Thursday, March 18, 2010

It's Not All bad.



































































It's not all bad in my world, I was only back from India a week when a friend gave me an art job, designing a flyer for his concert at St. Johns Church, that's it above, and don't think I'm going religious, the church has great acoustics and a grand piano and as far as I'm concerned we're paganising the place with cool music. I was going thru my art archives and came across much old stuff, I'm chuffed at how much I've done over the years, I needn't worry about being a failure, the journey was awesome, the Becoming more interesting than the Being. What a scallywag I was as a young rebel, I actually had the nerve to paste the poster of the Lord Mayer, Doug Sutherland, above, upon the front doors of the Town Hall, ala Martin Luther.

My wall murals have been destroyed but there are photos that keep them alive, for instance my "Darling It Hurtz" that I did on a squat wall in Darlinghurst which Paul Kelly ripped off for his famous song, there it is above. And the anti-uranium mural I did on the W'loo railway pylons, mysteriously disappeared recently, at the same time They are trying to resurrect Peter Carrot's career on Triple M radio, flogging his bad rock all day long, trying to convince us he really is a cool guy for all that he's sold out his principles to become a Pollie (wants a cracker!) I've mentioned before that he and his shit band "Midnight Soil" stood in front of it for a music clip when he was anti-nuclear, but now he's opening up more uranium mines They want us to forget his previous stance, and so my mural had to go, destroyed, like Nazis burning books, I'm highly amused that I've had the Big Wigs wigging out because of ART. Let's face it, most art is wallpaper or furniture or investment, very little talks about the world we live in.

Even Northcott Housing Ghetto is not all bad, while I have the neighbour from Hell on one side of me, on the other side I have the neighbour from Heaven, old Dolly, she's 88 and still going strong, the first tenant at Northcott back in 1960, it was her who cut the ribbon opening the dump. She is forever bringing me soup, salad and cakes, when I'm sick, tired, depressed, she brings light and love, who cares that all her grandkids are cops and that she prays regularly in the local Catholic Church, she is a true great soul and I love her dearly. She's the only blessing tho, three times a week for the last twenty years the fire alarm has gone off at 3am outside my door, waking the whole building up, the Fire Brigade wailing and screeching thru the dark to come to our rescue, always a dud, (except for Cursula's inferno.) I swear they must be using us as a practice drill, it's been too regular for too long, THEY don't want them firemen slacking off during the wee hours, but what suffering we go thru because of it, I haven't slept in weeks and am a screaming banshee when the Housing dept workers arrive at 8.30 am on some bullshit inspection.

Oh well, music soothes this savage beast as ever, I've got my mate Peter's violin quartets coming up, and last week was funky metal rock'n'roll from Redbee at the Lewisham Pub, white hot electric static, Dan and his brother leaping manically about the stage, me headbanging like an old rocker fool, oh the ecstasy!



If you enjoyed this story please go to the WEB address above and consider buying my book of tales about growing up anarcho-queer, rock and roll punter and mystic adventurer in Australia and India of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.