Den's Top Ten Songs (July)

1. The Presets - Girl and the Sea
2. Data Rock - Computer Camp Love
3. Helium – Cosmic Rays
4. Turbonegro – All My Friends Are Dead
5. Dappled Cities Fly – Battle Won
6. Andy Clockwise – Alice May
7. The Bloodhound Gang - Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo
8. Bloc Party – So Here We Are
9. Blue Bottle Kiss – Running Into Doors
10. Darren Hanlon – A To Z

Aussies didnt fare quite as well on this one. Aussies- 5 OS- 5

Listening to: Bit By Bats

cosmic rays and memory tricks

I had a rewarding musical experience today. I guess it was a rewarding ‘memory recall’ experience also. I was at work, it was early in the morning, I got an unknown fragment of a tune in my head and had absent-mindedly begun whistling it. Then It occured to me that the fragment, was sorta wrong. What I was whistling was a distortion of some song that I liked, but that I hadn’t thought of in years. Somehow I knew that the snatch of tune I had was from an obscure song that had been briefly important to me, some 4 or 5 years since, and that at the time I’d made a mental note to try and remember it. After several attempts, I managed to straighten out the tune in my head so that I had the correct melody. I recalled the sensation, from years ago, of being struck by what a poignant melody it was, yet I still had no idea what the song was, who it was by…or even when or where exactly I’d heard it. Then doubts plagued me about whether it was a song at all, and all that foggy memory game stuff started banging around in my head. Doggedly I kept whistling the melody over and over for about 5 minutes. An intuition came to me, that it might’ve been something I’d heard on a Matador Records anthology about 4 or 5 years ago. I wrote myself a stupid note that mentioned this notion. It was like 8am in the morning and I feared that even with this note, that by the time I got home I’d have forgotten the melody. I tried a Jedi memory trick…well actually it’s a technique that a spoken word poet, whose very distinctive name I can’t presently recall (duh) explained to me one night in Shelton lea’s bookstore in Clifton Hill. And whilst on this, it further warrants a mention, that the senior trainer at Boxing For Fitness, Robbie Bryant, does a very similar memory association trick, in what has become a ritual at the start of every training session. He looks around the gym and says “Ok, and we have…Denny, John, Paul, George and Ringo, we have…etc etc” until he has said absolutely everyone in the gyms name. Even people he has just met. It’s all to do with attaching in one’s mind a physical or symbolic association with the person or thing, that acts as a trigger to recall. You have to wonder why it isn’t easier to just remember ‘Fred’ rather than something like ‘roman nose, curly grey hair, face like a donkey = Fred!’ I dunno that I fully grasp the concept… and I have well digressed--- So because I was worried about forgetting the melody that had mysteriously and randomly popped back into my head after years of being ‘lost’, I attempted my version of this memory association trick and locked in on the time of day and how silly I felt at that moment whistling the melody for the seventieth time. It worked and when I got home I put on the Matador Cd, which for the completionists among us, is called ‘Everything is Nice’ and is a ‘10th Anniversary Anthology’ of Matador Records releases, which include Pavement, Cat Power, Modest Mouse, Guided By Voices, Sleater-Kinney, Cornelius and Yo La Tengo…to name a but a few (pretty fuckin great list there huh?) So yeah, it worked ‘cause ten songs into disc one I discovered the song…a song that I had been listening to with William Bowe in 2000, ( It’s actually Billy’s cd on long-term loan to my collection!)….{ d r u m r o l l }- - - ‘Cosmic Rays’ by an American outfit called Helium.
Wow that was longwinded wasn’t it…I must be a bit fried from the three 10 hour shifts I’ve just done in a row. ;-)
Anyhow for my patient, loyal and overly interested readers the song ‘Cosmic Rays’ can be listened to at: http://www.mp3.com/albums/259465/summary.html and the story of the enigmatic singer/songwriter behind it can be explored at: http://www.marytimony.com/neusite/
Where there are also some free mp3’s to download.

