On Monday I started running an Advice Booth at Readings. It’s been a lovely ‘ground zero’ experience – mixing with people directly in a post-internet age. The focus is on arts / creative advice – but as I say in my occasional spruik “Free art and creative advice, psychological, relationship, basic health and I know some bus times.” In my two hour window I’m barely alone for longer than five minutes. Meek, kind-eyed strangers sit and we share a cup of tea and some walnuts. I’ve spoken to about fifteen people so far. Here are some of the subjects covered:
A guy wants to start a metal band. He wants to ask his mate who is a drummer, but is nervous about asking incase he says ‘no.’
A girl plays piano. She would like to play with other musicians, but is shy about asking.
A woman is getting painting lessons. She doesn’t like her teacher much. He insists on finishing the students paintings for them.
A daughter of a famous Australian painter – she used to paint regularly / professionally, but hasn’t done it for years. She wants to get back into using pastels. I suggested she needs to break the habit of not painting and form the habit of doing a bit each day – a common theme!
A musician was nervous that his ‘mad’ music/comedy act might embarrass his children. He’s tailoring the act to feature less on himself personally and more on society in general. He has not done shows for quite some time, but would like to. I asked him to make sure this concern for his children wasn’t the artistic super-villain of ‘fear’ masquerading under the guise of concern for his children. Perhaps it was fear of failure or rejection. Family / children are some of the more powerful procrastination fuel for artists.
One intense, softly spoken man said “everyone keeps being aggressive towards me.” He was referring to people on the street and the way they looked at him. I said that one was outside my jurisdiction.
A psychologist was about to go six days a week. He was bemused to sit in the booth, as he’s usually the one listening, not asking for advice. He’s gone into a business partnership with a friend, going against the one piece of advice his grandfather gave him which was “never go into partnership with a friend.” He’s trying to move from working for a company to working for himself – so must work increased hours to build a roster of new patients. I spoke about burnout and the danger of harvesting personal time for increased productivity. He said that already his sleep was being affected, and I told him about the months of recovery it can take when you do crash. (We agreed that it’s not something you worry about until it happens). He just messaged me to say he realised six days was too much and will be paring back to four.
A young man stood for a long time asking me questions about The Bedroom Philosopher. After a while he sat, and while glancing around at the wall of spines around us, asked me how I dealt with stress. I mentioned exercise, yoga, strict work hours and counselling. He said he’d just started meditating. He told me about a simple technique of “in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.” (I tried this the next morning…and passed out. It is excellent for slowing down the internal clock – honey on the cogs.) I think I most enjoy giving advice to men in their early twenties. I know how hard it is for them to show vulnerability.
A writer / playright was my first customer. Like many, she poured out of Nova, where the power had gone out. I said my plan of sabotaging the fuse box had worked a treat. She was having issues with time management. She was working on her own production and acting as writer, director and producer. We acknowledged how difficult it is to hold down all those roles. She said it was wearing her out and sometimes she wondered if it was all worth it. I suggested being more disciplined / regimented with time management. Her things to do list should be divided into tasks to be completed that day, that week and that month. She should make mini-contacts with herself, of jobs that need to be immediately done. (As opposed to looking at a list of 15 things that all need to be done “soon.”) I also suggested working for 90 minutes in the morning, going hard on the admin – and then not thinking about it for the rest of the day. This is better than dabbling away at it all day and ending up overwhelmed / fatigued. She took notes – and went away a little more empowered.
A cute asian girl told me she really enjoys doing pottery. She works in a job helping others, so this is one thing she does for herself. Her teacher says the clay is a living thing. It moves how it wants.
Did you know that every thirteen minutes a relationship in Australia ends? Statistics tell us that only 5% of these relationships will end cleanly. The majority will haemorrhage into heaving silence with one staring into space and the other in tears. Sentences will get said: “I don’t know what I feel any more. I just don’t think I can give to this relationship.” The carcass of trust shall hang from necks. There will be gazes from the doorway. Beautiful creatures in knee high socks and soft cotton dresses sprawled on the bed, faces buried in pillows. Nervous men out of scripts and drawing on movie memories. Walk out the door. Just walk out that door. There’s no turning back. We’re past the point of no return.
