Bottom.) I’m so under stimulated intellectually and impoverished socially that sometimes I catch up with people more in my dreams than I do in real life.
Similar to how a sexual dream can offset ones frustration in a meaningful way, these ‘natter-mares’ service a submerged part of my neglected inner-self with intriguing precision. My ability to withstand social starvation is being tested on a near atomic scale. It has been this way for some time.
A perfect storm of isolation through no fault of my own.
BAD NEWS BROWNAKEEM THE AFRICAN DREAMVIRGILKOKO B. WARE
Picture someone who is a lone wolf wrestler writer. Take a personal memoir which they have to squirrel themselves away to write. Then add a pandemic where everyone burrows down for cover. Times it by being over 40 - a phase where virtually everyone you’ve ever known or liked disappears up their tree to nest, rendering themselves emotionally unavailable.
Oh and here’s the clincher - view all of this through the lens of someone with a heightened sense of abandonment, who feels like they are watching every single person succumb to smart phone addiction at worst and socially acceptable distraction at best.
The world used to be a party. Now it’s a series of messages in baby bottles.
If you scrimp and save and wrangle an in-person catch up, you will bear witness to the eerily subtle degradation of interpersonal skills - forced to dig deep in your memory hive to recall whether there ever used to be a time when you would walk away from hangouts feeling remotely satisfied.
See, it’s not even the technology but the structure of ‘mature age’ socialising that is flawed. In the golden days of uni and being in your twenties, you would see your favourite people all the time. You were on the same bus - the magical mystery tour. There was momentum. There were dynamics; harmony.
These years, you don’t see people for months. You get one two hour catch up blast. These coffees and phone calls can feel oddly transactional. Our tired brains have to work hard to think of high quality abbreviated chunks of information about our by now, quite separate lives. Nothing really changes. None of our decisions involve the other directly.
See, back in the day, you didn’t really ‘catch up’ you ‘hung out’ - the party was happening in real-time (even if the party was the pseudo prison of high school). There is something sadly / oddly (soddly?) nostalgic about a time when you were swimming in a temperate sea of social connections.
Life was a project you worked on together.
My personality was firing on all cylinders. Jokes, questions, responses, defences, jibes, flirtations, conflicts, infatuation; it was a veritable disco dance for a sprightly, lively mind. So young and racing and inquisitive and excited and hurt. Q&A meets Hey Hey.
Now? I’m f l o a t i n g i n s p a c e. It’s peaceful, sure. But a little cold. I communicate via my fishbowl helmet. Messages are delayed. Voices crackle back through static. There are atmospheres between us. The world looks small from up high.
I faintly dream that I might meet another astral surfer. Some like mind – that whole
Trouver l’amour quand on s’y attend le moins
finding-love-when-you-least-expect-it claptrap. I’m not sure how little I’m supposed to expect anything.
I daresay if my expectations fell any lower I’d be in need of medical attention.
And so, my friends, we enter into the post-romantic phase of life. I don’t overly expect anything.
I mean
I do, sort of
I have hope.
I just don’t pretend to cover up how angry I am. How disappointed. I’m still keeping up appearances. I wear sunscreen daily, mainly out of vanity. But – I’m self-serving to a fault. I am honest and protective in a manner I could only dream about when I was younger and being walked all over at regular intervals.
No, see, the fallout I feel is from actually having a healthy self-esteem and, god forbid, more room inside myself to share with another than I ever thought possible.
The cruel twist in this wild little tale is that at a time when I find myself growing into the ideal version of myself – there is absolutely no one around to take any interest whatsoever.
i never saw that one coming
I change my statement about being lonely. I’m not lonely. I’m just alone. There is and always will be a difference.
I would rather be bored than stressed.
CHECK OUT THE LATEST ISSUE OF fuzzy logic GAZETTER & SUBSCRIBE.
NOTE: John Lennon doesn’t believe in yoga, but I do.
Do you have anxiety? If so, I’m sorry to hear that.
