In high school we’re taught Pythagoras’ theorem and how to use a Bunsen burner – but not life skills like how to end a friendship. Acquaintance Management could have been a three-day tutorial in between sex ed and P.E., including cheeky themes on mental health, self-respect and boundaries; instead it’s outsourced to the “school of hard knocks” of our twenties.
Terminating a romantic relationship is a walk in the park compared to the swimming-with-sharks nebulous of telling a comrade their services are superfluous to requirements. Maybe it was simpler in kindergarten. One minute you’re playing blocks, the next you’re on the other side of the mats sipping milk with someone new. As grown-ups we can’t possibly express ourselves so clearly; squeezing sentiment through an elaborate set of euphemisms, excuses and hoop jumping.
My friend Josh once wrote a song called ‘Friendshit.’ The theme was “if I met some of my friends from school now I’d hate them.” The irony there is Josh and I aren’t great friends at the moment. It’s because I’m holding onto stuff from high school. Hey, I’m a collector and nostalgia is in.
Some friends are complicated. Some friendships don’t stand up to forensic examination. Who are you again? Why are you still on the emotional payroll? Some are due for an audit.
I propose a conscious unmating ritual down at the pub. You enjoy a long handshake, avoid eye contact and share a memory over a brief pot of beer. You turn your backs and walk off into the night like contented cowboys. No harm, no foul.
A few years ago I ended things by email. I told my ex-friend Matt that we’d had a good run but it wasn’t working for me anymore. Perhaps we would catch up for coffee down the road. My friend (of twenty years) never responded. It was a bit of a desperate move in emotionally challenging times. I felt fatigued and threatened. There was a motivation to separate myself from complicated people.
I’m in awe of parents with their “get out of friend jail” card in having a kid who is sick. Recently I’ve witnessed the raw power of the first-time parent who is renovating. Now that’s a David Copperfield-grade ability to disappear from a social circle. I don’t think my friend Hugh is just “taking a break” either. I think this time it’s over. The invite to the pub was declined. Fitting, seeing as I started the cancelling. Four years ago I delayed a dinner plan because I really wanted to go on a date. “There’s a girl I’ve met online who I’m nuts about and she’s only free tomorrow eve.”
Hugh seemed accepting. “Don’t worry about me though, make the most of the date night I reckon.” Thumbs up emoji.
Months later, I realised he was being sarcastic. (Well, I don’t know this for certain). Damn, I thought. You made a mistake back there. I emailed an apology, but I haven’t seen him in person since. Then COVID happened and I moved back to my home town.
No words were ever said about the status of our ten year friendship. I’m pretty sure this would be a time when someone older and wiser – maybe someone called Reg – would tell me that when someone has a child everything changes. In the Reg vacuum, I’m left with an in-house anxiety author compelled to spin elaborate narratives with me as the villain and the victim.
Friendships aren’t forever and that’s fine. They come and go like marvellous adventures. They fill our memories with gold. Give that chum a certificate of merit in your mind and move on. Leave room in your heart for a spectacular second act.
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.
I wrote a column about my love of arpeggiated synths for music site Mess+Noise in 2011. Since then, I’ve observed the explosion in popularity of what has long been my favourite sound in music. In short, it’s a run of synthesizer notes that groove back and forth – sparkling, colourful, magical and mysterious. The audio equivalent of a palindrome. A mirror image wave form, glowing and sparking on loop like an enchanted roller coaster.
Here’s a quick example – the spritely business partying up the back of Lionel Richie’s Dancing On The Ceiling as demonstrated:
The most popular example of recent times is the Stranger Things opening theme which dropped in 2016. A good example of the slower, more agitating end of the arpeggiator spectrum.
Like the show (set in 1984), the theme was a throwback to a time when pop songs like The Never Ending Story and The Riddle (both released in ’84) and There Must Be An Angel (’85) had a melancholic sonic blowwave wafting ephemerally through the back of the mix.
In 2013 my favourite band Boards of Canada utilised their biggest batch of arpeggiated synths to date in a 1980s John Carpenter soundtrack tribute Tomorrow’s Harvest. Like Stranger Things, they took the warm cosmos of the Popcorn sound and reduced it to a steely, robotic chill.
To me, arpeggiated synths are the sound of infinity. The glorious, cascading, expanding universe of my imagination. The spiritual projection of what I imagine an all-star all-flying glittering afterlife to be. The Never Ending Story’s Fantasia meets Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road.
A frosted, pulsing rainbow run.
Echo nebulas, rebounding through the galaxy.
Fireflies of sound, synchronised like hexagons.
In 2011 arpeggiated synths were thin on the ground in alternative music. There was my favourite song of all time Infinity by Guru Josh, in which he synth-bombed a whole decade with his audacious lyrics and a (count it) two minute piano solo. In grade ten I requested Infinity as part of my ‘Hi 5’ favourite songs of all-time played by Michael Tunn on Triple J! For a long time the only copy I had of the extended mix (which wasn’t on the CD album) was the cassette recording from the radio, including the bump where I accidentally pressed record.
