Irregular Writings
August 2013
Byron in July
Byron Bay in July? Just as the Melbourne winter really kicks into gear and the days roll into one long, windy, wet, dark afternoon? Just talk at a sideshow at Splendour in the Grass, have a rest and then amble over to the Writers’ Festival? Why, I think I can clear a week or so in my diary, yeah! Why ever not?
Duties were to include being part of a panel based around “drugs and creativity” with musician Ben Lee who has a new album out much inspired by a South American plant called ayahuasca. Clare Moore, Lisa Mitchell, and myself, along with Scott Owen from the Living End, Nadav Kahn (Gelbison, Kahn Brothers), writer/filmmaker Rak Razaman (Aya Awakenings) and Sydney/Bond University neuroscientist Professor Bulent Turman. Sounded like a well rounded bunch. I saw my role as to be sceptical, because I couldn’t really see any other way to look at it. Drugs are for recreation and all the great casualties in music and literature made their work in spite of the destruction wreaked upon their talents and judgement by hallucinogens, opiates, downers and booze rather than because of them.
We talked around it as best we could. Eventually I cracked and asked where anybody got the time to take a few days or a week out to get wasted. Being a musician is 95% admin! It would help to have servants. For when you nod off in the middle of the moat where you paddled out to shoot some water rats. A young man in the audience accused me of being a “big musician” and asked what was the matter with a young person like him using ayahuasca so he could write. A total whinger. I told him to write and write some more first. And if he was a musician to play and play any music first as well. Get your skills and your legs before going ten rounds with dope and booze.
A woman got up to say she’d never felt comfortable in the immediate world and “that’s why I use DMT”. She wanted to know if ayahuasca would be any good for her. Ben Lee had pretty much begun by warning people that it should only be used with an experienced HOLY MAN present. Where a regulation northern rivers stoner could grab one of these might be a difficult one. It was in many ways a frustrating panel to be on. An air lock attached to the massive festival that was popping outside. I just tried not to insult anyone too harshly. They had a lot of great stuff happening over the three days though – comedy, a sermon on Sunday by John Safran and a hook up interview with Julian Assange. Top shelf.
The writers’ festival was set in another specially zoned precinct closer to the town. It found me doing panels with authors, academics as well as performing artists (like myself) who had turned to scribbling and wandered into the room. I have been hearing a lot of talk from writers internationally, voicing their discomfort with being pressured to becoming performers in the NEW DIGITAL WORLD that is opening up around everybody. This disquiet was in effect here for a moment, but only a moment, for there were many great sessions that weren’t all for laffs. Anne Summers, Peter Carey, Michael Leunig, DBC Pierre, Tony Birch, Robert Drewe, Catherine Deveny. Many talented people involved.
I had the most enjoyable time at a launch of Australian Love Poems 2013 in a lovely old house by a lake. George Megalogenis launched the volume with two mock poems from Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. He felt he should play to his strengths – economics (the poems were two words each) and politics. He saluted the publisher, Inkerman and Blunt, and its head, Donna Ward for the polish and, yes, LOVE, that had obviously gone into the book’s editing and production. The editor, Mark Treddinick, spoke and six of the featured poets each got up to read. All kinds of ages, genders, tempoes and sizes. Softly spoken and hand flashing performance rhymers. The book is indeed a beautifully put together volume. The paper, the design, the very fonts and thematically organized flow.
It was inspiring. I had to be a part of a panel with the Bedroom Philosopher, Denise Scott and Judith Lucy. We made a pact to keep it highbrow but that went out the window as soon as the mics were turned on. Scott and Lucy traded one liners all across the footlights, working the crowd like Al Jolson and Henny Youngman back in the Vaudeville days. I was so ashamed for our profession. Whatever that was. The next day I did a panel on improvisation with Lucky Oceans and Bedroom. It ended with Lucky and I jamming on an old folk tune while Bedroom did a pole dance in front of the stage. The tent was actually rocking. Then we ran to catch the bus to the airport. We’d gotten away with something, again!
@davegraney
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