Paul Cox at Duneira, and 'The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinski'

 

THIS new post brings me back to the hugely underrated Australian film director, Paul Cox. His films are out of fashion, and have been for years. Rarely do they make much, or any, money. There are never any car chases or guns; rarely is there a well- known face amongst the cast; the films have a very small budget; they are not fast-action paced; they do not feature sudden loud bursts of music and product placement; heads are never blown away and limbs are never severed; it is doubtful anyone would ever buy ‘the soundtrack; the editing is often slow-paced and the viewer often receives more than a second or two to think about what is happening on the screen; often there is no murder or mystery or particularly strong intrigue; often the people in his films have basic jobs and live fairly ordinary lives. He is certainly no Quentin Tarantino or Steven Spielberg, but he is no Ken Loach or Mike Leigh either. Paul Cox’s film, if anything, resemble those quiet, reflective films of Europe- (think Krystof Kieslowski and Ingmar Bergman) and Russia (Aleksander Sukorov).

I like Paul Cox’s films because they are uncompromised and beautifully shot. Watching his films is a meditative and rewarding experience. And you know that he has put his heart and soul into the project, and thought more about the integrity of the end product rather than the amount of money the film might make. Now that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s also good that not every director is like Paul Cox.

This, my fourth Paul Cox-related adventure, took place on Sunday at the beautiful ‘Duneira’ property at Mount Macedon. We sat in the front row on the right, on a lovely soft couch. There were about 50 people there, and I think we were the youngest. Some people looked very arty, like they may have been in one of his films before. Initially I felt like I was gate crashing a party, then after a while I fully relaxed and felt the buzz of being a part of everything.

He spoke briefly about the making of ‘The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky.’ Then he showed the film, a small projection on the wall using a small projector. It would have been more glorious on the big screen, but it was still very captivating, and reminded me of his film ‘Vincent.’ There was a lot of imagery, and stills of Nijinsky, and many dancers, both male and female, representing him and his world. The voice over was by Derek Jacobi (an inspired choice, as was the choice of John Hurt for the Van Gogh letters in the earlier film). Jacobi read from his posthumous diaries. Nijinsky’s world became quite chaotic, and this was captured in the at times seemingly random projection of images. Nijinsky’s diaries consist of an ongoing critique of the world and an obsession with truth and beauty. I read them years ago, and was fascinated by the way they chart the slow mental deterioration of the man when his dancing career was finished and he was surviving the post-war years of WW2. These were heartfelt and beautiful sentiments. A repeated motif was the sad photo of Nijinsky as Petrushka, the traditional puppet from his ballet of 1911, as well as shots of flying birds and grainy images of trees silhoutted against the sky.  Much of the film was made in France. It was a success in Europe, like a number of Cox’s films, and had that real European sensibility that would make it impossible to pick Cox as an Australian director.

 

Nijinsky, along with Vincent, is a hero to Paul Cox. Cox himself has much in common with both of them, not the least their uncompromising view of things and their critical eye on what they perceive as the injustices of the world, as well as their unique artistic vision that is seemingly always out of fashion and ahead of its time. In one tragic scene Cox shot an actor acting out a chaotic dance of Nijinsky’s in a nightclub, depicting his failing grip on reality and his diminishing powers. His wife, Romola, sat, in the audience, looking embarrassed, perhaps ashamed.

At the end of the film, Cox spoke to all of us about his herculean act of editing such a difficult project and how it nearly made him become just as mad as his subject. There were the caustic comments about the banks and capitalism that I have heard before, the madness that is parts of the United States (its insane worship of guns in particular), the sorry state of the Arts in Australia (his disbelief that George Brandis is the Arts minister in the current government), his anger on the subject of film censorship, and the way in which the premiere of this particular film was cancelled on the afternoon of September 11, 2001.