Infinity contains what I believe to be the best 20 seconds of recorded music, ever. [2:06 – 2:25 of the 12” version]
For the rest of the nineties the only place to find arpeggiated synths was in remixes of obscure techno songs like Pizzaman’s Happiness. 2000 marked an indie-rock retro explosion as Grandaddy brought the arpeggiator love on their landmark album The Software Slump. Tracks such as Crystal Lake were striking for the juxtaposition of synth used in a rock song. (The origins of which could be traced back to 1972’s landmark single Virginia Plain by Roxy Music, the same year that Popcorn was released. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon would appear the following year). Radiohead, having successfully married computers on Kid A were soon joined by Wilco with Heavy Metal Drummer and in five years LCD Soundsystem would take the dance/rock fusion full circle.
If xylophone is “the music you hear when skeletons are dancing” (Homer Simpson) then arpeggiators are the sound of a unicorn galloping.
Sometimes I’m asked whether I’ve ever wanted to make my own synth music. Unfortunately I’ve never afforded my own machine to play with. It’s a sweet dream with a long tail. I picture myself locked away in a strawberry-lime studio with lava lamp, buggy posters and velour robe, crafting my own downtempo ambient electronica like a sporty Tasmanian Jean-Michel Jarre.
In 2012 I made an unreleased album working with Melbourne cult-electro wildman SPOD (Brent Griffin) and my favourite psychedelic songwriter Richard Cartright of Sydney’s Richard In Your Mind. SPOD had a vintage Micromoog, the kind of which Popcorn was no doubt composed on. It looks like the dashboard of Dr Who’s Tardis and is about as abstract to operate.
No ‘demo’ button here. You twist knobs and dials, squashing and squelching the soundwaves like a lightsaber manipulator. I watched SPOD with awe reserved for the Level 20 teenagers at my kiddie video arcade. This trucker-capped wizard of rhythm flounced and flocked the unit until it was growling and flanging with the savageness of Tom Morello’s guitar amp.*
Richard had an Oberheim synth with 100 prebuilt effects. He was soon able to recreate the impossibly warm sounds of everything from Take My Breath Away to Great Southern Land. It was exciting just to be in the same room as the equipment responsible for the friendly radio ghosts of my childhood. These unsung studio sentinels evoking the underlying longing and lunar loneliness that make up the soft padded bed of my eighties nostalgia.
Oh yeah, I got to play with synths on my 2009 album Brown & Orange. Hanna Silver had a retro Korg with some delightful presets. The most notable use was this track, which was always a bit of a messy record favourite.
And now, the original column from 2011 followed by some recent examples of my favourite arpeggiated synth based tunes, featuring the likes of Daft Punk, Beach House and Gorillaz. You can make your own arpeggiated sequences on this Online Sequencer if you wish. Dig.
TREBLE TREBLE // POPCORN AND INFINITY (2011)
illustrations by Leigh Rigozzi
My first memory of music is listening to Popcorn by Hot Butter. I’m standing beside Nan and Pop’s ‘Stereo Sonic’ entertainment deck with black sponge headphones wrapped around my noggin. I load a cassette into the deck and press down on the chunky metallic button. The oceanic tape hiss fills with a sci-fi whine, followed by a warbly synth waddle of baroque alien ducks and the novelty combustion of a robotic, whistle-ready melody.
I sit mesmerised, staring at a yellow and brown swirl print cushion. These sounds are colour to a blind man. An aurora to a caveman. A Christmas and birthday imagination sandwich. Cerebral sorcery that fits like a tshirt and springs like a trampoline. Music was shaking hands and asking to be my friend.
The song continues, the pad chord bed hitting the profound F#m. The vibrations enter my ears like molten fireworks then vapourise, leaving puffs of awe. Popcorn, at once silly and profound, is a Moog minstrel with a weeping heart. The jaunty lead tickles my chin while the broody rhythm of the bridge places a steady hand on my chest. The song is trying to tell me something.
At 1:08, something incredible occurs. The carriage of the song slips off its rails and sails into the air, gliding on a glitteringly gorgeous magic carpet of harpsichord and arpeggiated minor chords. The chords are broken down to their base notes and knitted back together to form a musical spine which flexes and flickers, like the tail of an electric dragon. The sonic flux swings and snakes, mirroring the waves and mountain tops of a stereo equaliser. The luck dragon cycles its way through the dazzling axis of my mind. Lava coated flowers burn red, blue then yellow. My LCD creature zips and darts, spelling mathematical shapes before exploding into rainbows and lightning rods.