Aint the memory grand.

Listening to:
Mary Timony

Satan’s Special Service

Last night I enjoyed an excellent evening in Fremantle visiting my good pal Petri Sinda and watching the Australian Cricket team take a winning position in the first Test of the Ashes series. I headed off home at around 1am. I was driving east along Leach Hwy when I noticed a Transperth bus had come up fast behind me and was now tailgating me. Odd thing really, they’re not like taxis, I mean these buses aren’t generally known for they’re erratic driving. So I’m kinda wedged between the bus and a slow moving car in front of me. Before I could take evasive action the bus pulled out wildly from behind me and tore up the outside lane. It went by so quick I didn’t catch sight of the driver or even its route number, but I could see that the bus appeared to be completely empty. I pulled out from behind the car in front of me so I could try and stay in touch With the bus. I laughed sharply when I saw that on the back of the bus it’s fluoro green route number was 666. The bus increased in speed and began pulling away from me and the other car, which was a bit back from me in the inside lane. The situation was quite surreal. There was no other traffic to be seen in either direction. The inside lane car sped up dramatically and past me. In the far distance I could see that the bus had pulled up at the traffic lights at the intersection of Carrington Street & Leach Highway. Maybe because it was around 1am and a foggy night, or maybe it was our proximity to Fremantle’s gigantic cemetery, but the atmosphere had become suddenly and distinctly eerie. Despite this, I had a broad grin on my face and was chuckling to myself a lot. I guess it was a disbelieving kind of chuckling, I mean I could definitely see the bizarre and funny side of the situation. I was still grinning as I drew up on the intersection and realised that the bus had been sitting in the right hand turn lane while the lights were green…as if it were waiting for us to catch up. The lights changed to red as the inside lane car reached the intersection. That left me approaching in the middle lane with the 666 bus on the outside right of me, and the other car on my inside left. I slowed down. The bus was definitely empty, it’s interior was strangely lit…I don’t know how to describe adequately…it was sort of dim, soft light with a yellow tinge…but the soft light had an almost misty quality to it. I rolled up toward the very front of the bus. I could see the drivers section was cloaked in darkness. For a brief moment I imagined I was about to see an empty drivers seat. I glanced across at the inside lane driver, still a sardonic, enthralled grin playing across my face. He glanced at me, then his eyes fixed in the direction of the bus. The route number on the side of the bus said ‘Special 000’. I stopped at the white traffic line. Thoughts whispering in my head ‘No driver, no driver…could there be no driver?’ But at that moment I saw that there was indeed a driver. Unmistakable. In the dim recess of the drivers compartment, his upper torso and head faintly lit. The absurd theatre of it all. Lit just enough so I could see the driver looking directly back at me. Looking back at us, unflinching with a steely mischievous grin. My heart rate pulsed. I glanced back at the inside lane driver. He appeared as if in a trance, his eyes locked on the bus. A tingle rattled across my shoulders and shot down my spine. The bus took off turning right. The lights had gone green again. I watched the bus as it tore off down Carrington street. A second or two later I realised that the inside lane car was well up Leach highway, obviously moving very quickly. I rolled off the lights and looked down Carrington Street as I passed through the intersection, but I couldn’t see the bus anymore.