Just as Paul Cox got to know the great grandson of Vincent Van Gogh- (the filmmaker and activist Theo Van Gogh who was murdered several years ago), after this film he also came to know Kyra Nijinsky, the daughter of Vaslav Nijinsky. In his pocket he carefully keeps as a talisman a black Jesus pendant given to him by Kyra, which once belonged to Vaslav himself. Perhaps not coincidentally, Cox’s daughter is also called Kyra.

Before too long Paul Cox disappeared, and I left him with a carefully constructed Van Gogh card ‘(Oleanders’) as a token of my appreciation. On the card I thanked him and wrote of my Vincent pilgrimages, and incorporated some quotations from Vincent’s letters.

At the end of all that the mind feels incredibly enriched. The pettiness of the modern world suddenly seems far away, until you creep back to the city again and you discover that the Reserve Bank has generously kept interest rates on hold.

The best review of this film can be found at: http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/nijinsky/ 

 

 

Tragic events, different outcomes

                                    

 

Robert Farquarson left the road and drove himself and his three kids into a dam near Geelong in 2005. Oscar Pistorius killed his girlfriend by shooting her several times through a locked bathroom door in 2013. How terrifying for the young boys, Bailey, Jai and Tyler, and how terrifying for Reeva Steenkamp. The Farquarson kids drowned whilst their father swam to safety on Father’s Day. Pistorius opened the bathroom door and found his wife’s bleeding body on the bathroom door on Valentine’s Day. What is the significance of these dates? Were these actions deliberate, and therefore callous, cold-blooded murder? Pistorius got off- manslaughter rather than homicide, the judge in Pretoria unsure whether or not he was aware that it was his wife on the other side of the door. Farquarson was not so lucky. After three trials and various judges and men and women of the jury, he was found guilty of deliberately killing his children, and is currently serving a minimum of 33 years in jail. What a conversation the pair of them could have if they were ever able to get together over some hearty jail food, watching the world go by through thick, black iron bars, or having an intimate stroll together around some prison yard in their bright orange clothing watching out for the menace of bald, tattooed heavyweights.

If we can believe the judge and her intuition, Pistorius made an awful error, mistaking his young wife for a threatening intruder. If so, he probably deserves no worse than his current fate. We may never know how guilt-ridden he feels right now in his first nights in the cell. Farquarson’s culpability, too, must be open to conjecture. Pistorius has his emphatic supporters who swear his innocence, improbable as it might be to the skeptic who finds his story just a little bit hard to swallow. Wasn’t there a quite vocal argument between he and Steenkamp on that night? Did he really forget to check in on her, to make sure she was next to him in their bed like he says he assumed. Did he really think it was her making noises in the bathroom? Didn’t she yell out in severe stress after the first bullet was fired?

It’s interesting how family sticks by you (as they say) through thick and thin. It is probably the way it should be. Farquarson’s sisters are just as steadfastly behind him, despite his equally improbable story. In fact, their fate could easily have been switched. The general public really had no idea how either of these cases might go. Pistorius might have received 33 years, and Farquarson the tentative five that Pistorius received. It is because there were no witnesses to either incidents. How do the rest of us really and truly know? And that goes for supporters and skeptics alike. It’s an awful question to ask, but can the difference in sentencing simply come down to the acting ability of either defendant? To education, money or class? To the fact that one was a struggling Winchelsea nobody, and the other an Olympic star with an eye catching disability?

I have read two captivating books about the Farquarson case lately which, collectively, offer me a number of reasons where Farquarson might have gone wrong. I imagine I am visiting him in his sad and sorry cell.

‘When you were driving the boys home at 7:15 PM after your special Father’s Day outing, you needed to be more aware of the strangers driving behind you- the woman and her family who became witnesses at your trial to your erratic driving. It appeared to them, and no doubt to the jury at your trial, that you just may have been waiting impatiently for that Winchelsea dam to appear on your right hand side, and maybe you were practising your descent, swerving on the road with panic starting to set in. Just maybe you were thinking of drowning along with them, and wondering if you had the nerve to die.

