~ a time of seething

After a period of stability, say four days or longer, a tension begins to form in the air - like a charge of static electricity that will continue to build unless it is released. The simplest release involves drugs, a sudden abandonment of discipline that results in a slow build back to stability.

I sense her thoughts, whispering, cycling in her head. It is the only recourse she knows. The only thing she can imagine that will free her of the horror of the day-to-day, from her entrapment here, in this ordinary house - albeit for merely a day, and despite the peripheral damage on family and friends.

It’s a vicious circle, driven partly by her and, as things go, partly by me ...

Of course, I am making a serious effort to repair our world, even as it is being destroyed. I am alert for Spore incursions. I have total and permanent charge of finances. I try to organise my time so that no one will complain…

Yet I have so little energy. The Spasmo-Nemigron holds me steady as it eats my soul - deliberately, slowly, as if with a cocktail fork. I can feel the Slammerkin larvae making a chaos of my liver, and slowly I droop under long and wasting exposure to the winds of Quinquagisma…

I do what I can, but I have to do it at my own pace, to my own logic – otherwise, I know I will slash back and make the whole thing worse.

Yet her frustration must find an outlet – and for want of something better, I have become that outlet. When I spend a day cleaning and organising, I am criticised for not playing with Polly. When I spend the day with Polly, I am criticised for not cleaning. I fall foul, regardless of what I do.

It’s worse in those first hours after noon, when the Spasmo-Dromoran curdles her fluids, makes her dangerous to be near.

I’ve always been sensitive to personal criticism – but never deaf to it. And it’s worse when that criticism comes off a casually poisonous tongue. I cannot respond, for that would force an escalation. She is sensitive, a raw nerve and, were I to return fire, she would simply collapse. I’m told she’s been like this since a child, bursting into tears at the mildest of scoldings. At this late stage, I see that she is one of the worst cases of depression I have known.

But my reaction is perhaps the deadliest factor. l seethe. It’s a physical thing. I feel it in my blood, in my temples, a shuddering weakness in my sides. If it is bad enough, I take valium. Worse, it lingers, sometimes for days, and my only answer is to try to act normally, politely, until the causes are forgotten.

But lately these seething episodes have been compounding, one upon the other, and I am tasting bitterness on my tongue…



I spent the afternoon with Lynne and Polly, lounging around the pool at Bruce’s place, watching his two year old daughter – Madelaine – swim like a pearl diver. It was the perfect antidote to the nerve-racking morning during which I wrote the above paragraphs. Bruce keeps a reliably excellent bar. I tried some agwa, a marginally legal liqueur made from coca leaf. It’s okay, but yesterday I stuck to the chartreuse…

There’s been a lot of talk about the past lately. Last year, a specialty label in the US put forward the idea of re-releasing the Beargarden album All that Fall. Now, after much delay, the compilation of a bonus album, a re-mastering from the vinyl by the redoubtable Simon Polinski, it’s near ready.

At the time, for me, it was a grave disappointment. We were saddled with a couple of old school producers who seemed intent on sucking the blood from our music. The project went massively over-budget with the help of shadowy entries for cocaine and Japanese food [something I only learned of years later], and the whole thing – the fights, the tension, the firing of bass-players – became the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was so naïve at the time; I let something that I’d spent years working towards be swept out from under my feet.

A few months later the band was gone. Virgin Records abandoned the project [despite their massive investment] and All That Fall was quietly released on our manager’s private label, Chase. For a long time after that, I took no pleasure in music, [despite singing in a band called Index which disintegrated as quickly as it formed]. I went overseas for a while and then became a writer …

So it’s strange revisiting that time. I listened to the material this morning, free of all those emotional associations. It sounds surprisingly good. Very eighties, of course, but worth making available again …

We’re talking about compiling an Ears album next and that I would get behind …

*

When we arrived home, the pall had risen from the house. Everything felt clear. The woman I live with was smiling and apparently at peace with herself …

* 17 February 1981 2.15am

I don’t know if my Queensland holiday did me any good at all. The Slammerkin came down hard that Saturday night. I was delirious with glee and forever holding out my wineglass to the gaggle of drunken teenagers in Nikki’s backyard – who were only too happy to ply me with their poisonous Southern Comfort. I was well past the point of making sensible decisions and paid for it by spending the last week of my holiday in bed. My liver is not what it was and behaviour like this could literally kill me.

