Monday, December 9, 2019

Dental Notes

 

I have a story in the latest issue of The Adelaide Review.  It's a pretty unique publication. Free but full of writing and ideas on politics, art , music, culture and food. 

It comes out every month in a beautiful paper edition. This is the full text of what I wrote. (Not always space for my freewheeling style on the paper page)

DENTAL NOTES

I wrote this in a dentists chair, on my mind. Through my mind.
Its about five days later, I hope I got it down right. I meant to write - I hope I get it down right. I suppose it’s a kind of a translation.
I wrote several songs too. But I keep forgetting to catch them.
One of those things, if you’re a songwriter – or any kind of writer, when you have no pen or paper around, ideas are guaranteed to come to you. I read that Thomas Hardy once wrote with a burnt stick on some dry leaves as he was compelled to get something off his mind and onto a page.
The dentist is in outer South Eastern Melbourne. I used to go to one in the inner city, recommended by a friend but that was when I lived in Zone One. I’ve been living in what was once Zone Three for two decades. This dentist  was recommended by friends from across the other side of the highway, music related people too. They said this practitioner looked like a member of Charlies Angels, the modern version. We laughed, though I only knew of Drew Barrymore from that series, she has the most classic nose of all recent Hollywood women. Classic as in Ancient Grecian. They meant to liken this person an actor of more Asian ethnicity.
So I’ve been going to this dentist for a while. I wouldn’t say “frequenting” as that is not a good description of my relativity to her business.
As a kid I hated the dentist so much. The pain was unbearable, but it may have been the noise, the smell and the sight of the needles that added extra energy to the whole evil sensation. It was operatic. Grand guignol. I remember making a scene at the barbers in Mt Gambier when I was a kid too, I kicked Vic Gentile in the shins and yelled us out of the place. My dad was shocked and apologetic to the barber. It must have been the chair, so similar to the dental swivelling high seat.
So here I was, in one of the few moments a modern man can get totally cut off from the webs and intrigues of life and its cyber ghostings. I was laying back in the chair and the assistant had her two hands near my mouth and the Dentist had her fancy little binoculars on and tools in both hands. I had some gel which came before the needle and also continuous gas.
There was a tv screen above me with subtitles and also music playing. The last time I was here it was a unified broadcast of audio and video, Air Supply Live. This time she had me watching The Block and listening to a playlist of MOR 80s hits.
I had breakfasted that morning on porridge and tea with an orange and some textual roughage  by Jonathan Swift from 1703. I had finished Gullivers Travels and was on to The Tale Of A Tub. His writing had really enlivened my mind, my inner monologue.  The Tale Of A Tub begins with a roundabout dedication and then an even longer runup to a preface where he begins to talk of “critics” and other writers. His tone is high and playful. He nails everybody and everything.
I lay back there with my mouth open and the gas flowing free and the lights and four hands about my mouth. The song playing was Paul Youngs version of “Wherever I lay My Hat”. It was peak sludge. Over produced over teched 80s UK beige soul. Every sound in isolation, all together. Music made for nodding, imperial radio programming straw men. No drummers, perfect machined rhythms set to an exact code. It was a period when I lived in the UK and that whole sheened era  seemed to go far longer than it actually did. No escape from it. No wonder the Smiths and Dinosaur Junior and House music hit so hard.
The Block was on above me on the screen. Some drama had been confected about tradies and budgets and materials and a deadline for someone’s renovation. I thought of the hotel in St Kilda where the show had last been and how all the poor tenants had been kicked out and they still sleep on the street directly across the road from their former home rooms.
The politics of it was horrible and blatant. Now I was watching them blow up some other situation. The leading man is a fat everyman who has been recently hired by the actual government to head some sort of policy team in regard to skills training. The television personality hired by the former advertising and marketing man who is now PM. How shallow our country had become? The music changed to Go West “The King Of Wishful Thinking”.
The intimacy of dental work! People inside your mouth for an hour or so. She was very good.
Did I mention I also wrote several songs as well as this text I am relaying here. Still getting a feint signal. Worrying me that I missed a beat. “Is it happening? The long fade?”
I had heard that morning about Kanye West and his gospel album. I wondered if he had ever been any good. I had heard one track I had liked, about being with his family. He’s been elevated to a level of celebrity from which there’s no coming back. There’s no possible reverberation for his sounds. Everything distorted and crushed, as if its come from deep at the bottom of the ocean. With added Kenny G! Hey, he’s no Tupac anyway. No Bob Marley. No Nas or Lil Wayne. They come with a charge. Of specific locale and accent. Cadence. Kanye might even be good but it all comes through this filtering and serious compression from deep inside the wheels of synthesized meat.
Yes, this chair and being held down here by these technicians climbing on me; waving mirrors and pliers was giving me some time to think on things. Is that how you have to do it nowadays? Get kidnapped and strung up and your mouth painted in gels and lit by stage lights so you can get some time alone?
After two hours I got up out of the chair, went and paid and drove off to a rehearsal with the NDE. My wallet was glowing red in my pocket as if it held some piece of enriched plutonium.
Later, I tried to get back into that mouthwashed, laidback, anaesthetized flow. To catch these free flowing thoughts. I had to battle the interference all around. Dental notes.