So dew eye, for what it’s worth. 👀
[Refer to the mockmarket of the soul and current value of a shitcoin]
2023 – could it be the year of beating anxiety? I’d say ‘war on anxiety’ but that doesn’t sound much fun (or a change). Pillow fight with mental health? Slightly sexy. Passive aggressive standoff with your other half?
Hot.
My point is, Moby has just dropped an ambient album. (Do you ‘drop’ ambient albums or release them as one might release a mist?) He says it’s about helping tackle his anxiety. A donation to the cosmos. Cool. I dig it.
Anxiety, for the record, isn’t just a general state of feeling worried or uptight. It’s a physical thing. Like being softly electrocuted. A black magic chain of thoughts that hijacks your thinking, making you act irrationally. It lives under the skin, like an alien. An agitated immersion in a strange, stricken brew. A cauldron of caution. A maelstrom of malady.
Ambient music is a perfect antidote. It’s slow, for starters. Anxiety travels at the speed of unsound. It doesn’t help that the pace of the world has been increasing (along with the temperature) for the past thirty years. In 1990 we had grunge music with a bpm in double figures. Folks now listen to podcasts at double speed. Cramming data isn’t precisely what consciousness evolved for.
Set your position to pause. Mood quake serenade.
Ambient music (also known as new age) may be an acquired taste. It might not be your cup of herbal tea. ☕
Ambient is spacious. It doesn’t have beats or lyrics, much. It’s a space, man. It doesn’t ask much from your mind. You can slip on your life cancelling headphones and soak in the sound. Let your thoughts play host to singular, spaced notes. Slow honey for a blow up head.
It’s a gentle suggestion. I’m a fan of Brian Eno and Harold Budd and Radiohead. The latter had a crack at ambient with ‘Treefingers’ from Kid A. It was pretty (chime) ballsy of them. That album was popular. This is probably my first ever experience with ambient music. YouTube comments suggest ‘Treefingers’ is “the one everyone skips.” Honestly, I would be included in that. Young men are not famous for their patience – but it wouldn’t surprise me if it made a comeback. The world is much more electronic instrumental savvy than it was in 2000.
Don’t worry if you don’t know where to start (or end). The beauty of Spotify is you only need one song to connect with and then select the radio for that song. That’s all I’ve been doing for five years really – unboxing a pandora’s pantheon of timestretched permusations.
Stockpiling chillout I can access in the fraction of a migraine. 🧠
Heck, sometimes technology works in favour of mental health. Maybe this is the only time. Perhaps you find success with meditation apps? Personally I can’t stand someone lecturing me. Having said that, Lemon Jelly do have a song called ‘Nervous Tension’ which is basically a self-help tape set to music.
From my new years meanderings I see there’s a recently released The Art Of Meditation by Sigur Ros. Electronic dude Jon Hopkins put out a Meditations single in 2020 & Music For Psychedelic Therapy in 2021 (the latter is a bit rich for my blood). Meanwhile, my good friend Conrad Greenleaf released the ambient album Dreamtape last year – so it’s in the zeitgeist, surely.
There’s even Tasmanian based ambient artists such as Leven Canyon & All India Radio.
Chillout was huge in 2000, so it might be experiencing a twenty year ambiversary.
If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air
Quaint little villages here and there
Groove Armada – At The River
There are other strategies to combat anxiety:
A sleep routine.
Talking to a psychologist.
Lying in a dark space with a weighted blanket.
Repetitive movements such as playing an instrument, walking, swimming or massage.
It’s worth trying everything. Make it your hobby – discovering pockets of air within your dark cloud. 🫧
Unrest is the best that life can offer, sometimes.
Make the most of finding a way to live with it.
The
brain
is
a
funny
alien.
Welcome
to
the
animal
that
chose
you.
Half the fun is remembering how to train it.
Finding the time to take it for walks.
Perhaps ambient music acts as a holodeck, allowing you to return to a home planet green and purple and blue and grey – where the days stretch out like dreams and the atmosphere is so gentle you find it easier to float.
You don’t have to meditate to listen to ambient music. You don’t need ambient music to meditate. Both are notoriously niche and slippery to appreciate. I file them under exercises for exhausted people. Or, there are 200k worse things you can do on your phone.