I’m back on line now, however. Back in the psycho-dome that is my house in Mt Waverley. No whiff of the Deadly Spores, thank goodness, but plenty of other unpleasant challenges to occupy my time. Jenny stormed out of the house Sunday after riling me up with a nastily phrased litany of my inadequacies. She called back today and told me she’d had her period. We compared notes and realised the exact same thing had happened exactly twenty-eight days previously.

So, to resume transcription of my ancient diaries …

*

This afternoon after practice, I purchased some heroin and took it back home to Christine. We locked ourselves in the flat and fucked ourselves sore … She is asleep now.

My love for her is frighteningly strong. She assures me this is also true for her. We assured each other, in fact, continuously, very self-indulgently all evening.

I’ve heard that Keith Glass said I was either stupid or a genius for writing the lyrics to Triple Treat. Well…?

Our new song should be called Green Food For a Queen. I have found a pseudo-religious poster to use on our drum skin... Put in a handbill to be printed… I have so very much to do.

Last night Christine and I fucked madly to the listening ears of her sister Anne. We are such ostentatious lovers. Christine’s father asked her if she was going to marry me. Hah! I am the first of her boyfriends he has seen and he is confused.

That’s all I feel is worth recounting on this excellent night

*

Green Food For a Queen turned out to be one of the best Ears songs …

green food for green queens tonight
and gruel for the black and the white

Triple Treat? Well there was a particularly tasty ice-cream available at the time with a slab of nice soft pink nougat-like material sandwiched in vanilla ice cream and coated in chocolate. I don't know if the song was related specifically to the ice-cream, but it went something like this ...

it was a triple treat, a triple treat
and triple tigers perish on the hour

Christine and Annes’ father, at this time, was the head of Victoria’s police union

Diary of 1981 - index

~ The Devil's Hexagons

I woke in the late afternoon and was shambling into the lounge room when a huge barbed psychic harpoon tore through the wall, winged Jenny who was reclining on the couch, and buried itself deep in the opposite wall - where the surrounding brickwork changed in its nature to become a form of highly reflective crystal. The Slammerkin were silent, their vile scaled bodies huddled together in fear.

The air became dishwater, the surfaces around me softened, beginning the process of decay. The Deadly Spores were in the room - and in overwhelming force. A blitzkrieg so powerful there was nothing to be done but ride it out.

The crystalline substance was propagating, cracking along the fault lines, disgorging more crystal. Rays of light lanced randomly about the room, in searing colours from an impossible spectrum, seeking non-spore substance, seeking flesh.

Already, Jenny was speaking in an aberrant voice, of things she would not have thought to say prior to the attack. Wearisome things. Ghastly things painted to entice.

Myself, I could not speak, and impotently shook my head from side to side. All efforts resulted in an involuntary spastic flailing that left me weaker and further disassociated. I reached deep into myself for the power to resist, but found nothing. I was buffeted on an angry tide of those most deadly spores, the elite among their kind, the long-range infiltrators, called by some The Nebula.

We were locked in a crystal prison. I watched with resignation as the walls made popping and fizzing noises, briefly became glass, and then were lined with dripping hexagons, honeycomb, each cell oozing a viscous tan fluid sweeter than the mind could bear.

And I gorged on that irresistible slime, forgetting the sweet lies coming like a black stream from Jenny's mouth, forgetting myself, and my purposes.

Few can prevail against such an onslaught, but fortunately its very ferocity seemed to drain - at least temporarily - the distributed power of the Deadly Spores. There was, thankfully, time after that to regroup.

The following day, we participated in a small war council. Organised resistance to the Spores is rare. There are larger entities claiming to address the problem, but on the ground it is almost always a personal thing. Soldiers must fight alone, and are often too psychically compromised to risk friendly contact. Their tactics, also, are often too private to divulge.

But from time to time there are small, brief gatherings where intelligence may be shared, strategies evolved and heads bent in desperate prayer.

We left the council and lay together for a time listening to the new P J Harvey album, White Chalk. It seemed like we had made it through.