Having done a snap-survey of my friends I’ve concluded that for those of us that are single, it’s not easy. We’re all nursing a photo album of bruises in our hearts. We’re all staring longingly into the suburban sunset, waiting for the smooth arms of a perfect match to cradle us through this spiritual recession. We have so much to give and we feel like we are going to waste. We sit on public transport retina scanning from afar, while love songs poke us like senseless siblings. We glance at stockinged legs wondering if now’s the time to stand up, ride the bumps like a fate surfer and wander over with business cards in hand and a ‘hey…you seem really…nice…let me know if you want a coffee sometime…’ before thrusting our little rectangle mangle of a lifeforce into the clenched hand of the long-haired lovely, nursing shopping and a good book – innocent royalty in this fraction of a possibility.
How can we meet new people? Us loners. Us washed up lovers. How can we tune into the frequencies of those who would hold our arm as we picked out videos. Who would add a ‘kiss me’ to our things to do lists and watch the ground for us as we text-walked? What combination of words and actions could unlock the vault of chance that would lead us to a universe of warmth beneath covers and the body lock of sweetheart sweat – the autumn-fall of thoughts leading to the timeless utterance ‘I’m so glad I found you.’
How can we find those we’d be so glad we found?
We go to gigs, parties, we flick about on Facebook. Everyone looks occupied and unattainable. The beautiful people have their friends, their drinks in hand, they don’t need us and our overthought desperation. We over thought it already. Our sentences are like highschool clay, all fingerprints and lumpy joins. What could we possibly offer? We are on the outside of the painting looking in. Colours are creamy and expressions are effortless. It’s a dream in there. How could we approach? We are covered in shadows.
Within a typical day the average single person will create over 186 conflicting thoughts about love. They may tell themselves things like ‘this is a good time to be single’ within the same stanza as ‘I’m horny, everything’s fucked.’ This is normal, and is reflective of the human experience. We are wise-cracking muddles all wrapped up tight in string, like Kris Kringles waiting to be given to the right person. We are store-bought bundles of poetic observations, clever humour and kisses. Oh dear God we are good kissers. Did we mention this? Upon the well-timed mouth we’ll make you forget every insult you’ve ever been given. We’ll take you up in a hot air balloon and land you in a forest of flowers, make you biscuits of the ripest honey and read you the funniest and saddest story, in voices soft as rain.
You just have to find us.
We just have to find you.
The first cut is the deepest, and Radiohead’s Creep cut me in a big way. It was one of my first experiences of a rock band. I watched the film clip, mesmerised. The picked tremolo notes rang like a macabre musical box while the chorus cut through like a chainsaw. Who were these pale, effeminate men, slinging and scrunching their way through such a pretty tune? In the stage lights Thom Yorke looked alien. His face contorted in ecstasy and angst. Johnny Greenwood hid behind a wall of noise and fringe, revving his guitar like a lawnmower.
When asked about Creep in 1993, Yorke said, “I have a real problem being a man in the ’90s. Any man with any sensitivity or conscience toward the opposite sex would have a problem. To actually assert yourself in a masculine way without looking like you’re in a hard-rock band is a very difficult thing to do.”
Until then my poster boy for masculinity had been Lenny Kravitz, strutting his way through 70’s pastiche glam. Radiohead sat brooding in the corner of the charts party, showing how vulnerable rock could be. No more Party Uncle, this was Arty Dad sitting me down with a bag of minor chords and telling me the birds and bees of sexual emotions. My world was ready for the juxtaposition of self-loathing in popular song. John Lennon had sung I’m a loser, Henry Rollins I’m a liar and Dennis Leary I’m an Asshole but they were all delivered behind a front-line of irony. Thom Yorke was compellingly exposed. An anti-hero who didn’t ask you to believe in him. His karaoke-slaying falsetto and crooked-eye weirdness gave the impression of a long suffering schoolboy – a life spent reading in shady rooms, sticky with illness, never getting enough sun.
