2nd of March
It's nearly midnight, but I'm still quite alert.
Music is a mirror that can be polished forever
ever deeper reflections of the self becoming revealed
Sixteen becomes twelve becomes seven becomes accent on five and seven and break//seven and seven and eight and seven and seven and nine.
Each digit is a push/pull,
an earth/fire/air/water,
hips/heart/hands/feet
each digit is a decision,
a precise decision requiring perfect confidence.
I have never been so confident as when I hit that 5th beat of the first repeat of the fourth cycle of the second verse in 9/8 time, in the middle of the song called Nine to Five. My voice has relaxed, I can sing again in key, not with that strangled flattened tone I force out of my neck hole most of the time. I have been practicing all my ukulele songs every day, getting to know their every little nuance, including the parts I intentionally leave improvised. Singing every day, singing in front of Wren while he plays with his toys. Even an audience of one is nice, motivating. He knows all my songs, and often sings along with wordless melodies, matching me note for note, not with perfect pitch, but with natural fearlessness.
The rehearsal at Rajesh's was good, with Solomon and Vinu, more details being sculpted from the rolling waves of sound that three drums can make. The call and response part is quite challenging, but also very rewarding. I have a recording from tonight to listen to in the morning.
four by three//two by three//one by six//one by six//six by three//saiidi to end.
The Morning after the Night Before. 5th of March
The final show of the Tale of Two Tribes was last night, not our best performance, but when our not quite best is this good, we are doing rather well. Lots of people have written on the subject of the sadness of a final show, but I will add my own thoughts. We have all worked for months to produce this 45 minute dance and music theatre piece, we have lost weight, drained our bank accounts, spent time away from our families and worked ourselves into exhaustion in rehearsals. When all that effort reaches its peak, the feeling of grand achievement, of SUCCESS is thrilling. As a performer I can stand proud of myself, knowing that I have done what it is that I am on this earth to do.
Then it is over.
Suddenly the adrenaline that has supported us throughout the months of rehearsals is drained of its urgency and what we are left with, after the glow has faded, is the cold sweat of loss. Performing is nothing like real life, and so the relationships that you develop among a performing crew are nothing at all like other relationships. I have mentioned the trust that has built between us, a kind of shoulder to shoulder reliability. When the show is over and the costumes put away, we try to return to our lives, but like all peak experiences, there is no coming back. Our lives are divided into two parts, before this, and after this. We must go about our normal lives knowing that the joy and exhilaration we have been bouyed up by is now a thing of the past.
Of course, I have already begun writing two separate scripts for next year's show.
This is how I avoid the post-show crash, I keep working. I am lucky that I always have many projects on the go, so each ending is really just an overlapping chapter mark, the story continues. I have one more Fringe show, Cocktail Peacock, I have my solo album to continue recording, the band will continue to work together, I still have my novel to work on, I have this journal, I have a painting now three years in the making to keep me occupied. It's obvious that I keep myself this busy to cover over my own insecurities, but it doesn't matter to me what I burn within myself, as long as I still have the fire. I burn my frailty, I burn my doubt, I burn my guilt and self hatred and the funeral pyre gives great warmth to many people, even if it doesn't feed them.
After the show many of us went for a drink at the Artists Bar ($5.50 stubbies of Coopers ale, a damn fine price). It was wonderful to just relax with everyone, to talk about the show, to talk about anything but the show. In the darkness of the garden we embrace in our mutual light. Somehow now it seems too private a thing to write about here. I will say one thing though. Regan told me a little about the five years she has been leading this dance company, of the shows they have put on, of the Avignon Festival in France, of studying in America.
It is a crooked economy we are a part of, nearly everyone in this festival seem to be getting paid more than the artists that make it all possible, and the armies of volunteers, families and friends who support the artists. Backstage crew, people working the door collecting tickets, costume makers, set painters...
In the production of my own new album, I am trying to keep my expenses at an absolute minimum. I cannot pay recording fees, I cannot pay the other musicians for their contributions, I will release the album in a digital-only format. The money I have already spent just on petrol to get to the studio will likely never be reimbursed through album sales. Being paid by venues or private parties for performance work seems like a dream from an age long gone by. Our society proclaims itself to be living in an age of great prosperity, people want art and music more than ever but no-one is willing to pay for it. It is possible that the economy of abundance is in play here. There are currently more musicians than ever before, producing a quanity of recorded music never before seen in the world, and this glut of music has plummeted the value of the service to zero.
Still, it gives me pleasure to make my own music, which sounds nothing like any other music I have heard before. As I was writing yesterday I listened to the recordings from my new album and thought to myself....no-one else in the world has heard this music, it is mine, my private pleasure. I love these songs, they move me and make me feel things no other music makes me feel. If no-one else ever heard it, I would still have it, and it would still give me pleasure. If that is the only reward I ever receive for my work, I suppose that it has been a worthwhile devotion.
* * *
Evening.
Here is the crash. I have never felt so much like a slave in my life. The only people not making a living wage in this, the second biggest Fringe arts festival in the world, are the artists. It makes me feel worthless, that the thing I value the most, my best skill, seems to have no real value in the world.
"...I hear music in the making
of slaves who dance to keep the breaking
of their hearts
from the breaking of their minds..."
I am a prophet of my own life.
I had a rehearsal today with Solomon and Regan for the upcoming Cocktail Peacock cabaret show. Regan was smiling and light footed upon the floorboards of the studio as we drummed for her. I felt leaden inside. How can she smile? Every dollar I have ever earned from teaching is because of her, her studio, her students joining my classes, her work promoting me...and she doesn't even get paid. I thought today that I wanted to give her my share of whatever we earn from these Fringe shows, that I need to give her something in return for all she has done....but I know that I wont...I have bills to pay as well and a bit of noble self sacrifice will not feed my children.
I came home in a deadbeat heap. While I was at rehearsal my ex-wife and I began a kind of train-wreck text argument. Old wounds never addressed, the consequence of not speaking at any great length about our relationship, why it ended, what is going on ...etc... I don't have any answers, I just know that I feel generally useless, and seem to be the cause of arguments each time we try to communicate. I don't want to talk about it here.
But when I came home, my partner saw the look on my face and without having to say a word, she knew exactly what to do. Into her ear I whispered my grief, and into her soft arms I let go my shame. My woman takes good care of me, she sits beside me now as I type, the evening breeze gently shifts the piles of ruffled skirts and peackock feathers that adorn the furniture of her bedroom. I got me a good woman.
6th of March
A cool, cloudy morning. Coffee, toast, making the most of my recovery time on Monday morning. Yesterday was black, today is gray, tomorrow the sun should shine again. The anxiety of possibly meeting with my ex to work things out today is a knot in my stomach, it is a knot in all our stomachs. We are tied together via the bonds of our son, a knot that cannot be untied. It's been three and a half years since we split up, people keep telling me it gets better over time, but opinions vary.
7th March
All day and night I have been asking the question, how do you cope with knowing that you are a slave? But I've also known that this is the wrong question.
The right question is Who are you?
So I asked myself another question. If the only option was to pay to have the experience of being a musician, like paying the fare for a show ride, would you pay it?
