the shed two storey's in the sky

2007-04-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

this is an extract from an upcoming split zine i'm doing with a friend of mine. my section is titled stroll. my friends, emily's, is called ticket to anywhere. enjoy

Missed photo 1. Prague

Kings Charles bridge, early evening, sun setting across the bridge, castle lighting up. I stand across from the bridge waiting for the light to change. Across from me two kids play soccer, the concrete outside the milk bar their field. They kick the ball back and forth until one of them dives to save the goal. I walk across the lights towards the bridge, as I pass them I smile at their guile and athleticism all the more so because there is no ball.

Missed photo 2. Tabor.

A cobbled stoned street outside a cafe. Mid afternoon, shadows of bikes. A couple stand talking to their friend the cafe owner. The guy is on the outside, the women on the inside. On the back of the womens bike there is a chair. It is occupied by a kid who would be two and a half at tops. The kid is reading the paper. He looks as if he's trying to figure the subtlties of string theory. Perplexed I watch for a couple of minutes before working past. As I do I cast a glance the kids' way... He's reading the cartoons.

Missed photo 3. The Lourve.

Under Delariox two kids sit with paper and crayons. A brother and sister of six and nine. The six year old has his back turned and is drawing pictures of cowboys and Indians. The cowboys are blowing off the Indians head. The girl is drawing the picture. The flag is at half mast purple and a green.

An art idea.

Naomi told us this story one day over the dinner table at CESTA in Tabor. The story goes as follows, a video artist from Canada got given a grant for a project from the Canadian Arts Council. The idea he had was to travel around the world as an expat Canadain filming all the locations he visited and then making a short doco about that. Well so that was the idea he told the Arts Council and that was the idea the Arts Council funded; in reality his idea was much much different. In reality he travelled around the world filming people waiting for aereoplanes clandestinely. This he did by using a hidden camera in his bag. He would film people sleeping in lounges, feet walking past, conversation between stranded passengers and lost travellers, yawning faces, tired faces, happy faces, laughing faces. This he did for six months without never once leaving the confines of an airport. (His methodology was land in one city, pay for the cheapest flight on standby then wait in the airport til that plane left repeating this at each subsequent airport.) when he finally arived back at Toronto airport the Canadian custom officers took him aside and questioned him in the deportation lounge for two days wondering where he had disappeared to. For the first day he refused to tell them what he had been doing, by the second day he changed tactics and decided that it was best if he told them what he had been doing and so he did. It was only after the Canadian custom officers saw the video footage that they believed him and let him go. That video footage has since been shown in the Guggenheim museum in New York and from Naomi's account has some of the most beautiful slow images in the world.

2007-02-26T22:05:00.000-08:00

so looking through my files. discovered this. it was written six months ago for a zine i meant to finish but in typical fashion haven't gotten around to it yet. anyway with the year anniversay coming up it seems appropriate now.

CAMP SOVERIEGNTY

KINGS DOMAIN 12th March
One. One, two. One, two, three, three helicopters. One two three helicopters circle the sky. It’s three days until the Stolenwealth Games commence and these helicopters are meant to somehow make me feel happier, more peaceful and relaxed. Gees what kind of world are we living in when the sound of choppers circulating and keeping the air ‘free’ is meant to be a soothing sound. God I don’t know. I wonder whether there was this much security for the Olympics in Sydney, whether people fell asleep to the sound of airplanes and helicopters. I suppose I should get used to it but fuck that why should I get used to this paranoid country, this paranoid world… this paranoia within me. Why?

It’s four in the afternoon. Loud techno music is playing in the background as a couple of thousand people get their kicks off at Earthcore in the city. I’ve been sitting here in Kings Domain since 11. Today’s the first day of the indigenous protest camp. We were to meet under the statue of King George (extremely appropriate!) at 11 and set up camp from there. Of course the socialist couldn’t help but get their hands in the mix by selling their rags to everyone. I think I was sitting there for only maybe five minutes when I was accosted by a Trot or some fringe branch Marxist member hocking a newspaper. To make things easier they’d even printed out a little piece of paper telling me twhich issue had an article dealing with indigenous rights.

After sitting there for an hour a meeting was called where Clare Land and a legal advisor spoke about the issues surrounding the camp. About the new gazetting rules that meant the state government could excise any part of the city as a games site. And as such quell any protest or voices that ‘disrupt the enjoyment of others’, that present an alternative view to that of the state governments media and tourist angle and there excessive budget.

This speech lasted for ten, twenty, thirty I don’t know however minute it was. Anyway however long it was the speech took place and then we headed over to the site that had been chosen as the campsite, all a hundred metres away. Here, the two hundred or so of us ferals, punks, student, activists, whatever the fuck we are calling ourselves these days, sat in a circle and listened to speeches by Isobella Coe, Targan, Robbie and Marge Thorpe, Robert Corowa and Uncle Kevin welcoming us to the camp and to the sacred fire. At the end of the speeches we all rose from the circle and grabbed a branch of gum leaves from in front of us and put it on the fire. As we walked back to the circle the city become covered in smoke and the smell of eucalyptus travelled down the hill, releasing bunjl to spread his message. Even one of the police officers, whose intention was to put the fire out, walked hand in hand with Robert Cowora to put a branch on the fire.

Since the first smoking ceremony ended- around one- we’ve been sitting around waiting to hear news of whether we’re allowed to set up the camp. Namely whether we’re allowed to use pegs and where is the best place to put the tent to ensure that we don’t pierce the sprinkler system. Also we’ve been waiting to hear back from the rangers the more important news of whether or not the sprinkler system will be shut off. Apparently all will be told by mid afternoon.

To occupy time some of us have been handing out flyers to the crowd heading up to the myer music bowl for Earthcore. I think in the half an hour or so I was handing out flyers only two or three people grabbed them. Mostly people just ignored me and walked on by. I guess guilt holds them back. Or maybe they’re not interested, which is worse. I talk with one of the other guys who has been handing out the flyers. He says he’s experienced a similar thing of being stared straight through, of being accosted and ignored. I guess though that’s what we’re looking to experience, that this ignorance is what encourages us to continue putting ourselves out there. Eventually someone, some idea will spark and things will just hit off. I mean there is two hundred of us waiting to set up a protest camp so it’s not as if there’s no hope in this country, or as if we’re not attempting to forge our own paths.
Anyway so it’s four o’clock and I’m sitting here at King Domains listening to an argument between a couple of punks and one of the guys from Earthcore in the city. I want to interject and get involved but I’m enjoying playing the role of voyeur and eavesdropper from the moment. Chris- I hope, I think that’s his name- is sitting there telling the two punks about the paranoia in his head. How he fought in Iraq, how he fell asleep twenty miles south of Baghdad to the sounds of bombing, how as he walks through the streets of Melbourne he expects the buildings to explode any moment. He explains how he doesn’t understand the protests about the war in Iraq, whether we hate him or not, why there were so many people out on the streets, that when he learnt about the protest over in Iraq he was pissed off at this country and all on those on the streets. A point to which the punks reply is that they’re not attacking him personally but rather the system that sends them off to the war; that the anger of the people on the streets was anger at John Howard for sending them off to war, a war that this country doesn’t need to fight. That they don’t want to see a body lost for a fight that is not really ours to fight, in a struggle to appease and keep up some delusional relationship with a psychotic country.

A point to which Chris counteracts that he to hates John Howard for sending him to war and that he wishes he hadn’t even been in the army but since his dad had and his dad before that there was nothing else he could do. And well besides once you’re in the army you can’t leave without the risk of going to jail. That even if this is not a war we’re meant to be fighting that it’s still better to be on the side of America rather than against. That even though he hates Howard for sending him to Iraq that he still voted for him and still will in the future. An argument that infuriates the two punks as that is the problem, that as a country we don’t need to go into war. That we shouldn’t be siding with America, that it’s this siding that leaves us in situations like we are.

I sit here watching all this, thriving on the intellectual argument. It reminds me of watching the Australian Open with my nan and pop, or sitting in class at uni laughing as lecturers argued amongst themselves (their theorists sitting on their shoulders like little devils/angels), or like two gazelles fighting in the plains of Kenya. It’s interesting but also headache inducing. After an hour or so the argument dies and Chris leaves heading down the hill into the city. I turn and talk to the two punks the look on our faces say it all. Here’s someone we’ve gotta free and it’s going to take more than an hour to free him and it’s going to split heads to do it. I’m glad I didn’t open my mouth because I probably wouldn’t have articulated everything as well as they did. Probably would have gotten infuriated. And besides truth be told I wouldn’t have remembered as much of what was going on.
It’s five o’clock now and we’ve just been told we can set up camp. The next hour or two is spent putting kitchens and fires in place and setting up the sound system for the week of festivities that have been planned. To set up the information tent, the medical centre, the barbie, our own tents, to collect enough leaves for the fire, for the daily smoking ceremony, to ensure that the spare blankets are ready to be used, that everyone can settle and buckle down for the next two weeks and wake up tomorrow ready to plan everything, ready to head on down to the yarra for the ANTAR stolenwealth protest that is taking place.

