~ the ears, the lyrebird, april fifteen

The Lyrebird Lounge is a tiny place, a shop front, but its size possibly had a bit to do with how wonderful the atmosphere became. Andrew had to sit on a couch with keyboard resting on his lap. I had to vocalise over an antique Galaga console. It was reminiscent of the old Exford Hotel, or perhaps the 475 Club from days of yore.

These latter-day shows by The Ears - without intending to overblow our personal trumpets - have, as they say, been pumping. And seething. And surging. If I didn’t have these accursed Hep C drugs in my system, sponging up my native energy before I’ve even generated it, I think I’d be inclined to put a good deal more time into the band. It’s fun to be a strange, thirty-year old, resuscitated, anachronistic musical artefact with a tightening death-grip on life. But you try bellowing to an audience for an hour with the twin, lead-filled panniers of interferon and ribavirin depending from your shoulders. Mind you, that’s just me; the rest of the band were steaming, and my work - if you could call something so thoroughly enjoyable ‘work’ - was probably okay, despite my reduced physical state. Mick’s girlfriend recorded most of the songs on a handheld gadget, and we watched the results today. Pretty amusing stuff. And all very exciting. I’ll edit some down and upload it to You Tube, if I’m able. And we’ll try to get some more shows organised. Hopefully, we’ll be playing at the Day at the Green in August - but I have the taste. I want something sooner.

I should also mention Josh Lord’s acidic, political, canvas-slash-poster-art which was on show a few doors down at The Bower. Very street. Very punk. Very distinctive voice. And the wonderful Ovals too, who also played at The Lyrebird. A bevy of courteous and bearded young men with a profound interest in the progressive rock of last century. They rang bells, tickled memories from my early teens; echoes of songs I couldn’t possibly have identified after the passage of so much time. Shades of King Crimson, Procul Harem, Mid Pink Floyd, ELP ... Gus, if you’re reading this, take note. There is simply so much music, so many styles, genres, attitudes ... not all can emerge from the vaults at once, to live again, but in observing The Ovals I was delighted to find this particular musical school resurrected and (naturally) given a new coat of paint.

* Sunday 12 July 1981 7.30pm

Little as happened. There’s something wrong with my voice. I’m getting fatter and drunker. The Ovaltine advertisement has been completed.

It involved many hours of idleness.

I’m getting sick of P---. Gus is particularly dissipated. I’m getting sick of this diary and of spending all my money on heroin.

*

It’s been a while since I’ve pulled out the old green diary. Pity the next entry in line wasn’t more interesting.

But since, at some time in the future, my character will be judged by a jury of my peers, I wonder how wise it is to mention drugs? I can only hope that, if they happen to read this, they will see it in context.

During that Ovaltine shoot, the director had a lot of difficulty getting me to smile. Perhaps it was because I was wearing a frilly white shirt and jodhpurs. More likely, I just didn’t consider myself the kind of person who would voluntarily smile in front of the camera.

There was a gorgeous, olive-skinned female model working with me that day. I almost fainted, in my innocence, when she began swanning around the dressing room utterly naked.

The art director didn’t like my silver Latvian ring - the one my recently deceased father had given me. I took it off, gave it to someone on set for safe-keeping, then forgot to ask for it back at wrap time. Despite my frantic phone calls to the producer over the next week, the identify of the ring-bearer was never ascertained.

I was so angry with myself - and with the anonymous thief. My solution was to pretend it didn’t happen. I acquired another ring not too long after, made by a little Latvian handicrafts outfit run by smiling old ladies on the second floor of an old building in the city. (Rings are very important in Latvian culture.) My girlfriend of the time, Michele Hallgren, gave it to me as a gift, and to anyone who asked I would explain it had been given me by my father a long time ago.

Later, two and a half decades later, a guard at the Melbourne Remand Centre ground it off in a shower of sparks with an electric cutting tool.

I have yet to replace it.

Diaries - 1981

(Don’t forget to come to Poetica at the Carlton Courthouse on Monday night)

* June 28 1981 Sunday

I’ve got myself the leading part in the Ovaltine (flavoured milk) ad. The payment is $1,000. They’re contracting me for a year, I think – and part of the fee will go as their percentage.