The answer of course is yes, I would pay for this experience. The truth is that I do pay for this experience, and sometimes it pays me, and that will have to be enough for now. That will probably have to be enough for the rest of my life. I am either satisfied with that, or I am not.
* * *
Rehearsal with Solomon and Vinu was at Custom Music on Henley Beach Rd. There are three or four rehearsal rooms out the back and the whole operation is run by an old Italian bloke called Frankie, who shuffles from room to room complaining about the cost of the air conditioner and making jokes about charging extra for bringing in microphones for us to use. The fee to use the dark, sweaty, foamed lined room is $50, which Vinu paid. It has a pair of mounted monitor speakers, and an amp and mixing board where everything is plugged in. Frankie brought us mics, extra cables and helped connect Solomon's electric drum set into the board, moaning in a typically Australian way that we were breaking his balls.
In the next room a cover band were murdering Wish you were here by Pink Floyd, which they only managed to top by murdering Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine. The singer seemed capable of only producing one note while screaming and the drummer had a limp. The rest was a wall of fuzzed out noise pulsing through the 'sound-proofed' walls and door.
Our own practice went well, though I can tell Vinu gets tired of being told what to do by Solomon, while I find myself still struggling to understand the instructions given to me. Vinu and I have been taking detailed notes at each practice, writing rhythms names and notations, descriptions of song progressions and signals for changes between parts. These written notes seem to contradict what Solomon says about the songs in the next week, so Venu and I are always editing and updating what Solomon claims has never changed. All this would be annoying, if it weren't for the fact that Solomon has an excellent sense for music and his ideas are usually spot on. For my part, I keep my mouth shut and just try to keep up. Drumming with them is challenging, which is another way of say that I am learning something new at every rehearsal. I enjoy the pressure of learning to play with them. Venu is very shy, very formal and polite, but in the moments when Solomon is busy or out of the room, he has been sharing more of his knowledge with me, playing his traditional Indian rhythms and letting me play along.
* * *
I'm worried about my loose tooth. It feels like I have been punched in the jaw. Really it's just the stress of the festival, but my gum is starting to feel a little infected.
I paid $40 to attend a drum workshop with a visiting Turkish Sufi teacher. I can't afford the fee, but I also cannot afford to miss such an opportunity. Adelaide is a one horse town, and I must grab any such opportunities for study whenever they arise. The workshop is in two days time.
Rehearsal at Custom Music on the 8th March
Today there seems to be a group text message feud breaking out between Venu and Solomon over whether or not Venu's Chenda drum should have a mic when we play on stage. Venu says he wants one, Solomon says he doesn't need one, that his role is to be in the background. Venu says that if Solomon didn't want the Chendar to be included, why was he invited...? Etc. I'm not into having fights over music. Lucky this is (kind of) someone else's problem.
Solomon is very talented and very driven, but he talks down to Venu, and seems intent on disrespecting the role he plays in this trio. That can only spell bad things.
While the sun shines I spray weeds in the vineyard, listening to Jonny Cash. This afternoon I will mow the lawns. Now in my lunch break, I sip my coffee and stare out the widow at the almond tree, listening to the buzz of insects, the buzz of the fridge, the distant sound of cars on the road across the river.
* * *
Well the dispute sorted itself out while I reclined outside the rehearsal rooms, admiring the Frangipani tree growing just beyond the carpark. I like carparks, empty lots and other multi-use spaces. There is always something interesting to be found amidst the detritus of the street, but the carpark at Custom Music is almost singularly bare. A solitary piece of graffit adorned a fence post; Jonny Cash, holding a guitar in one hand and giving the finger with the other. Still the breeze was lovely and the sky looked marvelous against the frame of grey walls, red roofs, flowering trees and power lines.
Frankie is an interesting man, a little friendlier tonight, a little more comfortable with us. His music store in the front room is beautiful, I went inside for the first time tonight. It is a living anachronism. Frankie began to tell me his story: I planned ahead, I own the building. I said to God, grant me a tabernacle...and he did. His faded Italian accent is perfectly blended within an Australian vernacular.
Back in Uni I wrote an essay on the Australian Character, which I defined as multicultural, plain and simple. The idea has lingered, lo these many years. Australia is an Immigrant Nation, even some Aboriginal tribes can trace their lineage to foreign lands. If you think about it for any length of time, you see that every nation on earth is the same. People think of themselves as belonging to one race or another, or one culutre, country, religion. Immigration tells a different story. I am fifth generation Australian, with a mixture of ancestry in German, English, Irish, Scottish, Danish and Spanish, but my name, (Morgan) is Welsh. Morrigan was the Irish name for the Mythical God/Goddess of Battle, often taking the form of a huge Crow. My Uncle Gabor was a refugee from Hungary, having fled from the Russians in the 1950's. He was my uncle, but not by blood, not even by marriage, he was my father's best friend. My youth is filled with memories of carafe's of wine breathing on the mantle, the dining table covered with preserved meats, cheeses, fruits and crackers. Gabor would always bring Weiswurst sausages, Vienna sausages, kabana, several bottles of his own wines and liquers. He was a winemaker, he brought his traditional Hungarian natural winemaking techniques and made them work in South Australia. I am a little vague on details, but there were some years spent in France after having escaped Hungary, a wife, a death, madness...(my song, Hungarian Homesick Blues is about his escape from the Russians, crossing the Carpathian Mountains with nothing but a loaf of bread and a photograph.)
The point I am getting at is that we are all from everywhere. I have inherrited hungarian culture, but was raised a Catholic in a country town in South Australia, by fifth generation descendants of German Immigrants, who were probably fleeing religious persecution in their homeland. South Australia was heavilly emigrated to from Germany in its founding decades, by free settling refugees escaping the usual bullshit back home....Look the point I'm getting at, is that Frankie was an Aussie, and apart from the bit about the tabernacle, I didn't get to hear any more because Venu found me and told me we were starting rehearsal.
Ok, but the real point is this. The more time I have spent around immigrants, the more I have seen common elements of augmented Australian culture. I am starting to see what they think of as being Australian culture, through the ways they participate and display. I am also seeing the gaps in their understanding of typical Aussie behaviour and cultural icons, I guess I'm learning to see Australia through their eyes, and that lets me see it differently. It's early days, I don't want to say too much.
It's been a good music listening day. From morning to night, this was my playlist.
Jonny Cash - mixed
Mojo Juju & The Snake Oil Merchants
Herbie Hancock - Fat Albert Rotunda
Metallica - Master of Puppets
Aquaragia Drom (Russian gypsy music)
Ross Daly - mixed central asia/middle east
March 9th.
Performing on the Fringe stage in Rundle Mall with Solomon, Rajesh and Abdul. Abdul is a master violinist from Syria. We played well, really well actually. It bodes well for tomorrow night. Afterwards Rajesh took Solomon and I to the Richmond Hotel, where we will be performing. It is a beautiful room, a little awkward due to its narrow space and central pillars, but it is adorned with flowing white curtains, making six or seven different spaces, each with an alluring sense of both privacy and vouyerism. The furnitre is wooden, hand carved ornate shelves from India, tall stools that creak a little when you sit on them. Beer is seved in tall straight glasses. Gentlemen with neatly trimmed beards look dapper in their tailored shirts and the ladies all wear in-season dresses and sip wine while talking over lunch. A little F.Scott.Fitzgerald in style, but the paintings on the wall were not quite good enough. Stylish of course, airbrushed pictures of 1920's ladies with feather fascinators, of crowds wearing long coats and hats. Atmospheric, but lacking life, none of the faces quite seemed real, like paintings of what a face is meant to look like. Huh....so I'm an art critic now? I couldn't paint a face to save my life. Everyone's got an opinion.
