Melbourne I love you but we're all a bit alien.

Thinking about the possibility of the existence of extra-terrestrials and the likelihood that man is yet to walk on the moon, I light a cigarette and sit in my underwear, feeling a little Eadie Sedgewickesque. Creativity is not something you can force any more than I can force an alien to walk through my bedroom door. Creativity now feels a bit alien to me; it has been awhile old friend. For, in the city of hopes and dreams, of music and indivituality, some days the need to survive tends to over-ride the need to express; and a tension in my limbs starts to quake. There is a distinct realisation that old friends don't understand, that a post-code no longer determines your identity and comfort; and that your ideas need to be handled with confidence and charisma, lest you fall to the bottom of the pile. It all seems a little daunting really. If aliens are indeed real, then on the grand scale, worrying about whether people will like a lyric of mine seems a little, well selfish. But. Are we all not essentially selfish beings? We want to be seen; wearing the right clothes, the right make-up, watching the right gigs, sipping coffee at Minor Place, riding fixies, being more alternative than another, not actually listening to, or making conversation based on your self image being far more superior than what you think of mine. If aliens are real, or even if they are not; what is the point? What is the point in competing, to be more creative, better looking, more "thrown together" and more popular. We on the North side are all in this pickled ratio of money:creativity. Something we cannot avoid. Something that we all share. As I suck the end of this cigarette, I think to myself that there are bigger things out there; I think to myself that I am  going to see the best in you, if you see the best in me.  

Melbourne I love you, especially when I'm in Geelong. Fuck yeah I love you. I hate Geelong. And the Nutbush. (Except the Nash)

I'm not so small minded that I actually think Geelong is the only guilty town. There are,without a doubt in my mind, people in other towns, other citys, and most definately in Melbourne somewhere; places on brunswick street are guilty of supporting, nurturing and providing a safe environment for people who don't have any taste in music; well people who don't really have any taste at all. And by people, I mean women. And by women I mean annoying women. And also by women, I mean girls included. They shop at womens stores, and throw together outfits with purchases from womens stores. "Oooh that must be nice because it came from a womens store, and I'm a woman, it must fit me". Actually its not nice at all, you look the same as every other female, you have the same hair as every other female, you have the same make-up and shoes as any other female who shops at Rockmans or Susssan (insert relevent shop to class catergory: ie Bourgiouse to David Jones). The younger generation of Sportsgirl shoppers who think their unique "indie" style is so alternative and not-the-same when actually, you look just the fuckin same. Somewhere in the middle, in-between Sportsgirl and Rockmans, the need to look like a hotter yet same version of your friends starts to shape those little tiny braincells, that believe it or not, you do have. And you start to constantly think about your weight, what your wearing, what your being seen listening too; and eventually you follow other people so much that you willl find yourself on a dance-floor wearing Sussan's summer collection dancing to the Nutbush. You make sure you can still remember all the song titles off Libertines Up The Bracket which you memorised the other day so you can be seen to have somekind of taste. Remember, you tagged along to Cherry Bar to "run into" a friend of a friends brother to whom you wanted to show off your knowledge because you didn't get a chance to at some party a few weeks ago where he was saying he wished he could be Pete Doherty, which is funny because you didn't have any knowlede of Pete even if you got a chance to talk, so you giggled, and then googled and found out who Pete Doherty was. And you were all like "awesome! I always wanted to be Kate Moss". 

So then you all look the same. Party the same. Have the same short conversations that don't really have any substance. Even compliments feel like payouts. Even dancing, or dressing up ,or laughing is out of the question. Unless your laughing at someone of course. You had better pay someone out to start a conversation, none of this "hi. I need your help, I'm doing an opinion poll on cookies and how you feel about them: Anzac or Choc Chip? It's an old debate that has been going on for, well obviously only a century of so, not really any longer because of the whole "meaning" behind the ANZAC "cookie"".
YOU'LL HAVE NONE OF THAT THANKME VERY MUCH!! It goes like this: "Oh you look so good", "Oh so do you", "Thanks, how are you anyways", "So good. You?", "So good", "How's ....?", "So good!! How's....?", "Yeah he's good. He's over there!", "Oh I might go say hi", "Yeah good. Oh. So. Good. To see you." "Oh you too. Love you".
So we've got rid of unique dress sense. Done. Unique music taste. Done. Unique ways of having fun. Done. Hmmm, The confidence to be unique? nope, done. What about unique conversation skills? Nope, Done. Unique topics of conversation. Done. Unique ways of thinking? Look, I'm going to say done. For fuck sake, these people are not individuals. One giggles, the other giggles. One loses weight, the other loses weight. One likes a top, the other gets it in black. Get it?

