New Jacket

On his return from a work trip to Malaysia, Stephen gave me a jacket he'd bought there for me, as a gift. After reading the blurb on the jacket's shop tag several times, I am still perplexed:

"Hot Wind signifies the spirit after dark. It is the spirit and soul that provide positive energies and winds by stimulating their nerve to realize their dreams and enjoy every moments of life. It is a street wear brand that explores into their mysterious side and breaks beyond their depth inner feelings that ultimately sparks off the attractive and sexiest chemistry."

Australia (Invasion) Day

Here we go again - another Australia Day - or otherwise known as 'Invasion Day'. And out come the Aussie flags in ever-increasing numbers which, until very recently, used to be rivalled by quite significant numbers of Aboriginal flags also. Lately, the latter are rarely seen, but after all, this is John Howard's Australia and we're almost as jingoistic as the Americans these days. Up at Woolworths supermarket this evening, the entire checkout area was decked out in them - almost as if they were Christmas decorations.

But there's something very creepy going on here. When the organisers of yesterday's 'The Big Day Out' (annual, all-day, multi-band, music festival in Sydney showgrounds) decided to ban the Australian flag from the event, due to increasing incidences of racist outbursts (eg the Cronulla beach riots of just over a year ago), where (generally white) neo-nationalist yobbos would wreak racist havoc under the flag's banner - often draping themselves in it - the media whipped the story up as a big issue, dragging politicians in to comment. Of course, Howard said that any event that asks for the banning of the flag deserves to be banned itself. Results of commercial TV surveys showed that 92% thought it was wrong for the organisers to do this, with only 8% thinking it was the right thing. Therefore, the organisers were forced to offer their apologies and regrets over suggesting such a thing. And at 'The Big Day Out', record numbers of Howard's youth were draped in their beloved flag. No surprise there.

But what is it that this piece of cloth actually represents? What's to love? Seems to me it's more about dividing, rather than uniting - groups of people trying to claim it as theirs and so setting others apart/making them the enemies of it. As I said, this is John Howard's Australia. And in this, an election year with a new Opposition opponent doing well in the polls, Howard seized an opportunity to look 'green' (imitating George Bush yet again!) by appointing the scientist and environmentalist, Tim Flannery, as 'Australian of the Year'.
What a hypocrite!

Lou Reed's 'Berlin' at the State Theatre, Sydney

What a treat. The chance to see Lou Reed perform his seminal 1973 concept album - the maligned and often dismissed, ahead-of-its-time 'Berlin' - as a multi-media song cycle - the headlining act of this year's Sydney Festival. Before Sydney, 'Berlin' had been performed over four nights at 'St Ann's Warehouse', a New York artspace, a month earlier. Clearly, this was an opportunity not to be missed.

The show, directed by the artist/film maker Julian Schnabel with Bob Ezrin, the original album producer, and Hal Willner as music producers included strings, horns, choristers (12 singers from the Australian Youth Choir) and touches of cabaret. The band included Lou's long-serving bass player, Fernando Saunders, with Tony Smith on drums, Steve Hunter on guitar (who played on all the original recordings) and Rob Wasserman on upright electric bass. Guest vocalists included Antony Hegerty (of Antony and the Johnsons) and soul diva, Sharon Jones.

The show played out like a sort of Brechtian fable - the melancholy story of a relationship with its blissful beginnings and indulgences and its decline into abuse, burnout, despair and ultimate tragedy. Lou Reed has this amazing ability to bring stories from such melancholic underworlds to life and make them beautiful. He is able to 'report' them without moralising and when performed, they are poetry. Julian Schnabel's set included screens printed with subtle 'Oriental' designs and calligraphy, with filmed scenes illustrating the story - while remaining impressionistic and non-dominant - projected onto them. Highlights for me were 'Men of Good Fortune', which was nicely cynical and could've been, at least in part, about any number of modern-day tyrants, 'Oh Jim' (especially the stripped-down part), 'Caroline Says' (especially II) and 'The Bed'. Sublime.

