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Sowing season.
My mum and I were discussing that good old feminist quandary of balancing children and career when she told me, “you can have it all, just not all at once.”
She met and married my Dad in her early 20s, became wealthy and professionally successful in her mid 20s and 30s before giving it all away to re-settle our family in Emerald, where Dad was the bread winner and she was a full-time stay at home mum.
It’s advice that’s stuck with me. I find it comforting to think about life as a series of seasons, rather than a series of supposed milestones. There have been seasons of love and comfortable long-term relationships, seasons where I’ve burned through lovers and cash, seasons where I’ve been among people and relished it and seasons where angst and depression meant I couldn’t see anything past my own nose.
For the last six months at least, I’ve been leading an almost monastic existence of relentless work. I get up at 2:30AM to go to work, and then either read, write or make music between finishing work at 12PM and going to bed at 7PM. Occasionally I’ll cook or clean my house, but I’ve managed to outsource most of that stuff to my little sister in exchange for driving her to her many social obligations.
There’s no way this would be happening if I wasn’t in Rockhampton. I live comfortably and cheaply by myself in a house I love. I have a few good friends who are more interested in having fun and doing right by people than making money, getting aggressively fucked up or starting petty drama. Social engagements only happen on the weekends, which means I can get enough sleep and alone time to keep my moods in check.
I think I knew this would happen when I decided to move back just under a year ago, and didn’t want to waste all this new-found spare time and stability on getting boozed and watching average television. For most of my life I’ve seen myself as a writer and I wanted to back that up by, you know, actually writing.
Months of minimal social and romantic contact with other human beings are beginning to pay off. The seventh issue of the zine is underway, I’ve started writing for one of my favourite music magazines and in June, I’ll spend a week in Melbourne as a writer-in-residence as part of the Emerging Writer’s Festival.
Living in Rockhampton has also eased me back into making music. It’s hard to say no when you can just get in a room with a couple of people you barely know, jam for three hours and come out the other side as mates. Playing more aggressive music on a regular basis has freed up my brain and helped me get back to what I’m good at – writing guitar driven songs about feelings.
You can hear some of them here and I’ll have my new EP out by the start of next week.
The last time I was in Melbourne, a friend asked me how I could bear to live in Rockhampton. I told him living there kept me out of trouble. While that’s certainly the case, the idea of a trouble-free life is ludicrous. One without love or romance is just as bad.
In the words of the criminally underrated Shawn Colvin, “trouble is just like love – if it’s half the way, it’s all I can see.”
Writing on location: The family home.
- What are you doing?
- Writing.
- What about?
- Stuff.
- What sort of stuff?
- Stuff about things.
- God, like you’re some famous author or something. Get over it, sheesh. Why are you doing it in on the dining table?
- Because there’s no desk in the guest room.
- You have a laptop.
- There’s also no chair in the guest room.
- Well, you’re in a public space so don’t get shitty when people talk to you.
- I have earphones in.
- So what are you writing about?
- NOTHING GOSH, GO AWAY!
I now understand why my mother hasn’t written the next great Australian novel… yet.
Turn It Up.
I have a scorched earth policy when it comes to relationships. Once it’s over, it’s O-V-A-H. No drunk texts, no “let’s hang out as friends”, no accidental make-up sex which results in us getting back together only to break up in a fortnight’s time when we start giving each other the shits again.
It’s something that’s worked quite well for me because I’ve mostly dated colossal fuckwits.
This also applies to music. Songs we’ve shared and loved together are dead to me.
Often removing these songs from my life, at least temporarily, is more painful than the break-up. At one time or another Gotye, Karnivool, Brand New, Thursday, Bloc Party, Dashboard Confessional (no great loss) and Missy Higgins (hoo boy) have all made it onto the Do Not Play In Case of Feelings list.
The Bamboos should’ve joined them. The break-up with the guy who loved them was particularly painful, mostly because he was the first person I’d ever dated who wasn’t a colossal fuckwit.
Seriously though, try to be sad while listening to The Bamboos. Just try it.
Impossible.
Plus Lance Ferguson is a total babe. That should cheer anyone up.
Vale Thursday.
Photo by Tori Pepper.
Some bands are like an emotional TARDIS, transporting you back to a time and place so removed from the present that it’s hard to believe it ever existed at all.
New Jersey post-hardcore group Thursday has always been my vehicle for trips back to high school, and seeing their last-ever headline show in Melbourne last week stirred up memories of angst, late night internet addiction and the type of intense relationships only high schoolers can sustain.
Kate and I met through our year 10 form class, which saw us taking all core subjects together.
I was a little bit in love with her and also pretty intrigued. She’d recently given our high school’s hierarchy the forks, leaving the popular Dais Group* to hang out with the Locker Rats near the science rooms. I watched this violation of social norms from my perspective as a boarder, and it gave me courage to come out of the dorms before school and work my way in with the day kids at the lockers.
