Why are people so cruel to each other, is it hard-wired into us from a vicious life on the African savannah, fighting over carrion with other bipedal ape tribes? Every day comes news of more slaughter, torture, murders, bombs dropped, I thought Richard Leakey said we were a co-operative species? I'm the kind of dude that has never really hurt anybody, except for hitting out in self-defence, and I wouldn't dream of killing one soul, but then I come from another planet, a throw-back from the future, sent to witness and report. I can honestly say I've been treated brutally from early childhood on, because of my difference and the innate viciousness of the herd. This is what twisted me.
When I was 4 years old my father tried to murder my mother and she was sent off to a sanitarium while I was put with my grandmother in inner-city Melbourne, Richmond, a working-class slum area in the 1950s, grey and tough. The local kids looked askance at my motherless existence and treated me like an alien. One morning they were playing with a heap of glass jewels on their veranda and I so much wanted to join in, find some human warmth and get a hold of those sparkling baubles, the light shining off them was delightfully entrancing. I pleaded and pleaded with the bigger kids to let me join them on the veranda but they continuously told me to "Fuck off!" I put my hand up onto the gate in an attempt to enter their sacrosanct domain and in a fury one of the little bastards slammed the gate to ward me off, my thumb getting crushed in the jam, blood spurting everywhere.
They all went into a panic and rushed to get my Nanna, I cried and cried, not believing kids could be mean as rabid dogs, they all stood back somewhat contrite as she carried me away to bandage me up, she even took me to the movies to placate my injured soul, to see a spirit-soaring pirate movie with Patricia Medina flouncing about in red-velvet and a tattoo on her arse, she came to stand in for my missing mother and I've never left the cinema palaces since. The 'lords of the flies' were conciliatory for a few days until they discovered my 'sissy' ways, then the torture set in in earnest, most days I couldn't go out of the house for they would round on me and push me about, pinching and slapping. This went on for 2 years and then my mother miraculously came back into my life, and she resumed brooding-hen duties. She found me out on the street being bashed in the circle of bigger kids and went wild with a broom, banging many over the head till they beat a hasty retreat and didn't dare come near me again.
Things never got any better for me as far as life in the 20th century was concerned. It's been one long battle, 1001 fisticuffs with any bully or gang that wanted to big-note themselves, and thus my view of humanity is skewed, I'm not quick to trust, always ready to defend. It only got worse in the adult world, the careerist wannabes I met in the arts, writing and film-making scenes were cut-throat in their ambition, ruthless, Machiavellian, vampyric to get the money, the awards, the kudos and the power, to be the next 'art gods' like "Van Gogh" or "Orson Welles", overlooking both artists died broke and terribly unhappy. The nasty part was the 'arts wankers' I ran headlong into and who killed me off with a smile, a pretense of "community-caring", mostly they were in the 'arts bureaucracy' and conniving to get the money and ideas flowing their way, and being naive I didn't see them coming, I overlooked the fact that the lure of fame can cause careerists to sell their fellow travelers into penury at the flip of a ball-point pen.
When Orson Welles was asked how he felt about his life, he replied "I spent 10 per cent of my time making films and 90 per cent chasing money, and it wasn't fun!" Only 1 in every 7 people I ever met was cool, capable of helping out, the others were indifferent or mean, out to exploit and fuck me, people I only thought of co-operating with, and who to this day will declaim on what a bastard I am yet it was them who did the ripping, for they got the careers and the millions, I got to eat their dust. What a bunch of smarmy fuckers, middle-class hierarchy climbers and power-suckers I met along the way, pretending social concern, as if in high capitalism and celebrity worship there could be any other consideration but greed and ego.
"They" probably hoped my life in the gutter would truly kill me off, but coming from the big-city streets of Melbourne, Delhi, Bombay and Sydney, I've grown into a formidable warrior, a cool one I hope, and much of this blogging, which seems so useless, and so fucking bitchy, is my way of hitting back so that those "artist" assassins don't get totally away with killing me off. Not that anybody gives a shit, it's always been about the "Lords of the Flies" ruling. In the end, the System wins, there's no beating The Beast, I'm toe-jam between its claws, a nobody, but it was fun trying to fight back. Remember, this Blog is a very long suicide note, trying to detail how I got taken down.