After this uplifting bridge the song breaks down into the tribal simplicity of tom drum and tambourine. An anxious two-note timer synth creeps in, adding a sense of urgency. Each layer of instrumentation is cleared, leaving only the ticking of a laser clock, soon blotted out by the squelch of Martian flatulence. It is at once comical and menacing. The sound of a spaceman being obliterated in a Commodore 64 game.
I take off the headphones and gaze at the rows of tapes and photo frames, my head slowly morphing back into shape like ear plug foam. What is this “music?” This kaleidoscope of sounds. I am caught hook, line and syncopation.
My second memory of music is listening to I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. For this six year old, the song is trumped by the micro-single which opens the tape. The XDR Test Toneburst that sits at the beginning of cassette albums from the era. An audio distress flare sounding out the basic spectrum of tones from sub bass to high treble. An arpeggiated fantail for my brain to decode.
The song plays. I am drawn to the warmth of the synths, blending sweetly with the early 80’s compression and Wonders rich voice. Listening back, I detect lightly arpeggiated notes in the mix, adding a mystical, tinkling ambience – crystal rain on glass. (A similar effect to The Never Ending Story.) The song has a lightweight of melancholy I am drawn to, and while my emotional palette is primitive, my synaesthesiac instincts associate the thick pad of the minor chords with a quiet internal warmth, as my heart increases the blood flow around my body, sending a rainstorm of thoughtfulness to my tummy.
Being a child of the 80’s, it’s little wonder my earliest memories of music are mostly synthesiser based. A glance at the children’s programming of the time shows cult classics such as Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold using the kind of synth-heavy soundtracks that Gary Numan could take back to his laser pyramid. I recently rewatched Mysterious Cities of Gold and found to my delight that not only had the animation aged gracefully, but the soundtrack was a full bodied tremolo dreamscape.
One of my first cinema memories was the opening credits to The Never Ending Story, featuring the title track playing while the camera tracked over dreamy clouds. While the single already contained brilliant melodic structure and a rousing chorus, my brain was excited by the arpeggiated bed, sublimely oscillating in the background like robo piano roll. Coupled with the epic adventure of the film, The Never Ending Story made me want to melt from happiness and sadness all at once. Add the prettiness of the childlike empress, the savagery of the wolf and ARTAX! and you have an original sex and death soundtrack with training wheels.
A few years later, in 1990, I would accidentally bump into the greatest arpeggiated synth sequence of all time. The song was called Infinity by the UK artist Guru Josh. The song revolved around a melody played on saxophone utilising a stirring F-C-G chord sequence similar to that found in Manic Street Preacher’s If You Tolerate This, Live’s Lightning Crashes and Scatman John’s Scatman.
Behind the sax are heavenly orchestral pad synths punctuated by a subtle oscillation of notes, brilliantly complimenting the chord sequence but not yet fanning all the hues to its peacock tail. It’s an ambitiously anthemic and acutely ambient opening, especially when listened to through earnest young ears.
The verses comprise of Guru Josh staking audacious claim to the entire decade “1990’s – time for the guru” backed by some industrial Terminator-esque effects and scattershot house beats. A looming three note bass line keeps the track in check while Guru Josh scats some ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ landing somewhere between Max Headroom, Kraftwerk and David Koresh.
At the two minute mark of the extended mix we are treated to a twenty second burst of what I have, for most of my life, accepted to be the greatest section of music ever recorded. The chorus chords are reprised with an arpeggiated lead running brightly over the top. The stirring ambience of angelic electro wash, flush with a dramatic major to minor chord change are punctuated with a constellation of digital train tracks whose rise and fall evoke the exotic quasars of my spatial awareness. It’s like a squadron of effervescent sprites line my kinetic pathways, waving brilliant sonic pom poms as I run a victory lap around my swirling fantasia – the music shining a neon blacklight on the dream bursts of my mind’s eye – a cross between the last rainbow level in Mario Kart, the time travel scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey and a Flaming Lips concert.
The reverb on the mix evokes an underwater dream – the audio equivalent of bubbles bursting as they rush to the surface. It is not dissimilar to Caribou’s Sun at the 3:40 mark, from a house album he wanted to sound organically underwater. Infinity creates a magic speedway inside my imagination where natural and synthetic are one. Circuits become veins and stars turn to pixels. I am the king of colours – flying through a psychedelic utopia, smelling the freshness and licking tears from my lips.
For a period of my teenage years, Infinity was my drug. I would slip on the earphones, press play on my walkman and escape. I lived for the arpeggiated section, and thankfully, after an astoundingly lengthy (2:05!) piano solo, Infinity offers a sixty second outro of the enchanting sequence, spiralling skywards before dipping and dissipating into a mushroom cloud of ambience.