After the songs were finished (it seemed as if it'd only been a few minutes), I was wondering if the audience's thunderous pounding for an encore would be fruitful. After all, 'Berlin' had been performed. However, back they came - albeit without the strings, horns and choir - just Lou, the band, Antony and Sharon. First up, they launched into 'Sweet Jane'. I started thinking that it was too much of a crowd pleaser and that it might ruin the mood, but when Sharon Jones took over and gave it the soul treatment, I was won back all over again. After this, things quietened down and 'Candy Says' was next - performed as a duet between Lou and Antony. I hadn't seen Antony before and I was gobsmacked - brought to tears in a matter of seconds. He has a voice that I can only describe as something between Nina Simone and an angel, but there is more to it than that. He injects so much feeling and pain that it is almost unbearable. The final song of the night was the strong and grinding rock 'n' roll of 'Rock Minuet' from Lou's 2000 album, 'Ecstasy', which he'd performed during his last visit in 2000.

All in all - totally killer!

Another train trip to the 'burbs

A blazingly hot summer day and I'm off to the hospital dental clinic again in Sydney's far west, by train. So, what did I see along my way? Well, in the city, before I'm even at the train station, it's just endless brand names and designer everything on every single person I come across. Shopping is now the official national pastime and designer labels give us our self-esteem - well, it certainly seems that way.

Then the train. A couple sitting opposite me look like off-duty police constables - exuding an attitude of distrust towards anyone in their vicinity, including me. The woman was heavily pregnant and attentive to anything her man said to her, demonstrating her approval of his comments with affectionate pats on his knee, while he maintained his look of indifference. His nose was snout-like and he wore one of those ubiquitous t-shirts printed with splatters of dye and the words 'CULT' and 'INDUSTRIE' in a sort of stencilled/branding style - as if they were stamped on bales of wool. Sitting next to me was a young woman, her feet squeezed into pointy-toed stillettos. Her toes stopped before the pointy part and were squeezing out the sides. During the entire trip, she was plugged in to her iPod and just stared straight ahead. The music must have been loud because it just went 'CALASH CALASH CALASH' the whole time. She wore those huge square'ish sunglasses - like every other woman on the train - that Paris Hilton was wearing (her 'trademark', so the media informed us) when she was in Sydney a week or so ago.

On the way back, the carriages were packed - a father with three mischievous children climbing all over the seats opposite me and a couple of old-timers next to me. At Strathfield, another old man got on, wheeling a suitcase and decided to squeeze in next to me backside first. I just saw this huge bum coming towards me and he smelt strongly of (a certain) haemorrhoid cream. For the rest of the journey, I could feel his thighs jammed up next to mine and smell the haemorrhoid cream.

Dream Ordeal

A familiar street - Spring Street, Bondi Junction, apparently. Looking over it from one storey above - the opposite side of the road from where the supermarket is, but further down. I remember seeing the 'Comix' shop that used to be there.

I was anxious and frightened. Men in the streets were carrying guns and lurking, or looting shops. The streets were empty otherwise and looked shabby and slightly decayed - a hint of slum. Watching a few scenarios, with the men edging around cautiously and the scaringly real sound of random gunshots getting closer and closer. I'm on the streets one minute - totally freaking out - and then I'm one floor up again, in a room with large windows overlooking the street - an office. There are other people busying around everywhere. There are people comforting and/or counselling others. Groups of police are doing this.

I'm crapping on to someone about the suffering of the Palestinians in an awful, flippant and pretentious way, yet my experience of the events on the street is all the while telling me that I am actually in the streets of Palestine. At one point, I'm walking around, engulfed by loneliness - tortured and desperate because no one acknowledges my presence in any way at all. It's as if I'm not even there. I see a couple of beautiful Asian girls sitting at a table, and the next thing I know my current lover - of whom I can decipher neither their gender or appearance - is seducing them both in the Ladies Room, which I walk in on. Naturally, I'm horrified and scream and cry out hysterically, but no one notices I'm there. An extremely heavy atmosphere. Truly terrifying.

Next, I'm in `the office' again, blubbering, crying, tortured, upset - a circle of female police officers counselling me as they sit around me. One of them was singing a lullaby to someone else. My tears just kept coming. This was the first acknowledgement that I was present. I just poured it all out to them and actually began to feel comforted.

Lasse Braun - 'The King of Porn' - is such a yawn

Just saw a nostalgic TV documentary on this guy and, personally, I find it hard to see the tired old '60s and '70s porn scene as looking particularly sexy, despite the hardcore action, fun outfits and hilarity factor. It all somehow looks too silly and unconvincing and the actors seem wooden and reluctant - kind of lame. Or is it just that it's 'retro'? I guess there's more of a sincerity of intent - or, at least, a 'passion for the subject' and lack of irony - in the pioneering porn scene - a sort of quaint naivety (despite the corruption) - as well as the DIY, generally libertarian approach - ie not slickly and cynically corporatised. Lasse Braun certainly made a hell of a lot of money out of it at any rate.