I don’t quite understand why I was chosen. Personally, I thought I looked ugly on the video, and I still had a shadow on my face, even though I took great pains in shaving.

It has the same air as a Big M advertisement [almost]. I felt embarrassed by some of the things I had to act out … prowling after girls … drinking the stuff … simulating satisfaction …

That Carol’s going to get it! I’m moving in regardless of those godforsaken druggies.

Lots of time with Phillipa & Gus. Lots of booze etc. Lots of wasted time. I’m going to become (the) retiring (type) for a while, I think.

*

I wonder if anyone recalls this ovaltine advertisement? I’d be curious to see it. I think I’m old enough not to be embarrassed. The agency were trying to get ahead of the trend by using a ‘blitz’ theme. I was wearing these bespoke leather pants and a semi-frilled white shirt, wandering down a forced perspective hallway opening doors. There was a cow behind one. There was a surfeit of ovaltine flavoured milk cartons behind another, and behind still another there was a rather hot female model, probably with Eighties hair, sipping ovaltine flavoured milk through a straw. I know she was hot because she’d stripped naked about two feet from where I was sitting having a semi-conscious morning coffee in the dressing room. The effect was instant paralysis. These model types …

The money, by the way, was huge at the time.

Diaries - 1981

~ childen of the ear

If you know anyone whose interest might be piqued by the Sails of Oblivion gig, feel free to forward this e-bill.

And to quote original keyboardist Gus Till's reaction:

"I recall you telling me that when the name 'The Ears' was decided upon it was also unanimously accepted as bleedin' obvious that it should never ever be mentioned that under NO circumstances would a picture of an ear ever be involved with anything ever associated with aforesaid group! But in one eye and out the other, the passage time of time has nullified this once unbreachable position.

But the ear of god? I like it!!"

* June 14 1981 Sunday 8.00pm

I’m auditioning for an Ovaltine ad. Small Kate arranged this. There are photos tomorrow.

On Friday, after coming back from Franca’s and the most potent trip I’ve ever experienced, I took heroin and went to the Seaview. Afterwards, I went back to Kate S---‘s.

The following night I passed out at Phillipa White’s house. Our first practice is tomorrow.

I’m still very determined.

*

A laconic yet evocative entry.

First, the Ovaltine ad. I wouldn’t want to upstage any later posts, but it’s safe to say that the exact product was Ovaltine flavoured milk in a carton, that the ad had a ‘Blitz’ theme, and that I got the part.

I recall going to Franca’s. I was with Gus, at his place in Punt Rd across from The Office Hotel. His friend Simon dropped by driving a taxi and proceeded to flatter me on my talents as a frontman. This taxi-driving sycophant turned out to be Simon Polinski, who wound up joining Beargarden on bass, and ultimately became a legendary, Aria-winning producer/engineer.

Franca lived in the hills, in a place called The Patch. I can’t remember why we wanted to go there - surely it wasn't for the mushrooms - but I’ll never forget how astonished I was that Simon happily drove us in his Taxi and then went back to work. It must have been fifty kilometres, at least.

And the first practice? This was the band that would become Beargarden, though I don’t think we had the name yet. There was still a chance that we might have called it something else … that we wouldn’t make that fateful decision.

~ the black hearted babycino vendor

As you can imagine, my life is currently dominated by preparations for Sails of Oblivion: The Gig. Our promoter Dolores is a whirlwind. Things are progressing swimmingly and at speed. There's a lot of interest out there. Already we have 85 confirmed guests on our Facebook events page.

But the general air of excitement has not stopped my ire being raised on the issue of babycinos.

I don’t know exactly when they first appeared, but when Polly was tiny they seemed like a new thing, at least here in Melbourne. They were a nice, efficient way of including her at a café table. A small, sweet, warm treat to concentrate upon, to delay the onset of boredom, to defer the impulse to whine or crawl over her parents. And they remain useful to this day. And they were free. Always free. And fair enough. A meagre quantity of milk-froth sprinkled with chocolate would probably not break the one cent barrier in production costs. And I suspect they’re good for business too. Mothers often like to chat at cafés and can do so with more amenity if their children are preoccupied.