Even before that night, perhaps a week or two before, you completely and recklessly dropped your guard outside the local fish’n’chip shop. Remember your old mate Greg King, the one who, probably in your mind, cruelly betrayed you? You saw your ex-wife Cindy Gambino and thought about her new boyfriend, Stephen Moules, didn’t you, and how he ended up with the shit car and you were lumped with the one that would become a coffin for the boys. Was it anger and frustration that possessed you to tell Greg of your plan to wreak revenge on Cindy, that it would occur on a special day like Father’s Day, that you would hurt her through her own children, that you would go to these extreme lengths to make her suffer for the way she left you feeling after your unhappy split? Greg came and saw you, didn’t he, all wired up for the anticipation of the police, and you were so careful, weren’t you, to ensure you didn’t say too much to Greg that might come back to bite you at the trial- but it was too late, essentially, wasn’t it, because in those moments of frustration you made another of those crucial errors that would lead a jury to put you away for a long time.

Let’s go back to the fatal evening when the driver of that random car has driven past you and has seen your children’s bodies crammed into the back of your car. Perhaps there were a few little coughs, perhaps there were no coughs at all, certainly not a ‘syncope’ as you described it later, as your car swerved maddeningly to the right, left the highway, avoided most of the trees, and plunged into the terrible, cold, black, black water. You might remember you switched the lights and the engine off- well somebody did and it was unlikely to be the boys all the way in the back seat. At your trial you conjectured that it might be so. There were so many ‘I don’t know(s)’ and ‘I can’t remember.’ None of this helped your cause.  You said you started coughing and coincidentally left the road just as that dam appeared on your right side. You said you coughed so much that you blacked out and then freakishly found yourself in the water. How is it that the path the car took on its way into the water was so miraculously unobstructed? Why didn’t you attempt to arrest the long slide into the water by using your brakes or altering your steering? Are you seriously saying that the whole time you lost control of the car, until you found yourself in the water, you were somehow unconscious? Once in the water, did you attempt to rescue your little children by opening their doors, or hauling them into the front with you, or at least grabbing little Bailey and swim to the surface with him? Did you, conversely, panic and alter your position, and leave the kids to drown as planned, but extricate yourself from the car because self-drowning was too terrifying? Why is it that you couldn’t really answer any of these questions in court, but kept saying ‘I can’t remember.’

After wading to safety and out of the dam, you decided not to keep looking for the children. If you recall you staggered, wet and deathly cold, to the highway and flagged down a car. There you made another fatal error which would come back to haunt you. You weren’t interested in phoning the police. You were desperate to be driven by Shane and Tony to Cindy’s place, car-less and children-less, to inform her with a certain amount of rambunctiousness that her children were dead- “I’ve got to tell Cindy that I’ve just killed the kids.”  You saw her face fall and heard her wailing screams. Back at the tragic site, with her and soon Stephen Moules, all you wanted was a cigarette. You stood there looking on, shivering, whilst he (not even yet the step-father of the boys) waded fruitlessly time and time again into the freezing water.

There was, of course, no hope. When the police arrived you were taken by ambulance to Geelong hospital. You didn’t do too well here, either. When you were interviewed you kept asking ‘what will happen to me?’ when the question the police expected to hear was ‘are my children really dead? have they been identified?’ (they had, by Stephen Moules). There was no mention by you of your poor children.

Later, you just couldn’t get your story straight. This is why the homicide squad moved in. Robert Farquarson was acting odd the whole time. He seemed to be more in preservation mode, rather than acting like a typically grieving father. Each time you rang Cindy, who was hungry for an accurate account of what really happened to help her in her elusive quest for peace, you sounded vague and uncertain, seemingly more interested in what she was thinking rather than any serious attempt to honestly recall.

I read your accounts in the books I have read, and I see what little choice the jurors and judges have. But what if they are wrong, and the loyal instincts of your family members are actually right? Then you should be joining Oscar Pistorius, the man who received the lucky break, in a much more truncated jail sentence.

