Sleepers Wake
Memories from various houses
Even the sparrow has found a home.
Posted by on May 12, 2012
I didn’t cry during the service. The next day, while waiting at the licensing centre of all places, I looked fondly at a cut on my middle finger and felt a tear burning the edges of my vision.
A week and a half earlier Sue Tilson, Mutley’s mother, had passed away. She had Motor Neuron Disease, and had slowly been withering away from us for the past year. The Tilson residence is where the band rehearses once a week and in all that time, they (Sue, Lyall her husband, and their kids Mutley, Steph and Seanan) had been magnificent; dignified, positive and staggeringly free of self-pity or bitterness.
Lyall, who had never ceased to be delightful, hilarious company during his ordeal, was finally letting the strain of what he had been through show. As convivial as ever, he didn’t shy away from talking and joking with people, still throwing out the odd merciless quip at Dave or mines expense, even through the tears.
It speaks volumes that the during the speech by Sue’s doctor (an old family friend and a delightful public speaker), the only time he was overwhelmed by emotion was when praising Lyall’s efforts during Sue’s Illness. A recurring theme was the unfailing selfless patience, the energy and endless, endless love Lyall had shown his wife.
It was beautiful, packed service, a lovely celebration and tribute to a wonderful human being. There was a true sense of gratitude in the room that we had ever known her at all. In the front row sat the immediate Tilson clan: Lyall, Mutley, Steph, Seanan, Seanan’s soon to be wife Lizzie and their own beautiful baby daughter, Charli.
During the final prayer for Sue, the speaker had to compete with Charli, who was filling the room with that lovely, silly wordless burble babies do before they can talk. She sat on her father’s lap, next to Lyall who was again, quaking silently in his seat. Only this time, it wasn’t sobs that sent little ripples through him. Lyall had his eyes open, he was looking at his granddaughter. Lyall was laughing.
In the name of love
Posted by on April 15, 2012
So I’m at this bar in East London, where Dean, my cousin, is DJ’ing. Apart from Dean, his stepson, and his stepson’s girlfriend, I don’t really know anyone, so in between pints of Fosters*, I’m chatting to the girl behind the bar. We establish a few common interests, she’s friendly and not all that busy, so the conversation flows. Eventually, I suggest she show me round London. I’m on holiday, and I don’t know any locals my own age. She suggests we meet at a festival that’s happening that weekend.
We travel into the centre of London on the train together, me, this girl and her friend. As we near the centre of the town, accompanied by the bass heavy rumble of nearby music and the beautiful cacophony of people having fun I start to notice things. Things like the high proportion of bald chaps kissing one another.
Well look at that. I think.
London truly is a great, progressive town. A town where two dudes can straight up mack on one another, without fear or shame. Truly it makes one proud to be British.
We shall be progressive, on the beaches, we shall progressive on the landing grounds, we shall… There really are a lot of bald chaps kissing one another. One would almost think..think…I was being taken to…
My companions have taken off their jackets, revealing white t-shirts with self drawn rainbows plastered across them. So I’m at the London Pride Festival, with a bartender and her lovely Italian girlfriend.
Two thoughts occur to me. Firstly, the chances of this girl and I embarking on a brief, torrid and ultimately doomed affair have just taken a serious hit. My second thought takes a little longer to explain.
See, I’ve always had, shall we say, a problematic relationship with conventional masculinity. ‘What?! A wordy aesthete who annonymously writes whimsical stories about his childhood on the internet, NOT a snarling wad of testosterone?‘ I hear you cry. Yes, shocking though it be, I’m not exceedingly butch. However, a few teenage experiments had satisfied me that, at least in every way that could be of any use to anyone, (You know what I’m talkin bout, baby) I’m very much straight. And yet here I was, at a Pride festival, holding a rainbow parasol someone had handed me to keep the light rain off. It wasn’t so much being hit on that worried me, as turning someone down. Plenty of straight people have though I’m gay, so me telling some suitor that I wasn’t might just seem an unconvincing excuse, like I was brushing them off. I mean, on pride day, how much of a buzzkill would that be?
The day was amazing. Regardless of your bedroom preferences, Pride London is a super rad party and the group I was lucky enough to hang out with were lovely. Given the setting, it’s probably not all that surprising that they were welcoming, relaxed and sweet towards someone who was essentially a stranger. So maybe it’s best not to focus on what it says about me, that all this time later, the most prominent memory of that day for me is the faint annoyance when I realised that not one of the bald chaps was giving me a second Goddamn look.