Take care in there.
Justin, 2023. *
please see my little playlist elbow, I mean below.
Ducks are my new favourite animal. (Soz cats.) I love them waddling about with their handsome metallic green necks and feathery brown pelts. It turns out Burnie has a large, healthy population at Romaine Park. I adore how they travel in pairs and huddle in groups. They are not afraid of people and snooze out in the open. It’s so trusting and meek, my heart melts.
Apparently ducks rest in groups for safety. The outside duck has one eye open to keep guard.
The quack community.
Little duck bums.
They generate happiness in me.
Well, it was a year. Chalk it up to experience. Downgrade my heart from spectacular. Surprise my mind. Beautiful reluctance. Transcendental views. Average dates – (I’m looking at you October 7).
Dogs barked, muesli was eaten. Spotify playlisted and rage guest programmed.
Joy. Content. Heartbeats.
Dreams about…wriggly jigsaws and friendly abandonment. How am I here? Where am I there? State hopping, spoken word performing, mental health monologuing, man about house.
I’ve had it all – a lifetime of moments. Set to the soundtrack of an infotainment hotshot cathedral.
Dress right. Knuckle down. Buckle up. Take off.
REFRESH refresh, INFINITE scroll. Poker machine high school reunion. Get up close to what troubles you. Keep clawing at the glass. Go handheld. I’m certain there’s a foothold on the
h o r i z o n .
WHAT I CHOSE TO WRITE ABOUT:
Mental health mainly. My opening gambit i is the loneliest letter was partly inspired by trawling through my musical archive. I found a stripped back version of my song I’m So Lonely, written in 2008. Just another patented Saturn Returns soundtrack to a suddenly bottomless life. I was impressed. If nothing else, it’s comforting to be reminded that you aren’t some alien version of yourself, just a boat rockin’ riff on previous themes.
Asking someone about their mental health is a confronting and private matter. It needs to be given the gentle, conscientious forethought of an orienteering operation. There’s strategy, tact, respect and craft. Instead, we get r u ok – (a high brow advancement on whatr u lookin at?) – the grammatical nature of which is enough to pummel my inner harmony.
Never fear, my well-meaning diatribes are here.
This year was marked by the premiere of my one man show Get Up Mum in March. It was epic. It was profound. (It was quite long, to be fair). I hope to perform it again mid next year in Burnie and Melbourne. I was interviewed by my new friend Helen Shield. If you were wondering, one of the most uncomfortable aspects of broadcasting such personal work is seeing the inappropriate tags and disclaimers clogging up the footer. It’s bemusingly ironic that mental health is either cloaked in euphemism or clownishly signposted in bureaucratic overreach.
I had surgery. An ulnar nerve transposition on my right arm (as you do). I’m past 40 and abstractly vulnerable. Well, to be fair, I was once described as ‘intensely vulnerable’ by Fiona Scott-Norman in an article about stand-up comedy in 2007. So, artistically, I’ve worn my brain on a chain. Only now is my physical self catching up to the costume. What could go right.
I wrote an article titledLiquid Mental. It was sparked after walking along Romaine Park and seeing a teenage boy wandering along the fields. His head was lowered, having mastered the art of walking and scrolling. I was haunted. I had to write something and incorporate Terminator 2 and the music of SBS Chill regular Eric Hilton. It was fun.
I packed up my place in Melbourne to return to Tasmania. As I was sorting everything it occurred to me that it was twenty years since I became “The Bedroom Philosopher.” Oh well, said the diligently private person to themself, I guess we could use this as motivation to launch a light to moderate assault of content – I mean – art, on the unsuspecting consumers – I mean fanbase. I rekindled pleasure in reimagining my first album of light-hearted folk songs, cultivated during my accidental dream job of being the weekly songwriter for Triple J’s Morning Show in 2002.
It was a nice time in the archives. I liked who I was at 22. In a not dissimilar creative time travel to the way I hung out with my 12 year old self in Get Up Mum – I had a beer or two with my 22 year old self in the Living On The Edge…Of My Bed release and subsequent memory lane / cassette digitising sessions. I even cut together my own radio documentary on the origin story of how I went from winning ABCs Heywire to scoring the gig of a lifetime, without having performed a single comedy spot.
