Author Archives: Graham Catt

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About Graham Catt

Graham Catt is a South Australian poet and writer of short stories. Sometimes he takes photos.

Kerryn Tredrea – Guest Poet

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This month I am very pleased to introduce the poetry of South Australian writer, Kerryn Tredrea. Kerryn is well known in the Adelaide poetry scene for her provocative writing and lively spoken word performances.

those moments.

it’s in those moments
when i’m caught
between touching you, and
not touching you,
and finding out that the truth
doesn’t always move
the narrative along
that my life takes on the
orchestration of a car accident.

it’s in those moments
when i keep finding the wrong
way to express myself
that i get the feeling i’m
a tourist here,
in my own town,
in my own home,
in my own bed.

it’s in those moments
when i’m pushing
myself too far, but somehow
it’s never far enough
and the burden of
carrying ugly
is just a knife slice
short of too heavy….

it’s in those moments.

art form.

sit by the window. type with one hand till the prozac takes hold. drop out to your alter ego ‘strap – on girl.’ take on the world with your sinister sister. paint pictures in porn. establish galleries of eyeball scraping masterpieces. break through the barriers of depravity and find fame in the strangest of places.

angels speak in fingers and tongues like deaf people. you are secretly suspicious of the handicapped. refuse to learn their language. still their sounds loop through your mind like a skip rope rhyme. your shadow slumps in the corner, exhausted, the little egos that you nurture in the window box are struggling in the winter sun, your guts feel like a traffic jam of fire engines. oh the humanity.

plagued by impossibilities, you obsess with pretensions at company. leave the door creaking. read dead lovers love letters. use comfort puppets around the lounge room and as occasional dance partners. put pillows under the doona, roll over and pretend that someone’s there.

loneliness, like pornography is an art form.


newcastle.

winter walks behind me but is sympathetic to my needs as foot falls echo off deaf walls and the gutters give nothing away to the full, fat moon hanging belly heavy in the early sky, mocking my moods and the decisions i make. but, girlfriends forever i never hold it against her even though her body is very beautiful.

desire comes too, clinging to an unfortunate chain of events that eventually show up in my underwear and inner linings. she is slow and chooses the shadows since being wounded in the war that nearly bought the whole house down. i wait for her because her dreams are strong.

adrenalin from within gives me speed, gives me needs that i cannot put names or faces to. and when i see my brother standing by the road i do try a little kindness but that only winds up as another meat hook moment – i just don’t know how else to end it when tender doesn’t cut it and nice doesn’t have him begging for more.

vibrations shake each footstep is a beginning and an end, a moment and a memory making tear drops mix with beer slops as i bumpy ride my way is long, longer than either road travelled no matter which route you take helicopters circle in a serendipity that rarely touches me but shines brightly through the eyes of others.

if it’s my way or the highway then i try the middle of a green lighted george street – rush hour pushes trucks thunder rumble through my every membrane where the word of the day is alert to flirt with danger no stranger to straddling the thin white line that is over in a footstep, in a heartbeat, in a sigh.

About Kerryn:

i am an adelaide poet, spoken word tourist and current secretary of the friendly st. poets committee. my publishing credits include paroxysm press anthologies, vernacular, sidewalk, friendly st. reader, releasing my first book “adventures in captivity” in 2004 through paroxysm press. my poem “cigarettes and speed don’t work anymore.” placed third in the melb. poets union international poetry comp. 2004. currently i am putting the finishing adjectives on a novella and planning my next trip to the overload poetry festival in melbourne. i like my poems to have a short attention span and sharp edges.

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Corduroy & Cabbage 6 – Sex Education

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My parents took me to all those Primary School sex education evenings where you watched dull 50s American documentaries involving clean-cut American teens and their mysterious problems, and you were given diagrams of such things as fallopian tubes and vas deferens. I came away from those evenings with some understanding of the mechanics behind the reproduction process, but no real idea of how it applied to the real world. It all seemed very vague and abstract to me.