That night I fall asleep thinking of Chris and Iraq and the helicopters flying overhead and wonder what the next fortnight is going to be like. As I wake twice during the night once to a rehearsal of the opening ceremony and the screaming of woman for her partner to get his arse over, another to the sound of pouring rain I realise it’s going to be quite tiring but not nearly as full on a war as that in Iraq. We may be saturated and captured by media images, may be isolated and alienated and feel scared and paranoid from helicopters floating over head, from the glorification of violence on the screens in front of us, but at least we’re not over in Iraq or Afghanistan being put on the frontline for some false ideological battle. That we’re free to come and go as we like and that all we can do is attempt to free others no matter how much they try and stick to the centre. That we have to free ourselves and those around us, in spite of the habits that we’ve been indoctrinated into and which we so easily fall into, in spite of the headache inducing moments that come along with that.

2007-02-05T19:55:00.000-08:00

FORTHCOMING

For the past few months i've been haphazardly working on a zine entitled autosuggestion (after the joy division song). Owing to cost and other reasons the zine will be limited to 60 copies. At the moment its stalled owing to delays to do with waiting for others to get back pages to me. In other words normal, i guess, collaboration issues. That said it has been great and i love the idea of cutting and pasting and collating and putting together the zine. And love working with and seeing the way in which all these disparate and different pages and people have created something so beautiful. Even more given that the friend who's zine it is is of galavanting through the forests or the beaches of South america. Every time I look at the box or work a little on it I'm left thinking of him and the crazy and wierd and beautiful spaces he is visiting. This is an extract I've written for the zine. It's also the beginnings of another piece I still fantasise about writing. One in which all the buskers and street artists of melbourne are written about. Enjoy the article. If you get the chance check out phelixs site to: www.phelix.com [i wish i could remember the way to link this here detail]

THE STREETS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF ART

A Saturday afternoon in late April outside PSC, he stands cigarette in mouth talking to a passerby. His left hand outstretched pointing at one of his abstract paintings. He's offering an explanation of it to the couple before him. It's an attempt to draw a woman washing the dishes he says. An attempt to draw its beauty without it becoming too erotic, too sensual. I crouch on the ground listening in on this and wait to ask him questions about another one of his works - his blog. I only know of this man by the chalk address on the pavement www.pheelix.com. A couple of minutes pass. I read about the nostalgia of Easter now that he's no longer Catholic. As I read I continue listening in on the conversation. The couple are from Ballarat and want to buy the painting so Pheelix invites them around to his studio tomorrow. They're only down in Melbourne for the day but thank him nevertheless. I sit and continue reading his blog. My mind is filling with questions. What are people's reactions? Was there a struggle when the games were on? What's more important the process or the final product? Does he see the blog medium as a way of breaking down the barriers around the artist? Is there a grander purpose to the blog? I look up and find him standing over me. I freeze momentarily trying to think of the best approach to take to asking him questions. The first query that springs to mind is about the Commonwealth Games. He says he avoided the city whilst the games were on - too many people, too many hassles and not enough room for the street artist to live. He mentions though that people would often express their anger when learning that their rates were being spent on cleaning up graffiti. The conversation shifts and I ask him about peoples reaction. He answers that he's experienced everything from joy and congratulations to outright hatred. I ask him where he thinks the hatred stems from. He doesn't offer an explanation, just annoyance over what he's doing and over his artwork. I glance down at the blog before me, no graphic sexual exploitation or acts of violence, just images of the banality of life. Of the struggle to eat, of riding the tram, of the search for love and the depths of loneliness. I guess people are terrified of the dull reality of their lives and enjoy hiding behind the sensationalist images of the world. The conversation switches again and I ask him about breaking down the barrier around the artist. For him art is a process. The notion of the artist working away for one ot two years to produce some work of art for others to look and theorize over angers him. Art should be open and fluid, it should be continuing everyday. The blog for instance is a year long project with each page eventually being sold to raise funds for a children's organisation. I stand and listen forgetting to mention how much of a good idea that sounds. A friend of his walks over with a coffee and our conversation ends. I grab a pen and paper from my bag and write down his address, I'll be sure to check out the website online on Monday. I put the pen and paper back in my bag, read a couple of pages and then head off to the tram stop to meet up with a friend for dinner.

2007-02-03T23:55:00.000-08:00

Notes are Theories, theories are notes.

so i've been thinking about guilt a lot lately and wondering where it fits into my life . as anyone who knows me will know i have a preoccupation with guilt, a preoccupation that is worse than any catholic you'll have meet and i haven't even been to a church service a day in my life. wierd? i know! lately it's been bugging more often than not and i've been wondering how i came to let myself be ruled by such a murky and cloudy emotion and mood as guilt. how i allowed myself to rational it has part of some white mans burden. i've been thinking about it and came up with a couple of little theories or thoughts about guilt. there just thoughts and will be left as that. nothing less or more.

GUILT and PARANOIA

In analysing my guilt i've come to realise that a lot of it is actually paranoid or imagined guilt. that a lot of it stems from my worry and concern about pleasing other people and what i think they feel or should feel. of course naturally no one feels how i feel and no one feels how i imagine they should and so when that happens i'm left with a hole to fill and well this hole is guilt. and over time this whole becomes increasingly filled until it's overflowing and i'm left with this dark murky cloud surrounding me.

GUILT and ARROGANCE

having been involved around the fringes of activist circles and politics for a couple of years i'm often left wondering how much of politics and society is based on creating feelings of guilt and worthlessness in others. that as activist our motivation came from the assumption that other people don't think or feel that way and they need to be made to feel guilty about that. the probably with this then comes if this is the sole motivation of a persons action then they may never give there all or give up some of that control and power.

GUILT and CONTROL

Essentially I see Guilt as a control mechanism implemented or instrumented by the Judeao-Christian western world i live in. It's an institution that runs as deep now as it did 2000 years ago when christ died even though the capitialist society in which we live is meant to be secular. we learn to act guilty or feel guilty because we are told that this or that is not right and when we do something that flags those constructed walls of emotion we fill this with guilt.

so there you go some notes on a theory of guilt.
read them. there's more to think and rework. what's yr take on the topic?

2007-01-24T05:02:00.000-08:00

The following is a review I found that I thought you all might like. The review originally appeared in Heart attack 32. For those who know heart attack is a punk hardcore scene from the states; for those who don't you do now. Having heard and seen these guys live I can attest for the quality of the music although the review itself is a tad pretentious.

XENOPHOBIC XYLOPHONES: demo tape

What is there to say about Xenophobic Xylophones that can't be said in a noisy chaotic mess of dismembered bodies and brains. The music on this tape is so discordant and chaotic that it feels like being sucked into the midst of a boeing 747 engine slowly. XX (as their fans call them) are a three piece hailing from the city of Melbourne Australia. G. Cunt, J. Coward and T. Liar as they call themselves play music that make The Locust sound like The Beach Boys. Fourteen songs clocking in at 5 minutes and forty five seconds (comes on 12 minute tape- both sides the same, one in mono, one in stereo) and with songs like PLASTIC PEOPLE, WITH US, WE GOT HIM XX are definitely worth shelling out the $2 (Australian!) for the cassette tape.

contact details: 45 Thretren Street Brunswick East Melbourne Australia 3061

To prove the genius of XX I've transcribed the lyrics from the cassette tape. I would scan them but my scanners kinda broken. Enjoy the lyrical energy that is G. Cunt.

Lyrics

PLASTIC PEOPLE

Plastic people everywhere
Plastic people in the sky
and in the street
and on the tram
plastic people every fucken where
plastic people why won't you die!
DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE
plastic people DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

WITH US

WITH US
WITH US
WITH US
WITH US
WITH US
WITH US
WITH US
(repeat adinfitum until we die)

WE GOT HIM

Ner ner ner ner ner
ner ner ner ner ner
you're it you're it you're it
haha haha haha haha
didya hear we got him!
we got him!
we got him!
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
nernernrnenrnernernenrnenr
you're next!