After a beer, we parted ways from the hotel. I stopped on my way to drum with a gypsy jazz duet playing on the street, Caravan...something or other. They were quite good, and if my parking wasn't about to run out, I would have stayed for longer than one song.
I am now at my brother's house, passing the time for the afternoon before a drum class I am attending with a Turkish Sufi Darbuka player. When I arrived, my brothers partner handed me a book of Japanese Death Poems, (compiled by Yoel Hoffman) which is something I have always had a fascination for. A whole book devoted to poems written in the months prior to the deaths of the authors. It is beautiful, with both languages displayed on the same page, and translation commentaries that give an invaluable insight into the subtleties of idiom.
Pg 231
Koraku
Died in 1857, aged fifty seven.
The joy of dewdrops
in the grass as they
turn back into vapour
I played my setar for a bit in the shadowed lounge room, every wall a bookshelf, above every bookshelf, a painting. All the curtains were drawn against the bright and hot midday sun. A friend of my brother's has since arrived, a martial arts teacher, who is right now tutoring him on the cleared wooden floor between bookshshelves and couches, while I sit in the adjacent room, listening to music on my headphones, and writing to you.
I sip my coffee and look out the window, past the eight pot plants and the easel, to the sunbright Lime tree heavy with ripening fruit. It is strange, the summer seems less progressed here than it does at Langhorne Creek. The Figs here aren't ripe yet, neither are the limes, the tomatoes are only just ripening now. I expected it to be the other way around, the city to ripen first. Huh. Ignorance will always be greater than knowledge. Expectation is the pride that goeth before the fall.
* * *
In the evening I attended a drum workshop with Mert Elmas, a Turkish Romany drummer on tour with a Sufi dancer. Only nineteen years old, he is so far ahead of me as a drummer that I could barely comprehend the techniques he was using. There were a few other students, all dancers attatched to the Amethyst dance school hosting him, and Gulten Bulca, the Turkish dancer (from Turkey) who lives here in Adelaide and who invited Mert to teach the workshop. He covered a set of rhythms of different counts, from 2 to 10, progressively building up their complexity and very skillfully guiding the room of absolute beginners to achieve a very good sound. After the drumming, while the Sufi dancer prepared to teach his own workshop, Mert and I retreated to a second studio room for a private session. He could only speak a few words of english, but that hardly matters with music. I played for him and found myself making all the same mistakes my own students make when playing before me. Too fast, trying too hard to be tricky, the end result being a display that is crude and unconfident. He played for me, fluidly and brilliantly parading his mastery before my shrinking sense of ability as a musician. He is so far ahead of me in technique and expression that it felt as if my fifteen years as a drummer....well, my ego was well and truly smashed on the floor. He stumblingly explained a few of his techniques as I pointed to them and asked for clarification. My left hand feels like a cripple again, a blocky, fat fingered, slow and uncoordinated hunk of meat on the end of my inflexible wrist. For every three notes I could play in sequence, he could play twelve, or more. His rolls were like rain on the roof, his grooves and melodies were so multi-layered as to feel like an ensemble arrangement. After fifteen minutes my wrists were so sore I could not even keep time as he blazed through intricate patterns overlaid upon familiar rhythms played so uniquely as to be almost unrecognisable. Humbling. It gave me a better appreciation for how my own students feel, and the struggles they overcome with every class they attend. It takes great bravery to be a student, to have your ignorance laid so bare before others and to keep coming back with your humility and dignity intact. I have been the only Darbuka player in Adelaide for so long, I had forgotten what it felt like to not be the best drummer in the room. I feel again that my knowledge amounts to less than a single drop of water in the ocean.
Coctail Peacock on March 10th
I had only a short day at work, but a short day can be heavy with thinking and leave the body weighed down. I dragged my feet out of there, my mind running circles around the old problem of whether or not I can actually continue to be a performing musician, whether it costs me too much. It might actually be a ridiculously stupid thing that I am doing, living hand to mouth, uninsured, and without savings of any kind. I own nothing of value save my musical intruments. Oh I suppose I could get a hundred or so bucks for my furniture and bookshelf, maybe sell a few old records. Bleagh...you get the picture, my poverty feels like a heavy yoke around my neck. I cannot afford to give my son the things he wants in life, instead he must learn to be content with what he has, and to be inventive with the toys he receives from others. It is a real consoloation to me to have Wren make the best of what he has. We have no internet, (no broadband, only the 800mb per month my phone account allows me) and no TV. We watch movies and cartoons on the laptop, sitting in bed together. Yet every day I feel terrible telling him that I cannot afford what he asks for, be it a ride at the fair, or a glass of lemonade at the venue. I am allowed entry to these places, but I cannot afford to be a customer. Nothing new for musicians I suppose.
So in a weird moment of madness, and desperate for a kind word, I broke my lifelong habit, and asked someone for advice. A singer I met a few years ago, but who I don't know personally, and who has achieved some success in the field and is performing at WOMAD this week. I sent her a message online, explaining that I was stuggling to make any money in music and would like some advice on how she does it. Long ago she told me of making very good money ($1000 a night) singing in Jazz bars. Long story short, her advice put me in a downward spin. All she said was that I should never play music for money. My thoughts cascaded through anger and despair. So only the rich may play music? I am not allowed to aspire to be paid for the skill I have spent over a decade developing? I was hoping for a little business advice from someone who seemed to have a professional foothold in the industry, instead I got a bullet.
As I made my final preparations to travel to the gig, I broke down crying and told myself that I had to give up. I said it out loud. I give up. There was no way to keep going on the way I had been. This would be my last gig. I had to grow up and work more, stop wasting my time on music, and certainly stop wasting time on performing. This foolish dream of mine was nothing more than a harmful illusion. Harmful to me, and even worse, harmful to my children and partner. It actually helped a little, a small weight lifted from my chest. I didn't have to care about it any more. I could play tonight and have a good time and that would be it. It felt as though the chains of my desire had been broken. My heart was free now, free from the burden of believing in a dream that had no place in reality. I have driven myself for years with the belief that if I were a better musician, my skill would be worth something, and with it, I would be worth something. I have that toxic association of self worth with musical ability. Night after night I have practiced and practiced, begging the universe to make my devotion worth something, to make all the things I have given up or destroyed outright be worth the effort. Instead it seems the opposite is true. The more effort I put into music, the worse I feel about it. My car runs rougher each week, my clothes are worn out and faded, my shoes down at heel. Meeting Mert Elmas and drumming with him made me feel as if my skill were insignificant, that my faith and interest in the music I am creating is a fool's fantasy. Success belongs to people with ability like him, while I am a dilettante amateur with delusions of talent. A little fish in a tiny pond. I could practice every day for another twenty years and still not be close to the skill required to actually get paid for my work.