I was finding my own non-druggy relationship between electronic dance music and hallucinating. During car trips, I’d disappear into deep trances, triggering the stained glass screensaver of my mind. In grade ten I fully explored this concept with a short film I wrote called Infinity. The story revolved around a DJ who believed that if you took the live speaker wires and inserted them directly into the brain, while high on a certain drug, you could physically transform and “become the song.” (It was not long after The Lawnmower Man where the protagonist became pure energy via virtual reality). In the final scene two investigators burst into the DJ’s compound (bed-sit) to find he has been successful with his experiment. On his bed burns the infinity symbol, rendered in blue flames.
What I was expressing was my deep desire to completely connect with electronic songs like Popcorn, The Never Ending Story, Infinity and whatever was happening on my Strictly Techno 2 cassette. I wanted to trip as hard as I could, powered by my imagination and a box of Nerds. Like in the book Gillian Rubenstein’s Space Demons where the characters are trapped inside a video game, I wanted to be sucked inside these songs – able to fly along the sonic dimension they existed within. I could hear and see music, I wanted to be able to touch, taste and smell it as well. I don’t think many other people my age wanted to smell anything to do with Guru Josh. He had a goatee and always looked sweaty. (I later discovered he fell out of favour after publicly supporting Thatcherism).
My love of arpeggiated synths continues to this day, and I’ve been drawn to it in recent alt-rock tracks such as Grandaddy’s The Crystal Lake, Wilco’s Heavy Metal Drummer and the music of Ratatat. I’ve used it on one of my own songs For The Love I Have For You, to moderate success, but have resisted the urge to buy my own keyboard. I fear that once I find the arpeggiation settings and put on the cans, I’ll swim down a sonic wormhole of no return.
FURTHER LISTENING — A PHOENIX DOUBLE HELIX
The Gorillaz Plastic Beach features an arpeggiator drop so satisfying that the comments reference the 0:41 point of the song!
When you’re sleeping and your body does that fake fall thing
When you’re playing Rock paper scissors in the mirror and you win.
Gorillaz // Plastic Beach
Slow Meadow // Artificial Algorithm
DIG ON THE FULL PLAYLIST…
* Rage Against The Machine made their guitars sound like electronic effects, and each album contained in the liner notes “no samples, keyboards or synthesizers used in the making of this record.”
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.
I’m not always reading. I wrote a piece for Meanjin about this. I also gave anecdotes to the ABC about self-doubt recently. I answered these questions for Hobart’s Weekend of Reading festival last year. Dig.
Q: What is a book that everyone should read?
Maus by Art Spiegalman. It’s a graphic novel about the holocaust by the cartoonist who used to do the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards from the 1980s. It teaches you about everything that is relevant in our modern world – in case you need some perspective – which you probably do (no offence).
Q: If you could save one book in a fire, what would it be?
My original pressing of Grug and the Rainbow. Ted Prior made only five copies with an actual rainbow inside. That guy is next level.
Q: What are you currently reading?
The blurbs of several books in my friends’ bookcase including Extinction. Seriously, who would read a book that’s all internal monologue and no paragraphs (sorry Tom Doig x). Gee you ‘readers’ are suckers for punishment. I got the Karl Ove Knausgaard cookbook and it was 1000 pages of his memories of soup. I don’t read so many books these days but I do like settling into middle age by enjoying the weekend papers.
Want more fun? I delivered further witted insights about my bookish behaviour to Brunswick Bound here. I read out my grade seven diary in the seventh episode of the Get Up Mum radio series. What have you!
“On my bed is a new pillow case and matching doona cover which has lots of crazy padded squares in green and white and pink paisley. I have a dark brown wood veneer bedhead with bedside table and three drawers attached. On the bedside table is an old style silver reading lamp and my ‘P’Jammer’ clock radio that used to be Mum’s. There’s also my new Korg guitar tuner and the book Michael and the Secret War which I have to finish and return to the library by next week. I’m really enjoying it.
It’s about a boy whose mirror cracks and from then on his life is in turmoil. Strange creatures come and visit him and he unintentionally gives them his help. He gets messages from the ‘enemy’ asking him to stop helping. In the end he helps the friends to win the secret war. I reckon I’ll give it nine out of ten.”
Taken from the first draft of Get Up Mum.
MY REVIEW FOR ONE OF THE LAST THINGS I READ: KENNETH COOK’S WAKE IN FRIGHT
204 pages – feels like a short read.
School teacher goes on a dark bender in an Australian desert town.
Mood: Hot, dark and claustrophobic. The hazy mash of inebriation. Trapped in a car with foul men. Face to face with a stabbed kangaroo.
Best sentence: Things half remembered and terribly feared, shrieked at him; tears of mystic terror rimmed his eyes.
Original review: “A classic novel which became a classic film. The Outback without the sentimental bulldust. Australia without the sugar coating.” Robert Drewe
Funfact: A keen amateur lepidopterist, Cook established the first butterfly farm in Australia on the banks of Sydney’s Hawkesbury River in the 1970s.
Best Australianism: “What the blazes…”
Suggested food pairings: Overdone steak from a hot bonnet. Lashing of cold beer.