 

 

 

Suburban Gothic in Sonya Hartnett's latest- 'Golden Boys'

A NEW Sonya Hartnett novel is a major literary event these days, and probably has been for a long time. When I read her books I am looking for a clever use of figurative language, and an opportunity to revisit some of those those dark, dark themes. GOLDEN BOYS is classic Hartnett, the Sonya Hartnett of SLEEPING DOGS ilk, the kind of writing and ideas that make me want to write to her, or visit her, and talk about these fascinating events and people that occur in her novels.

We have, once again, the mysterious suburbs, where dislocated families struggle to survive. I get the feeling S E Hinton is an early influence, but Hinton’s stories are sugar coated in comparison. Hartnett’s suburbs are more like the Maycomb County of To Kill a Mockingbird- nothing’s quite right, there is a subterranean unease that frightens and at the same time captivates its inhabitants.

In GOLDEN BOYS we have once again the troubled adults that inflict the consequence of their flawed personalities onto their siblings. Mr Jenson (Rex) provides his two young boys with lavish gifts- car racing games, swimming pool, fancy bikes- not out of a sense of indulged love for his kids, but rather as a magnet for their young male friends who he hopes will come to visit. There are some chilling episodes in the novel where he seems as keen as mustard to dry the wet boys off with a towel. He casts himself in some sort of heroic light- the wealthy dentist who would like to be the man who ‘could ease suffering when suffering was a person’s whole world’, and ironically is the instigator himself of a lot of suffering. He is first described as looking like ‘an action-movie actor.’ Rex is a fascinating character and he is at the heart of the novel. Hartnett is careful not to make a cardboard cut-out villain- with a subject like paedophilia, she easily could have. The unhappiness he provides Colt with is understated for a long time. He is all charm on the surface and even defends himself confidently from Joe Kiley’s loose charges. An innocent outsider could see Rex as an earnest family man. Any suspect actions on his behalf are subtle, and understated- like his fascination with Avery’s knee- and the novel is better for it. Mrs Jenson (Tabby) is as close to a non-entity as you might find, cosy, benign, as passive as her name suggests. Her lack of action or responsibility is criminal. The eldest boy has to take the total weight of his father’s dark secret. She does provide the reader with the scaringly ambiguous title of her husband as ‘the pied-piper.’

The other adults are the Kiley’s. Joe is a real problem. The sort of father that, when he comes home from his unfulfilled job as a printer, the whole house stiffens to see what sort of mood he will be in, specifically whether or not he will be drunk, and invariably violent. There is something powerful and complex about both fathers. At times they seem benign and friendly, but there is that menace underneath that calm veneer that threatens the lives of their whole families. Of the two, we might feel a little sorry for Joe. Away from alcohol and in better personal circumstances, he may be an ok father. We get a glimpse of this with his enthralling family stunt where he lights the petrol he stores in his mouth and roars like a dragon with real fire. Mrs Kiley –Elizabeth- is better than Tabby- she is a lot more earnest at protecting her own or other people’s children. When Joe’s physical menace is at its peak near the end of the novel, and he is about to use his fist (described as a ‘solid mallet’) on his daughter’s face, Elizabeth comes to life and says ‘Don’t you dare hit her!’, admirably pulling him back ‘with irresistible force.’ She also looks out for poor Declan who is not his father’s favourite. Elizabeth is so unhappy that she even advises her growing daughter not to get married, and more importantly, never to have children. I knew someone just like Joe, growing up, a father of close friends who lived across the road. For me, there was this ongoing palpable menace in the house, but I only felt it as a visitor- I didn’t have to live with it.

That leaves the children, and as in the case of many of Hartnett’s novels, they are interesting, and varied, and all have fascinating little personalities of their own. The Jenson boys are Colt (as in Coltrane) and Bastian. Colt is the closest thing to heroic status in the novel. He helps rescue Freya when she is at the mercy of her father. He takes the brunt of the blame for his father’s grubbiness in an awful, brutal encounter near the end of the story. He knows too much. He is smart, and that makes life depressingly difficult. His father constantly gives him the creeps. He makes a heartbreaking apology to Declan on behalf of his father, something a boy should never have to do. Colt was a very good runner, but thanks to his father he has abandoned the idea of an athletics club. He doesn’t want to be bringing male friends home with him anymore. The first words of the novel, from Colt’s point of view, are ‘With their father, there was always a catch…’  Hartnett could be describing a worm or a little fish on the end of a line used as bait. Bastian is younger and his life is easier. He acts young for his age, and mercifully, he seems blissfully unaware of the significance of all these purchased gifts in his life- a situation that of course will sadly not last forever.