Listening to:
The Best Of The Band

Bullfuck

I guy came in the bottleshop on Friday night and wanted to know the various prices on Highland scotch and cola pre-mix cans. I told him the bottlo had a 8 for $15 'run-out' special on Highland stubbies. He became full of bluster and swaggered toward me saying " 8 for 15?!",
"-Yep"
He continued to swell in size like some angry gas filled balloon...i felt sure he was going to nut me...
"Bull Fuck!"
"It's true mate, 8 stubbies for $15"
"Bull Fuck! There's no such fuckin thing as Highland stubbies!"
He turned away from me and walked over to the display fridge containing the Highland scotch and cola products, "8 for fuckn 15 stubbies! Ive never fuckn heard of em! Where are they then?" This was a classic piece of bizzare bottlo behaviour. He was standing right next to them.
Anyhow the rest of this story continues to move around in a rough Beckett-esque circle for several more minutes until the guy decides that he's well pleased that the stubbies do in fact exist, and that it's a "blody good deal" and he'll "go two of em" all the while still managing to look like he might attack me at any moment. But the real reason i recount this story is because of my fascination with his exclamation of the term BULL FUCK which i'm pretty sure i havent heard anyone say since circa 1978...
Bull Fuck. A true-blue Aussie amalgamation of Bullshit and get fucked or fuck off (depending on context and delivery of course). "Denny that's a load of Bullfuck!" for example.

Listening to:
Darren Hanlon
Little Chills (album)

Reading:
'Generations Of The Acid'
by Petri Sinda

Den's Top Ten Songs (June)

Ok so without too much further ado, below is my Top Ten of songs that I’ve been listening to in the month of June. My criteria is quite loose, in that there is no time restriction on how old a work is, for example, Romania by Dappled Cities Fly is about 3 years old now. But due to my ongoing fascination with new music, most of the songs will likely be from the past 12 months.
It is a Top Ten because I believe in List Therapy ;-), but really I hate qualitative lists of Art ( hence why I’m undergoing list therapy! ), I love all of these songs, but something had to end up at number 10…and lets face it, you know I had a bunch of cool songs that have just missed out…
If I get the time and inclination, I will re-edit this post and include websites, and other interesting bits of info about artsists mentioned…but heh if your really keen, you can always email me.
And lastly, I am fairly pleased to point out, that nine songs out of my inaugural
Top Ten are by Australian acts! Go Aussie!!
If anyone can email me and tell me correctly which artist is the foreigner, then I will send them a prize.

Den’s Top Ten Songs (June)
1. Romania – Dappled Cities Fly
2. No Way Out – Love Of Diagrams
3. Walls – The Red Paintings
4. The Eve, The Girl – Dappled Cities Fly
5. The Turning – Tucker B’s
6. The Chapter In Your Life Entitled San Francisco – The Lucksmiths
7. Mr Raven – MC Lars
8. Qwest (Feat. Seed) – Combat Wombat
9. Quarter To Three – Faker
10. You Saw Me Fall – The Fragments

Dig it. :-)

Candle Records

Last night I was sitting at my computer, stalling on getting ready for bed, feeling sorry for myself because I had to get up at 6am. I haven’t worked any really early mornings in years. Many nights on shift at The Terminus Hotel, by the time i got home from a night at work and afters shenanigans it was 5am or later!
Anyhow so I checked in on my email and discovered I’d won two Cd’s

“Denny,well done you've won 2 Candle CD's for leaving a message on the Candle guestbook. please email me your choices and where to send them to. thanks, chris at candle”

How cool is that! So nice to win something. I figure then that this is an appropriate moment to plug Candle Records, who have been unswervingly dedicated to their particular vision of Australian music, since 1994. As they say:
“Welcome to Candle Records, home to some of Australia's best pop acts –
The Lucksmiths, Anthony Atkinson, Ruck Rover, Golden Rough, Tim Oxley, Darren Hanlon, Jodi Phillis, The Guild League, Richard Easton and The Small Knives. They all write great lyric based songs and we're sure you will grow to love them like a family.”
http://www.candlerecords.com.au/

Candle is also the erstwhile home of the late-n-legendary, enigmatic &
Icarus-like Sydney outfit The Simpletons. Candle still have some of their CD’s for sale, although I believe most Simpletons stuff is sold-out and now rare.

Off to work. More laters

Word of the day:

Candour
1. Whiteness; brightness; (as applied to moral conditions) unsullied purity; innocence. [Obs.]
2. A disposition to treat subjects with fairness; freedom from prejudice or disguise; frankness; sincerity.
‘tribute superior sagacity and candor to those who held that side of the question. --Whewell.’