But then, as time passed, café proprietors would occasionally charge. A dollar. A dollar fifty. Perhaps, as the babycino became more popular, they wearied of making it for no reward. Or perhaps they couldn’t get their heads around providing a service for free. As for me, I began to judge the moral tone of an establishment on whether or not they charged for the babycino.

It all reminds me of what happened when they first introduced cat licences. Every Melbourne council had to start providing these licences, and because it involved paperwork a fee was to be charged. My own Monash council charged about ten dollars a year, (though this has risen over time to about twenty-five). Other councils asked for as little as six dollars, but some, if I recall correctly, charged more than a hundred.

You see, there were no precedents. Nobody knew what an appropriate fee might be, so they they flew on instinct and did not bother to confer with each other. And the greedier and more venal the council, the more they charged. Their ethical fibre was exposed. It was an object lesson in human nature.

Now the other day, my wife returned grumbling from a coffee session with her friends. She had been billed three dollars for a babycino - around the price of a real cino. My hackles rose. Deplorable, unforgivable, extortionate pricing. Worse even than the outrageous mark-ups on beer and chips at the football. Or popcorn and choc-tops at the cinemas. And I can tell you, with a high degree of certainty, that the individual who priced that babycino has a black heart

Here is a link that further explores this dismaying issue.

*

While burrowing through old boxes in the shed today, in addition to dust and house spiders and possum skeletons, I found a couple of unused designs for Ears single covers. I can’t work out why we didn’t choose the first one. It's brilliant. I think it’s by Tony Harding, brother of Christine and Anne. The other’s by Gus Till.

* 2 June 1981 Tuesday 9.00pm

It is agreed on all sides now that the Ears, as such, have split. I am still startled and am not sure what course I shall take – perhaps I should just sit down tonight and write a story. Perhaps that would set the right forces in motion.

Tomorrow we’re playing at a place in the city called “The Boulevarde”, Friday at the Oxford Hotel with the Models. It will be their farewell and certainly ours as well.

This alcohol thing shall stop. I am resolved.

Last night, as is my Monday night habit, I went to Inflation. I saw Sue Ryan again and talked to her. She has so much faith in me it is painful. She kept saying, “I feel so inadequate …” Her friend Anne-Marie is definitely worth the time of day.

Will I persevere with music? Today Gus, Mick and I arranged random words in the Office Hotel and came up with the name Vast Blood Masons. I like it, but Mick prefers Running Teeth.

Franca was down tonight. I stayed Thursday and Friday nights up there, in The Patch. I went to a mushroom party on Friday. Hideous. Those boys especially. Terrifying. Coarse. Hills people. And fancy dress to boot - as if it wasn't enough of a nightmare already. I sat out in the car for most of the night.

Franca loves me. I can see it a mile away.

Shall I go to Nimbin with her? (She has a swathe of unspoilt land in Tuntable Falls)

Shall I go to Sydney … then Europe, perhaps … singing and writing all the way…?

PS: On the RRR charts our single reached 7 and is now at 9.


*

We were crazy, letting the Ears go like that. At least, that’s my opinion with the benefit of hindsight. But the personal stuff going on between Mick and Cathy, in particular, would probably have made it impossible to continue. That Oxford gig, our last, was great.

I remember, that night in the hills, being in a car with rednecks on mushrooms. He hit something, probably a rabbit, and utterly freaked out. It was very disturbing

The Boulevarde was a place which later became Subterrain? Subterranean? Models farewell … Well that wasn’t a very successful break up, was it? As far as I know, they’re still playing.

Alcohol. Yes, alcohol. No alcohol for me these days – it would ring my glass liver like a bell.

I have a handbill from a secret Vast Blood Masons gig, which I will scan as soon as I get my scrapbook back. Andrew Till is using it for the packaging of the Beargarden CD. I wish that little cut-up session with Gus & Mick had yielded something really good, or at least something that didn’t sound like ‘beergarden’.

Mick was later to form a group called The Walking Bellies, I wonder if it was inspired by Running Teeth?