The Kiley’s are greater in number. Freya is the eldest of any of the children. She is 13, and on the verge of young adulthood and at the same age as Jem in ‘Mockingbird’, also on the verge of truth and knowledge- she has ‘started to see things she hasn’t seen before.’ She looks up to the Jenson’s- Colt, and Rex in particular. She hasn’t seen beyond the shiny exterior, and let’s face it, anything seems preferable to her own raging father. By the end of the book the cruel and intense atmosphere of her household becomes too much, and she enforces a deeply dangerous encounter with her drunken father, only to try and get Rex (her saviour) involved when she cannot handle it. Poor Freya feels the menace of her household keenly, in referring to the existence of a ‘yellow-eyed monster.’ She invents the idea that home is like a castle. She hates the lack of money in the home. And she has a morbid fear that her mother is going to have yet another baby. Freya has to confide in someone, and her inherent misplaced trust in Rex makes the reader fear the onset of tragic circumstances.

Freya’s younger brother Declan is the main protector of his younger brother, Syd. For some reason he seems to be the number one target of his father’s bullying, yet he copes in life by not questioning too much, but rather accepting that things aren’t always easy, or that life has its unfortunately messy complications. When it comes to the crunch- when Joe is trying to force the truth from Rex in their own living room- Declan is interestingly loyal to Rex, and not his own father. The overriding impression of ‘Deco’ is his steadfast demand that his younger brother, Syd, is not to go to the Jenson’s for a swim alone. It is Declan that puts the wind up Mrs Kiley. Syd (Sydney) is an easy target for Rex because he is younger, and unsuspecting. He has all the simple childishness of feeling free and grateful for a swim in a pool, and dreams of one day owning his own skateboard. He is also terrified of his father. The other children- Marigold, Dorrie and Peter, have less of a function in the novel. They too are subject to the witnessing of their father’s moods- ‘they stand around their mother like children in a very old painting- impassive but on guard.’

Outside these family members, Hartnett introduces us to two other ‘golden boys’, two very different boys in Avery and Garrick, and two people that add an enormous amount of interest to the novel. Avery Price is a sad creature, almost an orphan who lives with his grandparents and is always roaming around on his bike, even on his own, at night. He has no choice but to align himself with Garrick, the frightening bully, and seems to be the one most vulnerable to Rex Jenson, who develops an obsession with Avery’s busted knee.

Garrick is frightening, but the reader can’t help but share his despair at being the one who is targeted the most by Rex’s wandering hands. His indignation, shock and anger at having his ‘arse’ touched is chillingly real, as is his incredibly violent physical assault on Colt. Garrick steals Colt’s prized BMX just because he knows Colt will come looking for it. He feels incredibly let down by Colt’s silences- ‘But you knew. You knew, and you didn’t tell us. You let him.’ Garrick’s attack is shockingly bloody because it is the only way Garrick knows how to retaliate- and Hartnett has also built in a homoerotic element into the story as well. Garrick bashes Colt because he loves him.