Listening To:
Triple J

FAKER

FAKER
+ Guests
The Swan Basement, North Fremantle. June 26, 2005.

Local outfit The Silents started as I arrived. The Basement was about half full as The Silents pumped out a tough and sexy set of their nouveau psychedelic-beat-rock. The backing vocals were at times washed away by the bright sound of the room. Despite this it was a tantalising display and a crowd that was about half full at the beginning of their set, swelled to a near full house by the end, simmering away enthusiastically.
Faker emerged on stage like a man possessed. A man like their lead singer Nathan Hudson. Hudson has a big dark voice that at times royles out softly, dripping with intent, but also reaches up in angst filled fingers waving and shakingt at the sky. And he did that often. Flicking his fingers around and pointing at his head, counting off beats, hand reaching up high. His Body contorting and twisting spasmodically at times, indeed my esteemed companion William Bowe (somtime genius music journo) commenteed that Ian curtis was back “in” in a big way. (“Here are the young men…”) Hudson wore a tight buttoned up shirt and severe looking thin black tie. A tie that he used to gently hang himself with several times during critical highs in the performance. During the song ‘Enough’, Hudson bounced of the red velvet clad walls, and briefly stood like a mountain climber, side on, suspended in the corner of the stage, before flinging himself, wild dervish like, back to the mic for another verse.
Hudson was given excellent support in Bassist Nick Munnings, who swayed back and forth from his mic and often appeared to mouth the words along with Hudson, as if in a trance. He would then briefly snap to attention and rejoin in the critical harmonies, such as during the superb ‘Teenage Werewolf’. Munnings has a controlled coolness that shone from his face throughout the set. Although there still seemed to be some problems with the levels on the backing vocals, Munning’s cool focus, his singing along and smooth movements forward to the mic provided a perfect counterbalance during Hudson’s frequent disappearances down into the crowd or his climbs up the rear corners of the stage.
The frenetic energy that Faker conjured throughout their set was held together masterfully on the flanks by Guitarists Phil Downing and Stefan Gregory who were mostly fairly static on the far left and rights respectively. Of the back line engineroom, I couldn’t really see drummer Paul Berryman, but when I caught glimpses of him he was all focus ‘doin the business’ hunched over, coiled up and locked in. Guitarist Downing seemed on a couple of occasions as if he too, might explode off the stage, or crash into the walls as he tore up on ‘in-the-slot-riffs’ and intense climaxes, that were features of such songs as the brilliant ‘Quarter To Three’, ‘Bodies’ and ‘Teenage Werewolf’ . Both Guitarist’s playing during the latter song was so superb that it made me proud to be witnessing such a celebration of Aussie music, and to a full house on a Sunday night no less! Faker absolutely nailed this gig. It was evocative, and energetic. Dark at times thoughtful, pained and passionate at others. Songs such as ‘Quarter To Three’,‘Werewolf', ‘Kids On Overload’, ‘The Familiar’ and ‘Love For Sale’ were all highlights within a set that demonstrated the confidence and certainty of a band that has by all accounts, “taken it’s time to solidify”, but that is now clicking with a live set that must put them high amongst the best acts in Australia. Tonight was a clear validation of that time spent by Faker in “getting it right”. There is rarely an idle moment with Faker and scarcely a wasted song. If you can’t see them live their debut album ‘Addicted Romantic’, (EMI) is a significant document of an Australian band that has truly arrived. Masterful.
http://www.faker.com.au/