XENOPHOBIC NATIONAL ANTHEM

We don't want no e around here
you need that to spell race
no c or a either so what we're really saying is
xnophobi ntionl nthm

2007-01-21T20:18:00.000-08:00

IT'S ALL IMAGINARY pt 1.

A housemate (bullshit as my best friend so rightly dubbed him) once said that i live to much in my imagination. As easy as it is to admit: it's true. I tend to live a lot in my head; tend to think that it's enough to come up with all these crazy ideas; that it's the idea more then the actuality of the idea that's important. Sometimes I think that it makes for frustration on other peoples behalf as I start one thing and never finish it, as i tell friends of ideas that i want to do. It also causes problems at work where I get caught in daydreams making imaginary orchestras out of stone fruit pips instead of doing the dishes or finding hairclips that have fallen under beds. In order to sort out my mind and life I've posted fifteen project ideas i have (there's more hence the part 1 part). I'm posting them here (rather than writing them on a piece of paper and putting them in a drawer) because if I have an auidence here I'm more likely to do it. Plus I'm wanting suggestions as to what ideas are good, bad or stupid and lame. So if you read this and you have suggestions let me know. Um okay so yeah on with the show.

PROJECTS

started:

1. DIY HOUSEGIGS A BOOK: As i've written before DIY HOUSEGIGS is a network i've been involved in here in melbourne for the last year and a half. Recently I've come up with the idea of writing a book on the history of housegigs in melbourne. I plan on starting with the garage scene of the 60's, moving through the little band scene of the late 70's, the emergence of pubculture in the 80's, the hardcore and punk and rave scenes of the 90's through to the housegig scene now. I've started the research but have stalled a little. Question is i'm wondering if it's a good idea or not?

2. NIMBUS: Started below. Nimbus is to be a novel about a group of flinders street punks and wannabes here in melbourne. Have begun the started and have a few other sections just don't know where to go considering that it's going to be dark dark dark and thus might be too depressing to read.

3. PUBLIC ART GUIDE: Melbourne is full of lots of public art. Hundred odd scupltures in the cbd itself. Theres Larry the dog a sculpture that was stolen by someone in 1995, had a float of it made for moomba in 1996 in attempt to flush it out which was unsuccesful, recasted in 1998 when more money was donated by a generous philathrapist and then bolted down to a different site on the corner of Swanston and Collins street. Have started it by collecting photos and carrying out research. Don't know how much time it will take. Possibility of getting grant money from city council makes it appealing. Need to research relevance of it. Whatcha think good or bad idea?

4. MERRI CREEK AUDIO TOUR: Merri Creek is a small creek that runs through the northern suburbs of melbourne. It has a bike track that hundreds of people use a day. Along the way there are farms, schools, grafitti, and little placards giving a brief over view of the creek and the history of the region. The idea is to make a more extensive study of the history of the area. Recollecting tales of what it was like when the Aboriginals lived off it. How much it's changed in the last 150 years of Melbournes development. Idea is to make an audio cd of this tales so that riders could listen to it as they rode along the creek. Or alternatively to get more signs and photographs posted along the way at wider locations. It's still in the formation stage although have read a bit about the merri creek and walked along it and should try and see whether i can get grants for it or not.

5. STROLL/TICKET ANYWHERE: A travel zine with a good close friend Emily. The zine is to be a split of my travels through europe in june/july 2005 and of emily's travels from the same time. Have started writing it and emily has finished her half and sent it across to me. I've been slack and haven't finished/started mine because of the fear that my writing will be too serious. that they're really old memories and but going to read as quite cold and stale because of that. Also because I've been too lazy and become preoccupied with a whole heap of other stuff.

6. LOOKING ELSEWHERE: A zine of most of the writing on here plus another one or two fictional and journalistic type pieces. Have cut and pasted in simplistic manner a few of them and have made a file to print out just afraid it's too self indulgent and not that good and don't have enough spare money to publish the hundred or so copies i want to make.

7. MY ZINESHOEBOX: An online resource for zinemakers throughout all of Australia. Collaborative effort between a friend Rachel and I. Have a small resource section, have started constructing the site. Also in talk with making it part of undergrowth.org and expanding it that way. Just waiting for Rachel to get back from Tassie so we can put final touches to it and let it become part of the undergrowth family.

8. MISCELLANOUS: 200 300 odd photographs of abstract images taken from a year or two ago. Also photos for DIYhousegigs website and of camp soveriegnty and other images of the city and whatnot. Afraid to set up market and sell, will people buy them or think they are crap? Whole heap of poems should send off somewhere maybe?

9. ALONE: A story with images. The start of the story is online below. Plan on making it a zine with images accompany the piece. Don't know whether writings any good and where the story is heading.

10. MUSIC: Have loads of lyrics and tunes and ideas for songs just haven't learnt the skills of how to play music properly and with actual chords and notes yet. Am jamming with a friend tomorrow which will be melancholic noise since that's what our souls together write. lyrical sample of works below:

refrain for a song: "we don't have to be cynical
we don't have to rule the world
open up your eyes and realise
tomorrows not the same."

thought but not started:

1. TRANSFERENCE: Sci fi story set in the future. Don't want to ruin to much yet but think Philip K. Dick crossed with William Gibson and Greg Bear and you'll get the idea. This is brief because if I talk to much about it it will ruin the thematics of the idea.

2. AND SO HE SPEAKS: A cartoon version of Neitszche thus spoke zarathustra with Zarathustra cast as a purple rabbit who comes down into the city to talk then becomes famous gets shoved on tv before leaving and heading out into the outskirts of town where he dies in the wasteland there. Problems: still have to finish reading the book. Don't know fuck all about cartooning. Afraid it just stupid eltist pretentious shite.

3. AXE: A short film animation of the life as an axe. An axe grows up and gets excited about the first time it becomes able to chop down a tree. The intimacy and enjoyment of the blade counting through the tree makes ffor an exhausting day and loads of enjoyment for the axe. Eventually the axe gets replaced by a chainswa and then by bulldozers until there's no trees and the family has to leave the axe to rust in the sun and rain.

4. A DOCUMENTARY NOVEL (working title): This idea is four years old. Plan on writing a documenatry novel about an artist warehouse in melbourne. There will be artworks, a cd, photographs of the exhibitions held there, sculptures, works. Difficulty and problems arise in that every piece I write will be written and created by me. Thus it seems to be completely ego driven and self-indulgent and am wondering whether it's all worth it or not. Whether it's a waste of paper considering that it's going to be a Pynchon/ Foster Wallace size coffee book.

5. UNDERGROUND: A kids book storie written about a family of ants and insects set in the dirt underground. Follows how the family gets decimated by kids who capture one of their family members and they set out on a rescue attempt to get their family member back.

okay will post more ideas in future. maybe rework and add some colours to this site by posting photos and whatnot tomorrow.

ciao

2007-01-18T13:29:00.000-08:00

been awhile since i've posted. life outside of this blog and head have taken control and am travelling on that journey. it's fun and confusing and disorientating and i probably should get back into the swing of sitting here and writing some more. did rediscover an old poem that has been edited by my friend michael farrell. other than that i've been debating with myself over whether i'm more inclined to monogamy, polygamy or whether i should just go asexual and live and write all my fantasies out here and share them with the world. i guess i'm not really asexual if i've made out with people and slept with them but there's still the fear of commiting to one person/ one moment and dealing with the fact that committing to one thing means that i miss out on a range of potential experiences. maybe that's the beauty and the role the net and myspace/blogs play we can live vicarously through others and the others know it.

alternatively maybe i am just like every other predominately straight guy a committment phobic arsehole? maybe i'm more married to the idea of control and power and privelege than i like to think and pretend? maybe i'm just being too honest and harsh on myself and too scared of following my heart through? maybe i'm just over rationalising? maybe i'm on a course trying to alienate everyone so i can be left alone by myself to wallow in self pity and to live out a dark and violent heart. to place the blame on the world as a means of not taking responsibility for my own actions. maybe i'm really self centred and narcissitic like all wannabe artists? maybe i'm just full of shit and should just shut the fuck up? maybe i'm to aware of the fact that ultimately every moment ends and can never be recaptured and i'm living in permanent mourning over this? i don't fucken know. this is so nihilistic and confusing it's infruiating but i guess at least it's honest. enjoy the poem. fuck the preamble.

THE COMFORT OF WORDS (two portraits)

I lie
in bed,
the
rain dripping
down the
window,
imagining
a world where
Sara is not
heart broken
and I am not
the arsehole who
broke it.

I lie
with pillow
between
my legs
waiting for
them to
become hot
and sticky.