Everything became even more confusing when my friends and I found a collection of pornographic magazines. We were riding our bikes around the back of the local shopping centre one afternoon, when Ashley suggested we look in the big industrial rubbish bins kept there for use by the shops. He was convinced we’d find toys, electrical goods, tools and other goodies in there. We didn’t find anything like that, but we did find a big box of porn, not just glossy ‘girly’ magazines, but hard-core stuff, with head jobs, spurting cocks and wide-open beavers. For a bunch of 7 or 8 year olds it was like coming across evidence of an alien civilization. The pictures were exciting, shocking and a little bit frightening.

As the ‘finder’ of the magazines, Ashley felt he should be the one to look after them. We helped him carry them home in a variety of bags and boxes, and smuggled them into his room, where they were secreted safely under his bed. The next day at school, news of the discovery spread like a contagious disease. “Ashley’s got porn,” was the catch cry of the day. The fact that no one actually knew what ‘porn’ was made everyone all the more curious.

That night, and every night of that week, children that Ashley barely knew were appearing on his doorstep. “We came over to…er…see Ashley,” they would explain to Ashley’s bewildered mother. After being escorted to his room, Ashley would reveal the magazines with great ceremony, to gasps of disbelief from his visitors.

Ashley’s mother may have become suspicious of the sudden interest in her son, but it was something else that gave the game away. After spending time in the shopping centre bins with rotten meat and other revolting items, the magazines had acquired a rather unpleasant odour. It was upon investigating the source of the stench that Ashley’s mum discovered his porn stash. He was ‘grounded’ for a month. Of course, Ashley’s parents immediately told my parents about our disgusting secret, and I was punished too.

Things never entirely returned to ‘normal’ after the porn incident. It was like we’d been awakened to a new and ugly side of life. Suddenly sex was everywhere. It’s not as though we started having orgies with our 8-year-old friends – it was just as difficult connecting the pornographic images to ‘real life’ as it was the images in the Sex Ed documentaries, but some of our activities did become tainted by the exposure to sex.

Not long after Ashley’s one-month punishment had expired we built a cubby in the vacant block next to his house. We’d found a pile of discarded building materials and managed to erect quite a solid structure. The cubby house had walls and doors, and a carpeted floor. We felt quite safe and sheltered there. Some days, when everyone was together, we’d take our clothes off and sit there in the nude. It wasn’t overtly sexual at all; there was no touching or anything. It was just like a nudist colony – for youngsters.

And later still, a bizarre trend started among our peer group. We started wearing our trousers low at the back, so that the tops of our bum cracks showed. This was especially exaggerated when we rode our bikes. Our backsides would have been almost completely exposed. Thankfully, the trend never caught on in the wider community.

I’ve had an aversion to pornography ever since that first incident. I’m sure it has something to do with the smell accompanying that first glimpse of hard-core flesh – rotten cabbage, rotten cauliflowers, and rotten meat.

Cars – a Review

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After seeing the teaser trailer for Cars about a year ago I was preparing myself for the first Pixar failure. The story sounded dull, and the characters looked clumsy and unconvincing. But not only is the movie far from a failure, it is among the best of the Pixar collection.

It shouldn’t work. The fact that it does, and does so well, is a tribute to the skills of Pixar’s artists and storytellers. I must admit, the car is far harder to anthropomorphise than the insect or the fish, and it did take a while to warm to the characters, but by the end of the movie I actually cared about them.

The story follows the career of cocky young racing car named Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) who gets waylaid in the quiet backwater of Radiator Springs on his way to race for the Piston Cup in California. At first, he proves unpopular with the locals, and his over-confident city ways only get him into more trouble. But, as Lightning gets to know the residents of Radiator Springs – Mater the Tow Truck, Sally the Porsche, Fillmore the hippie VW, and town patriarch, Doc Hudson – they begin to see a more likeable, generous side of him.

Of course, during his stay in Radiator Springs, Lightning learns much about life. He falls in love with Sally the Porsche, finds a new ‘best friend’ in Mater, and uncovers the secret history of Doc Hudson (voiced by screen legend and racing buff Paul Newman). He also learns of the town’s former glory days, before it was bypassed by the interstate freeway.

Will Lightning get the ‘girl’, save the town, earn the respect of Doc, and win the Piston Cup? These various plot strands come together nicely in the last moments, and there is still room for a few unexpected developments.