Listening to:
JJJ

Saturday

“Saturn dies” (Part 1)
Well my Saturday was BIG. I did a day shift in the bottlo. At about 6pm when I was about to finish I went to take a stack of cardboard boxes out the back of the pub to the big bin (cause recycling isn’t very popular in Perth, but that’s another blog). The flattened out boxes get stacked up on this strange, tall and unwieldy 3 wheel trolley. I decided to try riding it like my skateboard. It worked surprisingly well. I skated it back up to the bottlo and then thru the driveway to amuse the casuals who are a bit younger than me and cool guys and I guess I was showing off a bit, so I turned around and yelled out that I was gonna tackle the steep hill off the back of the hotel on my new mutant skater. It got real fast downhill real quick and I tried to bail out by stepping off the side of it, but I got into a tangle and flipped the bastard…hard. Banged my right hand, elbow and knee up pretty good. I had to stagger back up to the bottlo with the ridiculously unwieldy 3 wheel monster. My young co-worker Neil, who was in hysterics, wanted to go and see if the ‘stack’ was visible on any of the security cameras. I managed to convince him to not reveal my stupid stunt to everyone…I’m supposed to be the older experienced, responsible one! Hehehe.
I iced up my knee, whilst hiding out in the back storeroom for a bit, then knocked off. Went to Nin & Tim’s house in Wembley for a fireside bbq and a few beers. A few hours later I left the bbq and headed back to The Stadium (the pub where I work), to make an appearance at one of the staffs birthday get-togethers. Kicked on there for a bit, then against my better judgment, I went into Northbridge with the party people.

West. (Part 2)
“The cardinal point on the mariner's compass 270° clockwise from due north and directly opposite east.”
A massive nightclub called The Paramount. Drank way too much, got bought shooters, watched Australia get beaten in the cricket by Bangladesh, watched a hyper-professional cover band, with a DJ playing between sets. Ran out of money went out to find an ATM, saw a road rage fight, some guy nearly got bumped (and that’s about all) by a ute trying to turn left and he’s charged up to the car window and got right in the face of the driver. Then he’s staggered off diagonally across the intersection (read: theatre-in-the-round) He must’ve said something that really got to the driver because a few seconds later the brakelights went on and the driver and passenger bolted across the intersection (read: the dress circle) after the guy and the driver king hit the bloke who’d obviously had too much to drink, and he went straight down like a “long streak of piss” that wasn’t enough for the driver because then he mounted the prone guy and started belting him in the back of the head, like a UFC knockout, then some brave soul pushed him off the prone guy. The passenger and the driver then decided they’d attack this person, but at that moment police descended from everywhere, including two coppers mounted on fuck-off-massive white horses…The ute that had just been sitting doors open in the middle of the road now drives off…the invitation just too good to miss for some opportunist…and perhaps I should be slightly ashamed to admit, but I’m on the corner opposite laughing heartily at this latest development and right next to me some friendly looking chap of East African (I think) descent and he too has been watching in amazement and now he’s talking loudly to nobody in particular, that he’s gotta get home to his kids and what-n-earth is he doing out here amid all this 4am craziness…been trying to get a cab for 2 hours…and how’d he get so fucking wired…well he didn’t say that, but he should’ve, he was buzzing off his head. I got back to the club just in time to be bought a slippery nip shooter by some friendly English bird and see a cat fight break out between two groups of woman throwing punches spitting and hissing (so that’s why they’re called cat fights). The bouncers seemed to get confused and 3 of them became completely distracted dealing with one very angry chick, pushing her back and back, as one of her mates outflanked them and came straight on in to attack some other woman, I managed to stand in her way, (again all smiles, I’m not sure why), as the bouncers regained control.
Despite all this, the general vibe in the place was quite friendly, you can tell a lot by the way people pass you in tight crowds, the way they touch your arm or pat your shoulder as they try to get past. A little bit of eye contact and a quick smile.
There is however a wild frontier-ism at work in Northbridge…out on the street, the atmos was a bit like a steamy B&S ball or a big Saturday night in the centre of some country town… make that a really big centre in a really big country town. Wild West.