* 23 May 1981 Saturday 7.00pm

These are troublesome times. My group has very little hope of surviving them. I may leave and go with Franka to Northern NSW, where I will again pursue my writing

I’ve been to Macedon twice and taken mushrooms in this last week. The second time we had a serious car accident. I would imagine this is why I am so utterly confused as to my wants and needs.

Storm paid for a night at the Hilton, where we became hopelessly drunk. I boffed Franka in the heated swimming pool sometime that morning. It was good.

Terry has been busted for drugs. Carl is being too stupid for me to bear. People like Mark Gason are depressing me more with their criticism. Mick has no conception of the correct course to take and his assured but reckless statements muddle things further. Cathy, I think, will be chucked out. Gus is becoming my good friend,

Our single came into the RRR charts at 28, Canberra at 19. we’ve had bad reviews for our live performances. Good for the single.

In the next three weeks we are making a last ditch effort to improve. If we don’t make it, we bust.

I am reassessing my life. Should I continue with the group? If I don’t, I shall lose a lot, the easy lubrication of my social life for instance… Has the time come to retire into writing? Something inside me is telling me it has…

There’s no reason why I should make anything of my life, but I may as well try, at least for interest’s sake. In this respect, pride is my greatest asset and my greatest enemy.


*

Sound like this band’s tearing itself apart, doesn’t it? I think I was in love with the romance of self-destruction … I wonder how much Christine’s death, coming when it did, played a part?

The mushroom trips to Macedon are very tasty tales which I will save for another occasion. Some very wild stuff was involved

I remember consciously always using the word ‘group’ instead of ‘band’. ‘Group’ was groovier. Later, ‘band’ became groovier. ‘Boffed’ was a good word. I’m pretty sure it’s fallen out of usage now. The verb ‘to pork’ was just coming into fashion.

Diary of 1981 - index

~ night of the bullet

It was some time in the early eighties. We were at Inflation, I think. Or it could have been The Underground. I was with Gus, sitting on a staircase.

Looking down, through the railing, we could see a well-attended bar. I remember Gus’s excited voice in my ear.

- You see that guy buying a drink? The one with the bullet belt?

- Yeah.

- Those bullets, see them? Each one is full of cocaine.

- No shit?

Gus explained that the guy was a friend of his brother Darren, and had bought the bullet belt, complete with shells, from an army disposals store in the city, obviously thinking it was kind of cool.

Upon getting it home and inspecting it with more care, he noticed something fishy about the shells. They were, naturally, supposed to be empty, but these seemed just a little too heavy. He opened one to find a white crystalline powder. Then he donned the belt and went for a night out at a Blitz club.

I didn’t really believe Gus’s story, but I went along with it, on the off chance …

From the beginning, the substance in the shells was referred to as cocaine. Why it wasn’t thought to be heroin, I don’t know. Presumably the belt had been in service overseas and used as a smuggling tool. Vietnam came to mind, and it was heroin not cocaine that predominated in that region.

Gus and I agreed that we should acquire one of these bullets, and the belt owner surrendered one without a quibble. Rumour spread quickly among our friends that we had a bullet full of coke.

But we couldn’t open it there. We didn’t have the tools.

I think there were about five eager inebriated souls who wound up at Gus’s place afterwards. One was a girl called Luisa, who wore striped leggings. Either Gus or I was going out with her at the time. Many years later, I was walking up Acland St when I was approached by a private detective. He showed me a picture of someone's daughter. It was Luisa. I don’t know her parents ever found her.

We converged on Gus’s dad’s toolshed. I remember being wary of that bullet. Bullets could explode, I knew that. And we couldn’t be completely certain this one was not live.

With as much care as a party of drunken revellers could muster, the shell was secured in a vice. We remembered to face it upwards, so that none of the powder would fall onto the floor. I watched from a distance, from behind whatever shelter I could find. With pliers, whoever was in charge grasped the pointed end of the bullet and tugged it free of the shell.

Though we knew what to expect, it was still a surprise. Free drugs, as if from heaven.

The powder was very crystalline. I had not seen anything that quite resembled it, but my experience was limited, particularly with cocaine which has never been my drug of choice. I recall insisting that no one shoot it up, and on this point everyone agreed. Luckily. It would have had a poor outcome.