2006-12-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

here's a review of a book published locally. it can be found at www.undergrowth.org.au. undergrowth is a friend of mine but the work is great and i'd be recommending it even if i didn't know tim who is a lovely man. enjoy. s

NoMadology- undergowth.org

We are all travellers, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are all travellers. From the moment we are pushed out of our mothers’ womb to the moment we are placed in a box in the ground/ sent out to sea/ our ashes are spread/ we are living breathing walking talking travellers. Every moment, every step, we take we travel into another world and become a tourist there. It’s a thought that can be paralysing if one lingers on it too long. Naturally we have ways of making this load easier, of sharing these journeys in order not to get buckled down by the magnitude of this thought. One such way is to share it through art, photography, travelogues, documentary and films. Another, and ultimately more simple and common way, is in the short anecdote. It is the later approach that Undergrowth.org take with their latest book Nomadology.

Originally started as an online blog in early 2005, Nomadology is the seventh and most cohesive publication to date from the Undergrowth crew. The stories are short and sweet (nothing longer than eight pages) and read like little snapshots, postcards if you like, from assorted locations of counter culture around the world. There’s Rak Razam’s reenactment (sans LSD) of the ride that Dr Abbie Hoffman took through the streets of Basel in 1943, Verb tells the tale of booty dancing in Gunbalunya and the effect that boredom and petrol sniffing have on the indigenous youth of that community a recollection which in its pondering and questioning style avoids the moralising tone that others accounts may have travelled down and in so doing is much more confronting and challenging read. Dan writes of teaching English in Indonesia and of the eroticism of riding the Jakarta bus where sardine conditions means a strangers hand can quite easily fondle ones private region. And in the Across the Belly of the beast, the longest story of the collection, Arrow writes about hitchhiking across the guts of America with Curtis a red neck gulf war veteran at the wheel and a book of blotter art in his bag. It’s a tale in which the gulf war veteran launches tirades against niggers, throws a homemade molotov coktail (made out of an empty whiskey bottle) at a 2004 election billboard for George Bush and which ends with Curtis and Arrow taking some of the blotter art, tripping off their heads on the side of the road, and waking up the next morning in each others arms. A poignant image for the need for connection we all have but it is not the most poignant piece of the collection. That title goes to Sam Hoffmans’ Travellers all sort in which he manages to convey the sense of travelling through India not by a description of the place itself but rather through a series of brief descriptions of the people he meets. It's funny, it's surreal (a guy hitchhiking across the mountain spots (at 4500 feet) two Koreans standing on the side of the road eating two minute noodles) and for anyone who has travelled a perfect illustration of what travelling reveals to the traveller: the fleetingness and randomness of life.

And it's this fleetingness that makes Nomadology a perfect illustration of the milleu of the globalised world in which we are living. To read Nomadology is to attend a friends’ party with strangers and acquaintances you barely know but who you once you’ve meet you want to remain friends with forever. It’s a night full of laughs and stories that inspire you to get out there and experience the world in all its shape and sizes. It leaves you with the realisation that there's all these places in the world you haven't visited and a sense of pride in that you've been lucky enough to hear it and can share it with others. More tellingly though Nomadology shows how we are more alike then we imagine at times. How deep down we all want long to hear travelling stories, that we all looking to share and experience the latest journey from some remote area of the world/ our brain. That in spite of fashion, politics, language, religion we're all travelling spirits longing for the connection of another spirit. That even if that connection is fleeting and transitory it’s worth it and in a climate and world that is trying to quell and squash ones spirit it’s these connections that we should cherish and treasure; as fleeting and random as they maybe.

2006-10-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

so this is a little piece getting published in the g20 reader in this ole town of melbourne

DIY HOUSEGIGS MELBOURNE

Diy Housegigs Melbourne began as an idea in late 2004, inspired by the DIY ethic of 70's and 80's punk. The idea was to bring together anyone interested in to holding gigs free from the constraints of the commercial society in which we unfortunately live. These gigs would be held in backyards, abandoned warehouses and shopfronts, dingy squats, rooftops, in short wherever the fuck one wanted.

The first of these gigs took place in early January 2005 at a house in Brunswick. On a warm summers night fifty or so people watched and sweated to the sounds of Tank, Young Love and Group Seizure. Those who weren't watching the bands lounged in the open rooftop reading and looking through the zine distro that had been set up. The next gig took place a month later at the House of Finbar in Footscray with twenty people chilling out to the sights of Go Genre Everything and Trickledown. The highlight of which was the four year old next door neighbour, who'd spent most of the gig hanging over the fence, singing along to a couple of improvised Trickledown numbers.
The next gig was Compost held at Montrose, a small inner city terrace house in North Carlton. Here 80 people relaxed in the backyard to the chilled sounds of Snawklor, Raceless and Ai Yamamoto, Casionova and Rose Turtle Ertler. There was a zine stall ran by Breakdownpress (www.breakdownpress.org) and food and cake for everyone. As dusk set in the Town Bikes gave a five-minute performance to end the night.
The forth gig took place at the House of Finbar and was the most ambitious gig to date. A mini-festival entitled “Let's lynch the landlord” it featured some ten bands/performances including: Pisschrist (one of their performances in which Yeap ended up with a bloodied face), Young love (the singer of which also followed Yeap's traditon of ending the gig bleeding from the mouth), the Ureviles, Procedure 286, Panel of Judges, Arch Rivals and Potential Citizens. There were also speeches from Michael Hyde- a uni lecturer who was banned from uni for life in the sixties owing to his student/ Maoist activism- who spoke about the Maoist anti-war protestors of ‘68 (and was questioned intelligently by a room full of anarchists about his opinion on Mao) and Briony from Resistance who spoke about her upcoming trip to Bolivia. Along with the speakers and bands Barricade books had their own store and there was information about the upcoming Stolenwealth Games Protests and Food not Bombs provided food for the event. There was also an acoustic room where a husband and wife duo spent the afternoon making experimental noise and spontaneous poetry performances took place.
The next gig was DIY Housegigs Melbourne greatest achievement to date: a mini-festival taking place over the course of a weekend (the 5th and 6th November 2005). Entitled The Cardboard Chateau the gig began in the early afternoon on the Saturday and finishing early Sunday evening when the cops enforced a $500 fine for noise violations and complaints. (A fine that in true DIY spirit has and will not be paid seeing as the gig only ran ten minutes over time and it wasn’t until everything was packed and everyone was heading home that the police decided to come and slap on the fine.) The festival featured some twenty performers all up. Saturday saw an eclectic mix of music styles from the noise and punk rock antics of True Radical Miracle, to the sublime sounds of Mousetrapreplica (complete with sound specific painter), to the riot grrl of Love the bomb, the eclectic country/gypsy music of The Adorable Catastrophe. Sunday was a much more relaxed affair with the sixty or so in attendance basking in the late spring heat to the sounds of Seth Rees, Basement Cinema and Go Genre Everything. There was also a puppetry performance by Deborah Hall complete with dancing skeletons and oversized toy squids and fish. The highlights of the show are varied but the collective spontaneity of the Exquisite Corpse art (one person writes a sentence, the other person draws a picture folds it over and passes it on to the next until the page is full and you get a strange and weird story) and acid inspired and induced graffiti that spilled across the wall on the Saturday night are a couple. Once again there were stalls from Barricade Books and Sticky (the zine store in the underground ) and there was cake and food provided by the vegan cooking branch of the Barricade collective. There was also a zine Here, there, everywhere given away free for the first sixty or so house goers. In this a lengthy account of the G8 protest in Scotland could be read as well as travel logs of protests in Darmsdat and squats in Berlin.
Over the rest of the summer of 2005-2006 a couple more gigs were held of which the Ovens Street warehouse was the most noteworthy. Organised in nine days this gig took place at the civil time of 2 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, with a wading pool out the front and haircuts in the alley around the side, a hundred odd people came to witness the sounds of Dead Record Girls, Go Genre Everything, Batrider, Love the Bomb and The Auralees, and the spoken word of Alice O'brien. The evening ended with the sounds of DJ's Cleopatra vs Prblmatic and the joys of a drunken walk home. All up DIY Housegigs Melbourne has held some dozen or so gigs and is looking to hold plenty more.
At the moment DIY Housegigs Melbourne is constructing a new interactive website to replace the old one. This website will have stories and photographs and sound bites and maybe one day in the future video footage (volunteers anyone?) With summer coming DIY Housegigs Melbourne is looking for people to start some fun and action to enliven the city. If you're in a band, or know anyone who is, or an artist, poet, writer, feral activists, media subverter, or if you just want to organise an enjoyable afternoon/evening at you place then you can send an email to diyhousegigsmelbourne@gmail.com and we can help you out. It’s fun and relatively easy a couple of emails and phone calls and a great afternoon can be had in your backyard. So come on let's create some little fun spaces of resistance and enjoy this summer and the years to come.