While I was having my little breakown in my bedroom, my son played with his toys in the lounge. I wiped my eyes and the two of us packed our things and headed off.
Before the show, I sat with my son as he played on the floor of the venue. He had brought some Lego, a toy pirate ship, and a box of Ben Ten figurines. I had brought a bag of food for us to share, cheese and bacon rolls, cans of tuna, apples, banannas, cherry tomatoes, snow peas and a bottle of lemonade. We ate in peace, the buzz of activitiy increasing with every minute as new people arrived carrying lights, and a team of technicians set to work. The restaraunt and bar staff didn't hassle us for eating food we had brought in ourselves, they didn't even glance at us. I guess I subconsciously expected them to give me a hard time. I can't even afford to look at the drinks menu in a place like this, let alone buy food for myself and my son.
The quality of light throughout the hall, (for it was a hall, though cleverly augmented to create a believable illusion of rooms)...anyway, the light was amazing. Every part of the room seemed illuminated by sunlight, a clean precision to everything, everyone dressed in beautiful, tailored clothing.
I am often haunted by a real terror of displays of wealth, that usually manifests itself as disgust. I see in so much wealth, a shallow, disingenuous striving for style, that does nothing at all to hide the shallow and vacuous personal aesthetic of the ones displaying the wealth. I guess I am just a little shocked by the useless and ugly things rich people waste their money on. It's a prejudice, for sure. I say all this, because I didn't get that feeling about the Richmond Hotel. Even in my broken hearted elation, I looked around me and saw relaxed, friendly people, laughing and talking and eating and drinking and working, and I sat on the floor sipping lemonade from a little metal traveling cup (a gift from my Grandfather), while my son played adventure games aboard a time travelling, flying pirate ship. He is seven and a half, and may very well be the most brillian human I have ever known.
I was still stuck in my grump, my heart feeling unchained by my decision to give up, but my soul grieving for the loss if its dream, when Regan, Sari and Jenny arrived (three of the Gypsies of the Past). It only took a glance at their smiling faces to utterly shatter the illusion of my decision. How could I possibly abandon performing, when it would mean abandoning this... We made brief greetings before they retreated to the change room at the back of the hall. I have a hard time maintaining eye contact when I am in this kind of dark mood, I try to conceal my feelings all the time. If people could see directly into me through my eyes...well, it scares me that they would see how fragile I really am. I played with Wren for a little longer before getting up to go to the dressing room.
Being a man in these environments is peculiar. Beautiful women of every shape and size are sitting, standing, stretching...waiting, in costume or partially dressed. Perhaps twenty of them all crammed into one small room, now cluttered with costume and makeup bags. As a performer I am accepted into these spaces, but I am always careful to not actually look at anyone as I pass. I approached the door feeling very unsure of myself, and stammered (literally st...st...stammered) to the Samba dancer hovering at the entrance that I was here to speak with the Tribal dancers, they were friends of mine. My hat in hand, she let me in, and I glanced up only once as I entered, spotting the gypsies in the middle of the room. I looked neither left nor right as I approached and only raised my head as I stood beside them. The tears were already in my eyes. It's a funny thing, trying to hide your feelings. It's funny because for me it is a waste of time. Like my father and grandfather before me, our eyes betray us the instant we open them. It is the same with my son, the well of feeling inside us is a bursting spring that demands release. Moments of great feeling, whether they be joy or sadness are always accompanied by tears, however faint. I looked up into the smiling faces of my friends, whom through the process of two years of performing, rehearsing, and classes have become quite close. This kind of closeness has crept up on us, the slow trust building with each parade, each hafla, each conversation. I told them that I had been having a horrible week with post show blues, they all understood me perfectly. I said that the only way I made it out the door today was by telling myself that I had given up, that this would be my last show, that I couldn't afford to keep doing this. I told them how good it was to see familiar faces, and how just seeing them made me realise that I couldn't possibly stop performing. We all hugged and I felt a great sensation of kinship and real understanding between us, a shared compassion for the pressures of the life we lead. Each of us struggle with the same thing. I had to wipe the tears from my face as I left, but this time they tasted different.
The audience were filling the hall, everyone had to speak directly into each other's ears in order to be heard. Sound checks were beginning for the band. I quickly plugged in four microphones and positioned my instruments, testing each one, communicating with hand signals to the sound guy who was an absolute champion. I am always a hassle for sound guys, my instruments have funny ways of overloading the speakers, bass frequency feedback loops making it difficult to balance the sound. Tonight it was the Tar (frame drum), an instrument which can overload the system just by sitting it beside an active mic and not touching it at all. It resonates with the vibrations of the room and I can manipulate the warm thunder of the feedback by leaning the drum into and away from the mic. I got through the Tar and the Cajon before setting up the Darbuka and Harmonica. Looking around I suddenly saw that a hundred or more people were staring fixedly at me as I muddled through improvised snippets of melody and rhythm. I didn't recognise a single face, which for me is an excellent feeling. These people had come for the performance, paid for tickets, not because I had begged them to come, but because they were personally interested in what we had to offer. They were there because Rajesh knows a thing or two about promotion and has excellent people skills. After the show I thanked him for achieving this, for filling the room. I can't do that, I haven't got the skills or network to build a show the way he does. He is the head of Radio Murphy, his production company which as a team were responsible for the sound and lighting, the promotional video (which had all the polish and glamour of a top 40 music video clip), the venue hire and booking all the performers.
The show began, and from my position crowded among the crew and waiting performers I wittnessed something that I don't see all the time. I won't talk about the individual performances, they were all excellent, and I don't want to just review the show in that way. I saw the crowd squeezed into the small space available to them, sitting on the floor, on seats, others at the back standing on benches to see over the heads of those in front. People shifted left and right to get a better view of the perfomances, peering past each other to stare wide eyed and excitedly at every single movement. I saw women studying the dancers, their feet, fingers, shoulders and heads making tiny movements as they imagined themselves dancing like that as well. A kind of joyful envy, not jealous, but inspiring. It was written on their faces, I could do that too, maybe I'll join a dance class.
I heard the squealing delight of young women as Abdul, handsome and charming, walked freely into the crowd with his violin to serenade them with sweet music. They swooned at his flashing smile and sparkling eyes.
The men watched the dancers with more serious faces, conscious that they were watching scantilly clad beautiful women shake everything that God gave them, but careful to not leer or appear too interested before their wives and girlfriends. Except one guy, in his fifties, well dressed, who lived it up in drunken joy, taking to the floor to dance between performances, showing us all up as sober conservatives who don't know how to have a good time. Security came to pick him up when he fell on his ass onstage during our drum performance, and I didn't see him after that.