But despite his experience and talents, let's face it. Guys like Lasse are just trying to get as much pussy as they possibly can and don't care to ask themselves why because they're sexual hedonists (and, probably, control freaks!). Sure, you can't blame him for that, but unfortunately the women hanging around the sleaze industry generally don't get off quite so unscathed and it doesn't help them to lay around - as they do in this doco - in provocative poses, dressed as strippers, whilst trying hard to give the impression that they're so into the self-empowerment of it all.

Intriguing, but generally unattractive.

Pigeon Lady

I guess most cities in the world have a large pigeon population, apart from those that see the creatures as pests and eradicate them with poisons. I actually remember being quite horrified upon discovering this had been done in Dunedin, New Zealand, when visiting the city sometime in the 1980s. And here in Sydney, it has recently become standard practice to instal rows of razor-sharp upright nails - of the 9-inch variety - along ledges of the outside walls or fences of upmarket buildings, particularly fancy hotels and apartment blocks, in order to keep the birds off these favoured roosting places. Bird poo has been outlawed.

People regularly refer to the maligned creatures as 'rats with wings', despite the fact that their scavenging says more about the excesses of human beings. Nonetheless, a fair sized population of pigeons still thrive, many of them hanging around Hyde Park, north-west of the fountain. This is no doubt due, in no small part, to the presence of an old, white-haired lady in black clothes, who spends her afternoons there feeding the birds with a variety of different grains. She sits on the grass and is immediately surrounded, talking to the birds all the while as she unzips her backpack and pulls out the knotted plastic bags filled with the grains and carefully undoes them.

The pigeons are patient with her as she feeds them and the seagulls don't even bother to try their luck. This is pigeon territory only. The woman talks to them kindly and also sternly at times, as if they are her children. When she has finished feeding them, she ties the plastic bags up and puts them away, spreads newspaper on the grass and lies down for a nap in the sun. The birds stay with her, still surrounding her and some sit on top of her. She allows them to stay. When she gets up again, she sometimes notices bird poo on her clothes, which she carefully wipes off, before leaving for the day.

re: a band I was in .....The Kiwi Animal (1982-1986)

I came across Brent's resume on the net. Actually, it was a website article/interview - made up of bits and pieces of interviews edited together - about The Kiwi Animal music. At the end of it, there was a contact address for me and a link to 'Brent's Resume', which consists of categorised lists of projects and products associated with him - all the things that Brent S. Hayward has made. But these lists are riddled with inaccuracies, as well as more than a few exaggerations and evasions.

For example, in his synopsis of some of the work of The Kiwi Animal, he neglects to even mention my name (despite flaunting the names of more famous/infamous people he maybe played a couple of times with once). This really is thoroughly crap of him. I have been way too generous in putting up with his rudeness for too long a time! But then, what would I expect? Brent can only be Brent.

The Kiwi Animal music is still a very big part of me. It is a place of communication - sensations, collisions and the places where things come together or blow apart. About something that might emerge out of the ashes of ruins. It is sometimes hopeful, sometimes fragile, sometimes hopeless. Whatever! .... It's MUSIC. It was the project of Brent Stephen Hayward and Julie Cooper. Guest musicians included Patrick Waller (who became a member in 1985), Caroline Sommerville, Simon Alcorn, Gavin Buxton and Sara Westwood.

Just for the record (and the music!), OK.

Just A Thought

It's pretty hard meeting new people in Sydney (especially for a freelance worker like myself) and I think it's getting even harder. People are so obsessed with looking cool. I'm sick of cool. I like warm.

It's a Mercenary World

I knew things were getting nastier, but I wasn't prepared for this little media piece. Apparently, a very old lady living alone in the Sydney 'burbs has been regularly - and trustingly - handing over the $30 monthly payments, as a matter of routine, for a broken-down TV she has rented for 22 years.

Now she is receiving threatening 'repossession' letters from the rental company, after ceasing to make the payments she is no longer able to make, due largely to the fact that she has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

$30 per month - for 22 years - for an old TV that does't even work - meaning she's paid around $8000 to date. Wouldn't she well and truly own it by now? Makes me wonder how many more people are being exploited in this way. The company, unsurprisingly, says they've done nothing wrong, according to the original contract. How fucked up is this?

Oh well, that's capitalism for ya!