For one day, I continued to believe that we had survived the attack unmarred, but tonight I saw dark clouds in Jenny's eyes and a cold alien wisdom directing her desires.

~ The Secret of The Moon Girl's Bracelets

At last the play is over. All those vital young new friends will pass, inevitably, into my history.

The sensual Flynn [Miranda] with his honeyed voice. Just out of school and ravenous for life. In a way, he reminds me of Michael Hutchence. Something about his soft, gentle manner... If it was a path he wished to tread, I could imagine him up there, under the par-cans, writhing in snakeskin.

The marvelously good-looking Ben played the Caliban - Michael Alig character [pictured below]. He has a clear and present taste for well carbonated beauty. Each night there was a selection of sparkling eyefuls. On the last night, he brought his girlfriend. She looked at me as if I was a stray, sauce-smeared paper bag which the wind had just flattened onto her dress. Almost certainly my fault, though I can't recall exactly what I did to elicit the reaction. You see, I just can't control my excitement around these people and - with some inducement from the Slammerkin - I start to believe I'm Oscar Wilde. Something similar also happened the previous night. A friend of The Moon Dancer [Kristine] began to cry after a barrage of weird comments escaped my big mouth. I tried to console her, but merely scared her. Again, I have no idea what I actually said, but the culmination certainly involved the word emo.

Kristine, who is from Norway, gave Polly her bracelets to look after during the show. I was a little worried as it seemed like fairly good jewellery, but Kristine was serious and Polly was treating them as if they were 24 carat gold. Afterwards, Polly reverently returned the bracelets and Kristine gifted her one. There was something sweetly emotional about this whole transaction, as if Kristine had been reenacting an event from her childhood. As for my child, it was a beautiful little lesson in responsibility & trust.

There was trouble with the trains late last night and we didn't get home till 12.30am. Very late for a four year old, but she had a whale of a time, twirling every adult she met around her tiny little finger with a subtle mixture of shyness and charm. I left her in the care of Camilla Z, while I dashed backstage to grab my brief-case. I returned five minutes later to find her preaching to a circle of eight cross-legged smiling adults.

~ Bursting with Vile Fluids

It is opening night and my brains are boiled within my skull. You see, the lizard-like Slammerkin are swarming behind the walls at RMIT, transmitting their jabbering voices into my head. Unfortunately, Lynne has purchased a fat old wine cask, bursting with vile fluids, for Stephano to heft on stage in place of a hogshead - and very little telepathic effort was required by the Slammerkin to force me to the teat of that poisonous bladder.

I speak of the Spores and their dire evil, but during the comfortable intervals, when their influence is marginal, often the Slammerkin will come forth with insidious mind speech, creeping red miasmas and invisible beams of dehydrating orgones. Perhaps I will wear a defensive foil cap tonight. I need to do something, as this miserable lexia hangover has all but incapacitated me.

Jenny and Polly are home and we are a family again. Jenny is bubbling, sleepless and proud of her war efforts - as she deserves to be.

Also, I am becoming increasing concerned for the welfare of Posh Spice. Yesterday I saw her image in the MX, posing as stiff and as inhumanly thin as a barbie doll beside the other Spice Girls, who seemed mature, womanly and who were smiling, rather than pouting. Posh is an enigma. Can a human being truly be as devoid of personality as this woman seems to be? I wonder if there is some fragile nugget of character confined somewhere in there, behind the expensively maintained skull?

Could she have a conversation that stretched beyond furniture, beauty products and money? Or is she - as the evidence suggests - a replicant - your basic pleasure model - who has somehow made her way to earth from the Outer Colonies?

I was told an astonishing story this morning. Apparently Posh was photographed from above at one of her poor husband's soccer matches and a bald patch was noticed [and magnified, and scrutinised] at the back of her head. This is a sure sign of anorexia, I believe, but Posh's response was to fly swiftly to Switzerland, or somewhere equivalent, and have some kind of hair piece put in place. This astounds me. The woman is nothing but an image. An ambulatory manniquin. One tiny imperfection and she whips into emergency mode, calling up her strike team and burning carbon across the Atlantic. No matter that it is a symptom of illness. No concern at resources wasted on a thing that, in essence, is of absolutely no significance whatsoever.