A girl kindly skippered us all to our various homes. She had a bit of freakout when, having dropped everyone but me home, and having just gone through a McDonalds drive-thru, she’s realised she didn’t have her handbag. So she retraced her footsteps as it were, back through all the stop offs, but after a couple she was ready to give up…freaked and desperate, and exhausted with it…somehow it'd become 6am.
I was so drunk and I was eating the McDonalds which we’d just bought. I was quite unconcerned and ebullient as she drove around and I ate all my hash browns, then all her hash browns, then as a kind of drunken after-thought I urged her to go back to the very first stop she’d made. Sure enough she found her bag there. I looked like a hero, despite having been fairly disinterested in anything other than keeping her busy while the mad eating frenzy sorted itself out. Booze-munchies-from-hell. So very drunk…
I woke up Sunday arvo with a throbbing hand, a knee that didn’t want to bend and a championship hangover. Sick as a mongrel dog as they say in the classics. Great night though, felt a sense of warmth and well being toward my fellow man, but booze aint really my shtick, tougher comedown than any drug I’ve ever known…so sickening.

Listening To:
The Notwist
- Pilot
-This Room

Forever Ape

I was so sick at work last night, I’m amazed I got through the shift. Stomach ache so bad, felt like the whole thing was gonna turn inside out.
Ok today though. Must’ve been all that pineapple I ate yesterday arvo. I
Have just re-discovered the joys of chilled (fresh) pineapple pieces…..ooorrrr yeaahh.

I have just had the privilege of looking through Hugh Ford’s folio of published design and illustration work. It is full of original and outstanding work and I will ask him for permission to place a link on dis-here-blog so y’all can have a looksee…well worth it. If not I will post a couple of samples of his work whence I work out how to post pictures. Hugh is currently based in Sydney and is working as a Senior Art Director for a publishing firm and as a neo-urbanist, post-post, cutting edge design dilettante gun-for-hire.

As I write this I am also online at MSN Messenger, talking to Tone, trying to convince him to apply for a job with East Coast gig operators Jager Uprising.
They want some programming done on some online gig/function booking program….
He’s worried that it’s a conflict of interest because he’s already designed a booking program called Gigatron, which we used online for The Underpass last year.
Stupid boy. I am currently threatening him with excommunication if he doesn’t ring them today. He’s trying to duck me right now by hiding in his toilet…..stay tuned.

Reading:
A Short History Of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson
Football Factory – John King

Listening to:
Triple J
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/

Fragments

Blitz training session this morning. Half as long but twice the intensity. After so much training it still astounds me that I can reach the ‘wall’ of total muscle fatigue after only a few minutes…if punished in the right way ;-)

Have recently had a little correspondence with an very interesting Sydney band called The Fragments. I highly recommend visiting their site and downloading the free mp3 ‘You Saw Me Fall’. Me and Anthony had a couple of great travel moments in Thailand with this song as a memorable piece of soundtrack
There are a number of other free Mp3s to download from the site, if your keen. The Fragments have an Album coming out soon.

http://www.thefragments.com/

Now having said that I find myself with little or no time to muse on anything else, as I have to go do my stupid, pointless and low paying job….
-“but whose fault’s that anyhow Den?”
-“Kids, stay in school!”

Stay Beautiful.
;-)


Listening to:
The Aislers Set
- The Walk (Peel Sessions)
- Long Division (Peel Sessions)
-Walk in Line (joy division cover)