2006-10-17T17:29:00.000-07:00

the shed two storey's in the sky

here's a couple more pieces. the nimbus section is the beginning of the sam selection below. the other is just a brief little poem.

NIMBUS

Get.
Get up.
Get up now.
Now
Now
NOW!
Come on.
Move your leg.
Move your leg.
Move your...
Come on.
Move it.
It's not hard.
Move it.
Move your damn leg.
Move it!
Lift and Put down.
Lift and...
Put.
Down.
Lift and...
Move it.
Your left one.
Move it.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Move it!
Move it!
Move it!
MOVE IT FUCKEN NOW!
NOW!
NOW!
Move the fucker now.
Move it.
Come on.
Come on.
Come...
On.
Come...
Come...
Come...
Come.
Fine.
Fuck it.
Stay there.
Just go on.
Lie there.
See if I care.
See if I.
Just stay there.
No one's watching.
No one cares.
No one
No...
One.
No...

BREAK UP POME (AFTER ED SMITH)

There used to be a time
i would have shared my toothbrush
now i couldn't care

oh and this is something i started this morning:

ALONE

I wake to find myself lying who knows where.
It's light. Or at least in my eyes it's light.
I have a terrible headache and my mouth is aching.
I worked last night, I think. I don't know days have been blurring lately. Too much to. I'll get on top of it soon I hope.
I hope.
I hope.
I'll get on top of it!
I lift my head. Try and lift my head but I can't. The headaches too much. I'll have to just lie here and wait.
I roll over. Look up. I can see a lamp and some leaves. I'll lay here for awhile, sleep it off.

There's some loud knocking.
I think it's coming from beyond me.
I don't know. With this headache all sounds are reverberating. It could be coming from right in front of me for all i know.
It doesn't really matter. At least now I know that there are other people around and that maybe i can get help. I just have to get up.
I try raising my head again.
One, two, three. I raise it three centimetres and then nothing.
I lay me head back down.
It aches so much now.
I'll give it ten, twenty, thirty minutes and try again.

There's a couple behind me.
I can hear them arguing.
It seems pointless.
They're late to meet someone. A mother, a father. I don't know. Through the headache their voices are muffled.
I try and yell.
Nothing happens.
I try and yell again.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I hear a car start.
I am left alone.
I stare up at the lamp shade and the branches.
I count to ten.
I have to get up and out of here.

I have made it.
Finally I have made it.
I am sitting on a brick fence.
It is white.
There's a block of flats to my side.
My head is still hurting.
On the ground there is a pile of blood.
I wonder where it came from.
I reach up and touch my face. There's cut's and lacerations all across it.
I look down at my arm.
The stamp is still there.
On my right arm as always.
Wait! This time it's on my left arm.
Something is not right.
My head is hurting more than ever.
I fall.
Face down.
Face flat down I fall.

I am up again.
Sitting not on the fence but on the ground in front of it.
I can see a house in front of me.
Further up the street there is a man walking his dog.
I think of getting up, chasing after him but he's walking too fast.
Besides there is a telephone closer.
When I get the strength I'm going to walk across to that and call home.
9542 4322
9542 4322
9542 4322

...to be continued

2006-10-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

here's a couple of extracts from a work in progress. enjoy.

maybe that's all we can hope for. one, two, three, four, five seconds of pure unmediated joy, happiness, pain, sorrow, loneliness, whatever. maybe that's all we're after and that's all we need. and that if we have to lie, cheat, steal, fuck, fight, breathe, argue for that then that's enough. that art, addiction, prostitution, robbery, even murder and rape are ways in which we can reach that. that deep down we're all fucked up with nowwhere to go. that we're all searching for the same thing: a way to break through the artificialty. maybe that's all there is to being a human. who knows? whatever the answer (if there is one) it was certainly too much for Sam's seventeen year old mind to comprehend. particulary given the hour and his state. no at 6 on a saturtday morning there's only one thing on your mind and that's...sleep. well once the room stopped spinning and your stomach settled and the heart slowed down and the body started twitching there's one thing on your mind. and that's sleep. sleep and dreams. sleep and... sleep.

was sam sad? was he happy? hard to say. he felt his heart beating. he felt his chest being ripped apart. he felt like he was about to be thrown face first into a cave to which he and he alone would have to force his way out of. he felt so different. a week, an hour, ten minutes ago it had all been so...so flats not the right word but it will have to do... so just so and now... and now it was all just...just different. was sam sad? was he happy? hard to say all he knew was he was fucken terrified and he had felt like that before..

obviously the context helps but it would be great if you comment.

and another poem/prose piece

PROJECTILES

To the loud grunts of two guys fucking on screen we make out.
You ask if this is my first time, your hand reaching down my trousers.
I lie and say no.
Good, you reply massaging my hard on.
Want to go to a room? you ask.
I nod.
You lead me hand in hand.
Are you sure you want to do this? you ask shutting the door behind you.
Yes, I reply.
You sure? You ask again detecting the nervousness in my voice.
Yes, I reply making sure to sound confident.
Good, you reply reaching for my zip.
You pull out my cock and begin sucking.
I begin shaking.
Relax, you say. Relax.
I take a deep breathe.
And another.
And another.
Slowly but surely I feel my body relax.
Up and down you move your mouth. Up and down.
In my head I try and describe what it feels like.
I can’t. It’s... I don’t know. Words will never do it justice.
You pull back.
My cock pops out of your mouth.
You ask me to come all over your face.
I start masturbating.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven
Eight
Come! Come all over my face! you shout.
I try. I try. I try. But I can’t come.
You face is too beautiful to destroy with my white sticky liquid, besides I wouldn’t want you to walk around the city with the smell of me on you.
Sorry I say pulling up my trousers. It’s... it’s... I don’t know...
And I don’t for once.
That ‘s alright you say. Maybe some other time. Next time we’ll go to my place.
Yeah, I reply, maybe that’ll be better.
We both know it’s a lie. There will be no next time.
But somehow it’s the right thing to say.
It’s so perfect in it’s untruth. You turn and walk out the door, heading back to the lounge.
I turn and walk out the front door embarrased and more confused then ever.

2006-09-18T22:22:00.001-07:00

Looking Through The Mobius Strip

Where do I begin to describe the effect of Dennis Cooper's works? To explain the subtle nuances of a writer who's work is an illustration of the impossibilty of language, and art, to describe the multifold reality in which we are living. Is it a cop out to fail to write this piece? Am I taking the easy way out by not achieving what I set out to write? Or is this the best way to approach the works of a writer like Dennis Cooper? To affirm your failure and in doing so celebrate and rejoice in this? To embrace this natural and often ignored element of life. How do I explain every subtle emotion and discomfit and anger that Cooper's work brings up in me? How do I explain it all without resorting to saying something as simple and trite as go and pick up one of his books? Go and read the work for yourself. How do I explain? How do I? How do I?

These are but some of the questions that have been floating through my head these past few months as I've started and re-started this piece numerous times. Of course there's been other questions, other pressing reasons for my failure to write this piece, cowardice and paranioa being the two prominent ones amongst a myriad of others. But they're best left to the privacy of my own head than to hang it out in the world for all to see. But then writing is all about an opening into another world and it would be unfair of me not to let those feelings and experience permeate throughout this writing. So what to do then?

Well it only seems natural to begin at the start and work my way from there. Not at the very start when I found Cooper's writing on the shelf of Monash University and devoured the novels Closer, Frisk and the short story collection Wrong with the energy of a sugar ridden kid at a birthday party. No, no, no. It's best to begin with the original idea for this piece and work from there. And that is to start with a reading of Cooper's novel Try. For it is Try that I feel exemplifies the importance of Cooper's writing. It is Try that shows the emotional impact and venacity that Cooper's writing has on the reader. It is Try that is the heart of Cooper's writing. It is Try that in those three letters and one word exemplifies everything about Cooper's work.

The third novel in Cooper's George Miles Cycle Try story focuses on Ziggy, a seventeen year old Husker Du loving punk who lives in one of those sprawling Los Angeles suburbs. (Well at least I imagine the novel is set in one of the sprawling Los Angeles suburbs, Cooper for universality sake never actually locates the novel). Besides being a seventeen year old Husker Du loving punk, Ziggy is the sexual object of his two step-fathers and the writer of a zine 'I Apologise.' To make matters all the more complicated for Ziggy is that he is in love with Calhoun, his straight junkie friend who could write the greatest novel the world has ever seen if there wasn't a needle sticking in his arm.