SOME OF THE BEST BOOKS I CAN REMEMBER READING
A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius // Dave Eggers
Came through the uni magazine pigeon hole when I was twenty and basically influenced how I write.
Space Demons // Gillian Rubinstein
Came through the primary school library pigeon hole and took me inside an Amstrad and influenced how I problem solve.
A Confederacy Of Dunces // John Kennedy Toole
Gotta be the funniest book I’ve ever read. Cannot look at a hotdog the same again.
Lolly Scramble // Tony Martin
Followed closely by Sir Tone. Fab book cover!
On Chesil Beach // Ian McEwan
Freedom // Jonathan Franzen
He was like the new Eggers for me. Who knew Twitter had Tall Poppy Syndrome.
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden // Hannah Green
A brill book about schizophrenia which was always sitting mysteriously on the bookshelf at Nan & Pop’s. The girl on the cover gave me my biggest ethereal crush since The Childlike Empress.
Life After God // Douglas Coupland
Catherine Duniam recommended this. I cried massively at one point. One of those big ones that taps into your locked up late 20s melancholy.
Maus // Art Spiegelman
Similarly. That last page panel reduced me to liquid form. It didn’t help that the girl in it was called Anja.
The Sense Of An Ending // Julian Barnes
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time // Mark Haddon
1984 // George Orwell
A documentary, non?
Lolita // Vladimir Nabokov
I did think at the time it was the best written book I’d ever read.
Bridge To Terebithia // Katherine Paterson
Also one of the last books I had read to me. There was much talk at Parklands High School about how much Miss Stones cried when she got up to that bit.
The Journey // John Mardsen
Read to us by Ms Moore in Grade Nine. She refused to vocalise the infamous ‘barn scene’ and said we had to read pages 57-59 ourselves. (A young man gets in touch with himself.) Incidentally, I absolutely dug the Tomorrow When The War Began series but forgot to read the last one and now I can’t remember what happened. Shit. (Sorry John, who signed my first edition ‘The Journey’ in 2018 and said it was probably his favourite of his own books.)
Chronicles, Volume One // Bob Dylan
The Big Sleep // Raymond Chandler A lovely gift! I really dig the writing style. Probably my favourite book cover.
Tess of the d’Urbevilles // Thomas Hardy
Did I enjoy it? They made us read it in high school. Essay hint: The weather reflects her outlook.
To Kill a Mockingbird // Harper Lee
It’s a yessum from me.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close // Jonathan Safran Foer
Grug and the Rainbow // Ted Prior
A metaphor for…everything. I used to read this at the end of gigs during the mid 2010’s.
Strawberry Hills Forever // Vanessa Berry My favourite Australian author and retro-genius. Seek out her recent output Mirror Sydney!
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories // Etgar Keret
A very funny, clever dude. Recommended to me by Vanessa.
Honourable mentions to Christopher Pike, Anna Krien, J.D. Salinger, Enid Blyton, Nicole Krauss, the Fighting Fantasy series & David Foster Wallace (Mainly for his essay Ticket To The Fair in which the greatest writer of our time reviews the US equivalent of the Burnie Show.)
Last book I technically read? Maybe The Circle by Dave Eggers. I thought it was fine. Or Follyfoot Farm by Monica Dickens as part of my Get Up Mum research (Mum always had it lying around). Research also included Where’s Morning Goneby Barney Roberts, the only other memoir I know set in the north-west coast of Tasmania. I remember it was a big deal for Nan and Pop in the late 1980s. Someone had come along and painted their childhood.
Hey, I’m not the only one not reading!
(Taken from Guardian interview with Etgar Keret 2019):
What’s the last really great book that you read?
I’m usually honest in my writing and less honest in interviews, but I can tell you that for the past year, I didn’t read any book, which is the first time since I went to first grade.
Why was that?
My wife and I were working on a very demanding TV series, a project that demanded relocation and that we direct in French, when we don’t speak French, so all in all it was a very overwhelming experience. It took a lot of my inner space.
This year, I’ve been doing something that – if we talk about changes in humanity – all humanity’s been doing, but I guess I gave myself a very good alibi. Whenever I wanted to delve into a book, I would go and watch a Netflix series instead; I must say for pure laziness, because I think the big difference between a TV or film and reading a book is that reading a book demands creativity from you, because you need to imagine things and you need to create them in your mind. And I felt so drained at the end of the day that I wanted somebody else to think out how the characters look.
As a child, were you a keen reader?
From the moment I started writing, I read less. I think reading was a way of widening the world in which I lived, and that the moment I started writing I found a different way to widen it. So I would alternate between writing such a reality or reading such a reality.
2009 was the busiest year of my life. I was doing everything. In the space of 12 months I made two albums, wrote and performed a new Comedy Festival show (which encored in Fringe Festival), orchestrated a national album tour, got a gig acting on John Safran’s TV show, wrote monthly columns for Frankie magazine, went in Comedy Festival Roadshow, moved house, broke up and fractured my humerus in a bicycle mishap.