Cars is not devoid of clichés and stereotypes (grouchy patriarch versus young upstart, the obsequious Italian tyre merchants), but given the freshness of the rest of the film, and the lush visual treatment, these can probably be forgiven. The movie is stunning to look at, with some gorgeous landscapes and many other beautiful details. Indeed, it is the fine details that set Pixar movies ahead of the rest, and Cars is no exception, with each frame filled with original ideas and images.

As is usual for Pixar movies, there are plenty of jokes. It’s not as funny as Monsters Inc or the Toy Story movies, but there’s still enough to amuse most people. Stay alert during the final credits. I laughed most at a series of gags slipped in when most people were filing out of the cinema.

Judging by the number of previews screened before Cars, computer animated films are here to stay (at least, for a while). Unfortunately, few filmmakers seem to be able to balance the various elements of the animated film as well as Pixar.

You can see why they might want to keep trying though. John Lasseter and friends make it all look so easy.

Return to Cookie Mountain – a Review

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In a decade punctuated by revivals (garage rock, post punk) it is rare to come across a band with a completely original sound. TV on the Radio are one of those rare bands. Hailing from the same New York art/music scene as Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem, TV on the Radio’s first album ‘Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babies’ received glowing reviews around the world. The band’s combination of complex vocal arrangements, intelligent lyrics and industrial/electronic sounds, as well as a mixture of music styles, was new and exciting.

After a change of labels, the recruitment of new band members, and innumerable delays, the follow up to ‘Desperate Youth’ is finally here. The oddly titled ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’ is a progression for the band in every sense. There is a greater variety in sound and mood, while the songs are more complex and, at the same time, more accessible.

The album opens with a sequence of songs that is as good as anything I’ve heard in recent years. Unlike ‘Desperate Youth’, which maintained a slow and ponderous pace, ‘Cookie Mountain’ features a number of uptempo tracks. ‘Wolf Like Me’ rattles into life with the force of a locomotive. Vocalists, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone, trade lyrical blows over layered guitar and droning synths, until a shift in tempo halfway through the song ushers in a chorus of music box sounds.

‘I Was A Lover’ starts with a stuttering mechanised beat, wheezing synth and clanging guitar sample. The mood is dark and unsettling. The lyrics suggest paranoia and schizophrenia.

I was a lover before this war
lived in a luxury suite
behind a barricade door

Later, the narrator confronts a clone who ‘wears a brownshirt’ and whom he ‘seduces when there’s no one around’.

‘Province’ is a love song of sorts. Messrs Adebimpe, Malone, and a certain Mr Bowie, harmonise about ‘autumn leaves’ and ‘memories precious as gold’ over shuffling beat and sparse piano.

Hold your heart courageously as we walk into this dark place
Stand steadfast beside me and see that love is the province of the brave

‘Province’ is followed by another uptempo track, ‘Hours’. The song is deceptively simple – trademark vocals over crisp, militaristic drumming. Yet the space around these sounds is filled with hints of saxophone and guitar, glistening keyboards and electronics.

These four tracks set the musical and lyrical tone for ‘Cookie Mountain’. It’s a formidable opening. But by starting with such a strong set of songs, the band sets expectations high for the second half of the album. Briefly, it seems we might be disappointed.

‘Playhouses’, builds on the claustrophobia of ‘I Was A Lover’, with layers of noise, voice and increasingly frenetic percussion, while ‘Let The Devil In’ varies the template with the addition of a playful bass melody. The second of these, in particular, is more than a little laboured.

After this minor mid-record slump, ‘Dirtywhirl’ introduces another series of remarkable songs, each built around a simple melody, each given moments of light and dark. ‘Whirlwind’ itself starts slowly, just tambourine and vibes, before the drums kick in. The lyrics are ominous – ‘there is a murderess among us’ – with Adebimpe and Malone harmonising to great effect over an almost swinging rhythm.

‘Tonight’ is a quiet melancholic tune, with just chimes and electronics keeping the vocals company. The lyrics too, suggest resignation and decay, citing suicide, ‘dusty portraits’ and ‘blooms falling from the vine’. The third song in this trio, ‘A Method’, starts with little more than whistling and handclaps, before erupting in a storm of percussion. It’s a thrilling moment. Once again, the song is propelled by a simple, even naive melody, with each vocal or instrumental layer adding colour to the mix.