Good. So you want to be a certain kind of style, person, music lover, or whatever. But when someone of that style actually makes conversation with you, you have nothing. Nothing. You like stuff, apparantly, but you don't have opinions about what you like. You just like it. What did you really think about that album? What do you think of this solo album? What about the lyrics make you cry, laugh, feel something?????? Do even have fucking feelings?

You're going to end up dancing to the macarena, the time warp, the nut bush, dressed in sussan, or david jones, because you just do what the group does. I actually heard one of you last night say to herself: "I don't know why everyones getting up and going over there, but I'm going anyways". Fuck you.

Melbourne I love you but take off that god damn lambs wool vest and tarp up!

Since when did it become appropriate to inform strangers about your incessant disregard for condom usage as it imposes on your ability to “rock” one’s world? Just because you play guitar and wail with a screeching detachment from any known key, in a band of PE-teachers as charismatic as dust, does not give you the right to impose your “knowledge” of the industry and up-sell your so called “skills” to girls in order to bed them.  It might be alright if the sound you were producing was anything fresh, exciting or new. But the only thing fresh is the barely 18 year old girls, the only thing getting excited is your Johnson and the only thing new is every girl, because after just a few days they catch on that your a completely arrogant and self-obsessed cunt, who’s not as attractive as he thinks he is and actually has the personality of a pea. But peas don’t get Chlamydia and then have offensively loud casual fucks that reverberate up the spine of the household or offensively loud casual talks about how useless the young thing was in the sack, how she’s too curvaceous or how she suggested you use a condom which, thankfully you overrode because of your “charming” ability to convince a girl that she’s special and that there wasn’t a girl wailing “fuck me harder” yesterday, or another screaming “AHHH!!” the day before.  Promiscuity can be funny, I’m not a prude. But STD’s are not funny, and knowingly having rubber-less sexual intercourse with victims who are barely old enough or confident enough to stand up to you, without so much as visit to the clinic: not funny. What is funny is that at a young age you learned that women like being called darling or darl; but you conveniently forgot to factor in that it loses all meaning and swaying purpose when overused in every situation, it just makes you sound like a boy trying to be a man. It makes you sound manipulative and desperate, which you are.  And no-one even knows what your fucking favourite band is!!!? Go get another shit tattoo darl!

Melbourne I love you but, Drum circles?

Just because you have dreadlocks and can play guitar reasonably well, does not give you permission to sing songs about taking drugs in the bush. We’ve all been camping. We’ve all dappled in hallucinogens. It does not make you an alternative musician. It most certainly does not make you unique. In fact, it is the most un unique topic of conversation. Thanks for making my ears bleed. I can’t help that my eyes prefer to look at the inside of my brain than listen to another hip-hopping jukebox regurgitate their alternative lifestyle into a monotonous predictable “song” that suggests their insatiable appetite to prove that those dreadlocks serve a purpose. I know you live in Melbourne. I don’t need to hear predictable lyrics about what it’s like to walk down Sydney road, or to sip chai in Fitzroy, or to be on Centrelink and living off tuna tofu meat. I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. Get a bit more creative, or don’t call your self a songwriter. Yes your songs take me to another place. That is the ultimate duty of a song-writer. But you take me to la-la land in a Homer Simpsonesque thought bubble where I’m chasing a circus monkey and giggling insatiably at his antics. Monkeys are cool. This one time I saw a circus monkey dressed like an ancient Indonesian mythological dragon in a market in Malang Java. He was tied to a fence and demanding money from passers by. He was starving and had unusual welts on his legs. That was not cool. The monkey was still cool. He looked a bit like the monkey in my head. His name is Albert.  Albert in my head would never wear a jilbab because he’s not Islamic.  Nor would he ever have dreadlocks- he’s not a Rasta. He would never join a drum circle because he hates the sound of bongos. He does smoke weed. But he’s not Californian so he smokes it with tobacco. He uses tally-ho’s if they are around because at the end of the day all rolling papers are the same. He can roll a mad 3 paper like a seasoned big mama would roll White Widow with her eyes shut in a cafe in Amsterdam. He keeps his eyes open though because he’s only got small hands. It would be like one of us trying to roll a scoob with 3 sheets of A4 and having our eyes closed. He’s a good monkey. But he’s bounded by the limitations of Darwinism.

Melbourne I love you, but leggings are not pants!

I was reading MX and I saw a camel toe. I'm so sick of camel toes. Even hot girls don't look good in leggings. Just wear a longer singlet. Especially do not wear a little singlet so we can see overflow and cameltoe. Even super skinny girls look shit in leggings as pants. Everyone, and listen close, everyone looks shit in leggings as pants. I know its been said before. There is a Facebook group about it. But I don't think anyone in Melbourne uses Facebook because there is a lot of leggings being worn as pants in this city. I wrote into MX. They never published it. Its okay to yell abuse out of your car window to lants (legging pants wearers). Its the only way they will learn. Some people call them mumble pants. Thom told me. You can see the lips moving, but there's no sound coming out. My other friend Tom wanted to get a tattoo of a camel on his toe is Byron. I thought it would be funny. The tattoo artist thought he was a dick head. I met a dickhead once who had a shit tattoo, but he was from Canberra and his favourite band was Nickleback. Fuck he was a cock bag.