I didn’t necessarily need a time intensive weekly sketch radio show to helm, but the thing was, I’d accidentally-on-purpose landed this dream opportunity to go wild creatively on a respected citywide platform.
I’d been going into Triple R a lot to appear on the spoken word show Aural Text, hosted by poet Alicia Sometimes. Each summer, the tradition was regular hosts took holidays and had a b-team fill in. I agreed to take on a four episode fill-in job for Aural Text, 12-2pm Wednesdays.
I gathered together a hit crew of my favourite alt-comedy pals. We wrote some sketches and ideas. We brought scripts in to perform live. We lined up interviews with local notables such as Marieke Hardy. While our interview skills left a lot to be desired, station manager Mick James was so impressed with our comedy that he had to stick his head in at one point to confirm we were actually busting it live.
“You’re the most organised summer-fill I’ve ever seen,” he said.
It boded well.
By the end of our month, Mick was a fan. He offered us our own regular timeslot. We ended up kicking out the long-running comedy show in the Monday 7pm slot. They weren’t exactly happy about it. They gave us six months. The show ran for five years.
Thrilled with this promotion, we went to town. Writing, recording and home-editing our own sketches. We would leave ourselves room to do a news and reviews segment live in the studio. Add in special comedy guests and maybe one silly song and you had the hour.
Damien Lawlor was the unofficial captain of the good ship weird. His unbridled tenacity single-handedly kept the thing alive. Charlie Brooker grade genius engine of under the skin, on the money, in your face segments including the long-running Hugh Jackman Diaries and hyper-local gems such as Punt Road & Music Snobs Through The Ages.
Josh Earl was his loyal lieutenant. He brought whip-smart pop-cultural satire smarts to add lightness to Damien’s odd nebula. Songsmith laureate Craig Lee Smith made up his own songs about towels & biscuits.
Hats off to Eva Johansen, member of cabaret comedy act Caravan Of Love. I think she is a vocal genius. One of the main reasons I’m kicking off this reel is to share her delightful talents.
Lime Champions! Sketch comedy for men and women. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of fun. It was on when people were getting tea ready. I’ve been carrying around a CD of my favourite originals. I think they’re okay.
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.
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NOTE: John Lennon doesn’t believe in yoga, but I do.
It started off innocently enough. One day, I found him sitting next to a fellow uni student mate of mine. From my glass collecting orbits, I could gather that Pat was a clingy old fullah, who appeared to be doing most of the talking and occasionally reaching for Bruce’s leg. Bruce, the cool customer, stared defiantly at his newspaper, occasionally making a laconical remark about sport or something irrelevant.
‘You’re a real nice bloke,’ Pat slurred from the bottom rungs of his nasal cavities. He had something wrong with his cleft palate, which left his face sort of crooked. His eyes were deep sea moons through powerful glasses.
‘Yeah you’d be really good for social work, you seem like a caring sort of person.’ I’d told him of my desires to enter the field. Then left, for fear he’d want to give me another handshake with the caressing thumb.
My shift finishes. With Pat in the toilets, I go over to Bruce. His lazy eyes roll over the pokie horizon.
‘He keeps on asking me to move in with him. I just keep staring off into the distance, in the hope that it looks thoughtful.’ Bruce demonstrates one of these stares. He does indeed look thoughtful – an expression of one who has done too much thinking.
Pat returns. He is having another beer. I don’t really want him to have another beer. He sings my praises again. And squeezes Bruce’s knee. Bruce does not flinch. Bruce goes to the toilet. Bruce is buying the next beer.
‘I wonder where he is?’ Pat says, checking his watch. I estimate Bruce has probably been gone fifteen minutes. Bruce isn’t coming back.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say in a tone that says I’m not sure about anything. The place smells of cigarette guts. I run my fingers up and down the material of my work pants. There’s hundreds of lint balls to pick off. A blind person could make a story out of them. There’s half a beer. Chit chat. Pat’s eyes are two blue torches in my face.
‘You’re a real nice bloke Justin, I’m so glad to have met you.’
‘I’m glad Pat, you’re a real nice bloke too.’
‘It’s been a year since my wife died.’
‘Oh really? I’m really sorry.’
‘Yeah, I dunno mate. It gets so lonely in the house now.’
‘Yeah, it must be hard.’
Another silence. Pat fills the silences by staring at me with a look of someone who can’t believe what is happening to them.
‘You know what Justin?’ He leans in. Then pulls away, as if in two minds. He shakes his head. It’s all too much. ‘I could very easily love you Justin. You’re the kind of person I could love. But for all the right reasons.’
Yep. My gentle skin is pricked with alarm ripples. From this point on there will be no more small talk between us – ever.
‘I’ve got a secret to tell you mate, and I’m not sure if I should. I’m scared what you’ll think of me.’