So, beginning with small sensible lines, we snorted it up. It was very harsh, sharp, cutting. The second time round it was worse, jagged. But, lo and behold, there was an effect - and the effect seemed to be that of coke.

Unfortunately, it hurt too much getting it in. Probably, it had lost potency over the years spent in its steel casing, and definitely it had been cut with something unfortunate. Gus, I remember, thought it might be alum. Whatever it was, it was bad for the nose. We all developed large unsightly scabs around our nostrils, and our nasal chambers were tender for some time after. And none of us ever got really wired.

I wish I knew the history of that bullet belt. Where was its owner when he had the bright idea? Did Australia ever have troops in South America? Why was the belt [or belts] abandoned? I imagine it was inexperience that led to its being cut with the wrong stuff. Over the years I’ve encountered much good gear that has been ruined in this way. [Consider the story of ‘the mud’]. Anyway, there were to be no more bullets. To our astonishment, the owner of the belt surrendered it to the police, who then visited the disposals store to make certain there were no more.

I gave up after a few lines of that cruel powder. It felt damaging. And the pain outweighed the pleasure. But others, including Luisa and Gus, were not so scrupulous. Their scabs grew in length and breadth as, over the following days, they polished off the contents of that mysterious shell.

* 2 April 1981 Thursday 1.30am

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain
Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game
they burst their manacles and wear the name
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain!

Coleridge was writing about the French Revolution, but I prefer to think of the above passage as universal.

*

I am twenty-one today. I feel sour, yet glad to have something on which to anchor some kind of new life. The pain comes and goes.

The group has been booked into Armstrong’s in six weeks to a record a single. We’re doing the supports for the Snakefinger tour, and a Macy’s headline is coming up. Ian Meldrum congratulated me on Saturday night for what he said was a great performance.

Friday night was my funeral. I cried from start to finish. It was a release I needed.

Still colours cannot be properly colours. I feel alone, as what was closest is gone. The distance between me and other human beings seems much greater.

I spoke to Brian Harding on Monday night. He relieved me over legal matters. I’m free to grieve and suffer over myself.

*

Snakefinger was the guitarist with mightily eccentric US band the Residents. The outfit he brought to Australia, however, was a lot more comprehensible.

One night after a gig at Melbourne Uni [I hope I’m not presaging a later diary entry here] I had passed outside through some revolving doors. Hearing something, I looked back to see Snakefinger on the ground. He’d had a serious heart attack. He survived, but the tour was cancelled, and I believe he did actually die not too many years after of something similar.

I spoke of my meeting with Brian, Christine’s dad, in an earlier diary post. I was in my youth and had no idea how the dreadful incident would pan out legally. I had been worried that I might be charged with something, and was thankful that he cleared up that concern.

Some friends, I recall Anne Harding and Gus were among them, organised a casual celebration for my birthday downstairs at Inflation.

Diaries of 1981

* 26 February 1981, Friday 9.30am

I’m getting irritated with Troy and Christine – I can get no peace in my flat again. I am retiring early and rising early. I’ve been smoking dope which has fogged up my sensibilities.

3 March 1981, Tuesday 8.45pm

These entries are stretching further and further apart, but I must persevere. I’ve already broken my personal record for keeping a diary.

It is raining today. The door is open. Leaves and vines are slapping wetly against each other.

Terry is strengthening the morale of the group again. We are to play on the 26th of this month at the Waltzing Matilda, supporting Johnny Farnham. That will be a splendid occasion [!] – though I shudder to think of the stress it will cause me …

Friday is coming closer. Our bills have been posted. All handbills gone. Dolores is very happy. We’re expecting a big crowd. Terry has unearthed a PR guy – a fat queen named Kevin …

On Saturday Craig McGee and his friend Warwick photographed us in and around the stormwater drains of South Yarra. Terry brought his briefcase up at least 500 yards of stuffy, cramped tunnel.

Our cover is finished. I’m on the front. Gus [of course] hated it – made much soul-destroying noise. I came away grasping my head – they all complain to me, these hideous inhuman complainers, and it chills my very spirit.