Can't get this song off my mind

I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know
I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you're home

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
cause I see you

I find it hard to believe you don't know
The beauty that you are
But if you don't let me be your eyes
A hand in your darkness, so you won't be afraid

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
cause I see you

I'll be your mirror

- The Velvet Underground (1967) -

iPod Rant

iPods. Mobile phones. Tomorrow's garbage. Here we are in 2006 - a gadget-obsessed world, especially (it would appear) amidst Generation Y, who almost always appear to be turned on, tuned in and out of reach. Never has Marshall McCluhan's famous phrase - 'the medium is the message' - been so relevant, because what are we talking about here? iPods are actually only mediums through which music/audio works are transmitted. But are we really listening to the music? Seems to me that being seen to possess these gadgets is what's most important, due to the intense marketing campaigns of 'Apple', that relentlessly push the 'cool image' factor. Mobile music is hardly anything new anyway and, in terms of sound quality, good cassette walkmans and MD players can hold a key advantage, when considering the compression ratios people often use to get the desired (advertised) number of tracks onto their iPods. The quality is often no better than bad AM radio!

Of course, mobile music has its place (as with mobile phones) but - perhaps with the exception of long solo plane/train/bus trips - it doesn't work for me. I simply find music - and the audio world in general - too interesting and absorbing. Listening commands my attention and is therefore distracting, so that, plugged in and walking around, with the sound not relating to my surroundings, I find myself in an ever-present danger of being run over by moving vehicles. And anyway, what's the point of leaving the house, except to be immersed in a different sensory environment from the one you have built for yourself?

Yeah, baby. It's the medium that rules. As I see it, a sort of fetishism of objects and technology, where users can shut themselves inside their own micro-world and non-users out. 'Being on our own together', as the catchphrase (apparently) goes. Participants are fond of asserting that this is a new type of community and I'm aware that kids like to fit into their peer groups. But perhaps it's just another form of social eliticism, based around an apparent 'need' to own expensive products. Also, sometimes I'm concerned that humans are progressively merging their individual identites into cultures (or even celebrities) identified with - already conveniently pre-packaged for them. The scariest thing is that we do this so readily and willingly.

Another concept in human engineering? I guess I should just lighten up.

Dream On

Dreaming of being somewhere else
Somewhere better than here
Somewhere where everyone is laughing and music is everywhere
A 'somewhere dream'


Somewhere where there are soda carts in the streets, with all the little bottles of coloured liquids
Somewhere without fashion
Somewhere where life is not about lifestyles - and there's plenty to do without spending money
Somewhere with a music
Somewhere were laughter stems from pure, spontaneous joy, instead of smugness
Somewhere else. Dreaming it. Somewhere better than here.

'Gotta Maintain'

Don't we all just love to hold on? To things, to our ideas, to other people, to what we have, to what we think we are. We hold on to every little thing. It's what we're made of - a whole lot of stuff being held onto.

To maintain. It's what we do.

These Boots Were Made For Dancing

'Ghetto Fabulous' - Sleaze 2006

The first 'Sleazeball' I attended was in 1988 and I've been to at least seven or eight since. Last Saturday's 'Ghetto Fabulous' was the 25th anniversay of this Sydney gay and lesbian community party and it certainly didn't disappoint - despite the expected whinges here and there about the finer details of personal preferences for the event.

Despite any complaints, it is clear that 'Sleaze' (and also 'Mardi Gras' - parade and party) is an incredible, unique event in Sydney, providing opportunity for Queer Sydney (and supporters) to come out of hiding and party together. Like an antidote to TV versions of 'normality' and all that is sanitised, ordered and considered 'tasteful' in our daily lives, 'Sleaze' can be a cathartic experience. Dressing as tacky, freaky, raunchy as we feel, these parties are a 'safe place' - a haven for freaks, who appear to be less and less visible in a society that becomes more and more conservative every day. Celebrating the joy of being different - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, pansexual - whatever. These parties rock!

Highlights for me were the ghetto blaster wall onstage at the Hordern, the graffiti wall outside, the mirrorballs and laser lights in the Hordern, the fantastic outfits people wore, the smiling faces, dancing to Sveta & Rob Gilbert in The Dome and Chip & Alex Taylor at night's end in the Hordern. Bring on Mardi Gras 2007!

Weekend Trip

All organised. All packed. I've got my Paris Hilton volumising lip balm on and comfortable clothes for the car trip, so off we go - stvbee and me - for a trip down the Hume to capital city world.