Above the plateau

I had a great hard workout this morning, which I performed well in. This is especially important to me as I have been feeling very flat in all my exercising for 2-3 weeks. I have felt like I'm not getting any fitter, that I'm not able to see or feel any improvement in my physical performance...so much so that one starts to question ones own health- "Why is this young chick kicking my ass on this set of shuttle runs, which I must've done 80-90 times in the last 12 weeks? There must be something wrong with me"
Of course she could just be fitter than me! Or as a trainer kindly pointed out to me, having seen that I was quite disappointed with myself, "That was your second set of shuttle runs, and she was on her first set!!" So all this is what's commonly referred to as plateauing. So to feel like I broke through a little this morning was a real morale boost. To top off what was already a great session, I got to spar with a gifted boxer, Robbie Bryant who is a former W.A welterweight champion, Nationally ranked in Australia and a New Zealand Nat-Titles Silver Medalist. Do you think I was fuckin stoked?! :-) He even complimented me on how relaxed my shoulders were, which was very cool as it was one of the key things that my Melbourne training partner Jason "archie brown" spent a lot of time instructing me on. Left the gym on such a high. Went to a job interview on the 'moonlight' before I went to work in the bottlo, (have been looking to find a different job more befitting the experiences I gained in Melbourne). It went really well and sounds promising. I have punched, pushed, thought, bought, fought and worked hard today...and surely any moment now I will pass out...
What a fucking great day!

Listening To: Dappled Cities Fly - 'Battle Won'

In Retrospect...again

Its funny & sad, I'm at work tonight in this bottlo in Bentley WA and I'm finding myself reminiscing uncontrollably about my old job at the Terminus. A job that in December of last year, I felt like I was completely sick to fuckn death of. In hindsight I probably just needed two 0r three weeks holiday, (which I bloody well should've taken, as I am still trying to recover over a $1000 bucks in holiday pay outta the bastads). I find myself missing so many little aspects of that job. Tonight in the bottlo it was fucking cold, 12 degrees and sheets of rain cutting in sideways and everyone was freezing, and I'm privately recalling with intense pride, the long bitter Melbourne winters in the Termo bottlo. Nights when the temperature clock on High St in Northcote read 5 degrees...and how we'd cheer as we'd read it driving past, having survived another mind-numbingly cold winter shift. I can scarcely remember what I disliked about the job. my nostalgia tracks me like a heads-up-display with no memory...
no memory, but a revisionist passion for pasts that may or may not have existed.

I'm sure I will touch upon this theme again. These last few months have been dominated by such thoughts.....

And of former Terminus comrades: Congratulations to Heidi, who at 10:53pm on the 4th of June, became a mum with a son! ;-)

listening to: Combat Wombat - qwest

Normandy

Today was The 61st Anniversary of 'D-Day'.

http://search.eb.com/dday

"Nous restons ici" (We are staying here)

- Lt James Coyle in response to a Frenchman who asked if it was a "raid or an invasion?"
Pg 313, 'D-Day' by Stephen E. Ambrose.

Night Skating

Melbourne. Late on a warm summer’s night. Having stopped for a rest from skating on the long promenade paved with slate that runs thru the Melbourne Royal Exhibition centre. We rested our heads on our boards and stared up at the city lights. And then a mother duck and three ducklings bustled across the promenade in the distance

We followed them to their lake.

I nearly cried.

Nearly.

Recollections of a Hooked Fish Frying.

— The darkness of life first becomes known to adolescence like a surrealist depiction of pre-cognitive lightning. And so it was thus that I was struck on the chest a full blow. My old man on an interventionist mission of marital redemption — Dressed himself up seven ways from Sunday. Spruce, paced out steps, penitent steps in his head, his hair combed back and organised in the mirror of Aunt Eddy’s bathroom — scrubbed forward false dentures, waxed shoes, buffed soul, flowers bought at noon.

— At the back gate strode through high with built up confidence, ring of marriage and ring of pride. To face his wife again with flowers and a fistful of passion owed in arrears....for him it was the dawning of a new day — Yawning out over plans and planned loves once confused and lost. Now found again and polished up, carried up the path to the family heart.

Unfortunately Mum’s day had begun earlier.

Under the fragile pink sky draping life in its post stormatic cape, and though she knew he was coming, she could not trust him in her space yet, and left urgently; space intact but heart like weary punch drunk circus pugilist. A heart as big as Phar Laps and ready to relent and give way to peace love and contemplation. Too far past however the black stump of no return....she wept fleeing or fled weeping, I can’t remember which....