Creep was a song for a generation of boys lusting clumsily through the schoolyard of life. Yorke said: “It is one of the things I’m always trying: To assert a sexual persona and on the other hand trying desperately to negate it.” Repressed sexuality was something that would define my school years. On one hand I was trying to be nice and Christian, and on the other I was feverish with hormones, keeping a diary of which girls had looked at me that day and taking too many baths.
Drying up in conversation, you will be the one who cannot talk
All your insides fall to pieces, you just sit there wishing you could still make love
When I first heard this lyric I nearly cried with embarrassment. Any closer to the bone and I’d have a heart attack. When asked what inspired the songs on The Bends Thom Yorke replied “Impotence.” While he was probably referring to a more general feeling of powerlessness, I clung to the word like a life raft. I’d just spent a bleak Australia Day home alone not having sex with my girlfriend. My Oasis poster wasn’t helping. I could hear Noel and Liam dissing me, back with another one of their cock-rocking bleats. The Bends was audio balm – gentle medicine for my collapsed soul. Someone felt as sad as I did.
* * *
Kid A is my favourite Radiohead album, and in my opinion the last musical masterpiece. I remember bringing it home in second year Uni – my flatmate Adam and I turned off all the lights and lay on the lounge-room floor, swimming in sound. A few days later I was home by myself listening to the vocal crescendo of ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack.’ The CD skipped, causing Thom Yorke to hold the note indefinitely. Perfectly.
I’ll see you in the next liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…
I stared at the stereo in disbelief. It was bizarre and beautiful. A moment created just for me.
I remember Triple J’s Morning Show first playing my favourite track The National Anthem.
“It’s a long way from Creep isn’t it?” Said Francis Leach, with a sense of respect and trepidation, as if he still wasn’t sure which camp he belonged to. The disc dropped like a buzz saw, cleaving the world in two like great art. There was no sort-of liking Kid A, you were either saluting their inventiveness or mourning the lack of guitar songs. On writing the album Thom Yorke said he’d “completely had it with melody” and just wanted rhythm. He liked the idea of his voice being used an instrument rather than having a leading role.
The National Anthem is menace and finesse. Ominous and tough. Haunted and defiant. Entrancingly simple and deftly layered. It’s strut-prog drone-funk that flutters the subconscious and churns the stomach like butter.
Death jazz.
At 0:01 we hear an electro glitch, the delay of a switch – the mother ship of malevolence warms her valves. The bass lays cables of dark fuzz, the stunningly primitive three note loop lurking down the scale. (Yorke wrote the riff when he was 16). The cymbal smashes in like white sun on ice, leading a galloping drum pattern, swinging and bowling like an eight legged kinetic road horse.
At 0:22 the cymbal is robbed on the first bar – delectable editing from Nigel Godrich. The percussion jumps a ravine before picking up on the fifth. It’s dropouts like these that add funk to the fury. At 0:54 there’s lashings of ride cymbal smacking. Beneath it synth lasers spiral and howl like remote space stations shooting digital comets into the lunar abyss. Snippets of ghostly brass warp and warble. The song paces back and forth like a horseman.
When I listen to The National Anthem on public transport, I feel tough and fucked up at the same time. It’s the soundtrack for my loner superiority. If I were a professional wrestler it would be my themesong. I’d be called The Ultimate Worrier. My signature move would be The Schitz. I’d wriggle my limbs uncontrollably, psyching out my opponent.
Synths and cymbals stop. Vocal begins.
Everyone (bassbassbassbass-bassbassbass)
Everyone around here (kickety-snarity-kickety-snarity)
Everyone is so (smasssshhhhhhhhhhh) near
and so alone.