For those fans of Hartnett who find her treatment of the suburbs fascinating (see also Georgia Blain), GOLDEN BOYS is rich material. The stormwater drain, the enticing backyard swimming pool, the enticing ice creams, the ‘playroom’ filled with innumerable children’s toys, the electric tension in the Kiley household when Joe comes home-‘ They hear the shoving of his chair, his tread across the kitchen’, the creepily ambiguous words Rex uses to the spellbound Freya, who is described brilliantly as ‘she has pulled on a weed and the whole world has come up in her hand’, the chilling fatherly tone Rex uses on Avery when he advises him not to go near the stormwater drain with his bad knee, Rex’s greasy, lizard-like behaviour at the neighbourhood BBQ he organises, ‘at its base runs a thin greenish thread of never-drying slime’ (that’s a description of the stormwater drain, not Rex), the brilliant passage where Freya and Rex are talking, and almost simultaneously on the page the boys are having a slot car race (of course these twin narratives are intertwined), the tense encounter between Rex and Joe at the Kiley’s home when the truth is almost exposed (which strangely enough reminds me of the clash between Gatsby and Tom Buchanan at the Plaza Hotel).

 

 

MOST PEOPLE ARE GOOD

MOST people are good, despite what Nick Cave says on one song from his ‘Boatman’s Call’ album. Every day I see strangers, and given the right brief and random opportunity, people will smile at you or leave you alone and respect your right to be left alone or encouraged smilingly. The true test of whether people are good or not is this witnessing of warm or benign strangers. Of course, sometimes it takes a little effort on your part. It helps to look decent, have your children trail next to you (if you have any), smile and look content yourself, exhibit kind eyes, to not look aggressive or arrogant, and to look calm and safe.

The news these days is full of stories about people who want to hurt other people. Some of them want to cut off your head. Others just want to rob you, take your money at the ATM, sexually assault you, or say something racist or demeaning, or glare or swear at you at the slightest provocation, or steal your parking spot or your spot at the ice cream line, or smirk at your taste on books, films or clothes, or frown at your vulnerability or the way you wear your heart on your sleeve, or your political choice or your desire to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, or the way that you hum or sing whilst you walk, have a foreign accent, or laugh meanly when you trip on the pavement, or glare menacingly when you try and start a conversation, or give you a parking ticket or traffic infringement notice at the drop of a hat, or accuse you of snobbery if you like a foreign film or wear a smart suit.

But this is just the news. Most of the time I find that people are really good. They either don’t mind you and seem not to notice you because they are on the phone or have plugs in their ears, or they do notice you and their face opens up and smile and make your day.

 

      

September exercise

 

YOU leave the place where you work, fairly exhausted. It’s Friday afternoon and it’s such a relief.  In your mind the weekend is like a beacon of cool, clear water in the middle of a burning desert. In reality it’s only two days but two days of space and reflection and leaning and passivity is something.

You close the black wrought iron gate behind you and make your way to the Mt Alexander Road roundabout. You have to find the Essendon Traffic School, an oasis for kids who ride their bikes amidst mini traffic lights and mini roundabouts, supposedly learning to navigate the big, bold rules of the road. There is a party there this afternoon, which you must attend.

You cannot remember the exact location of the traffic school. You will need to ask. There is something about the air this particular afternoon. There is a weak sun streaking down around you, so it is neither cold nor warm. You are sometimes prone to OCD in stressful situations, but on this occasion you cannot be dreamier or more at ease. It is a luscious feeling. You ignore the cracks in the concrete and the mirrored reflections from shop windows. The position of your body in relation to the oncoming car is of no consequence. Later you are unable to recall the linguistic make up of advertising signs and street names. You are unconscious of: your breathing, cigarette butts on the pavement, the temptation to feel fence palings, the way you sometimes bite down on the inside of your cheeks left right left right left right, obsessive useless mental arithmetic, scratching your left arm and compensating for it by scratching your right arm.

There are young people in school uniform scattered around in small groups. You begin by asking this first casual group near the tram stop where Essendon Traffic School is. Their response is warm, and not very helpful in its vagueness, but somehow delightful all the same. At 7-Eleven you organise a self-help cup of coffee. You inadvertently fill a two dollar cup and pay just a dollar. Smilingly, the man behind the counter asks for a further dollar, and his smile broadens when he sees that you weren’t aware of your mistake. This time you receive more accurate information about where you need to go and decide to catch a tram as it is advancing just at that moment when you need it, and it will apparently take you half way there.