*Oh wait, yeah, Fosters. I really don’t get what the big deal is.
Things you shouldn’t do
Posted by on March 26, 2012
When you’re feeling all tired and fragile on your way to work, You will think, ‘Praps Bob Dylan’s hard won wisdom and wit in dealing with his loneliness will make me feel better, less alone.’
Bollocks it will.
Because eventually, you’ll come across “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” and its sunny take on loss, it’s quiet, grateful acceptance of what was, and what now is will needle at every sinew of you. Peversely, you will hold on till the last line of the song before skipping it. But it’s futile, because everything, from the hepcat blues of ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ to the exultant joy of ‘The Man In Me’ will now be viewed through the same hot blurry filter.
And you’re on a bus, and you feel like a pratt.
Everything about it is appealing…. (Part 2)
Posted by on March 17, 2012
So we turn over the engine the 3 times or so it takes to satisfy us that the car isn’t going to start unaided. We decide to give it a push start. We run the length of the street. It doesn’t work. We turn it around and do another length. We attempt a third before the futility of our endeavours start to become glaringly apparent. We check under the hood, and Alan and Cassidy between them conclude that it must be that the battery needs replacing. Alan is dispatched to the nearest petrol station to get one.
Cass takes a deep breath, and takes on that ‘just ran a marathon’ hunch . “God, I feel a bit…Hyuurgh! Hyyyeeugh!’ The exertion of pushing a car filled with film equipment up and down a street after having been up all night filming with naught but a ham sandwich and several cups of awful instant coffee to sustain him has taken its toll. A few minutes of retching, followed by a sit down and some gingerly sipping on a diet coke bring him back to life.
He looks under the hood again, presumably motivated by the same impulse that causes us to look in the same place five times when we can’t find the remote. This time however, that instinct appears to be correct.
‘Oh, wait.’
He reattaches some loose cable, tries the car again, and with insulting simplicity, it starts. Faintly annoyed, I close the bonnet of the car.
Alan returns with the new battery. He has somehow manager to spill battery acid on himself, so his jeans have a spattering of neat little holes burned into them. We bashfully inform him that the car is now working fine.
‘Right,’ He says, briefly regarding his jeans, now looking as though they riddled with tiny bullet holes, and then the battery. ‘I’ll just…keep…this, then?’
He leaves, and so do we. We drive up Stirling Highway towards my house, past the schools and parks, in that special gentle quiet of the rising sun. I start to feel a warm, sleepy satisfaction, and for the first time in about 3 days, I start to relax.
THWUNK.
The bonnet of Cassidy’s car flies open, blocking our view of the road. We screech to a halt on the mercifully traffic free 5.30am roads.
In the deafening silence that follows, I manage ‘Ok, that one was my fault.’
A few hours of restless daytime sleep later, and I’m checking through the footage. It’s useless. Great streaks of pixilation ruin whole takes, and where there should be the mellifluous purr of my lightening dialogue (you’ll just have to trust me) is unlistenable crackling static.
Whether this is a fault of the equipment, the relative inexperience of the crew or the aussie battlers clumsy do-si-do with our camera is immaterial. We have used up 50% of our schedule and we have no way of ensuring that the equipment will work before we shoot again that night. And we have nothing. We cancel the next shoot, and the film doesn’t end up being completed for another 6 months.
The point of this, if there is one, is the following. The need to be creative, frankly, is a bastard. Whether you’re trying to make a film, record music, paint or write, you will struggle. You will make sacrifices, it will consume your life, you will doubt yourself. And, especially if you’re just starting, the end product might not even be all that good. You have to truly love it. Truly. It simply isn’t worth it if you don’t.
There will be no guarantee of rewards, except perhaps this one: You will have made a contribution to the art form you love. It will be a tiny, microscopic contribution, a decimal point followed by a million zeros and a one, but a contribution. And nothing can ever take that away.
Everything about it is appealing… (Part 1)
Posted by on March 14, 2012
Sometime in early 2004 I found out about the Assistance To Screen Artists (or ATS) fund, and decided it was time to make my move. I had been hanging around the Film and Television Institute in Fremantle, Perth, for the past year or so, working on other people’s films, trying to accrue enough friends with technical knowledge to make my own movie. The ATS fund was essentially a discount on hiring equipment from the FTI ; at the time it was the one form of financial assistance that basically anyone could get and, providing you had the right kind of script, make a film with.
