songs to sing at a richmond karaok night

(apparently) welcome to the jungle

that danger, danger, high voltage song, when we tou-u-u-uch,  when we ki-i-iss

any song that is the last song for the night, including steal my kisses.

 

eastside

the air is sick with bushfire smoke this morning, and dilan says: yeah, you don’t get this in sydney, hey?

dilan, we reply, you lived in kensington your whole life.

 

driving up (installation art)

run run run running along the road upward and onward and the wind hitting sidewards always sidewards the truck shaking its head dazed. the road runs along, the long road runs and runs.  see the road run. run road run,  the wind pushing you into bends, cars dropping off at intervals, the whole thing a big worm of death, but the road runs!

but then, it’s only newcastle. no need to get carried away. it’s not like those real runs across the island that run until the bit where the earth melts and the sky seeps in. in the middle of the desert cars can rust into dream and in a second go up in flames. sydney to newcastle is like tripping on one point along the coast and landing your body’s length away. trip                                                                                                                                                              ping and landing. but the death is there along the way. someone mentioned it to me when we were at the festival. and i felt it on the drive acutely, with my arms braced on the wheel of the truck. petrol ran through my arms, fattened them and greased them. i felt the whole weight of the truck under them. the wheel the same width as my shoulders. when we crossed the bridge the other cars ran towards me like a snare roll, and us so large and weak. the truck was one big death machine and in my hands. i was petrified.

we could feel ourselves becoming more manly by the second. we passed places that can only be vomited out. tuggerah. berowra. the mooney mooney fuckin bridge. everything and everyone seemed to be just gaggin’ for something or other. we gave the finger to predicted north shore cocks in their silver 4wds. we lifted things and we beeped when we reversed. i finally understood what all those chauvanistic wankers were talking about. oh god we were men! men’s men, but not the kind that like other men, we were men-who-love-their-men-but-not-in-that-way.

we left no taboo undiscussed.

a: do you think that a 3 tonne truck means, 3 tonnes gross, or 3 tonnes tare? (we had become men who used terms like gross and tare now. we were that manly.) because i noticed on the back of the truck a sign saying maximum load, 500 kg.

j: shit, i dunno. but 500kg doesn’t sound much, does it, for a 3 tonne truck.

a: mmm.

j: well, i suppose these sorts of trucks are more designed for carrying big, bulky things as opposed to heavy things. i mean, we’ve only got four wheels (we actually had six) and if you look at one of those big fuckers – kachugger kachugger kachugger – they’ve got what, 16 or something.

a: yeah well, i suppose, you could probably fill this truck up with boxes of eggs or something.

j: i dunno man, eggs aren’t necessarily that light

a: maybe

j: and of course, you’ve got different weights of eggs. like, there are 600 gram dozens and 800 gram dozens…

a: mmmmmm (at this point, the two men do manly, thoughtful sums of how many 600 gram eggs would weigh 500 kilos. nearly a thousand. which doesn’t seem a great deal of eggs to these men. we who could eat twenty eggs each in a sitting)

 

tina

well well well, tina tina tina. what can i say about you? i’m still not sure. one or two notes before i start to get things together:

- a woman’s place is on a horse while a vaccinated horse is loved longer
- they growed here we rowed here

- side mirrors explode

- all my jackets smell

- all that running along the road

- all those drinks down the gullet

- all those illshapen bodies, the youth bursting tumourflowers the older wilting warts

- the yells from the windows of cars

- what? the art?

the sense will start making after a few last beers i think. then the detox.

 

room wanted

walked up to king street yesterday before class to see if there were any signs up asking for flatmates. but the fuckwits from the council had just be down the street pulling them all down. thanks boys.

just in case anyone other than the four people who i think read this blog comes across it, if anyone knows of a room going in a nice house around newtown, please get in contact with me.

+++

also, so as to fit two whinges in the one day’s post. wisdom teeth. what the fuck. let’s evolve already.

 

the room on level two of building three.

s once told me that her mother had said that she never felt that this was her new home until she gave birth to her first child. then she said to herself: this is home now. that idea terrifies me. of being somewhere half-heartedly, kind of longing to leave but not knowing if you would ever be able to. when i was away i knew i would return, so i went about knowing places as deeply as i could while i had the chance. had i just found myself there, exhiled, not knowing whether i was staying or returning, i think i would have broken down.

i feel like i’m kind of losing my mind in sydney at the moment. i’ve never found myself in a situation like this before. whenever i have changed place (only a couple of times) i have always set about immediately rooting myself into that landscape. high school took me out of place but you were out of place amongst other lost boys. the same thing happened in europe. of course coming back was different. because i entered into something that was formed an functioning. the hole i left in it had healed back over in my absence. because i refuse to settle into/for living with my parents, i have to maintain this sense of placelessness. this unbelonging. it’s like standing with your stomach muscles flexed. and it means that i do it when i relate to people too. not everyone. but at times i reflect that coldness onto people around me. when i know what i’m doing, where i’m going, where i’m staying, i think, might be able to treat you properly.

at the moment, i feel hyper-sensitive to the spaces that i inhabit. and usually, uncomfortable. the room on level two of building three, for example, has about six or seven rhythms of cold. there is the air-conditioning that quivers against itself with the circulating air, kind of like a thin, closed hi-hat. there’s the stomach shudder of the lift as it slides up and down the building throat. every time announced by the sick wane of its bell. one ding for up. ding deungggg for down. the computers in the corner hum like they don’t want you to realise, but if you listen, they don’t shut up. they just move up or down in frequency as they think more or go to sleep for a bit. then there is the bubbler, which has another motor in it somehwere, keeping it’s dribble-flow cold, and my brain on edge. there are other breathings that i can’t pin-point. but it’s like feeling someone inhaling beside your shoulder. one thing that worries me is that i’m feeling a similar sensitivity to my uni writing. a sensitivity that actually goes too far and doesn’t let me write. because there’s a tightness in me. like asthma.

 

mapping

asti and i talked about sydney yesterday. turns out she’s a mappy person. knows street names, has a city firm in her hand with north at the top, east south west cartwheeling around it clockwise. for me cities are just paths walked. nothing more. i can spin the city like a bottle and it makes no difference to me because i never knew which way was north anyway. i just follow the same mind-path that i walked last time. makes me understand why i did my piece on the old town of pamplona the way i did it. i think i thought i was representing the city through a sort of universal experiential eye. turns out it was just my own.