Kate’s brother Chris was the first person I knew who illegally downloaded gigabytes of music and movies using torrents on an ADSL broadband connection. Until then, my friends and I battled virus ridden file sharing programs like Limewire and Kazaa, painfully downloading single songs on dial-up connections.
I was hanging out at Kate’s in the summer between grade 10 and 11 when she gave me half a dozen burned CDs of music and videos. There was a bit of nu-metal dreck on there, but there was also At The Drive-In’s seminal release Relationship of Command and Thursday’s Full Collapse and War All The Time albums.
There were also live videos ripped from pay TV music channel Channel V, with Thursday’s then-recent Big Day Out performance and At The Drive In’s infamous set at the 2001 festival.
I struggled with the pitchiness of Geoff Rickly’s singing on Full Collapse, but the crushing waltz of War All The Time’s opening track For The Workforce, Drowning hooked me in, the lyrics blending imagery of bodies falling from the crumbling World Trade Center with black-clad office drones trudging through the monotonous working week.
I might’ve only been 15 years old, but I worked 40 hours a week in my Dad’s hardware shop on school holidays, as well as trying to navigate high school and living in a girls dormitory. I felt like I knew what drudgery was, and that I didn’t want a life full of it.
I burned those albums onto MP3 CDs and listened to them constantly in the last two years of high school, timing my afternoon walks to War All The Time’s track list.
For The Workforce, Drowning and Between Rupture and Rapture would help propel my chubby little body up the hilly streets of southside Rockhampton, the guitars drowning out my laboured breathing and the whirring of my discman. I’d make it to the park next to the reservoir in time for the album’s title track and a bit of a breather, before sneaking back into the dorm with Rickly’s impassioned cries of “We are cured, we are cured!” blaring from my headphones.
Two years of walking up hills helped me shed a bit of my puppy fat, and I had my first kiss at that same park near the Reservoir just before the end of year 12. I was wearing a Thursday t-shirt at the time.
After I finished school I couldn’t bear to listen to Thursday. The memories conjured up by their music were way too recent and way too painful.
I saw them briefly at Soundwave 2008, where Incubus and The Offspring also played. Festivals are always a bit of a buzzkill. Nothing takes the focus off a much-loved band like fighting through the bar and dealing with drunken bogans while trying not to die of heat stroke or slide down a muddy hill.
Their sixth and final album No Devolución brought me back into the fold. It was dark like War All The Time, lyrically pared back like Full Collapse but also a huge step forward from the rest of their work. Best of all, it was brand-new and un-marred by the sticky fingerprints of old memories.
Not long after its release last year, the band announced they’d be calling it quits at the end of their Australian tour.
Fifteen years in a touring rock band is a hard slog for anyone, and Rickly told Alternative Press he’d taken on a retail job between tours to pay the bills. Turns out being one of the most influential bands of the century isn’t a big money spinner.
So on Wednesday, my aunty dropped me outside a venue on the edge of Melbourne’s Chinatown and I watched Thursday play their final headlining show.
I was part of a seething mass of people near the front of the stage for the first 15 minutes before escaping to the relative safety of the bar. I sang along to Wind-Up and caught myself getting teary during War All The Time.
Towards the end of the show, Rickly dedicated recent single No Answers to his Australian ex-wife, explaining the song was about the idea of devotion and putting one thing in your life before everything else.
He clipped his microphone back into the stand and paused to survey the crowd, many of whom had dedicated their lives to this band. They’d spent money on music and merch, tattooed song lyrics and the band’s logo on their bodies and given these songs a place in their hearts.
“You know,” he said earnestly, “just because something ends… that doesn’t make it a failure.”
The crowd roared in agreement.
*Named after their usual hang-out on the dais in the school’s main undercover area.
Game on, moles.
It’s election time in Queensland.
A quirk of scheduling means the state and local elections will be held within a month of one another, which means candidates will be battling the public’s campaign fatigue as much as their opponents.
Aside from a bizarre period from 1960-1972 where Rockhampton was split into electorates of north and south, the Beef Capital has always been represented in state parliament by a Labor MP. Prior to the resources boom, the meatworks and the railways were the town’s biggest employers and both had strong union memberships. It made perfect sense then that current Labor premier Anna Bligh kicked off her re-election campaign in Rocky, one of the safest Labor seats around.
Things could be different this year, though.
Longtime Rocky MP Robert “Schwarto” Schwarten is retiring after more than 20 years in the job. He’s been described as a strong parliamentary performer, or alternatively the Minister for Poor Behaviour.
Whatever your take on him, he’s a bit of a Rocky institution and people who’ve voted for him out of habit or fondness will have to have a think about what they’ll do this year.