When I saw him stroll through the back gate my heart burst into flames. Danced before my eyes like mirror shades of the trance — Caught a glimpse of the game in a way I couldn’t fully comprehend...but felt it...the import-gravitas of such — Surge to sway giddy in the horror of my juvenile naivety,  rotor-bladed like so much talked about roses, in the twilight of a furiously burning millennium close. Fearful Fuckin’ Reckoning...Titanic shirt front of the soul...

 And his pain must have been so much worse than my own...

I might as well have been blind. Darkness so thick ya couldna see ya hand before ye face...

Further still I might now spare you the detailed portrait of the colour of hope seeping through soles of his best feet forward. Draining colour from his face —

Last ember bright but only a moment hence, blink out....

FADE TO BLACK

bearing straits roaring out to sea,

sinking surely stone,

liquid jungle of bone,

immeasurably depthy greatness of dark great beast,

fantastic fucking dark shark of life ocean jungle.......

...but I didn’t get that far then.

Enough that I was on the drunken steps to the set of someone else’s urban stage production —

And the act rolled on; Me lying on my bed as the old man poured petrol round our house. He’d “Fuckin’ show her now!”

I told him I’d burn with our beloved old house, and the situation deflated beyond anger’s vorpal-bladedness — Could not cut a sweet swathe thru the Black Sea and could not set a man free...

Anger is usually the last bastion of a man determined to wrought his will on the ugly mug of reality — If he’d been a solipsist he could of written it all off as a bad dream or a dream that’d gone bad. Like an apple forsaken in its bowl; decompose to earthy brown; fade to black...

Deconstruct it all to black?

And alas-alack he believed most strongly in the preciousness of Her & the ‘wholeness’ of Us, Family —

Perhaps he had a vision of himself that led him out onto the Great Australian Night trail lit up by MimMim light; An Australian man on the trail of his life, with a map of where he meant to travel and a beleaguered sense of its own divergence into fields of the past. Recognised now, only as points upon the map….Upon Horizon Treasure Map. Pots, rainbows and the gilt edged frost bitten lakes at the end of them. Glancing back then forward, a few pauses on this otherwise frenetic trail. Too hard to read the map whilst keeping the lodestone on the road. Damned shortcuts and cul-de-sacs that cost the sort of time that never-a-moment-spent of could ever come again...set forth in new directions...

His teardrops exploded, rolled down the hill of his cheek and ignited the old map in his hands. He rubbed his eyes and found that he was still lost, swaying on the backyard footpath of our old house —  Limbo like old ghost haunting itself in its old house on its old hill overlooking great old vast wretched unknowable ocean of its future.

 He must have thought he’d die alone on such bluffs — Love crashing out in crescendos with breakers breaking forever breaking, forever breaking..........

She spared him such fates in the end—

Still, we all must reap what we’ve sown.

In a monumental act of selflessness, she forgave what had too-late-already-past and focused on the future that limped into itself, never quite the same. She remained and found freedom in the honour of remembering what she had loved in him. Fixed Focus on afore said, giddy future, limping into itself for eight more years till he died —

For mine, the cigarette cancer had killed him off a decade or so earlier....like a partial absence for the last few years. And maybe in his way, that I just impressionise for you now, he was still out there on his ‘trail’. Studying the ashes of his old map and trying to recollect where he’d digressed at, where he was hooked at, where he was frying.

                                                         

                                 

Hanging From Flory's Shoes 1994

We will all experiment
With different ways
To an out-of-it State
Mainly an escape
But really a mind rape

And at the mad gate,
We're in and standing
Down
Having our silvery gown
Hoky drug boy clown

We might be feelin'
But
It's shifting though
And everything smacks of an LSD glow

We was all snaky climbin'
Through craters etching
Tunnels through the chambers
Of his heart