November 12, 2009 – 3:23 pm
This is how it goes:
Me: I’ve never been overseas.
Person: What!?
Me: Yep.
Person: But you’re from Tasmania.
(Person laughs for 18 minutes).
Me: True. I guess I have then.
(Person continues anecdote of how they caught a train from Paris to Berlin and then ended up in Amsterdam and fell in love with a New York girl who they lived with for a while before moving to London via Tokyo.)
Me: I’ve been to Broome.
You’ve heard of the 40 year old virgin, now meet the 29 year old travelling virgin – oft attracting the same kind of playful derision from friends and colleagues that Steve Corell’s character does. Like him I am equally sheepish yet matter of …
November 12, 2009 – 3:21 pm
Alcohol is pure sex. Frosted white wine splashing between your lips. A smooth green bottle, snug in your dancing hand. The spitfire sweet of a straw sucked liqueur. The luscious punch of ice shrapnel between teeth, a slush of lemon and gin anointing your smoky throat. Alcohol lubricates your gasping mind. Oils your dancing bones. Fuels your childlike craziness. Alcohol is the slinky DJ at the decks of your brain, fading your inner monologue and amping up the joy. Alcohol is your dear, dear friend. Wild and reliable. The champagne spray that christened your adulthood will also toast your passing.
As a teenager it was like cordial 2.0. This thing called beer that came in smooth blue cylinders. Charisma in …
May 8, 2009 – 2:55 pm
Who could forget the feeling of first discovering your favourite band or show. Like a seasoned explorer, you sail the air waves, telescope poised, waiting for a particular hook, lyric or joke to glimmer on the horizon like a cheeky lighthouse. Eyes grinning through sea spray you throttle your badge encrusted wheel, drop the striped sail on the Good Ship Indie and lay a course for life-changing island. Reaching shore you dash out, plunge your headphone jack into the coconut tree and immerse your mind in its luxurious bounty. That which lay undiscovered now feels like home, and your map of the world becomes a little more complete.
In 1999 my friends and I discovered George. They were fronted by …
May 8, 2009 – 2:54 pm
As a kid I’d say ‘when I grow up I want to be a struggling artist.’ When I blew out my birthday candles I’d wish for a first round grant offer from the Australia Council. To further the fantasy, instead of playing shops at school I’d insist we played Centrelink. On dress up days I’d pull on a bummed out cardigan and tobacco flecked cords. I had a clear vision of myself as a grown up: In my late twenties, artistically hit and miss, still renting with a phobia of children and a string of failed relationships behind me. And now, I have reached that point. I am an actual grown up. This is it.
This is it?
My lifestyle …
May 8, 2009 – 2:53 pm
(This piece first appeared in Frankie magazine in response to the question ‘What is your super power?’)
You don’t choose to be a social suicide bomber, you are born one. Just like a pre-pubescent Spiderman was caught with goo on his hands, those inflicted / blessed with this conversational gift discover it by accident. With great power comes great irresponsibility; if it’s the ability to unnerve the most robust of people with sheer presence alone.
I first discovered I carried ‘the mark’ (my face) entering teen hood. I was a Junior Nipper at the Burnie Surf Club, and often attended squad training with the older boys. Despite my best efforts to fit in, I started noticing a trend: as soon …
December 27, 2008 – 7:58 pm
I was speaking to a friend who’d gone to see U2 on their ‘Pop Mart’ tour. She felt mixed emotions of loving the gig, but feeling oddly underwhelmed at the sight of “just four blokes up on stage.” For her, the juxtaposition of antlike men representing the mythological superstars of her childhood was, to be precise, ‘smaller than life.’ The experience of U2’s music, a pollination of studio perfection with her own imagination was now a crude reconstruction where freaks shrieked over stampeding frequencies and Bono sipped water between songs like some guy at the bus stop.
When I was thirteen I woke up on Christmas morning to feel the tantalising weight of a pillowcase full of goodies on my …
December 27, 2008 – 7:56 pm
(This piece first appeared as a writing exercise on the above question in Frankie magazine.)
For me this question needs to be answered in two parts. I first became aware I was an adult at age twelve, and then again at twenty seven.
1992
The first moment was on a grey Sunday at Nan and Pop’s place holding Mum’s arms back to stop her from attacking Nan. She had reached the tip of the iceberg of her mental illness, and it was this moment that I was able to put a childhood’s worth of hyper awareness to use and intercept her anger. I was extremely adept at reading my Mother’s behaviour, and would know within heartbeats when she was becoming …
December 27, 2008 – 7:54 pm
(This first appeared as a writing exercise answering the above question in Frankie magazine.)