My script, whatever else it was, was the right kind of script. The movie (called “Launderette”) was a short, ramshackle character piece shot entirely at one location. It was also, as every first attempt at things of this nature have to be, clumsy, muddled and fairly naff.
Here’s the synopsis I wrote at the time:
The basic story of the film centers around a young man, Nick in a launderette at 1am. A young woman, Holly, enters having had a terrible night. She is initially cold and unfriendly, but eventually warms to his nervy charm. After they talk and get to know one another, Nick is presented with an opportunity to act on his romantic interest in her, but his cowardice and indecision cause him to mess things up.
The story of the film that eventually got made is one for another time. If we’re being charitable, (and let’s be – I don’t hate my 19 year old self half as much as he hated himself) we’ll just call it charmingly amateurish and leave it there. This is the story of the first 12 hours or so I spent as a bona fide director.
Cottesloe Laundrette, the premises that graciously allowed us to shoot there, is just across the road from the Albion Hotel. When you make your first film, with no money that hasn’t already been spent on equipment, such lofty ambitions as ‘not shooting near something as loud and filled with naturally curious drunks as a pub’ don’t really enter ones mind. You know that most business owners aren’t all that keen to allow a group of strangers into their livelihood, unattended, after hours, for a whole night for no discernible gain (‘But what of the priceless advertising one gets from being in a film that will be watched by literally tens of people?’ I hear you cry. They just don’t see it, the short sighted fools). Basically, like a lonely drunk pairing off with another of their ilk at the end of the night, you take what you can get, and you’re very grateful.
Our first disruption is a predictable and fairly minor one. A swathe of tarty drunk girls approach us and ask if we’re making a porn film. The episode seemed a fairly cruel turn of events. At that age, I was generally terribly keen to have tarty drunk girls take an interest in what I was doing and make lascivious remarks while they were at it and now that they were, I was too beholden to an accursed shot schedule to do anything about it. They leave, and from then on, the pub proves to be remarkably kind to us. No one else approaches us, we’re able to do shots that don’t require sound until they shut the music off, and we’re pretty much running on schedule for the next couple of hours.
And then.
And then, emerging from the blackness of the alleyway adjacent to the Launderette cometh he.
He looks at the lights we have set up with that bewildered squint favoured by the fucked up and the just awoken. I have a feeling he fell squarely into both those categories. He’s young, decked out in a baseball cap and dark baggy clothes. He looks around a the crew, befuddled.
‘…the…the fuck is going on?’
‘We’re making a film.’
This clears things up. ‘Cool.’
Swaying. Long pauses.
‘I’m the Aussie battler.’ He says by way of introduction. The he sees the camera, and suddenly, he’s away.
‘The Aussie battler, gonna rattle ya, coming with the rhymes, cos I don’t do no crimes, know how to fight, and maybe I just might….’
And so on and so forth. For, like, a really long time.
After what feels like a decade, but is probably about 6 minutes (still a very long time to listen to a pissed up teenagers unbearably clunky freestyle) of everyone in the crew just standing around, too amused and baffled to do much apart from wait for him to stop, he runs out of steam. He then steps off the pavement, apparently forgetting that the camera he’s just been playing to is there, perched on a dolly. His weight sends the cheap, fairly unstable dolly hurtling towards the other end of the tracks. The dolly kicks when it hits the sandbags set up to keep the tracks in place and the battler dismounts with a little jump and surprising amount of grace. We all look on, horrified and equally grateful nothing is damaged. Another long pause.
‘Can I have a cigarette?’
The lighting guy obliges, and the aussie battler disappears into the night, presumably to rock other faces with his ill rhymes. We continue.
Some hours pass, and we’re essentially on schedule (which is film speak for acceptably behind schedule). And then, from the exact same place he had earlier emerged, comes the aussie battler. He looks around, clearly as unsure as we are as to how he’s managed to end up back here.
‘Wow. That’s kinda scary - it’s getting hairy, going for a walk and all the bitches wanna talk…‘
“Look mate, sorry, we’re actually trying to get things done, so…’
‘Oh right, yeah.’ he stands motionless. Another long Pause.