Some young people on the tram vaguely know you and they acknowledge you before you properly see them with another warm smile. The tram stumbles and clanks its way down Fletcher Street and you disembark about five minutes from where you need to go.

It has been a perfect beginning to another weekend. The sun is now somehow brighter and warmer. There are a lot of parents and kids at this traffic school. You watch, sometimes fascinated, with the juvenile comings and goings of bikes flashing past, red light rules broken, kids randomly moving and merging in different directions. Parents are having earnest conversations and watching their offspring at the same time. Some seem to be more worried about their child than others.

The evening is beginning to get cooler. The onset of dusk is beginning to invade the playground. The onset of early evening is somehow making you feel melancholy. You hear a shriek emanating from some dark place, somewhere. This animal-like sound sets off a trembling in you, like an intolerable memory of anguish from long ago. Somebody close to you is screaming. You can see splashes of scarlet blood over her body. It is evident her arm has become almost detached from the rest of her body. The sight makes your stomach unsettle and you cry amongst the frightened children.

 

Rik (1958-2014)

 

 

ABOUT a month ago when I woke early on a work day I found a note left for me on the kitchen table telling me to watch the news to see who had died.

Within seconds, at the bottom of the screen, was news that Rik Mayall was dead. The ABC news presenters then began an informal chat about who Rik was, and what they remember about him. They mentioned The Young Ones first and foremost and were not as warm in their appraisal for later Rik Mayall ventures.

I left for work with my mind buzzing with the news. It’s one of those funny sensations when your mind is filled with something, in this case a mild shock or discomfort or sadness, and you are aware that everyone around you is either oblivious or totally disconnected to the news.

I remember feeling that I am in store for other days like this, probably more profound, when Van or Joni eventually die. Not to mention one’s own parents, of course.

It was a hollow, uncomfortable feeling that lasted for days, based on my appreciation for what he did and the impact he had on my consciousness when I was much younger than I am now.

It’s not The Young Ones that I think about though. It’s the subsequent shows where he pushed his manic anarchic style of comedy further, where he seemed to be less hinged by others and had a broader and more risky palette, often feeding solely off Adrian Edmondson who created a chemistry and foil (like Abbott and Costello had all those years ago), but closer in spirit to The Marx Brothers intellectually, and The Three Stooges physically.

 

The ultimate shows for me were Filthy, Rich and Catflap and Bottom. A lot of people will say they haven’t heard of the former (not a lot of people in Australia watched it), and they will recoil at the latter (just like the ABC news presenter did) because it goes further than The Young Ones and is more anarchic and risqué, and clearly too risqué or edgy for some tastes.

So during these days of vague hollowness and certainly sadness, I was thinking about characters like Jumbo Whiffy and Ivor Whopper, and Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog, as well as sublime moments that existed just between Eddie and Richie when innocuous things like Richie’s birthday, or a game of sardines, or a turn on the Blankety Blank set could be so funny.

 

 

 

                                                           

MELANIE, IN MELBOURNE AGAIN

              

 

I FIRST saw Melanie in concert way back when, in Melbourne at Dallas Brooks Hall. I was a teenager and can still remember the concert finishing with Ruby Tuesday and Babe Rainbow. She was about 30, and had just released an album called Photograph. Looking back, I can see that she was at the top of her game. Her popularity was at a peak around then, but dived later. And now, just last night, I went and saw her again, this time at the Recital Centre. A different venue and a different sense of where she’s at. But apart from the fact that she looks older, and her son plays guitar with her (he wasn’t born yet the first time she came out here), and that she has some new and newer songs, not much was else was different. Her voice is still strong and clear and hypnotic.

An hour before the concert, before I left home and drove to the city, we played some Melanie on YouTube, and the anticipation swelled within me. Stoneground Words, My Rainbow Race, In The Hour, Chart Song- all songs you would love to hear at a Melanie concert if you know her material around the late 60’s.
 