Thom Yorke’s voice has a metallic echo on it – half robot / half ghost. We are treated to a Theremin trail and the wack-tableaux of a child’s la la la. It’s an eerie nod to the patronising monotony of city living. The lobotomy of misspent intelligence. The kid in the back seat of the car, young and free, poking his tongue out as your blood boils.
Everyone / Everyone is so near / Everyone is ? fear / It’s all a lie / It’s all a lie.
There is no song more audacious. From it’s very title it runs a dark claw beneath the stiff upper lip of modern day Britannia. It’s the Kraut-rock opera for a traffic jam, a pummelling hymn for those encased in the metal coffin of capitalism. The spiritually constipated. The Ok Commuters. It’s an unromanticised, unapologetic, undiluted musical army barnstorming the restrained recesses of popular music and turning over tables like Jesus in a temple. Charlatans! Hypocrites! It cries. Your pomposity and saccharinity has stagnated. Where’s the show don’t tell?
At 2:38 horns become weapons. Radiohead show us what blood and guts sounds like. The microscopic screech of a life half-lived. Amplified. Contorted. Mutated beyond human shape. Alarm wails for the professionally world-weary. Rails buckle under artificial heat. Trains of thought rattle and tip. Dreams lay crushed in stagnant ambulances. Unapproachable wounds. The blunt reality of our unpublishable selves.
Nick Drake sang I am the parasite of this town, while Trent Reznor wrote You could have it all / my empire of dirt. REM’s Everybody Hurts film clip features human traffic stepping out of their cars and moving on. The closing three minutes of The National Anthem is a furnace of sonic distress. A brassy black hole where sentiments melt down to their base elements and erupt with backlogged, unresolved emotion.
It’s all a lie.
It’s all a lie.
At 3:46 there is respite. The song stops to breathe, like a crazed man tired from self-rumpus. Voice and trumpet are one. Blood flows. Traffic moves. At 4:03 a string is tightened. Nerves pull taut. At 4:08, a death scene. A lone trumpet speeds out of control. A poisoned wind-nymph spiralling through death throes. It’s musically graphic. The sound paints a thousand pictures.
The horns are wonderfully ugly, like the creatures in Pan’s Labyrinth, there is a labour of love in their ghoulish design. They bleat like sheep, wail like children, harrumph like Roald Dahl characters, zigzag like autistic etch-a-sketch, compete like sperm, jostle like chimps and clog up the void like orchestral off-cuts. As with an audio Jackson Pollock, strips of colour have been thrown on the canvas with such precision of vision that the final mix, as messy as sin, convinces the audience it is as much and as little as it needs to be.
It’s busy.
Like life.
By 5:00 the song’s been going for dog days. No more ABAB. This is alphabet soup. I want to cry. Sympathy for the demons. The subconscious hits and conscious misses. A booklet of bruises. At 5:15 the song runs out of steam. In the studio Johnny Greenwood orders the players to choose a random note, waving his stick like a wizard. “Just blow. Just blow, just blow, just blow.” There are two such ghastly blasts. The sword is driven into the dragon. Swirls. A chilling vocal sample. Man caught in limbo. Falling awake.
Delay is sped up and sped down – the Godrich signature.
Finally, there is end.
The National Anthem is compelling, disturbing, offensive and exciting. An anthem that hammers the dimensions. Each play, a moment in history. A personal revolution.
* * *
To off-set their overblown presence, Radiohead are often met with a teenage aloofness. “I kind of stopped bothering with them.” They dwell in their own chamber – off the mainstream radar but alternatively popular beyond scale. I like to think of them as The Beatles of my time. Too often they are the round peg for my holy soul.
First published Mess+Noise 2011. Illustrations by Leigh Rigozzi.
Welcome to the new blog. (A blog is not a website, I’m learning – you can’t just write a post and have it send to the page you’d like. It’s like driving a manual.) I’m taking my writing more seriously this year – watch out. My new book (Funemployed) will appear in June! I’ll endeavour to add to this each week and not be sabotaged by American spell-checks. (“I put a spell on you…”)
f u z z y ⚡ l o g i c 