And it is here that Cooper's prose shines. None of the characters are demonised. There's no division, no black and white (even though the emotion is always with Ziggy). Everything is given it's chance to breathe and work. It's fucked up. It's disturbing. It's fuckin' discomforting in parts. Particularly the letter Bob, one of Ziggy's step fathers, writes to Ziggy in which he describes the process of rimming his son. An act that becomes all the more chilling when Ziggy yells out in the middle of being fucked by Bob: “If you loved me you wouldn't fuck me when I'm crying.” It's challenging and confronting to say the least.

But that is why Cooper's writing is so great. Not just in Try which is the most realistic of his novels but in the other novels of the Cycle To. In Guide and Frisk he blurs the line between fiction and reality so well until the line blurs into nothing and you begin questioning the difference between your own factual experience and your own fantasy life. Until you learn that your real life is a shadow of your fantasy life. In Frisk this is demonstrated in Cooper's 'love' of 'snuff' films. Beginning with a description of five photographs Cooper loved and cherished as a kid, a series of photos presenting themselves as a snuff film, the novel follows Cooper through his fantasies of disembowelling his lovers and sexual objects from his teenage years in LA to his time in Amsterdam where in a drunken, drug induced binge he kills and disembowels a young dutch punk in a windmill. The story unfolds in a manner in which the fanatasies become more and more blurred until you actually believe that Dennis has murdered the boy. It's only at the end of the novel, wherein the five pictures are re-written and the images are shown to be fake that you realise that all of the stories themselves are fictions and fantasies and a way of Dennis himself being able to release himself from himself.

In Guide the novel takes the shape of an LSD trip. Starting from a Guided by Voice song the novels morphs and merges through memories as the main character Dennis goes to trendy bars, makes collages, writes an article for Rolling Stone about a squat in LA, takes esctasy, picks up guys in cruising lounges, backstage concerts. There's trendy art galleries, self-obsessed artists, debates over childhood pornography, paranioa over being a writer. It's trendy indie LA sans the simplified commercial Hollywood glamour. It's LA seen through the blearied wide opened eyes of a middle aged anarchist. It's a subversive novel that ends as it begins with a memory fading and fizzing out.

That said Guide is not the most difficult of Cooper's novels. Not by far, that monkier goes to Period the final of Cooper's Georges Miles cycle. The novel is essentially that. A period, a bloody full stop. It is the end of the cycle. The end of fifteen years of his life, of twenty-five years of drug taking, prostitution and experiementation. It is also perhaps most importantly the end of language. The inevitable failure of it to describe anything to do with violence and emotion. The novels plot, if a word like that can be used here, focuses on two Satan loving teens who decide to murder the local deaf/dumb kid in order to bring them closer to Satan. If the violence of earlier Cooper novels is psychotic and paranoid this violence is more terrifying for it's minimalism. In the way in which through short, terse, one/two word sentences he is able to depict the fear and the sounds and sights of this deaf/dumb kid. If reading the early novels left one frenzied for a killing spree this novel leaves one cold like they've seen a ghost.

It is the natural conclusion to a cycle that begun some eighteen years earlier with Closer. In this novel, it's title stolen from the Joy Division album of the same name, Cooper pieces together five loosely related stories around the themes of self-obsession and violent sexual fantasies. Nihilistic in their nature and outcomes, they offer an insight into the self-destructive mindframe of a group of young confused men in late 70's LA. Like all novels in the cylce the focal point of the novel is George Miles. In this novel Georges is a skeleton of a character. A skeleton who his friends are drawn to as the object of their violent sexual fantasies, as a muse for their artwork or just as someone to share. The beauty of this novel is the way in which it shows the self-obsessed nihilistic tendency of that period to be ultimately hollow and quite shallow. Once there fanatasies are reached the characters become nothing themselves. Become quiet empty and hollow. This is evident in the story of David. Obsessed with the idea of being a famous singer David goes through his life fantasy about his own stage performance. So wrapped up he is in his own world he doesn't even hear the car turning the corner and crashing into the garage party he's attending. Doesn't hear the car until it crashes into him and he finds himself dead and buried. His fantasies left like that.

Of course Cooper's writing is not just limited to the cycle and the five novels that make this up. Since finishing Period in 2000 he has published three more novels. In 2002 he published My Loose Thread a novel based around the diaries of Kip Kinkle, the killer who murdered his parents before undertaking killing spree on his school colleagues. In 2004 he publishedThe Sluts- the one novel of his I've yet to read- a novel set in a gay cruising lounge where Johns rate and talk about everything they've done to Brad, the best arse in town. And last year he published God Jnr a novel in which the central character is a father mourning the loss of the son he killed in a car crash. A novel which in spite of the lack of sexual violent themes of Cooper's other work is still a powerful mediatation on grief and loss. Another illustration of the way we handle the inevitable circumstances of failure and the often fucked up ways (for example Jim the father milking a job by pretending to be crippled) in which we live and bring guilt upon others.

More recently Cooper has started blogging his life on www.denniscooper.net. It is the latest attempt in breaking down the barrier between writer and author, artist and audience. Here you can read about past lovers, find info about new artists, get into debates about labeling and privacy, as well as reading the works of other aspiring artists and writers from around the globe. There's been an open mic night, a portrait day, an artist collection day, poetry competitions, giveaways. All circular. It's damn addictive and pretty voyueristic but fits in perfect. It's also something of an odd antidote to his fiction world where the characters ultimately can be seen to be spiralling to their own death - metaphorically and literally – whereas the online community seems to be expanding further and further. Exploding rather than imploding. And that's where we all should be heading. Exploding out in balls of chaos rather than turning inwards in movements of self-doubt. So have I suceeded? I don't know. And somehow I don't think it really matters that much.

2006-09-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

here's a couple of poems inspired by camp sovereignty which existed in Melbourne Kings Domain from the 12th March 2006- 11th May 2006. Over the duration of the camp some 20 000 people visited, offering moral support, clothing, food, blankets, and their hearts and minds to show that places can exist outside of the capitalist/monetary sytem in which we live. The top poem is mine. The bottom two poems are written by a friend of mine. The article, in the post below, was written by me and published on www.undergrowth.org.au.

WHY CAMP SOVEREIGNTY?

Because it's about bloody time
Because there's some voices that need to be heard
Because it feels good to cry
Because this is the chance
Because it beats watching Neighbours
Because it's like nothing you'll ever imagine
Because there's a spirit burning
Because it's a chance for your imagination to roam free
Because there's a mystery there that'll never be solved
Because it's time to listen to that beating heart
Because the shadows will protect you
Because it's time to fuck the gubbament
Because your not blind
Because it's now
Because it's nothing you'll ever read about
Because it's cultural not political
Because a thousand photos will never do it justice
Because sometime you need to be broken
Because confusion is needed in this world
Because guilt is not always a bad thing
Because poverty is not offensive
Because it's abjection that makes life interesting
Because it's fun
Because you're giving someone a job
Because it's feels good to be wanted
Because...

HOW COULD YOU by sparx

How could you forgive us if you could not forgive yourself?
Perhaps you loved that fire as we love to breathe or
Perhaps it was a love the spirit not the flesh could understand.
I heard you saying "Keep your mind on that fire."
To see that fire go out,
That is the worst of all.
Therefore most we keep you warm and fed all through the cold nights
And the days as well, so you can burn that old fire on that hill
Open to wind and rain?
I knew, or I thought I knew, that was right.
"You can smoke some of these."
"I brought this for you, you can eat this."
How could you forgive us when you still punish yourself?
How could we expect from you gratitude and reconciliation
When you must burn that fire
To see that fire go out,
That is the worst of all.
How could you forgive that when I cannot?
It is beyond my knowing.
Are we spirits to live like that fire, open to wind and rain?
Many times we saw you struggle
Are you God to forgive and reconcile when it was you not us
Whose pain washed down that hill
Who felt all your birds leave you without a word
When it was you not us who tended that fire, who saw that fire put out
"Stop," you say, "stop gubba, you mustn't. It was all I had."