Bright day, fun music, dry landscape out the windows. A stop at a tiny colonial'ish settlement town for lunch at a rustic-style cafe with amazing food and cashed-up clientele.

Canberra - bunker-like buildings and the sort of creepy motel where you definitely wonder how many people have used that blanket since it was last washed. All of the bedding crackling with electricity generated by the synthetic fabrics. Good Chinese food and 'Saturday Night Fever' afterwards on some 'Foxtel' channel. Not much sleep, due to an all-night rave around the corner. I notice that the exact time the beat stops is 6.03am Sunday morning. Water and mandarins. Bleak and windy weather, with sprinklings of rain. Too rainy for the flower show. A shopping mall for fruit and yoghurt, a too-big cup of milky coffee and artificially-flavoured muffin. I'm so anaesthetised by the atmosphere that I get sucked into buying $40 worth of 'Dead Sea' beauty products. Whatever.

Then it's the drive home along the Hume Highway again which, especially in late-afternoon cloudy weather, has that low-sky feel in places - as if you could just reach up and touch it. The trees and road signs are flying past and there's lots of traffic, but something is magic about the way it all comes together.

Quotes For Today

"War is now considered a legitimate reaction against terrorist strikes."

"The U.S. government's response to September 11 has actually privileged terrorism. It has given it a huge impetus, and made it look like terrorism is the only effective way to be heard. Over the years, every kind of nonviolent resistance movement has been crushed, ignored, kicked aside. But if you're a terrorist, you have a great chance of being negotiated with, of being on TV, of getting all the attention you couldn't have dreamt of earlier."

"We can't ever abandon our personal quest for joy and beauty and gentleness."

- Arundhati Roy -

Adventures in Springtime

Thank goodness my last bout of bronchitis and cold is finally dissipating. And thank goodness for springtime.

Yesterday involved the usual fun train trip between western Sydney (I occasionally go for dental appointments) and the city and the diverse characters I never see around the inner-city bullshit zone. I sat next to an older couple. The woman looked amazing - resplendent in bright purple, her grey hair up in a bun, her tanned face covered in an incredible pattern of deep - and not unattractive - lines, which looked like a kind of aerial map. She took everything in around her, including an elderly woman with very black skin sitting opposite us, who rose from her seat and left the train at Lidcombe Station. "She's very dark isn't she?", the lined lady said to her silent partner, who nodded slightly and continued to grimly keep his firm hold on a walking stick. He wore the type of slacks that I've noticed many older men on this train wear - greyish beige in colour, synthetic fibres glistening in the light. He never said a word during the entire journey, but his wife chattered continuously about everything that came her way.

She fell silent after the train pulled away from Redfern though and, upon arriving at Central, asked him what he'd like for dinner that night.

He didn't say a thing and they both got off the train.

Narcissists I've Known

The good thing about growing older is that we can look at our experiences to date and analyse them, with a view to making wiser decisions in the future (well ... one would hope, anyway). This particularly applies to our choice of intimate partners.

Looking at my past relationships, many are people who interpret and judge the world - including people around them - according to whatever point they themselves have reached in life, or philosophies they associate themselves with, at any given time. For example, their current realisations are the ones everyone else (especially you!) should be adopting; the food they have decided is the best for them is the best for everyone else; their knowledge and perspective, to date, is the most relevant etc. etc. They move through life constantly justifying their own actions and habits, whilst judging those of other people, inadvertently revealing a very deep and hopeless insecurity. For them, the notion of empathic understanding - an interest in and sense of how others may experience or feel things - is an impossibility. It is a notion that simply doesn't occur to them. They feel no responsibility in regard to how they may affect the feelings of others. It is as if the world exists for themselves only and if everything else doesn't fit into place around them - including people - then it is an obstruction, an antagonism. I have learnt, through years of therapy, that these people are narcissists.

Disturbingly however, I have been noticing that many people become more narcissistic as they age and am starting to think that it is almost inevitable - perhaps a 'side effect' of the individualisation of a society in which self-centredness rules. Yet, on saying this, I suspect that mothers are probably far less likely to be narcissistic, though I'm not sure whether I'd extend this exemption to women in general. Surely, we owe it to ourselves and those around us to try and understand what the concerns of others are - how they feel, what makes them tick, what might be of benefit to them and how we can perhaps help? However, given the way the world is going right now, including attitudes, in general, towards 'the other' in situations of conflict and the greed and selfishness of those of us living in affluent societies, I don't feel particularly optimistic.