My own performance with Solomon and Venu went well enough for a first performance. The sound was a little muddy, (those bass frequencies...) a few technical issues, Solomon dropped a drum stick during one of his solos, but kept right on going with one hand while he bent down to pick up another stick. People cheered and clapped and danced where they stood. Rehearsals are such a private affair, three months with just the three of us in a room, resulting in the three of us playing three songs in a room crowded with strangers. But the little errors aside, the songs played well, the crowd loved it and then it was all over. Months of work for fifteen minutes onstage. Wren watched the whole show, rather transfixed by the Samba dancers I thought, and after the drumming, when the DJ started in with some awesome Indian dance tracks, he busted his moves on the dance floor. Wren's breakdancing style is developing well, becoming more and more well timed, each move executed with greater precision. I watched him dance with liberty and joy among the adults and I realised that he has the one thing I always wanted him to have. Confidence in his body, the ability to dance unabashed, unconcerned, free. His own personal style and feelings expressed perfectly through movement. A poor man I may be, but if that is the only opportunity I could ever provide my son, I am glad that I have done that. He has come with me to nearly every show I have done over the years, he has seen nearly as much dance as I have, raised amidst the noise and cheer of a performer's life. A part of me dreads the future, that he will suffer as I have. In a way I hope he does not become a performer, that his life might have more stable opportunities for happiness and success in a financially viable job. Yet every day he drums with more skill, sings with more harmony and dances with more confidence, proud of his father and excited for the future. I hope he makes a better life for himself than I have made.
* * *
...late at night...
Up and down. My moods are volatile. All through the whirlwind of the day
I say:
Thinking Thinking
I am the earth watching the clouds of my thoughts float by.
I try to remain unruffled by the winds
to still the mirror of my water
and make a picture of the moon.
but
the earth stirs too
a serpent deep below
touching the toes of tree roots and rippling the rise of hillsides
Somewhere between the torrent of the sky
and the thunder in the earth
I stand upon the surface and breathe in
breath out
trying to still the water
and make a picture of the moon.
* * *
My days and nights flash hot and cold. Despair and Elation share space upon a single coin. Of course I am happy that Wren is exploring music, dance, art, all these things that have brought me immeasurable joy. Of course I wish for him even greater joys. I don't really think that a musician's life is cursed (except sometimes I do), I just don't want Wren to suffer, which is selfish of me. If I hadn't suffered I would not glow so brightly from the fire within. Suffering teaches truth, resillience, flexibility. I think a lot of my negative feelings about music are misplaced expressions of the guilt I feel for devoting my time to something other than my family. I am a conflicted person, sometimes more doubt than man. But sometimes, I am more man than doubt, when the world becomes illuminated for a moment and I feel certain of the way. I have prayed to the moon, and to Inanna for help, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But here I sit, in a big comfortable bed, with huge pillows, late on a warm rainy night in Autumn, my children play in their rooms, or draw pictures, or sleep. Carrie sits in the lounge room with her friend, listening to music and talking about the world. I am in the bedroom, writing to you.
* * *
So I have given up, but not performing. I'm not sure what it is, but something is gone. I still feel lighter. Have I given up hope? Or despair? One seems a food for the other. I think I have given up doing things the way I have been doing them. I think I have given up my grip on my old life, my old needs. My heart still races as I think of the shows I will put on in the future, of the dancers and the musicians...but I must step more carefully. I have over extended myself this year, the end result is sure proof of that.
What am I trying to achieve? What am I working towards? How do I get there, and how do I get there without mental collapse? Interesting questions. I guess I've always assumed mental collapse as par for the course, just another price to be paid. Madness is a consequence of my choices, of my continued choices. Perhaps I overdramatise. I do that.
March 12th
This process, this journal, the constant stream of introspection is having deeper consequences than the production of text. This level of careful self analysis is revealing me to myself, and with this language tool I am developing a vocabulary for my own transformation. I have not given up performing. That is clear already. As I lay in bed last night my mind raced with images of dancers in masks, dressed in long robes entering the stage to the opening bars of Thousand Cuts (a song from my new album). I saw the band I would form to perform the drum ensemble parts, the strange story of the Invisible Enclaves is whispering itself to me in my sleep. Voices echoing in caves, conversations in hushed and nervous voices in abandoned wareouses, beneath bridges, in train cars.
I hear voices. I always have, ever since I was a child. These are not auditory hallucinations, but inner voices that speak with accents, telling stories, speaking wisdoms, sometimes just rambling personalities afloat in the void of my imagination. There a half dozen or so regulars, personalities I have given names to, their faces float in my minds eye, (the Hillbilly, the Gimp, the Goddess, the Zen master...) while others pass through like a morning breeze, leaving stories, feelings, experiences that later find themselves woven into my fiction writing...
I haven't given up performing, but I think I have given up trying to make money from it, trying to get paid gigs. With the festival over, the question arises:
For whose benefit do we perform?
Certainly for ourselves, the benefits of pursuing our heart's desires, the benefits of creating beauty and magic in our own lives, so certainly, we perform for our own benefit. For the audience, I suppose we do it for them, we certainly could not perform without them. It would be a secret ritual without them. The audience pay for the benefit of receiving the beauty we create, we pay for the benefit inherent in being that beauty.
But here's the hard bit. The venue owners are paid in full, the hire fees cover their costs and allow for profit. The festival organisers are paid full wages, which are funded by the fees they charge the performers to have their shows included in the festval. The web designers, the printers, the journalists are all paid full wages for their work helping us promote the shows we put on. Their hours are calculated, their expenses accounted for and their paycheck is guaranteed.
The performers get what is left, which if we are very lucky, will cover part of our travel expenses, and not much else. The entire community surrounding the festival are paid for their work, work they would not have if the performers did not put on the shows. They benefit from everything we do and are paid accordingly, but we the performers are not. We work for their benefit, we pay their rent, their morgtages, we put food on their tables and put their children through school, we pay for their holidays, we pay for their retirement superannuation. We work for their benefit, but we gain none of those benefits.
So guess I have given up trying to make money from performing. The arts economy is funded by the artists, who employ everyone else, but who are unable to consider themselves employed. I'm not blaming anyone. I'm probably not even upset by this imbalance, slavery is the life I chose and I have to be either proud of my choice or ashamed. I don't resent that everyone else is getting paid, they must also pay rent, feed children...but if it means that I cannot afford to pay my own rent or feed my own children, then I must stop. I am a common labourer, I cannot afford to employ others while I go hungry for the sake of beauty.
If I estimate $20 in travel expenses per trip to Adelaide for rehearsals and performances from January 1st to March 10th... ($15 in petrol, $5 wear on my car, 120km return)
6 rehearsals with dancers
8 with band
8 with Solomon & Venu
4 peformances with dancers
2 peformances with Solomon and Venu
28 rehearsals/performances X $20 per journey = $560
Each rehearsal averaged 2.5 hours (plus average travel time of 2.5 hours there and back). Each performace required 2.5 hours (an hour on stage, plus setup and packup time) equals approximately 70 hours work, plus 70 hours travel time, for a total of about 140 hours. These calculations do not take into account the hours of paid work I had to give up in order to make it to some weekday rehearsals.
By my preliminary estimates, as a peformer in this festival, I will earn about $500.
So yes, I have given up trying to make money as a performer. Trying to get paid at all for this work is a soul destroying act of madness. Everywhere the lie of prosperity is spread by the paid promoters of culture, while those who pay for the lie go hungry for their efforts.
15th of March
A few nights ago I dreamed of finding my car with the two passenger side wheels pulled off and lying in the dirt. It was snowing and the tracks of the vandals were muddy all around the car. An old friend, Matt Benjamin, was there and helped me get the wheels back on my car.