I’m reading The Tin Drum. It’s an excellent book [Oertel gave it to me while my father was dying, I think]

Christine and I had more sex than usual today – once shortly after waking, once while watching television in the afternoon. She described it as my horny day. We’re getting on much better now.

On Saturday night, dazed by speed and alcohol, I rose and urinated on Anne and Ed who were sleeping near the foot of our bed. I believed I was pissing into a dark, deep abyss. I awoke during the act and, horrified, cried out ‘My heart! My heart!’

I shall work on my crow tonight with Franka, who returned yesterday.


*

Terry Rogers looked after the Ears through a good percentage of their existence. He was a Kiwi who came to Melbourne with another group he managed, The Marching Girls, [previously The Scavengers,] who consisted of Ronnie Recent [who became Brendan Perry], Des Hefner and John Cook. At the time, Ronnie was going out with Lisa Gerrard, who was fronting a band called Microfilm, but was soon to collaborate with Ronnie on Dead Can Dance. I was fascinated with Lisa for a long time; she was an exotic flower, ethereally beautiful, and already her voice was breathtaking. She also played in a little band called Junk Logic. A mild-mannered freak named Lee Smith hammered an untuned guitar, while Lisa sang and played what may have been her Yangqin. They had a really good song called ‘Junk in Cupboards’.

The last time I saw Lisa, she was singing at Wendy’s burial under a hellish sun, perhaps ten years ago. Despite her unmistakable voice, I did not recognise her. I did not know that her brother had settled in with poor Wendy. Later, at the wake, I sought her out, aiming to say something about her incredible voice, but wound up staring …

There’s something very familiar about you, I said. She replied by saying the same thing. A few seconds later, we remembered; a capsule of very intense time, a long time before …

Terry Rogers also ran the Champion, a gig which was our home away from home north of the Yarra.

Dolores is a promoter. Amongst other things, she used to run the Exford Hotel. I think she’s with Chane Chane now, the singer from La Femme.

Franka was a rusted-on hippy chick from the Patch. Many years ago she disappeared into the psychic wilderness of Tunable Falls

Diary of 1981 - index

* 25 February 1981 9.30pm

Apologies to Mick Lewis, Ears guitarist & co-founder, over this one.

*

My entries are slipping further apart now. I hope this journal doesn’t die.

I’ve just made my way out of an infernal depression. It was probably born from tiredness and compounded by irritation at [Mick] Lewis. Gus has done this comic-book detective style piece of artwork for the record cover [Scarecrow]. Mick seemed to like it. I simply hated it. I would prefer our artwork to be artier, more along Birthday Party lines.

We printed many posters and I organised Lyn Nicholson to put them up.

What’s more, Cathy’s back. We went to the Seaview [Crystal Ballroom] last night. She stayed the night with me and Christine.

Our song Green Food For a Queen is coming along nicely. The future of my other song looks depressing. Our first full band rehearsal was terrific fun.

I turned up at the Birthday Party’s film clip shoot at the Hawthorn Tip. There were fires burning in a pit bordered by a murky lake, which in turn was bordered by a great sandstone cliff. Bubbles of methane spurted from the surface of the lake, gallows and crucifixes were set up on mounds. I watched for hours until finally – on heroin and booze – I decided I wanted to swim in the lake. I stripped and Troy covered me in body paint. I made my way out to a bathtub, in which they filmed me, as I danced…

The whole thing seemed like a cheap version of Ashes to Ashes.

I’m getting very nervous about March 6th, the date of our first gig. The Serious Young Insects got picked out by “Sting” from Police for their record label – it makes me sick with jealousy.

christine & I

*

The sentence in italics is paraphrased – the most sense I could extract from a very strange mess of words. I recall my anger at Gus’s record cover – it was entirely naff and I was determined to at least match the wonderful graphics coming from the Birthday Party camp. The fact that it was even being considered infuriated me….

Lyn Nicholson was queen of the Melbourne poster mafia. I worked for her for a time, but because I was solo and didn’t have a car, it was a nightmare. On my second or third night, I was nabbed by the cops, charged and later convicted. To this day, this bill posting crime still pops up if I get pulled over, or questioned or whatever. I think it’s the only actual conviction on my not-so-brief rap sheet.