Beauty.
It wasn’t all beer and skittles in that career. Sometimes it was sarsaparilla and quoits. I love nothing more than bemoaning the clusterfluff of riding success while being a share-household name in Australia. I feel like I’ve had so many backward compliments and subtle cracks at me over the years I wear a technicolour raincoat in a fickle bid to thicken my skin. Anyway, blow off steam I must – it felt fitting to hold my own Depress Conference.
And so on and so forth. I had two pieces published in the mental health themed poetry anthology Admissions. I wrote a letter to schizophrenia, gave a talk at a mental health conference and rereleased / reimagined my first ‘proper’ album recorded on a four track at the end of Hellyer College, 1998. (Peppered with lil’ somethings recorded on my cassette walkman).
I was nominated for the most underrated book award in 2015. It was a relief to lose.
It was nice to receive a kind letter towards the end of the year. Thanks Lucy.
Thanks to like, anyone who has read my self-published dalliances and gained any insight into the cosmic beauty of our abstract depressions. Power to thee.
The key is to….keep going (apparently). And try hard not to ask anyone if they are okay. And if you’re talking to me, try and avoid the sentence “I found some of your posts worrying.” It’s sort of patronising, sorry.
Bonding on that private channel requires you to have prepared an application with a backpack full of context. Put thought into what you say – as opposed to the industry standard of little. Do your interpersonal homework. Like a good essay, support your statements with evidence.
If you are truly, lastingly concerned about them / me, just be brave and ring them up. Have a friendly chat. Talk about the price of weather. Remind them they are cared about. It’s far too easy to forget. (If you are a bloke and can drop the ‘L’ bomb – well, good luck with that.)
Why the human heart is designed with affirmation amnesia I am uncertain. Perhaps we are animals after all; fitfully aware of the perilousness of our circumstances – the energy reserves required to survive in this befuddled bio-matrix claptrap of a bush doof. The casino of soft knocks and hard streams. It could not be more unnatural if it tried. One puts ones blinkers on. One runs ones own race. 🏇
Get human. Stay wobbly. subscribe/unsubscribe in/out/in/out
Love from planet Justin. 🪐
The best way to stay tuned to anything I do is via my beloved mailing list Justin Heazlewood’s Fuzzy Logic. (The latest one of these can be witnessed hither.)
I’ve just signed up and wanted to let you know how I’m enjoying all of this. Your writing is so entertaining – love the fast-paced, psychedelic imagery and invented words (autobiocracy!) I also dislike of the question “are you okay?” – not just because it’s a bit patronising but it is also such a non- question, it lacks real curiosity and just leaves you to reassure rather than reveal. I think if the asker really wanted to know, it wouldn’t be a closed question.
I also wanted to let you know how much I loved ‘Get Up Mum.’ I cried many tears for 12-year-old Justin, but found myself equally in awe of the creative, intelligent, sensitive and resilient kid he was too. I work with therapeutically with children and have on occasion with child carers and so this resonated strongly for me. Thank for for undertaking such creatively courageous work. Digging up and reworking childhood trauma can be therapeutic but it’s also painful and can’t go back to being unseen, which comes with its own complexities.
Your stuff on loneliness has been so inspiring and helpful for me at this particular time in my life, so thank you! When is your next book!?
Forgot to say before, the free-associative flow of your work is really enjoyable to read. I’m not sure how you feel about Helen Garner, but I love her autobiographical stuff for the same reason. The way she layers little snippets and details from daily life that sometimes almost seem random, but in accumulation hint towards an unbearable/unknowable emotional truth lying dormant in the background.
Looking forward to reading more Justin.”
FROM LUCY, BY EMAIL
If this article has concerned you then please sit back and tinker with that tickly feeling of being emotionally stimulated. Cultivate a sleep routine, turn off your phone by 9pm and seek out the help of a good psychologist.
f u z z y ⚡ l o g i c 