When I awoke I sent a text message to Matt, telling him of the dream and asking him if he wanted to catch up. I haven't seen Matt in about five years, but we used to hang out and play drums a lot about ten (or more?) years ago. Back when my hair was long, and hung rope heavy, adorned with coloured threads, shells, bells and glimmering glass. A lifetime ago.
Today I visited him at his home in the dry hills on the edge of Peramangk territory, upstream half a day's walk from Carrie's home. When I arrived, Matt asked me what the dream had been about, what's been going on? I did not hesitate, I felt very comfortable around Matt, the years have deepened our friendship. I told him what had been happening to me, about my struggle and collapse. I said to him something that revealed me to myself. I said that I had burned most of my other relationships in pursuit of a life in music, but now I had gone and hurt my relationship to music as well.
Matt said that music was no different from anything else in life. He did not elaborate.
There it is, my relationship to music has harmed me, and it has been harmed in turn. You always hurt the ones you love, the ones who love you always hurt you the most.
Visiting Matt may not have literally put the wheels back on my car when I was stuck in the snow, but his friendship and understanding of the struggle have helped. I dont't usually admit that others can actually help with personal problems, but today I walked away with something I did not arrive with. Matt told me of his own need to put music aside and prioritise his family during the prolonged illness of his daughter last year. He told me of the massive commitment to rehearsals he made the year before in order to perform at WOMAD and how it burned him out. We talked about the music industry, about other sucessful musicians and what they had done to market themselves. Matt's wife, Tana, said something rather insightful. To paraphrase, she suggested that the search for your audience is really a search for your own way of playing music, searching for the right atmosphere for performances as well as the right way to share your music as a product. Ultimately, she said, it's a search to know yourself.
I discovered something of that, last December when I played at the Gov, and looked up to see the whole front bar standing silently to listen to me play. That is what I need, I need silence. I need an audience that is willing to listen actively. I'm not strumming power chords and singing about girls. I'm plucking magic from beyond the veil and making each note a song. I'm not serving fast food to be consumed on the run and forgotten among the staggering garbage piles of discarded pop sensibility. I'm trying to tell the truth. I'm trying to share the pure sound of a human being pulling magic from a single string, magic enough to make my sister cry. Telling stories that turn adults into children sitting crosslegged on the floor. I'm trying to share something with you. I'm trying to share with you the infinite space to be found inbetween A and B, and not just A#. I'm trying to swing your bones to the uneneding intervals between 1 and 2, and not just "&", all the feather thin slices of time that can be brushed off, turning a square into a circle without adding or subtracting anything.
If all this sounds vague, if this sounds like hippy mumbo jumbo...well, I've got no argument to defend myself with. But when I take up my instrument in the middle of the night and that first note touches my ear...well, you and I don't really matter any more, not our opinions, not our ideas, not our needs or dreams or complaints.
It's just me, and Him in the room.
HayAllah
D_DTT_T_DTDTT_T_
Play it slow, you'll get the message.
16th of March
I watched a documentary last night about the building of Wellington bombers in England during WWII. There is something about that era that rings with truth for me. People had nothing, but worked tirelessly and were happy. Food was rationed, everything was rationed, people dying every day and night, homes being bombed, but in the shelters people sang with each other. Locked away in dark underground train stations, they held concerts while the bombs fell above them.
I think I have been focussing my attentions too narrowly upon my own little financial troubles. I have a beautiful home, my children are healthy, happy and go to good schools, my partner is beautiful and an amazingly creative artist, I have a good, relaxing and easy job in the sunshine where I can listen to music all day and not have to talk to anyone. While I struggle to pay even the most basic of my bills and my RAA membership expired a year ago...so what. We are at peace, and the trouble with peace is that nothing is ever good enough, there are no victories to work for, no common goal, no shared values. These things are also the benefits of peace, we may strive endlessly for the betterment of our lives, there are no enemies bombing our cities, our goals are our own, our values are independent, we have near limitless freedom of choice.
I have the freedom to perform, the freedom to work and earn money, the freedom to play with my children and enjoy the benefits of a country without war. My home is one of the few on this planet that is not ravaged by modern war, and I must remember that my purpose as a musician, is to enjoy that peace, and to promote that peace, and to sing the songs of my soul so that others may know that their souls have songs, and that the words are written in their feet, their hands, their hips, their hearts.
Drum classes on the 18th of March
I think I'm coming out from under the ash cloud of my post show blues. Before class I sat down in the abandoned building next to the studio, a ruin of a house with floorboards crumbling beneath cracked walls and sunken ceiling panels. In the two back rooms, everywhere the filth of rough living is scattered, mattresses, sleeping bags clothing and food wrappers. A book is folded crooked beneath the heap, a history of Australian cricket. Old underwear and socks, a packet of firestarters and bbq heat beads, a metal grate, sootstained in the black fireplace. A toothbrush, mirror and comb in a plastic box beside the mattress. Graffiti on every wall, bright, colourful tags and a painting of a winged demonic dog-like creature and the words, Grow your own wings beside it. The other rooms are spartan, unlived in, their floors more collapsed, the roof less stable and with more holes. The noise of the road is much louder...but the back rooms are dark and quiet, a secluded haven from the bright and noisy world outside.
I have been coming here for two years, to write, to play music, to read. There are precious few places where one can be unobseved in the city, where the eye of the crowd, the eye of the camera, the eye of the sun cannot reach you. This broken down shell, a memory of a building that has yet fall in upon itself, is a haven for those unfortunates whose lives forbid the comfort of a home. When I go there I think upon the circumstances of life that might drive me to treat such a place as a dwelling, for real shelter, rather than as a quiet room to write in before drum class. I have great sympathy for the homeless, the invisible suffering of their lives, and the blame that is heaped upon them for it. Places like this one, where they may seek shelter without charge, without judgement, without harrassment, are rare and precious. I leave no sign of my having been there, save my footprints in the long grass.
In today's class we played four variants of the Sufi rhythm HayAllah. It was hypnotic, everyone seemed to let go, and allow the rhythm take over. I closed my eyes and listened to the tiny flourishes , the golden ringing of the zills, the thunder of seven drums in the low ceilinged studio. Its a kind of miracle, to be able to listen to this music, to be in the presence of these drummers. All seven of them are listeners, all seven of them strive to create something from themselves, something sincere. Today's lesson included our first attempt at an actual stage seating arrangement in preparation for a song we will play at a show on April 21st. It is a marvelous thing, a Darbuka ensemble in Adelelaide, and I'm playing in it! I am both proud and grateful.
...but...
We are all humble before music.
Wednesday the 22nd of March
A note about practice. I hardly ever write about it, but my classes are chock full of the advice I give about effective practice. In the mornings I try to play before work. I arrive ten or fifteen minutes early, giving me time to sit in the lunch room and wake my fingers up. The lunch room at the farm is like a pioneer home: two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom, the toilet is outside. The acoustics in this simple stone building are crystal clear, the low ceiling and stone floor contain the sound perfectly. Seated in the middle of the room, facing the window that looks out upon the almond tree and the morning sky, I play my ukulele and sing before work.