The film clip was of course Nick The Stripper, directed by The Rich Kids [Paul Goldman & Evan English]. That film about Frank Sinatra’s tour of Australia – The Night We Called it a Day – is the last work of Paul's of which I am aware.

Nick The Stripper on YouTube

I recall Nick Cave saying something caustic about the tribe of extras in rabbit suits etc - but it did turn out to be a bit of a classic, didn’t it?

It was a filthy night, and the occasion of my most unsanitary injection ever – squatting on the putrid ground of the dump, by the light of one of their witch-fires… Simone was with me. Yet I wonder, where did the gear come from?

To my great chagrin, the bathtub dance never made it into the clip. Apparently, I was too far away for it to be effective … I should just have been thankful that I did not die from tetanus, or hepatitis…

Diary of 1981 - index

* 10 February 1981, 11.10pm

Generally, I don’t have much truck with censorship, but I have to be careful with this ancient diary [and, indeed, the current one] – especially when names are mentioned. Basically, I don’t want to hurt or abhor relatives and friends who nurture sweet memories, nor do I necessarily want to freak out any net readership.

Upshot is, I’m going to blank out some ‘sensitive’ passages. Use your imagination…

I’ve also corrected some uses of uncouth US spelling.

This second diary entry was made late on the same day as the first.

*

And so I rush to the kitchen and frantically paint, feverishly adding to my film jungle, not daring to stop and think what else I could be doing – what other constructions I could be involved in – forever thinking of phrases to supplement this diary.

I don't think this cataloguing of myself is self-indulgent. I take far too little time, of late, to examine my actions. The diary will hopefully help me keep an eye on myself – rejuvenate my hold on myself, my vision of myself.

Or is that all passed now, with my adolescence? I suspect it may be, though I cannot be sure.

My memory for instance. Once, when I fashioned a sentence... I cannot remember having the trouble I have now of forgetting how the terrible thing began as I came to its conclusion…

Grammer! There must be something wrong...

As my group [The Ears] becomes more recognised, so do I. And in this way I learn to recognise myself... Again, after first I lost my dignity... my self-esteem... when I bared my naivety to those naïve faces... But only music. Not even that, I suppose…

[? The above paragraph may refer to some event my earlier self was so embarrassed by he could not bear to put it into words.]

I am tired and I am confusing myself.

Today we practised without [bassist] Cathy. It was not a fulfilling rehearsal. We drank in The Office afterwards, frustrated. We played some pool and I left, determined to achieve something – I don’t know what. Christine and I tried to buy some heroin, but it seems at this stage that we’ve failed. She ___ ___ as we watched TV with Troy.

I completed a crossword, but faked two words.

I’m considering using the World Series Cricket theme in the group. The melody, though, is hard to figure out …

*

What a marvellous idea …

At least it seemed to be at the time and, who knows, maybe it was? Gus, the best technical musician in the band, sorted out the notes and, for at least a year, the Ears opened their set with a highly orchestrated cover of Channel Nine’s theme for the Wide World of Sport. It did seem cool, somehow.

In this period, I had cultivated at least half the kitchen with a ‘film jungle’. Strips of 35mm film hung thickly from the ceiling like vines. It was a good effect, if I remember correctly. You could sit at the kitchen table and examine frames by staring through them at the light …

George - my best friend in secret craziness – was always my partner in projects like this. He was, at that stage, a photographer, and his maxim was – if you get enough of a thing, it’s going to always look good. We collected a lot of a lot of things. Cats, kitchen chairs, roast chickens… In crimson, we painted the word ‘photo’ on the ceiling in Milton St so many times, it did, indeed, look good. But I’ll talk about George in a later post …

The Office was a pub across the road from Gus Till’s house, in the basement of which we rehearsed. Gus's was a double storey terrace that has long since disappeared under a widening Punt Rd. The Office has transmuted into a Seven-Eleven.

One last note. Though there’s much mention of heroin, it was still a recreational thing for most of us. We were innocents. The real slaughter was yet to come.

Diary of 1981 - index