There are two more songs on ‘Cookie Mountain’, the sax and clatter of ‘Blues From Down Here’, and the apocalyptic drone of ‘Wash The Day’, but by this time the album’s worth has already been well established. Seven of the eleven songs here are exceptional, and only one (‘Let The Devil In’) is really less than noteworthy.

I played ‘Desperate Youth’ again after listening to the new album a dozen or so times, and it seemed somehow crude and incomplete. The basic elements – vocals, guitar loops and effects, percussion – were in place, but the songs themselves seemed a little one-dimensional. ‘Cookie Mountain’ uses these same elements to create far more dramatic, complex and colourful pieces.

It might be only be June, but ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’ is an early contender for ‘Album of the Year’.

PJ Harvey on Tour – a Review

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Not long into this new dvd release Polly Harvey confesses to hating the average live album or dvd. She says her aim with this dvd was to do something different, a ‘patchwork quilt’ of images and sounds. ‘PJ Harvey On Tour’ is certainly different to most other dvds of this kind, whether or not it achieves Harvey’s goal of making an authentic live document, rather than a ‘slick package’, is another matter.

The disc features sixteen songs from PJ Harvey’s ‘Uh Huh Her’ tour in 2004, representing, one assumes, a typical PJ performance. However, rather than just run through a show from start to finish, this collection pieces together snippets of different performances, even slipping from one to another mid-song. Interspersed with the songs are various behind-the-scenes clips – sound checks, rehearsals, interviews, backstage drinking competitions.

PJ Harvey has always shone as a live performer, and her efforts here are as good as might be expected. She swaggers, shakes, pouts, howls – in fact, the transformation from quietly spoken, shy Polly, as seen in some of the interview footage, to sexy, dangerous PJ on stage, is quite remarkable.

The songs from ‘Uh Huh Her’ in particular (which sounded somewhat muted on cd) are especially good. Other highlights include ‘Dress’, ‘Down By The Water’, ‘Victory’, ‘A Perfect Day Elise’ and ‘Harder’. Most of Harvey’s albums are represented here although, surprisingly, there is only one song – ‘Big Exit’ – from her most successful album, ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’.

While Polly is undoubtedly the focal point of proceedings, she is ably supported by an enthusiastic young band. Guitarist, Josh Klinghoffer, plays as though either blind drunk or in the midst of convulsions (or both) – he staggers, stumbles, falls over; while the Mohawk-haired bass-player, Dingo, stalks the stage like a man possessed.

Long term Harvey collaborator and director, Maria Mochnacz, has chosen to shoot the dvd in a variety of ways – fuzzy focus, grainy black and white, stark documentary-style realism. She also tries to capture the performances from as many angles as possible – front, back, above, below – even from cameras mounted on the instruments themselves. Altogether, this enormous range of shots helps to achieve PJ’s ‘patchwork quilt’ of images.

The only thing I did wonder about this approach – the melding together of so many different shots, from different locations and different performances – was the distance of the finished product from the original live show. The end result sometimes more closely resembles a promotional video rather than a live performance.

The ‘bonus feature’ on this dvd release is a 30 minute interview with PJ Harvey, during which she offers insights into the ‘Uh Huh Her’ project – recording techniques, artwork, working methods and so on. As Harvey has offered little in the way of such things in the past, it is all fascinating stuff.

‘PJ Harvey On Tour’ is an entertaining and insightful dvd release from one of the most original singer-songwriters of the last 10-15 years. Of course, it doesn’t come close to actually seeing PJ in concert, but then nothing does…

Belle & Sebastian at Thebarton Theatre – a Review

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When Stuart Murdoch came on stage wearing a bowler hat and sipping a cup of tea we knew we were in for a different kind of rock experience. Indeed, given the beatific smiles soon decorating the faces of the crowd, and the warmth and good humour generated by Murdoch and co, we could have almost been at a Christian Youth rally. There was an intimacy too, with band members chatting amongst themselves and the audience – telling jokes, stories, borrowing cigarettes. Belle and Sebastian are the sort of band you wouldn’t be afraid to invite to your home.