In my lunch breaks as well, I eat between songs, taking a bite of my sandwhich and playing on.
In the evenings, while my partner cooks dinner, I play for her in the kitchen.
After dinner I play again while the children play.
When they have gone to bed, I stay up with my partner, watching Sherlock Holmes, and after that, in the sleepy darkness, sometimes then I play as well.
I carry an instrument everywhere I go, and wherever I am, I play. On those occasions when my hands are busy, I sing. I sing at work, acapella among the vines, kneeling in the warm earth. As I lay in bed, slowing my breathing, slowing my mind, I find my heart racing to the melodies I have been playing, imagining the turning of dancers, their shadows on the walls, their face-like masks, and their mask-like faces caught in the stage light, timeless.
When I wake, it is with a song in my mind. When I chew my breakfast, it is to the warbling melodies of the morning birds. When I drum upon the steering wheel, my car speeding between the last gentle folds of the hills, looking past them to the vast flat land beyond, to the lakes, my fingers spell out in code all the complex and counter-intuitive rhythms of my complex and counter intuitive thoughts. Between the crunch of my boots on the dry earth, between the breaths I draw, tasting the salty afternoon breeze from the south, between mouthfuls of food, I play music.
* * *
I played at Ava's house two nights ago, a dinner party/BBQ. Harmonica, Violin, Darbuka, Tabla and Mandolin, all of us seated around the table, the remains of the feast before us. I remember the stomping and clapping of the other guests, all of them musicians, travellers, artists. An Irish Jig, a gypsy swing, a reggae drop...When I first arrived five people were playing together, guitar, mandolin and three harmonicas, as the food was prepared Stompy played a few songs, someone sat reading on the couch, I wandered in the garden. I played ukulele while people mingled, drinking, laughing. While we ate someone told stories about India. He observed the high level of sophisticated performance and entertainment in Hindu rituals. He observed the generosity of the Hari Krishna's and the exuberance of the their songs.
Everyone is grateful to be in each others company. I spoke with the Mandolin player, whose ex-wife had hated music, so he never played while they were together. Since their divorce he has devoted himself to music, and seen the natural wellspring of talent his children display in casual moments playing their favourite songs together at home. He still had a prison-break, hang-dog look about him, a beaten man, held aloft from within by the music which loved him, in a way that his ex-wife never could.
Candles in the windows.
Our light pours out into the night
and not even the endless vacuum of space can swallow it all.
I make my way home, staying up late making tiny origami rings. I have some fine Japanese decorated papers which I will use to make paper rings for my partner's birthday.
The poor man's wife wears a paper wedding ring,
but she is not ashamed,
she wears it proud upon her hand,
and smiles upon her man.
Thursday March 23rd
Today I received $250 for my part in Cocktail Peacock. An admirable sum, and receiving it made me happy. I am very grateful to Raj for making such a successful event. The money should be there in two to three days.
Tomorrow I leave for Victoria, to Albury to visit my Uncle an Auntie for a birthday celebration. I am going with my father and my son. Petrol should cost me about $250 for the return journey. I presently have $130 in my account, and ten dollars in my pocket. The sum total of my wealth.
Today I paid my RAA cover, $185. Because I let my membership lapse for a year, my membership does not come into effect for 48 hours.
Today I put my car in for a service, only 3,000km overdue which is about usual for me. I only manage to pay off the pervious service by the time I am overdue for the next. Today I discovered that my car is burning oil, I had a cracked coil plug, and all my spark plugs were black. The fee is $600, of which I paid $100 today, money my mother gave me for my birthday (to pay for the service which I said usually cost around $150). She gave me $200, but I spent $50 on food, and $30 on new phone charger cables and a portable speaker for the car, since the stereo stopped working years ago.
I have no idea how I am going to pay the $500 remaining on the mechanic bill. I have almost killed the car it seems.
I feel as though I am always on the edge of disaster.
Last night I dreamed of travelling in my car, becoming lost, crashing, smashing the windshield, then driving on a little further before the car gave out and I began walking home. I was still walking 24 hours later and it seemed I was no closer to home than when I began. In the dream I was very frustrated, exhausted and desperate.
I dread that I am about to drive my father (who is nearly blind) and my son, (who is seven years old) out into the wilderness where we will become stranded. Without proper RAA cover, the callout fee is another $250.
I am running as fast as I can, and only ever moving backwards. If my car fails, I have no savings to buy another. Without a car I cannot get to work. Without a job I cannot pay my rent, which is $460 per fortnight from my $800 average per fortnight wage. Here I am again, worried about money, complaining about never having enough, stuck in the hampster wheel. Unable, or unwilling, or unimaginative enough to find a solution to my problem.
I have tried to live by my own hands. To be a man. But all I am doing is digging a hole into poverty for my family. By my own crippling delusions I destroyed my first marriage. By my own crippling delusions I nearly destroyed my second, and now find myself living a life split down the middle, unable to afford to continue to be a performing musician. If I do not manage to earn better money this year...I cannot afford to do another Fringe Festival. I had hoped to at least cover my petrol costs with the money I earned from performing, but all that money will go to pay for my car repairs, and I will still be in debt.
Dread. I rest my head upon the pillow tonight, heavy with dread.
In the morning I will face the dawn and drive all day. Praying that the car will make it.
March 24th
Beer, wine, wine, beer, dinner, beer, scotch, scotch and arguments about religious wars with my relatives. I asked my uncle if he had ever met God...he hummed and hawed before saying no. I responded that it was interesting that he had such strong opinions about religion...since he was advocating and promoting the war between Islam and Christianity. I get cruel when I drink, my mind becomes a knife, my opinions are poison darts I use to cripple those around me...searching for weak spots in their arguments, I strike.
Between the bouts of bullshit disagreement we laughed, reminiscing about our shared family history. My Uncle Phil and Auntie Sandra are acctually two of my favourite relatives, we have always gotten along together very well...last night just turned dark somewhere between the last beer and the first scotch, around 11pm. I played ukulele, harmonica...everywhere I go, there I am, music in my hands.
The journey went without a hitch, a perfect and uninterrupted twelve hours on the road. Worry hurts me twice. I grind my teeth over nothing. Grandfather, Son, Grandson....on the road together. It has actually been a marvelous day, filled with stories, discovery, food, music, and ending with dinner, family and a comfortable bed. I shouldn't complain.
My father (Peter) told me a story today, of the time his father (Max) kicked him in the balls. I guess he was about 13 years old. My father said that all he saw was red, and the burning thought...how dare you!. He remebered launching himself at his father, his young hands around his throat...but Max was much stronger than him. The story had no more words. It seems a relief to my father, every time he tells me a little more about his brutal childhood...it is a relief to me to hear those stories...they are real, and they make sense of the world I inhabit with him.
The Australian landscape is a sketchbook of story names, mysteries from the past still haunting us with their proud titles. We crossed Skelleton Creek and Murder Shack Creek, we passed Chinaman's Island and stopped to take a photo of a giant Murray Cod, a fish the size of a house in the city of Swan Hill, a city beside the river surrounded by endless flat plains for hundreds of kilometers. Australians are not without their sense of humour.
Today is Carrie's birthday. I phoned her to wish her well. Phone conversations always seem so awkward. I am awkward.