‘It’s okay Pat, I’m not going to judge you.’
‘Thanks mate, you’re a real beautiful person, you know that? You are.’
I’m blushing in my uniform.
‘Oh mate, it’s hard to say.’ Pat lights the cigarette he’s offered to me a couple of times. I should have accepted.
‘I’ve been married 38 years, to a really beautiful woman, and I’ve had two kids. And I miss her like hell. But all that time we were married, most of that’s been a lie.’
Nod.
‘I’ve got a thing. And it’s really hard to live with.’
Pause. Breath.
‘I like blokes mate.’
He likes blokes.
‘Does that change what you think of me?’
‘No Pat not at all, why should it? I’m not worried.’
I’m not worried. I have a sip of my beer. My other hand is engaged in a handshake with the thumb.
‘I love you and I respect you Justin. I respect you mate. And I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you.’
I’ve shut down. I’m smiling and nodding. Pat has broken me with his intensity. I’m waiting for my beer to drain and the club to explode me out onto the street. I am hungering the hazy Saturday sun.
‘I’ve really got to go Pat. I’m going to a concert tonight.’
‘Give me a call sometime Justin.’ Those eyes staring at me. Those glass globes.
‘Yeah I will. I’ve really got to go mate.’
At 4:17pm, on February 21st 2002, a youth and a gentleman hugged in the old lounge of the Canberra Labor Club. No one saw. No one knew. No one cared and nothing changed.
Three months later. Today. Pat still says ‘you’re a beautiful person’ to me and ‘I love you.’ Now he has added ‘I only come in here to see you.’
‘Why didn’t you fuckin’ call me?’
‘Pat, I saw you last Saturday.’ My tone is defensive, which it never usually is.
‘I think about you all the time mate. I really want to have a beer and a talk with you.’
A beer and a talk has been promised since February, but so far I’ve dodged it. My heart is turning into a spa bath of blood. Today I am on tray service to the poker machines. As I wait for the barman to get my drink I glare out the side of my glasses. Pat is badly pixilated in the distance. I can make out his red and black bomber jacket and a small head with two giant windows facing me.
I can’t see his eyes. I don’t know if he can see mine. I am ignoring him.
My head jeers me. ‘There’s your boyfriend…hey Justin, your boyfriend wants to see you.’If any of the bar staff said that to me I think I’d have a stroke.
Pat says I love you, like others say how are you. His hand reaches out to me whenever I serve him at the bar. His grip traps mine while his thumb stretches around like a faceless worm.
Two days ago, when Pat came up to buy a VB, he asked what my last name was and walked away. The next time he asked where I lived. I said the street. He asked who I lived with. I said my girlfriend and best friend. Then, with the honesty trigger which continues to get me into trouble, I said I was thinking about moving.
‘Move in with me. No, I shouldn’t put that pressure on you. But I’d love it mate. I get so lonely, I’d love to take care of you.’
Beer pouring, head screaming. I don’t need you to look after me. I’m twenty one. Beer comes out. No words.
I am uncomfortable in my own workplace. I am thinking about Pat. His very presence smears my chest with something thick and unpleasant. I am angry.
After almost backing out, I take my lemon lime and bitters and walk towards him. There is another work mate with him, whom I use as a support.
‘You’ve got a break have you?’
‘Yeah, I thought I’d better give myself one.’ I’m desperate to keep things jammed in small talk.
The other worker returns to the bar, leaving Pat and I alone.
Silence. Here comes the handshake.
‘Andrew’s a top bloke. But he’s not very happy here.’
‘No, he hasn’t been since I’ve worked here.’ I’m surprised and ecstatic. I must keep Pat talking about something other than me.
‘The place just wouldn’t be the same without him.’
‘No, he’s a top bloke.’
I take a sip of the bitters. It is all rich fizz and lemon. I am never confident that I’ve made them properly. The silence is too long.
‘I’m sorry mate if I’ve come on too strong. You just tell me, you say ‘Pat, back off’ and I will.’
‘Yeah, well, I think you should.’ Toy guns are blazing.
‘I love you so much Justin. As the song says you’re always on my mind.’ His voice is a brown suitcase stereo.
‘Yes well I’m not necessarily comfortable with that.’
Why use necessarily… don’t hold back.
Pat leans back on his chair. His pursed lips sit a good five centimetres out of line with his nose.
‘I can’t help it. You’re a beautiful person mate. When you’re in the bar I sit here and I can see right into your soul.’
My guts are buzzing. It’s my pager, which means I have to go and get someone a drink.
‘I’ve got an order,’ I say.
Pat is smiling.
‘I know mate.’
I spend the rest of the shift hoping he will leave, otherwise I will have to confront him and avoid having a beer. Half an hour later I check, but he is not there. I am wary and sceptical. He could have gone to the toilet. Fifteen minutes pass and I go inside the toilets to check. There is one cubical that is engaged.