UNTITLED (or more precisely I've forgotten the title now)again by sparx

The fire is out
You won't breathe that smoke again
Stand on that road and look up at that park
The fire is out
You won't hear that voice again
The land will rewrite itself
Nevermind you won't lose that voice
You won't lose that fire
Sometimes you'll be walking in the noisy city
You'll hear it humming quietly again
You'll be walking home on a warm night
And that smoke will creep into your
Old lungs again

2006-09-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

Forty-Five Days...

“What you are a doing is a disgrace!” The shrill voice of a lone dissenter breaks the somber mood of the early afternoon. One, two, three, four police surround the man and drag him off. Throughout the barage of abuse Aunty Beryl continues reading the list of Victorian Indigenous soidiers who fought to defend this country. There's over 200, all forgotten, all ignored in the ceremony which just happened down the road.

In front of Aunty Beryl, three possum skins lie, two painted red one yellow, they are covered in photocopied photos of the soliders and their families. There is also a massacre map of Victoria highlighting all the known places where Victorian Aborigines were killed between 1836-1851. The scariest fact is dot 33 which simply reads: 1842 Skull Creek, Gippsland- unknown number killed. Walking past the photocopies later I overhear Robbie Thorpe angrily musing on the numbers that could mean: tens, twenties, hundreds, a thousand. Annoyed, he walks off stopping at a photo of an Indigenous woman to aks about its origins.

It's Anzac day 2006. The forty-fifth day since the fire has been burning in Kings Domain. Forty-five days since the Rainbow Serpent first travelled into the sky and began his healing of the land: his healing and awakening of the citizens of Melbourne and with it the World. Forty-five days since I sat around the edges of the fire listening to Aunty Isobel Cobb and Robbie Cowora light the sacred fire with the ashes they bought from the Tent Embassy in Canberra. Forty-five days since a group of us, punks, ferals, students, parents and kids, activists of young and old, indigenous and non-indigenous, walked forward gum leaves in hands and placed them on the fire. Since we sat there and watched the city disappear into a haze of smoke (not for the only time.) Forty five days since the tents went up and twelve days since they were taken down when the Supreme Court demanded that all 'creature comforts' be removed from around the sacred fire.

In that time the camp has been ignored, harrassed, celebrated, admired, cherished and most importantly visited. People have felt ignored, defeated, grumpy, ecstatic, confused, angry, amazed, sad, bemused, delighted, frustrated, lied to, manipulated, proud, honoured. There's been tears around the fire, jokes shared, there's been secret meetings, marches through the city, flags and banners painted, letters written, flyers circulated, stews eaten, kitchens set up and dismantled, stages built, films shown (a fieworks display interfering with one of them!), new friendships have been made, old ones re-invented. Bikers have threatened to put out the fire only to walk through it, Corrobees have taken place (a group of dancers have been formed from people around the state) people have travelled down from Brisbane, Sydney, Torres Straight Island, South Australia, from Nigeria, Poland, America, Jamica, India. Kettles have boiled as helicopters have flown overhead, the media have swarmed hovering around looking for the latest news story, international press meetings have been made whilst up gum trees. The Queens been visited, the Australian flag has been burnt, the aboriginal flag has flown in the city. There's been discussions about 'Genocide, Sovereignty, Treaties' (Gavin Jennings unequivocally stated that there will be no republic in this country until a treaty has been signed). I've heard repeatedly the numerous ways in which Australia has breached the United Nations Convention on the Prevention of Genocide:killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (Stolen Generation); forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Stolen Generation). I've heard how Victorian Indigenous Aboriginals own less than 0.001% of this land. I've become angered over the fact that indigenous Victorians are 16 times more likely to go to juvie; that only 34% of them finish year 12; over the fact that the life expectancy of Indigenous Victorians is twenty years less than that of non-Indigenous Victorians.

There've been chants, shouting, marches, the centre of Bourke Street Mall has been occupied briefly. Captain Cooks cottage has been made into a crime scene. Banners have flown outside Bhp Billiton. Barrongs warning song has been sung. Poems have been read, songs have been written. Speeches have been made, politicians, sports stars, musicians (Gavin Jennings, Cathy Freeman, Michael Franti) have visited. We have danced and listened to acoustic songs. Learnt and watched traditional dances (the mating dance of the black cockatoo has been danced outside the exhibition building and at camp.) Salads have been made, barbeques cooked, breakfasts eaten. Food and clothing has been brought and left with campers. The West Papuans have been welcomed on Easter Sunday. Campers have come and gone and come again. And all the time the fire has burnt.

It has rained, people have shivered, have huddled together under the shade of a couple of trees and still the fire hasn't gone out. It's amazing to think that what was an idea in late January when I first attended a black GST meeting has become this. Something so organic, so problematic, so so real. Even the anticipated threat of violence, of police harrassment, has become a reality since Easter. Every little delivery of wood has been meet by a demand to burn it. A gunyah is built, the police demand to take it down otherwise they will smash it. A fire is lit to cook some food, the police come and put it. And so on ad nauseum. The mass media which stayed away whilst the shambles of the games went on have flocked around looking for some little story, little edge, little fact. The bouyancy of the first week has subsided into sleepless nights as the barriers and ropes that were put up have been taken down. As the rain has ruined the comfortable sleep of many.

And throughout all of this people have come in their dozens like we have today. To sit and listen. To learn. To watch the dancers. To witness history in front of them. To listen to the sounds of the digeredoo rumbling through the earth. To sit with coffees, teas, bottles of water in hand and watch a corrobee before their eyes. Watch the Camp Sovereignty dancers dance the dance of the bee. Dance how to hunt down a kangaroo. The patience needed to sneak up on it, to ensure that you are not spotted by the roo before it hops away. Sit and listen as Ringo Terrick talks about how the fire has allowed his spirit to fly high like the eagle, how it has awoken a spirit in all of us that we should let fly free. It is this spirit that is trying to be squashed. It is this spirit, this freedom that is trying to be reigned in. It is this spirit that we are taught to be scared of. The spirit of the fire, of the earth, of the body, of the minds conviction. The spirits that in all of us, the spirit, the spirit, the spirit...

At six I head home. The day is over. The ashes from the fire have been dispensed to the tribes of Victoria where they will burn bright. In two weeks the cutural heritage that has been granted to protect the camps fire will end. It's still not decided what will happen with the fire. There's talk of a permanent stone hut being put here. To commerate the fire, the 38 elders who are buried here. To commerate the site of the first indigenous reserve in Victoria. As I look around the crowd I notice a look of loss on a lot of faces. There's a sense of closure, of ending. I know I feel it and I sense that others feel it too. As I walk off and head back towards Flinders Street I feel priveleged, feel lucky to have known this has existed for 45 days. I hope the fire last for longer, much much longer. If not I'll always be left with the memory of riding a tram my jumper smelling like eculyptus.

POST SCRIPT: Just after midnight on the 11th May the fire was put to rest. A hundred people gathered around the fire to say their goodbyes in one last sacred ceremony. At midnight, with the protection act ending the police moved in, in spite of the agreement that had been reached between the park officers and firekeepers to put the fire out themselves. The men moved to the front where the police were coming from, the women moved to the back. As the fire keepers poured two wheelbarrows of dirt putting the flame to rest, 40 policemen barged through the women pushing and shoving them aside forming a horseshoe around the fire. The council hosed the already dead fire before dumping a truckload of dirt on the ashes. As the council worked and the police stood silent like stunned rabbits a group of protestors sang the tent embassy's prayer. By two everyone had left and gone home. For sixty days the sacred fire burned in the city centre. And although it's no longer burning there's 25 other fires healing the rest of the state. Not to mention the ashes waiting underground for a time in which it can be rekindled and the fire will burn once again.

2006-09-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

here's a couple of vignettes i wrote about working in a cruising lounge. they're to be published on an online website. i hope you enjoy them.

VIGNETTE 1: CHRIS

I first met Chris in the second or third month of working at Erotica Plus.He was in his early thirties and a gingernut. The first time I met him it
was a Sunday, the quietest day of work. He told me straight out about his troubled life. A gambler and an alcoholic, he had taken a day off work to
spend it at the Casino. Starting with a couple hundred bucks, he’d found
himself five grand to the good and decided he’d head to Thailand. So he rushed off to the airport and spent a couple of days in Bangkok with all the Thai bois he could buy. Arriving back in Australia, he bought himself a
bottle of Jim Beam at the airport. He then went around to his girlfiriend of
ten years and informed her that he was gay, not bi. (She had already
suspected.) As he drove home he came to the realisation that he was an
alcoholic and so once home he poured the bottle of whiskey down the sink.
Now single, he hit the cruising lounges for a bit of promiscuous sex. A little
bored with the sex and the lifestyle, he started taking speed to spice up the
fucking.