Melbourne I love You, but whats with all the shit on your face?

Its on facebook. Myspace. Everywhere. You see it when your out. You see it on the street.

Girls putting shit on their face. And Pose. Oh this is just me, holding a flower to my cheek. And pose. Oh this is just a cut out of a heart which I'm holding to my face. And Pose. This is me near a guitar, near a brick wall, looking the other way. And Pose. This is me and my friend doing all of the above. Posing. This me and my friend doing all of the above, one of us has a fringe, the other has red lipstick, we are wearing actual leather jackets. Mine has a hood. She bought hers at a vintage store.

You wouldn't know where it is though. It's really underground and indie. This is me and her shopping at the vintage store. I'm holding a vintage retro oldschool bow to my face. And Pose. She's wearing the vintage dress that I picked out for her, looking down with her hands byt] her sides. Her hair is so messy and indie. Pose. So when we put shit on our face, its really unique because it reflects my love for art. Its really creative and inventive. Plus we look really hot. I bet all the boys go onto our facebook pages and look though our photo albums that we take of ourselves at home holding shit up to our face. I bet they go through every photo, even though they are all really similar, and look at how creative and artsy and indie i can be.

SIA is my favourite example. She doesn't pose so much like those facebook indies. But boy is she creative. I've taken it upon myself to suggest a  couple of designs for her new album. Guess which ones were done by yours truly.

Melbourne I love you, but Washington?

Music is good. Music as an idea is good. It is a positive word that symbolises our imagination of and creation of sounds interrelating to evoke a positive response from within. Music helps to shape our model of the world; our percieved view of our own identity can often be constructed around our particular taste in music. We identify with singers, songwriters, guitarists, bassists, drummers and so on because it helps drive our youthful disillusions that we too can be somebody great. And also because we feel a foreboding sense of attachment to sentimentality. Thus we hold on to those artists and bands that impacted on people in such away that their lives were never to be the same.

Whether you listen to folk, rock, punk, reggae, or whatever. I'm talking about the songs that make you stop. The songs that make you close your eyes. Throw your fists in the air in time to the music. I'm talking about lyrics that are meaningful, or atleast passionate. I'm talking about people whose were driven to innovate. Artists who were drawn to change the face of music. Bands who were motivated to change the way people understood music. Music that evoked energy and life from within the listener. Who is doing that in Melbourne right now? Everyone is looking for the new sound of Melbourne. The next big thing.....??

People like to guess. People like to feel like they have some kind of knowledge that is unattainable to everyone else. People say that disco may be the new sound. Disco does not, and never will reach a large enough audience to actually define and reflect the identity of a city let alone a generation. There are all kinds of theorys out there... How about this one......

Look at yourself Melbourne. You decided to give up on thinking for yourself.. You only do what Triple J tells you to. Are you even aware that there are local radio stations. Have you heard of RRR? So you decided to forget yoursel because a radio station has forgotten its roots. Your fed bullshit songs like, barbara streisand and magic fountain and you lap it up. You actually call up and request to hear those songs again! Your new sound is Washington, Art Vs Science and other acts that lack back bone. Thats right! Here's your new fucking sound! Poetry-Gone. Innovation-Gone. Talented musicians like the boys from Art Vs Science have to resort to repetitive gimmik songs in order to actually make money. And musicians are actually caring about making money. The want to be products, they want to have there balls ripped out... And it works. Washington just made the record for selling out the most shows at the Corner. There you go melbourne- your new sound- CRAP.

Melbourne I love you but, Everyone is a fucking dj.

So my friend who's a dj rang me the other day to see if I wanted to spend 25 bucks to see him dj. And I asked him if I could get in for free because I can't afford to spend ridiculous amount of money just to watch my friend. So he said he would ring his friend who is a dj and ask him if he I was allowed to go on the door list. He didn't get back to me for several days. I guess he was working on some new mix cds.

Meanwhile another friend of mine who is a dj messaged me to see if I want to come and watch him dj on Friday night. I told him I already had plans with my other friend who is a dj, and I was going to watch him dj, but only if his friend who is a dj could get me on the dj doorlist. If he could not, I would then agree to go with my second dj friend and watch him dj. He agreed and said that he too would ask his friend who is a dj and see if he could get me on the dj doorlist.

One time at a music festival two years ago I made friends with these two guys and we spent hours hiding in bushes and jumping out of them. One of them turned out to be a dj.