‘Can I have another cigarrette?’
The lighting guy tells him to fuck off, and he does.
We eventually finish shooting for the night, pack the cars up, tetris-like, with equpiment, and the crew leaves save for me, Cassidy (Director of Photography) and Alan (Producer). At roughly 5 in the morning, we try to start Cassidy’s car.
But Cassidy’s car does not start.
The Freakshow, Part 4
Posted by on March 4, 2012
Ketchup:
http://sleepers-wake.com/2011/12/13/the-freakshow-part-1/
http://sleepers-wake.com/2011/12/14/the-freakshow-part-2/
http://sleepers-wake.com/2012/01/05/the-freakshow-part-3/
Marcus was especially interesting. He has Aspergers too, but not as severe as Rory’s, which means you can have several conversations with him without realising anything is particularly different. Only after a while do you realise that certain phrases pop up very often, as stop gaps, placeholder statements. He’s incredibly friendly and sweet, Marcus, there doesn’t seem to be an iota of malice in him. He treats human interaction as a kind of study, some foreign culture he’s keen to know more about – invariably every conversation or anecdote ends with him checking his reactions against yours. ‘This is how I felt when this happened, do you think that’s how you would feel if that happened to you?’ He understands it just enough to know that he doesn’t understand.
In this regard, I’ve concluded, old Marcus isn’t actually all that different from most of us. But more on that later.
The bus takes us away from Marble Bar, away from my oblivious paramour and back to Port Hedland. But there are issues. Opening the door sets off a high-pitched whine, presumably designed to stop the driver driving off while the door is open. Generally, this whine stops when the door closes. Generally. Today however, it does not.
The whine is piercing and endless, the heat overwhelming. Our little crew, all fried or hung over or some ungodly combination of both are not all that happy. Dave’s mother, Joan (really, a passing mention of her doesn’t do her any justice. A great stresspot Catholic matriarch, she often carried the entire festival on her shoulders, and didn’t buckle once), calls in another in a list of a million favours, somehow finding a mechanic in the middle of nowhere, willing to help us out.
We stand around in the yard of the mechanics (a faintly ominous Lynchian scene, replete with decaying vehicles and animal sculptures made from rusted scrap metal) sipping on scalding tea from styrofoam cups. To kill time, we created the concept for a sitcom around one of the vehicles we saw. Gladys and I would be oddball roommates. We take on a lodger who turns out to be a tractor. Hilarity ensues. The only storyline we came up with as follows:
Charlie brings a date home, but tractor pulls! She finds him a-tractor-ve.
Sadly we almost immediately exhausted our stocks of tractor puns, and the sitcom remains a lost masterpiece.
From the mechanics, we stop at a gorge that Joan wants to show us. It’s glorious and every part of it feels truly alive, with lizards scampering about on the rocks, and tiny fish that scatter as your feet hit the water. To work your toes into its gravelly sand and frosted glass water was to connect with something permanent, some truth pleasingly free from the confines of language. The rock face stood with imperious beauty, seemingly indifferent as to whether anyone bothered to observe it. I was the only member of my band to swim, and the carers had briefly wandered off. I sat waist deep in the water, silently ignoring the passage of time, while the members of rudely interrupted were scattered around me, similarly mute. Except Rory.
Rory talks a lot, often certain phrases, likes lines from songs, repeated over and over. Or laughter, or humming, or animal noises. Kind of awesomely, Sam, no matter how far away he is, will invariably identify whatever animal it is that Rory impersonates. Rory will give an ’OoohOoohAAHAAH’ yelp and from across the room, you’ll hear a cry of ‘Monkey!’.
A really necessary component of social behaviour is occasionally pretending to understand or value something that you don’t to make a conversation go easier. Or at least it is to me. I have many, many conversational blind spots when it comes to adult life. Bring up, say, anything to do with money and I’ll smile and nod and make noises when I think I’m supposed to, throw in the odd non-specific ’wow’ or ‘bloody hell’ when the emphasis of the speaker indicates I should (or I think it does).
So the seemingly endless silence was pierced intermittently by Rory’s hooting and hollering, and there was Marcus with his generic ‘aren’t we having a nice time?’ smile, Josh all silent and hovering, Sam splashing the water with huge hands. I didn’t think of myself as the odd one out. I thought about all the times I’ve felt I had to lie, because I wanted people to think I was just like them.