A week after that  I was back in the chair. Only an hour in the zone this time. It’s quite addictive. Gas, gel, needle. “You okay David?”
“’yeah…”.
It didn’t take long to get back into the flow. The zone.

How many times have I been to the dentist in my life? A dozen?
The experience as a child and as a young man and now as a vintage gent.
I wanted to be brave, I didn’t want to hurt my mother. I didn’t want her to see me cry.
The experience is so primal.
Primal.
I use words like I know what they mean.
“Mean”, what does that “mean?” Have I looked it up in a dictionary? Have I memorized it?
Who am I to be wielding these words so loosely?
She is really digging in. An attendant on the other side with a suction tube and passing instruments and materials. They speak in English and Chinese. Cantonese? Mandarin?
She asks me how I’m going.
I’m being brave.
She is about to put a crown on a back tooth. She puts a mirror in my hand so I can look at the crown itself. She says she has tried to match it with my front teeth. I was meaning to get them cleaned and whitened.
I wave my hand in dismissal as if to say “it’s cool, just fix it…”
I worry that I have upset her. Was she up all night at the fireplace fashioning this crown with a nailfile and some sort of buffing material? Matching the colour?
Seriously, who is ever going to look inside my mouth to see a back molar? Except for her, or another dentist?
The Block is on again. These disgusting people are selling their renovated apartments in Grey street St Kilda to some other disgusting types. Each goes for well over three million dollars. They all act as if they’d won a lottery. The place is in the part of St Kilda that still has some streetwalking sex workers and is otherwise a haven for backpackers.
I gaze through my fogged eyes at the screen as the music plays some 70s soft rock, normally my favourite. Today it was Don McLean singing Starry Starry Eyes. He is no David Gates. Lets leave it at that. Those who know- know.
The disgusting buyers. I wonder if they will eventually extend the depth field of the show to make it all about the buyers with all the predictable drama of the couples renovating the properties way in the background (everybody has been there and seen that shit- so they have a gay couple and some non anglos- they’re all still disgusting) and make the show about the people wanting into these hideous nouveau, tricked up dumps. Some could be filthy rich, some just reps for overseas investers (send a crew over “there” to get intel on them) , some going through forensic interviews with bank managers (send a crew to background them as well). It would then telescope in at the end to an orderly scrum at the auctions.
I mostly still hate Scott Cam the overweight everyman tradie who hosts the show and is now employed by the government. He is a tradie to our country.
I rise from my chair and drift to the counter where I see so many zeroes float in front of my eyes I realize why she wanted me to at least take a  look at the crown she’d made. By the fireplace the night before.
It was quite valuable.




Dec 20th Dave Graney and Clare Moore inducted into AMC SA Hall of Fame in Adelaide and then a duo show at the Jade Monkey.


Feb 7th Dave Graney and Clare Moore play Hardys Bay Club, Central Coast NSW


Feb 9th Dave Graney and Clare Moore play Smiths in Canberra with Coral Snake Robin Casinader joining them on mellotron. 


Feb 22nd , Mona Foma, Hobart 1pm show

 Feb 23rd , Longley, Tasmania 2pm show


Dave Graney solo dates in WA in February.



Album #2 for 2019 ONE MILLION YEARS DC by Dave Graney and Clare Moore
ONE MILLION YEARS DC by Dave Graney and Clare Moore   




ONE MILLION YEARS DC is the title for the new album credited to Dave Graney and Clare Moore.
Its album #2 for 2019.
11 tracks recorded and mixed at the Ponderosa in Melbourne.



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