In 2000 I stood before a packed dining room, faces glistening in the candle light. I was MCing the graduation dinner of a youth organisation I volunteered for. As always, I was seen as the lovable comedian, set to dazzle with my wit and silliness. This time things were different. I was down and out. Starring in a sexually explicit play at uni and losing control of my will had crashed me through the barriers into depression and self-doubt. Getting out of the house was a stretch, and suddenly I had to be funny.
Organising and conducting the dinner was the final stage in our leadership …
December 27, 2008 – 7:51 pm
Are you the one book-ended at the head of your birthday table quietly contemplating the perpetual horror of ‘another year?’ Have you ever caught yourself cornering friends and barking the words ‘I can’t believe I’m age already – I’m old!’ Gosh – surely you don’t need the fact that a magazine column has just summed you up to tell you that you’re getting perilously predictable. It’s time to throw those out-dated age prejudices aside and think free-form about your future. From the creators of your invincible 20’s comes a time period often dismissed by trend-critics as dowdy and disillusioned. Wake up creative Australia, it’s time to embrace the emotional and artistic second honeymoon of your 30’s and beyond. Damn it, …
December 27, 2008 – 7:50 pm
When I was fifteen I recorded my first album of songs. This was done in my bedroom, on a little cassette walkman with a stereo microphone blu-takked to the indoor clothesline. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I aimed to nail each track in one take, but I’d usually stuff up somewhere along the line and have to rewind back to the start. I tried ‘dropping in’ halfway through a song, but it left me with more pops and clicks than a retirement home. Naturally, the recording’s were no-fi and dusted with tape hiss, but they captured the essence of the songs, and the whole process prepared me for many of the factors a musician in the studio can …
December 27, 2008 – 7:47 pm
(This piece appeared as part of a writing exercise on the above topic in Frankie magazine.)
I decided to rid the earth of religion. The exact process was mysterious, involved a lot of forms and tickled a bit. I was led into a secret basement beneath Frankie HQ with multicoloured moss, posters of bands from 2034 and the faint smell of caramel popcorn. I was put through a ‘thought sorter’ which was like a personal Gravitron where I could see my mindscapes like fireworks. Some guys in hoodies came and stamped something onto my leg with a fluro typewriter. I was sat down at a desk and given a pen by a beautiful archangel in a petticoat. She had ruby …
December 27, 2008 – 7:44 pm
Australian’s please let us rejoin,
For it is one degree.
With oldies loyal and health in turmoil
Our shops are shut by three.
Our land is ground into nature’s chips
Forestry’s stripped us bare
It’s a mystery gays were allowed to stay
Advance Tasmania where?
With employment strained the young jump ship
Advance Tasmania where?
In the high school of Australia, Tasmania lurks down by the bins, watching beautiful Melbourne and Sydney laugh and frolic, hoping that even the weird kid Adelaide will sit next to it at lunchtime. As a Tasmanian, you can’t help but be aware of your lot in the geographical playground, as the cruel jibes and patronising remarks ring in your ears. I’ve been on the …
December 27, 2008 – 3:11 pm
Ever had the feeling that someone, somewhere is having a much better life than you? Ever trawled through a magazine, much like this fine one, and taken the whole thing personally? E Gad! Look at these hotter, wiser, better dressed, more experienced young things. Ever stared at that touchy cutesy couple at the gig and assumed they must have regular, effortless, mind blowing sex while listening to a cutting edge compilation of bands you’ve never even heard of? Well…you’re a bit weird.
Or perfectly normal and wonderful. Probably the latter. It’s a common phenomena I like to call “the jeans are always blacker on the other side of the stage.” It stems from our own insecurities that we are somehow …
December 27, 2008 – 2:59 pm
I was first diagnosed with depression when I was sixteen. Clumsily, by a doctor who may as well have been doing a sudoku during the consultation. I went in to complain about not sleeping, which I had already self-diagnosed was caused by the medical anomalies of thinking too much and having complex sexual fantasies set in the speech & drama costume room. Next thing I know I’m being threatened with questions like “Have you ever felt sad?” and “Do you worry all the time?’ I said I had and did, but denied any suicidal thoughts. According to Super-Scientific-Checklist-Beard that was enough to be charged with depression. I slumped in the musty beige seat, pale, acne annoyed and flat-haired as Dr …
August 6, 2008 – 9:53 pm
(This piece originally appeared in Frankie #23)
Dear Blog, Today I did this and said that and made this private joke and generally my grammar was terrible and I got myself into a situation with no dramatic tension or character arcs and I guess you had to be there. *SUMBIT*
Sound familiar? Yes, tickle me Qwertyuiop: it’s blog-o’clock! Enter the literary dark ages as a million volume omnibus of misspelled first drafts and textual healing is spammed out of Generation-Why? keyboards quicker than you can Yahoo! ‘line breaks please!’ Hey, don’t get me wrong, this influx in self-narration can only be good for the online diary industry – it’s just the readers union I feel sorry for.
In high school …
