I woke up from a short but deep sleep, feeling groggy due to
the potions I had partaken of the night before. They knocked me out but wore
off pretty quick. I had dreamed, but was going to, as has been my lifelong attitude to these things, keep them to
myself. As soon as I actually remembered them. (This would be usually with a shout
of some quite innocuous word at the shaving mirror or at the car windscreen. I
would then suddenly look at myself in the mirror. I loved doing that. ). So I
woke in my usual manner is what I trying to convey to yas. A time honoured,
long held-to direction, and ambled to the kitchen. In a way, I was waking up in
a robotic, zombie like manner, though I have since learned I could use a much grander term. I was operating in a CLASSIC manner. It was a VINTAGE shamble into
a new day. The cat played its part and ran in front of me at every opportunity,
herding me towards its food bowl. I boiled
some hot water in the sleek, new, stainless steel, CLASSIC looking kettle and
prepared some tea. No tea bags for me, only loose leaves which I had imported
myself from a WOOLWORTHS supermarket in South Australia. A RUST BELT state. The
tea is in a packet which I associate
with that part of the world where I sprang from. Amgoorie tea. In a brown paper
packet with exotic images of the mysterious east all over it. I drive there to
get it. 455 kilometres a pack. I assemble a bowl of my CUSTOMARY cereal which
is raw oatmeal from the ICONIC house of BLACK AND GOLD. I drench the rustic oats
in LONG LIFE soy liquid and open my newspaper. Below the ICONIC masthead which
should by rights be rolling upside down in shame at the “all the goss” bilge
which is spewed across its pages every day, and spent a good minute learning of
the activities of the world while I slept. AS is my want, I throw it away in
disgust and leave for the smallest room. I am sure this is the correct outcome
of the transaction. I was behaving in a CLASSIC way of a disgruntled reader of
my age. They would have had focus groups to agree with them on this. I needed
to be herded toward the online version of the paper, which was full of more
intelligent shit, as well as blinking lights and sexier ads. The editor should
be happy. In the can , which I had had built by a DUTCH man so as I could
inspect my PRECIOUS waste rather than drop it into a small pond of water in the
ANGLO fashion, I was gladdened to see a log of much health . A glad, JOYOUS
stool. AS one of YORE! “Shakespeare could have dropped this!”, I marvelled to
myself. I felt connected to life on
earth. An absolute PEARLER. A CLASSIC! A HUMDINGER!
I turned the radio on to listen to the anguished thoughts of
the callers. I wanted REALITY, not some namby pamby EXPERT telling me stuff
that only he could know.
I drank a can of pop soda. It had my name on it. A friend
had bought me a case. CLASSIC IRONY! The drinks name itself was a brand name
synonymous with corporate fascism and mass ill health the world over. Loved by
billions.
I went for a walk past a toilet I once did a gig in. It was
being hounded by near and far-by residents for being noisy and smelly. People rushed
to defend it and were referring to it as an ICONIC venue. I reflected , in my now
CLASSIC manner, that my morning stool had been more ICONIC than that dump. That
PILE of steaming bricks! That was the times we wuz livin’ in though but. People
shouted and talked shit up like holy rolling preachers at every turn. Nothing
really rated it. Nothing really ever happened any more. It was a CLASSIC STORM
EYE we were experiencing. For how long, nobody knew. We looked to SPOKESPERSONS
to talk us out of it. So we could see shit from the outside. “You pay peanuts-
you get monkeys” was all I could summon as I heard some lame ABC types stretch
their skills to the very limit in brave efforts to be entertaining and then
Kyle Sandilands and Allan Jones do the same in the way of being informative.
I got back into my car - a Japanese made 4 cylinder van. A
CLASSIC from the early 00’s that will never be made again. For some reason. I’m
hangin’ onto it. The wheel. Will to live I guess. Some damn INNATE compulsion. I
turn on the radio, set to a CLASSIC rock station and listen to stuff I had
heard a thousand times before. It had been great. Once. I waited for the magic
again. The stuff was guaranteed. SUREFIRE!.
I wasn’t feeling it. I felt off the worlds game. Out of it. Like
Steve Martin in THE JERK.
I turned to one of the few stations dealing with new shit
and tried some of that. Scandinavian indie bands singing some dreadful,
sexless, feckless, filthless , faux folk song that sounded OLDER than time –
than recorded music itself. I guess that’s what they wanted. Terrible lyrics
and the boy/mans voice came all out of his throat. There was no rest of his
body involved. Sounded like musical theatre pipes happening. Thin and reedy. Punk
was never going to happen. Is that why people listen to Neil Young? The
reassuring grampiness of it all? There were a lot of other acts around on air,
they were all generic too. People liked shit that they could see whole. The
beginning and the end. They were blind to anythin’ else. Didn’t have the
bandwidth. When I grew up there was a squall of old time shit on the tv too.
Made it unbearable. The Waltons and Happy Days. How many teen deaths were those
shows responsible for? Then we got stoned and turned to the Blue Oyster Cult
with their hit, “don’t fear the reaper”. (The singer is dead and is telling his
girlfriend to kill herself and cross over- a CLASSIC). That would have been legendary if we’d all
carked out there in the forest, behind the drive-in, with “Tyranny and
Mutation” on the tape deck, repeating on the track “OD’d on life itself”.
Total teen death VERISIMMILITUDE! Totally! My life would have had , almost, an
appearance of meaning.
I was dressed in quadruple denim. The world had perverted
me. I was always dressing for that funeral that never was. A denim cape,
jacket, shirt and pants. I was looking for some denim shoes and a denim hanky
to poke out of my pocket. Years ago, I had a denim slouch hat made. A fucking
CLASSIC! It was ICONIC! Made from a
Generals titfer. Five folds in the band. ANZACIACAL! Still, people eyed
me suspiciously. They still do. I am neither romantically driven nor do I
strive for a classic form. Well I do,
but that’s just me being polite, trying to get square with folks. Get out of
peoples way. Dodgy, but. What I really needed was a one piece suit in dark
denim , perhaps like the one designed by black panther Eldridge Cleaver. It was
called a cock suit , because it had an exterior sleeve wherein a bloke
ostensibly sheathed his throbbing purple headed Gila Monster. That was an
ICONIC bit of clothing. It beheld a narrative - a story! Eldridge had fled the
USA to Algeria and had come back, with an eye to making a killing in the rag trade. They mocked him,
perhaps that garments time has come? And I could at last assume some agreed
human form?