March 25th
8:30am
Today is the reason I am here, with Wren. It is my father's birthday, and my Auntie Sandra's. Seventy years old. My father walks with a cane, his eyesight is going, his hearing is following and the pain in his body is subdued only with morphine tablets. My Auntie Sandra is sprightly, good humoured and healthy. Our bodies tell the story of our lives...my father has lived hard, worked hard and his body now creaks and leaks and parts long overdue for repair are breaking down completely. My Uncle and Auntie, having never had children, are the only members of my entire extended family who have any money, and both of them seem to have lived, not sheltered lives, not sheltered at all, but healthy lives, supported by the good rewards of hard work and success.
* * *
11:56pm
My Auntie Sandra's sister, Raylene: Her son committed suicide at age 31, a merchant seaman. Tonight, after 3 glasses of wine, two glasses of toquay and a can of cider...the stories came out. Her husband, Andy opened up to me and my uncle Phil. Five years ago, his son hung himself. Why? I will never know, but tonight I was privileged to hear the stories told by the parents who survived the death of their adult son. When I imagine the possibility of my own son's death, I cannot see a future in which I survive. Wren is literally made of my flesh, if he died, I would die with him. His body IS MY BODY. I said tonight that no-one outlives their own children. Whoever it is that lives on after...it is not the person that lived before. Andy said tonight that only now, after five years, has he begun to see a psych, and that the first thing that he told her, was that he had not yet shed a single tear.
It's hard to type through my own tears that fall uninvited at the thought of the bursting ocean of grief that must lie behind his eyes. I personally cannot imagine a future without Wren. If he died, I would die.
My own father killed his father, in order to save the life of his brother. I am the son of the man who survived that murder...does a child really live on after killing his own father? We are marked. Whoever it is that lives on, it is not the person that lived before. My father surived the murder of his father, then became a father himself, now I, his son, am a father. My son has begun writing stories, he lays asleep beside me as I write now, his dreams are informed by the quiet tapping of the keys, and in the day he writes his own stories and in the games he plays, he tells still more tales of adventure, building heroes and villians from Lego and imagining their epic battles. Tonight we wrestled upon the lawn while the elders talked and prepared dinner, the pig roasting on the spit, the women in the kitchen preparing vegetables, the men outside by the BBQ, drinks in hand, the setting sun painting the world nostalgic.
I cannot say what I have learned tonight. To be seated at a table with my Father and Auntie, both turning seventy, my uncle and the sister of my Auntie and her husband......The tales that were told between the running mascara of Sandra's birthday speech and clenched jaw stubbornness of her husband after their argument in the kitchen, men and women struggling for identity even as they reach for the grave. Decades pass in ignorance. Wisdom is an idea...an ideal, a platonic concept as removed from life as death is removed from birth. In noble ignorance we struggle, we strive for understanding, but stand in baffled bewidlerment at the mystery of our own stories.
I pause to run my fingers through my son's hair, his steady gentle breathing is the soothing balm upon a mind troubled with the imponderable questions of mortality. His sleeping form beside me in the bed is the most perfect and unassailable proof of life and its purpose that I have ever known. How many nights have I sat as I sit now, writing of the confusion and vicissitudes of existence, only to look upon his beatific face and find all my questions dissolve in the peace of his slumber? He is the answer to my question, the peace to my conflict, the end to my means.
* * *
Tonight I played only one song, and as my voice raised up in joyful praise of the the spirit of music, the crickets fell silent to listen. My family fell silent to listen, and in their silence, I found myself.
March 26th
Flat tyre, at least it didn't happen on the road home. Another expense. sigh. My consolation is the following song lyrics that have finally completed themselves just in time for me to return home and sing the song for Carrie.
* * *
Ticking Clock
the ticking of the clock
keeps time in my head though the watch has stopped
birds in the trees
speak in code to me
when I close my eyes I can see
the turning of the tide
makes sense in my head though the world is wide
sun in the sky
singing just for me
when I close my eyes I can see
winter goes right to my head
I run away with spring and then
summer brings me back again
the loneliness of doubt
stuck in myself and I can't get out
stones in the ground
dancing just for me
when I close my eyes I can see
the gentleness of you
slip past all the walls I can't break through
you whisper sweet
nothings in my ear
with your love I'll overcome my fear
winter goes right to my head
I'll run away with you and then
together we'll come back again
When I close my eyes I can see.
* * *
I received an invitation to be involved in another performance, a three piece music and storytelling show, with a flamenco guitarist and Avalanche. I just don't know how I can do it, I don't know how I can perform at all...every gig costs me twice what I make back.
I received this txt message from Stompy yesterday.
I used to dream in technicolor for you, you'd paint my days passionate red, fire vs water: what a steamy conundrum. We were sundancing like summer indians, just us against the world. And sometimes we tried so hard to hold it together. I don't know what kept happening honey. Always another leak below deck, our ship was cursed to flounder the high seas and it never rains but is monsoons in the tropics. Buckets of tears bespatter the deck washed down with cheap chinese liquor thrills, guaranteed to make you crazy with forgetting or your soul back. Falling out of bed for breakfast, you hate me again, how long for this time I wonder? I don't hate you I want to love you, please don't make it so hard. But it's hard sailing when your stormy baby never lets up the weather front...my ship's at her mercy, never thought I'd look back on the days of lonely plain sailing with burned out nostalgia and sigh.
Poetry is the medicine for an illness no doctor can diagnose. I am quite blessed to have such friends as these, with such beautiful sadness and such eloquence.
March 28th
Home at last, twelve hours on the road again yesterday, all smooth travelling. Wren up in the front seat with me for first time, we listened to Red Panda hour after hour, eating chocolate, eating fruit, stopping for coffee and burgers in Ouyen with a dust storm at our heels. Such a vast flat land, beautiful and desolate, yet everywhere can be seen the mark of human endeavour making life upon the land viable.
March 29th
The money came through from Tale of Two Tribes. With the worst of the post show blues passed, I feel like I have been reacting to the situation in the wrong way. I have suffered because I entered into this production with the EXPECTATION of making money. I worked harder than I have ever worked on a musical production, and saw greater successes than I have ever seen from my efforts. I ASSUMED that this would translate into greater financial rewards.
Expectations, Assumptions...the Buddha would be appalled at my short-sightedness.
I also assume that there is a better way to balance my life. I assume that balance may be achieved. I expect that making different decisions will result in different outcomes.
I know that there is no way to stop. The music is in me. I could no more stop performing than I could stop being human. The stage is my native habitat.
March 30th
A couple nights at home with Wren, the world just melts away and the games we play with hero figurines seem to eclipse whatever it is I have been whinging about these last few months. Money? Who gives a shit. Last night I returned to work on my novel after a two month break...I finally had a breakthrough regarding the central conflict and the resolution of the story. Every time I have thought that the tale was done, there is an itch that keeps me from finishing it. I take some time away to consider the problem, then I stay up late with A4 sheets of paper and a felt tip pen, and voila! Four years, five years? Possibly more. Such wild times I have had, glued to the keyboard watching the action play out in my imagination, shock and amazement at each new discovery. It's like reading, only better.