So my friend who is a dj rang me back and said his dj friend could get me on the door. I would have to get the night off work. which means that I miss out on money, and have to pay for booze to enjoy watching my friend the dj, dj. So i told him I would think about it. I then spoke to my other friend the dj and told him that I couldn't come because if I did decide to take the night of work then I would be going to support my other friend dj at Roxanne. And he was shocked. Roxanne was where he was djing too. What a coincidence that  I would have two completely seperate people friends that were both djs and they would be djing at the same place with guess who. The dj from the music festival. We just got cdjs at my work which I can use. I'm gonna burn some sweet mix cd playlists and become a dj too. Then I'm gonna get a djing gig at Roxanne. Then I'm gonna buy a mac, use garage band, download some samples made by other people, add some of my own original combinations of samples, talk really fast so it sounds like I know what I'm talking about and impose my samples onto nice people who won't tell me they don't like it so I can get a confidence boost.And I'm an artist. No wait, I'm a DJ.

Melbourne I Love You, But I'm Too Hungover to Drive.

Sit in my backyard. Shit all over the backyard. The reminants of a soup party I didn't attend. My car is in Hawthorn. I live in Brunswick. Just ate tuna. Tuna was a bad choice.
Look at a poster for a raffle that was painted by an old housemate. She couldn't spell very well. She also called Beetroot-Beetfroot. I miss her. But I don't miss that. It was annoying.

Think about what it would be like if I did a 10 silent meditation retreat. Surely I would turn insane if I had 10 days to contemplate my life. I would think about money I owe, and think more about money that I owe. Then I would think that there is nothing I could do about it because I'm stuck in silent meditation for 10 days. Then I would think about people in my life, this funny cartoon I drew the other morning when I woke up and this website I was shown the other day which was created by a Graphic designer in Melbourne who is hilarious. Then I would think that I would like to be that funny. Sam Simmons is funny, I saw him on a tram once. He asked me what I did, I told him. He told me he worked in television and radio. I didn't tell him that I had been to see his show on my birthday for the last 2 years in a row, so I already knew that. I used to row in year 9. I didn't continue that for very long.

I would ponder over memories of rowing, Erin as the cox, and the other three girls. And the first time I worked out on a rowing machine. That was hard. But I had good form. So I quit.

I would think about all the things I had quit in my life. There was tennis with Pete the tennis teacher, piano lessons with Miss. Burch, guitar with hawaiin shirt long hair man, singing with musical notes for earings, Norah Jones loving Gale. University in 2006, several jobs, a relationship, and University again in 2010 with a whole bunch of right wing dougebags who still lived with their parents in Geelong and favoured going to the library to debate the days lecture, rather than going to the bar to discuss it.

I love a good debate/discussion; however, not with douchebags and second, over coffee or beer.

I would think it's hard not drinking. And then I would start actually missing it. I would try to convince myself that it's healthy and better for my body to eat lentils and water and pray and be silent. But my heart would tell me beer. And my mind would tell me beer. And then I would think about all the beer I could of bought if I didn't pay for this retreat. I could be getting drunk right now perhaps. I could be going to see a gig, or a friend, or both. I could be attending soup parties, fun parties, even shit parties....

And speaking of shit parties: I would think about what happened to me last night at this small party in Carlton full of late 20's early 30's Ash Grunwald wannabe's. And I would call it:

Melbourne I love you but your peeps don't have any street cred (working title)

At last nights party we got rapped at.

I said "how are you".

She said "Fine, fine, I rap all the time, I'm here to get fucked up so give me some love". I said "oh ok cool. Thats a nice rap you've got there".

She said "They tell me the rules, I dropped out of school, I'm fucking cool, she's fucking cool, them cunts they hate us, but that's what made us, I'm a freestyler and I know hows ta holla".

And I was drunk. I egged her on. And on and on for ages. My friend dragged me away. Later on slappy rappy was kicked out of the party for macking some bird, and licking her tits on the kitchen floor infront of everyone.

There were a few people dancing inside. M.I.A-Paper Planes was playing. Which suggests an awkward room of people with no taste of their own playing what they think is "alternative". Anyone who actually likes M.I.A would never play paper planes, because we all know that Arular is by far her best and only good album. Seeing as I was the drunkest person there, and didn't know anyone except for 2 people who were busy in the kitchen. I thought I would make some mates on the d-floor. "Hay! great d-floor!"

Then a song change. And before I knew it I was caught in a dry hump circle, and I was the only one not dry humping anyone...Damn you Jamie Foxx and Kanye West!!! Damn you!!!

And as I stretch into my Vipinassa something or rather yoga pose- I would think that I don't like any kind of dry hump dancing. There's no place for it in this world. Especially not in Melbourne.