A few weeks before the election campaign began, a disgruntled local allegedly* rammed his luxury 4-wheel drive into the office of Federal Labor MP Kirsten Livermore. He then crossed the river over to the working-class suburb of Park Avenue and rammed the house of a private citizen unfortunate enough to share Livermore’s name. The guy finished off his rampage and presumably what was left of his car by ramming into the garage of Schwarto’s house, damaging Schwarto’s own luxury 4 wheel drive.
New coal ports proposed for the Fitzroy Delta have got conservationists up in arms, scared that whatever blighted the Gladstone Harbour might make its way north.
Combine this with Schwarto’s retirement, the State Government’s asset sell-offs and the current shenanigans of the Federal Labor party and things start to look a little murky.
I’ve been noticing posters, wheatpaste art and stickers appearing on bridges, lamp posts and abandoned shopfronts around Rocky’s CBD. The wheatpastes and stickers have the same artwork so I can only assume they’re done by the same group, but you never know.
So internet: enjoy a Capricornian take on street art and political activism.
Sticker on a light post, Fitzroy River Bridge.
Seen on the old Kodak Kiosk in the East Street Mall.
Spotted a couple of weeks later in a disused shop-front in Archer Street. Old mate has stepped up the puns - I don't believe his apology for a second!
Found on the abandoned Wintergarden Theatre downtown.
Wintergarden again.
*He hasn’t had his day in court yet, but a passer-by saw this bloke ram Schwarto’s house and took down his licence plate details.
Go west!
My zine got accepted to Aunty Mabel’s zine distro, which is run by the Perth Zine Collective. I did a sneaky copy run before work this morning, and they should be over the other side of the country by the start of next week.
A lot of “zine people” don’t really like my zines. They’re quick to say nice things about my writing, but counter with the fact that it’s not a traditional perzine.*
Sure, I’m not a vegan, lesbian, pushbike-riding zinester who writes about my periods and the oppression of the patriarchy. I’m also not a black-and-white hardcore band lording fanzine writer who dumpster dives, or one of those girls who draws cute little line drawings about cardigans and cats.
Criticism doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is people pretending zines (and maybe blogs and punk for that matter) exist in this magical world where people who get shafted by the mainstream can be unconditionally accepted for who they are.
I just don’t think a place like that exists.
I take photos, I love music and coffee and I tell it how I see it. That’s about the best I can do.
*I think it’s a traditional perzine, but anyway.
The bossiest shop in Rockhampton.
When I was in high school, Rockhampton’s East Street Mall was a terrifying place of empty shops and slippery tiles, populated by drunks and aggressive homeless people.
They’ve cleaned it up a bit over the past five years, but the long-time retailers are jaded, tough as nails and totally over dealing with the dodgy East Street regulars.
My sister was on the hunt for a costume for a fancy dress party, so we took a deep breath and headed into the costume shop on the mall. As well as carrying a wide range of costumes and Bundaberg Rum merchandise, this shop was also home to a large number of passive-aggressive and downright bossy signs.
Something tells me they have a problem with shoplifters.
My week in photos: rain, music, rellies and Vodafail.
My love of playing guitar is greater than my longing to have manicured hands like other adult women.
Blisters on my left hand are from playing bass, grazes on my right hand from playing an acoustic. Shred life.
I played at a house show in North Rockhampton on Australia Day, along with Lockjaw (pictured above). The small punk/hardcore community here makes me feel so excited and so hopeful about life and creativity. I think there’s a lot to be said for the punk ethic of just jumping in and getting shit done.
The rains have come a few months late, which is fine by me. In fact, I wouldn’t have minded if they’d taken a year off after last year’s floods.
Not long after I took this photo, a tree in my front yard was struck by lightning and crashed down where my car usually stands. Ah, Queensland.
The first Benjamin Family Circus for 2012 happened in Brisbane this weekend for my Granny’s 80th birthday.
My cousin Dommie put together a wonderful book of Granny’s life, featuring research my sister and I had worked on. I’ve written about Granny’s life before – it’s certainly been eventful.
Here’s Dad reading a letter he wrote to Granny (his mother) when he was four years old, which my cousin had put into the book.
My siblings and Granny are laughing because he isn’t sticking to the script.
I spent a large amount of time arguing with Vodafone this week. I’ve been with them since late 2005 and was really happy with their service until around 18 months ago. My Android phone has bricked itself for the third time in its 18 months of existence and since Rocky doesn’t have a Vodafail shop, I’ve been forced to use the relic pictured above for phone calls and texts.
I can’t do battle with their call centre as their service drops every second call I make. Yep, it’s really that bad. I’ve been communicating with their social media team and emailed their tech support with a job number, but haven’t received any contact in 4 days. Telecommunications ombudsman, here I come.
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A dispatch from a time-poor smart phone wielder.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, Instagrammed mobile phone shots should count for at least 500 words, right?