Inside the venue a half hour before it began, there was Melanie merchandise and Melanie fans everywhere. I tried to pick up snatches of conversation. It is rare indeed to be surrounded by so many like-minded people. Of course you realise there actually are a lot of people who like Melanie. Strange feeling that you don’t actually know any.

The band, sans Melanie, came out to play to do an instrumental medley. When Melanie emerged, spotlighted, generous applause. And then she launched into a different, but credible, People In The Front Row. If I ever saw Joni Mitchell, it would not be to hear Big Yellow Taxi, or Both Sides Now, or You Turn Me On (I’m A Radio). And when I did see Van Morrison (twice) hearing Here Comes The Night, Gloria, Moondance, Wavelength, and Bright Side of the Road were not my favourite moments. The same goes for Melanie. I could have done without Brand New Key, Look What They’ve Done To My Song Ma, and Candles in the Rain, even Ruby Tuesday.

Melanie spoke indulgently between songs. She seemed very relaxed. I think it helped that it was the last concert of a busy one month schedule in Australia. Most of it seemed off the cuff, random observations about the woes that are a part of the music industry (modern day producers want young artists rather than older artists- even ‘young shit’ is preferable).  9/11 was an incredible shock and produced a certain numbness, as well as a lovely song called Smile, co-written with her son, Beau. The Woodstock story emerged, which I have heard too many times now. And then there was the Beautiful People story based on a life affirming subway trip one day in New York in the late 60’s. Miley Cyrus was cited a couple of times, but not, unlike in her reference to Celine Dion, disparagingly. And then another long, interesting story about the making of Brand New Key, and Roger Kellaway’s part in it, as well as the corny background vocal that somebody else created, and the embarrassment it caused its author when it became such a global hit (no. 1 in Australia, for example).

Requests were requested. Some annoying person behind me was insistent on calling loudly for ‘Candles in the Rain’ and then after that just ‘Candles!’- as if it wasn’t going to be sung anyway- what kind of knowledge about Melanie did this suggest? I’m sure the singer was irritated. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked for a request. Or maybe I, uncharacteristically emboldened, should have yelled out ‘Little Bit Of Me’, or ‘I Am Not A Poet’ or ‘Leftover Wine’, or, to really impress her, ‘Close To It All’ or ‘We Don’t Know Where We’re Going’ (except that last one would be such a mouthful). (Later, in the car, I thought about how embarrassing it would be to request a song by Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez by accident. The guy sitting beside me, who said he was such a fan, told me his favourite Melanie song was Candle in the Wind!).

So really, it seems, in concerts like these, you don’t seem to get the songs you really want to hear, the less well known, less commercial quieter ones. You just have to put up with it and remember that the bulk of the audience are there to hear Brand New Key because they remember hearing it in 1971. They probably don’t even own more than one or two Melanie albums.

I enjoyed the concert, and was pleasantly surprised that her voice is in such good nick for her age, and her stories were interesting, albeit a bit long-winded. But the best moment of the evening for me came at the end, after the hour and a half long wait in the queue. Meeting Melanie for the first time, having her sign my programme.

I finally got to the front of the queue- person in the front row. I didn’t know what to say, but part of me was determined to say something about my gratitude. I can’t even remember getting eye contact with her. She asked me what I wanted her to sign. Then I said something like ‘I feel the need to tell you that you have been such an important person in my life, and yet you don’t even know me, and I don’t know you, and I will probably never even see you again.’ Her response was ‘you don’t know that, that you won’t ever see me again’, and I said, nervously, and fumblingly, ‘you’re not likely to come out here again.’ Then I remembered I asked the person behind me to take a photo of us, which she did, with my right hand gently reclining on the middle part of her back. And suddenly, that was it, and when I emerged into the cold, cold night at midnight, the night before a busy working day, I wished I had asked her what Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards think of her covers, and if she has met Joni, and how can I write to her, etc, etc.

Meeting someone you really admire is exciting, and powerful, but it can be deflating in a way as well if it is too transitory. But deflating is not accurate here. ‘My God’, I thought to myself. I have actually met Melanie. All day today I have had Melanie music in my head.