I am still not convinced. I consider peering down to see the shoes, but this day has been extreme enough already. Plus, I can’t think what shoes Pat wears.
With half an hour to go of my shift I check the toilets. All the cubicles are empty. Finally.
As I turn to leave the door swings open, like the final shock in a horror film.
I fully expect it to be Pat, but it’s a Chinese bloke. I see Pat’s empty chair and cannot control the peace and joy in my heart.
Do you have anxiety? If so, I’m sorry to hear that.
So dew eye, for what it’s worth. 👀
[Refer to the mockmarket of the soul and current value of a shitcoin]
2023 – could it be the year of beating anxiety? I’d say ‘war on anxiety’ but that doesn’t sound much fun (or a change). Pillow fight with mental health? Slightly sexy. Passive aggressive standoff with your other half?
Hot.
My point is, Moby has just dropped an ambient album. (Do you ‘drop’ ambient albums or release them as one might release a mist?) He says it’s about helping tackle his anxiety. A donation to the cosmos. Cool. I dig it.
Anxiety, for the record, isn’t just a general state of feeling worried or uptight. It’s a physical thing. Like being softly electrocuted. A black magic chain of thoughts that hijacks your thinking, making you act irrationally. It lives under the skin, like an alien. An agitated immersion in a strange, stricken brew. A cauldron of caution. A maelstrom of malady.
Ambient music is a perfect antidote. It’s slow, for starters. Anxiety travels at the speed of unsound. It doesn’t help that the pace of the world has been increasing (along with the temperature) for the past thirty years. In 1990 we had grunge music with a bpm in double figures. Folks now listen to podcasts at double speed. Cramming data isn’t precisely what consciousness evolved for.
Set your position to pause. Mood quake serenade.
Ambient music (also known as new age) may be an acquired taste. It might not be your cup of herbal tea. ☕
Ambient is spacious. It doesn’t have beats or lyrics, much. It’s a space, man. It doesn’t ask much from your mind. You can slip on your life cancelling headphones and soak in the sound. Let your thoughts play host to singular, spaced notes. Slow honey for a blow up head.
It’s a gentle suggestion. I’m a fan of Brian Eno and Harold Budd and Radiohead. The latter had a crack at ambient with ‘Treefingers’ from Kid A. It was pretty (chime) ballsy of them. That album was popular. This is probably my first ever experience with ambient music. YouTube comments suggest ‘Treefingers’ is “the one everyone skips.” Honestly, I would be included in that. Young men are not famous for their patience – but it wouldn’t surprise me if it made a comeback. The world is much more electronic instrumental savvy than it was in 2000.
Don’t worry if you don’t know where to start (or end). The beauty of Spotify is you only need one song to connect with and then select the radio for that song. That’s all I’ve been doing for five years really – unboxing a pandora’s pantheon of timestretched permusations.
Stockpiling chillout I can access in the fraction of a migraine. 🧠
Heck, sometimes technology works in favour of mental health. Maybe this is the only time. Perhaps you find success with meditation apps? Personally I can’t stand someone lecturing me. Having said that, Lemon Jelly do have a song called ‘Nervous Tension’ which is basically a self-help tape set to music.
From my new years meanderings I see there’s a recently released The Art Of Meditation by Sigur Ros. Electronic dude Jon Hopkins put out a Meditations single in 2020 & Music For Psychedelic Therapy in 2021 (the latter is a bit rich for my blood). Meanwhile, my good friend Conrad Greenleaf released the ambient album Dreamtape last year – so it’s in the zeitgeist, surely.
There’s even Tasmanian based ambient artists such as Leven Canyon & All India Radio.
Chillout was huge in 2000, so it might be experiencing a twenty year ambiversary.
If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air
Quaint little villages here and there
Groove Armada – At The River
There are other strategies to combat anxiety:
A sleep routine.
Talking to a psychologist.
Lying in a dark space with a weighted blanket.
Repetitive movements such as playing an instrument, walking, swimming or massage.
It’s worth trying everything. Make it your hobby – discovering pockets of air within your dark cloud. 🫧
Unrest is the best that life can offer, sometimes.
Make the most of finding a way to live with it.
The
brain
is
a
funny
alien.
Welcome
to
the
animal
that
chose
you.
Half the fun is remembering how to train it.
Finding the time to take it for walks.
Perhaps ambient music acts as a holodeck, allowing you to return to a home planet green and purple and blue and grey – where the days stretch out like dreams and the atmosphere is so gentle you find it easier to float.
You don’t have to meditate to listen to ambient music. You don’t need ambient music to meditate. Both are notoriously niche and slippery to appreciate. I file them under exercises for exhausted people. Or, there are 200k worse things you can do on your phone.
Take care in there.
Justin, 2023. *
please see my little playlist elbow, I mean below.
Q: What is a book that everyone should read?
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