Overheard in the smoking section
Posted by on February 18, 2012
‘A mate of mine ran over his cat. They used to play chicken in the driveway, and one time, the cat didn’t move fast enough.’
Another successful interaction.
Posted by on January 14, 2012
One time at a work function one of the girls we were with got very drunk. Like, borderline passout drunk. We were at some bar and there was this dude hitting on her, being very touchy feely in a slightly icky way, given the circumstances, in so far as she didn’t seem that into it, more passively indifferent than anything else. Anyway, he leaves for a second and I go up to her and ask ‘Is everything cool? Do you want any help getting rid of that creepy dude?”
”That’s my husband.”
Of course the second I knew that, his behaviour ceased to be creepy, it became very understandable . He was being protective and affectionate with his very drunk wife, at some work function were he didn’t know anyone and the only person making eye contact is some weedy dude staring at him like he’s a sex offender. But how to you explain that in a noisy bar to a barely concious woman you’ve just insulted?
I, for one, do not know.
The Freakshow, Part 3
Posted by on January 5, 2012
Wait, sorry, let me back up slightly. At this point, I should probably introduce the bands. Us first, as we were the opening act. The aforementioned Limpin’ Dave (vocals and ‘rhythm’ guitar), one of my oldest and dearest friends. A shambling Irish charm merchant, an inveterate party animal and poet whose appetite for wine, women and song would send Andrew WK scampering off for a nap after a few hours. On drums we have Gladys Spume, Stephen Fry’s metal head cousin, an erudite, witty gent with a fabulous sense of the absurd. He’s also a staggeringly knowledgeable linguist, and I dread the day he invariably writes a book. Make my work look a right load of clumsy toss, it will. Finally, on lead guitar, Mutley O’Muttleson, the skinniest and most hirsute beast in all Christendom, like Cousin It after a lengthy spot of fasting deciding to have a rushed and inexact shave. He’s also one of the most supremely gifted musicians I’ve ever encountered, better at most instruments than I am at any. There’s something rather wise and Zen about old Mutley. However warranted it may be, I can’t remember him ever raising his voice or getting upset at anyone.
I laugh more with these three than probably anyone outside my family, and when we play well, I find few greater comforts in this world than sharing a stage with them.
And now the headliners, Rudely Interrupted. On Bass we have Sam, a great thunderous boulder of a man in a lighting bolt cape, Rock music distilled to it’s grunting essence. He is also, it must be said, exceedingly gross, always farting in his hand and throwing it at you or wiping his nose and trying to get you to shake. If you meet him and he tells you it’s his birthday and asks you to buy him a drink, you probably should. He’s almost certainly not lying.
On Drums (and a truly sublime drummer he is too, one of the tightest and punchiest you’re ever likely to see) is Josh, a strangely beatific presence, his condition giving him a sunken look and making his movements ambling and deliberate. A man of few words, but often sweet and profound in their simplicity. When we last hung out with them, Gladys asked if Josh had any advice for him as a drummer. He thought briefly. ’Don’t muck up.’ I can’t say why exactly, but of all the rudelys, I think I miss Josh most of all.
Rory is the lead singer, a wonderful lyricist with perfect pitch and an eye for the ladies that makes James Bond seem a simpering ninny. Which is ironic, given that he was born without eyes. A little prickly and acerbic at times, but that’s probably on account of the aspergers.
Then there’s Marcus, the keyboardist, gregarious and sweet, interested and interesting. His warm, rich synth playing is one of the key components of the bands sound.
The band is rounded out by Rohan on Rhythm guitar. He’s the bands mentor and wrangler, a long time musician who does what is sometimes a very difficult job with humour, grace, determination and wisdom.
Check them out, this brief interview (a two parter, and it’s worth watching both) shows their dynamic and sound better than my words could:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqZnFnCowUU&feature=relmfu
The last I saw of rudely interrupted, they were boarding their bus back to their accommodation and eventually the airport. Josh and Sam were the last two onto the bus. One hand slung over each others shoulder, beer in the other, they raised their drinks to the sky, smiling and silent, and clinked them together, a little Eiffel tower of celebration, before disappearing around the corner. It was a moment that almost seemed choreographed, as though they knew it would one day be the image someone would use to fondly close a tale about them.
Stay tuned for Part 4: In-jokes and clarity.