It was three or four months before I saw Chris next. This time, it was a Saturday
arvo and reasonably busy. I was at the desk reading and studying, when Chris
rocked up. We got to talking and catching up. About five or ten minutes into our
conversation, a couple of guys walked out of the lounge. They were talking to
each other about grabbing a bite to eat. Chris turned and looked at them for a
couple of minutes. Staring one, then the other, down until one of them asked him
what his problem was. A question to which Chris replied, “Nothing. What’s yours?”
The guy looked him up and down, and then left with his friend, heading down the
stairs. Chris then entered the lounge and stayed for about half an hour or so before
deciding to head off.

An hour or so later, the phone rang. It was Chris on the end of the line telling me he knew Johnny, and that if those two guys came back, to tell them that. To tell them
he knows Johnny and that he will come and get them. I told Chris that I’d pass on the
message and hung up. I went back to work. A couple of hours later, the two guys
came back to the lounge. On the way through they asked what that guy’s problem is.
I said I don’t know. They entered the lounge and I went back to my reading.

The next, and last, time I saw Chris was the Labour Day weekend in 2005. I was
downstairs, putting stickers on the backs of DVDs and talking films with Rick, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure run up the stairs. Rick noticed the figure too and got out from behind his desk and ran to the stairs, to tell the customer to pay for a ticket. There was a muffled reply and then I heard Rick muttering to himself as he ran upstairs. I continued putting stickers on the DVDs when I heard a scream from upstairs. I ran up the stairs and found Chris punching Rick in the face repeatedly. From the blood on the wall, it looked like there’d been quite a few punches. I ran across and tried to grab Chris off Rick. He turned and hit me on the side of the head. I slid down the wall and covered my face with my hands. By now, Rick had pushed the buzzer for the lounge. Chris rushed on into the lounge room.

Rick ran downstairs to call the police and I went to follow. As I reached the top of
the stairs, Chris spotted me. I turned to my left and ran into the toilet. I tried to shut the door on him. I wasn't quick enough. I lay on the ground, my hands covering my face, as he kicked me a couple of times. He then ran down the stairs. As I lay there on the floor
I heard a loud crash and bang and Rick screaming again. I ran downstairs to find the
counter smashed to the ground and Chris punching Rick again as he tried to speak into
the phone. Rick hung up the phone and Chris stepped back, threatening to put a bullet
in him (and me) if he ever called the pig. He then ran down the stairs and walked off
down the alley.

I followed him turning to get the police. He spotted me walking out the door and made to come back to Erotica Plus. I shut the door and from inside I called the police and an ambulance for Rick. As I stood there four colleagues came from the other stores to see what had happened. They were ready to beat the shit out of the guy.

Fifteen minutes later the police arrived. They took photos of the blood stained walls and steps and took our statements in the alley way, using the milkcrates from the Chinese shop next door as stools.

A little more than a month later in early May I got a call from the Sargeant at Flinders Street station to come in for a line up. I stood at the counter of Flinders Street Station looking through a series of photos. It took me little more than a couple of minutes to identify number nine as Chris. I was informed after identifying Chris that there would be a court case later on that year. I left and
had forgotten about the case, thinking that the police weren't doing anything about it, until May this year when the police informed me that Chris was about to go to hearing on twelve charges related to
the incident on Sunday 13th March 2005.

That hearing is now a court case that has been scheduled for the 19th October. I am to make an appearance at that case. I'm a little scared to think what that means.

VIGNETTE 2: DAVE

Dave was a cross dresser. I only saw him at the lounge a couple of times.
The first time would have been early on a Saturday morning. He came up to
the counter with a bag in his hand. He looked a little drunk, but that was
none of my concern. (Guys shot up in the toilets, so there was no
real drug policy to speak of.) He was probably in his mid to late twenties. He
wore a hat, tracksuit pants and a t-shirt. He asked to watch a video. I grabbed
the fifteen dollars from him and directed him to the booth. I went back to reading
the paper and drinking the coffee, glancing up every now and then to ensure that
the video that was playing in the lounge hadn't finished.

About twenty minutes later Dave walked from the booths to the counter. I looked
up at him. He was wearing a black dress and a green blouse. Under his dress,
he wore a pair of tights. His face was made up: lips bright red, eyeliner,
face painted quite thick. His hear was now a shoulder length wig. He asked to
enter the lounge. I grabbed the seven dollars from her. She entered the lounge, I
switched of his TV and went back to work, namely calling up for the lunch rounds.
An hour or so later I saw Dave walking down the stairs. He was back wearing his
trackies and t-shirts. I was climbing the stairs having completed the lunch round.
His face was still made up and he still had the wig on under his cap.

At the top of the stairs I turned the corner and headed towards the counter. A guy
was waiting for me. The video had finished. He asked me what that guy’s story was.
I said I didn’t know. He said that he would lie there on the couch, legs spread, masturbating. He would sit there, finger up his arse, the other on his hard cock as the video played. He would just sit there. No one would go near him. Everyone just stood there and watched, their eyes moving from the porn stars on the screen and back to the guy on the couch.

I changed the video and the guy at the counter entered the lounge. I went
back to my reading curious and interested at what I'd just saw. The next day at work
I told Rick about it and he said that Dave had been coming to the store for a couple of months. He'd first started watching dvd's downstairs and then one day he started wearing make up and a wig. Rick had always wondered when he'd start wearing drag.

It was a couple of months before I next saw Dave. This time he had
a goatee and his hair was longer, wavy, brown and shoulder length. He told me
which booth he was in. Number seven. He was wearing a backpack. He looked
slightly drunk again. I turned the video screen on and watched him work down
the corridor. It was a Sunday so I went back to reading my book.

About an hour later, he walked out of the booth. He was wearing a white
blouse through which a black bra could be seen. His hair was tied back in
pigtails, his lips painted a shade of pink, his eyes covered in black
eyeliner, his face heavily made up. His legs were covered in tights and
he wore a black dress. He asked for a ticket to the lounge. As he walked
towards the door, I called out to her.
“Do you do this often?” I asked.
“Occasionally,” she answered. “If I’m drunk or something. I usually get the
clothes from the street.”
“And what do you do with the clothes afterwards?”
“I throw them out.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just do. I don’t need them anymore, really.”

I didn’t bother pressing any further, there was no need to, so I let her walk on through to the lounge and went back to reading my book. All I could think was he should have shaved off his goatee. He would have looked so much more the part.

The last time I saw Dave was later that day. He was still dressed up, although he looked more fashionable and better suited the part. The make up on the face was thinner and the goatee was gone. The blouse was now done up and the hair that had been poking through it before was now no longer visible. I commented that he looked much better without the beard and he thanked me, then entered the lounge.

He was still there when I left.

I wonder whether he still frequents the lounge. Whether he’s still Dave and more importanly whether he’s more comfortable with himself. I'd like to think he is.

2006-09-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

SOMETIMES I

"You know, sometimes I want to grab you by the neck."
he says this with a tenderness that makes the words sound so sweet.
"Sometimes I want to shove you up against the wall
and rip off all your clothes.
"Sometimes I want to bite you on the lips
until blood runs down your chin.
"Sometimes I want to grab a knife run it all over
your body and watch as you sweat and shiver.
"Sometimes I want to bite your nipples until you scream for
me to stop.
"Sometimes I want to shove my fist so far up your arse
that i can feel the dinner we've just eaten."
He says: "Sometimes I want you to fuck me so hard that
I breakdown in tears just so I can tell you I love you."

POETRY

Potraying
Objects
Emotionally
Turning to
Read
You

TRANQUILITY

a blue green mirror
ripples travelling eastward
a bird flying south

2006-09-04T22:19:00.001-07:00

I REMEMBER

I remember:
the silence of pens
and the ruffling of paper
and the echoes of the corridor
and the hugs and plans
and all this because of
one word:
Hometime.

WATCHING

He says he is dead.

He says this matter of factly without any emotion.

He says that I should I know why.

He says this to me without moving his lips.

He says he is dead.

He says this in a voice that is bigger than me and him.

He says that he beginning to forgive me but he’ll never understand.

He says this as I’m walking down the street, as I’m watching a movie, as I’m driving my car.

He says he is dead.

He says this as I’m sitting in the office sipping a cup of tea.

He says all of this to me.

He says all he wants to know is why I refuse to believe him.

GORGEOUS

Billet this:
we are
under the
sun lips
open craving
artificial highs
painted in
red averted
eyes missing
the stare as
arms fold
open again
and again
and again

2006-09-04T22:19:00.000-07:00