The band opened with a lovely rendition of long-time favourite ‘Stars of Track and Field’ from their second album ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, before launching into a string of songs from their latest album ‘The Life Pursuit’. While songs from ‘Pursuit’ provided the bulk of the set list, one of the pleasant surprises of the evening was the appearance of so many older songs – ‘We Rule The School’, ‘Dog On Wheels’ and ‘She’s Losin’ It’ among them.

One of the highlights was a lively version of ‘Electronic Renaissance’, which had Murdoch and lead guitarist, Stevie Jackson, pogoing about the stage like puppets. Another older tune, ‘Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie’, provided the band with a rare opportunity to ‘rock out’ (or as close to ‘rocking out’ as Belle and Sebastian are likely to get).

Of the new songs ‘Funny Little Frog’, ‘We Are The Sleepyheads’ and, especially, ‘Dress Up In You’ stood out, while audience favourites ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ and ‘I’m A Cuckoo’ also sparkled.

As principal songwriter and band founder, Stuart Murdoch certainly comes across as the ‘man in charge’. But one gets the impression that Stevie Jackson’s contribution to the group is particularly important. Apart from being a skilled guitarist, he also takes on lead singer duties for ‘Song For Sunshine’ and ‘Jonathan David’, while his unassuming Buddy Holly-meets-George McFly persona (and robotic dance technique) provides an entertaining focal point.

With eight people on stage, and most called upon to play several instruments over the course of the evening, there was always something happening. In fact, given the number of people and instruments squeezed into the space, it is perhaps surprising that everything ran as smoothly as it did. The evening’s few hiccups gave the band an opportunity to joke around. When keyboard player, Sarah, left the stage for a toilet break, Jackson entertained the audience with an impromptu version of a song called (appropriately) ‘Adelaide’.

After a rapturous response from the crowd, Belle and Sebastian returned for a three-song encore, which included an improvised (and dubious) version of Bryan Ferry’s ‘Let’s Stick Together’, as well as latest single ‘The Blues Are Still Blue’ and a soaring ‘Sleep The Clock Around’.

It’s not often that I leave a concert with a grin on my face. I wasn’t the only one. As the audience streamed out of Thebarton Theatre into the cold night I noticed everyone sporting the same blissed-out expression. It takes a special kind of magic to send people home in such a state, and Belle and Sebastian seem to have such magic in bucket loads.

I’m guessing it might have something to do with the tea.

The Generation Rap, Part Two

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When I read my dad’s article there were a number of points I disagreed with, the first being that the idea that “teenagers must disagree with their parents”. It is true to some extent, but it was never intentional for me to disagree with my dad about music. I don’t do it on purpose… unless it is to stir him up when he is clearly irritable. For example, I have recently taken to watching Big Brother, not because I like it, but because there is nothing else on. And if Dad didn’t complain about how awful the show is I doubt I would watch it at all.

When I was younger I saw how similar my dad and sister’s taste in music was. And I don’t know if it was because I didn’t want to be like them, or if I just wanted be “part of the crowd”, there was just no way that I could have the same taste in music as they did. However, a small part of their taste in music has crept into mine. This has resulted in me being a fan of all sorts of music (not just rap) – The Beatles, Kanye West, The B-52s, Ben Folds Five, The Spice Girls, Bette Midler, Death Cab for Cutie, Kate Ceberano, and Eminem (just to name a few).

The other correction that I have to make is Dad quoting me calling the music he listens to “Dad’s music”. The term my sister and I actually use is “depressing man music”, and it usually consists of some guy, not singing, but whining, to a really awful downbeat tune. The music isn’t played quietly either, it blares and echoes from his room. I can’t provide an example of this type of music, as Dad doesn’t seem to have used any of them in his list of songs.

When Dad asked me to participate in his project I was more than happy. And when he asked me to provide him with a list of favourite rap songs I will admit I did choose ones that I knew he would find a challenge to listen to objectively. I don’t know why but for some reason I couldn’t help it.

Anyway, here are my comments on some of Dad’s favourite tunes:

1) Pixies – Gigantic

I don’t mind this song. It starts off well anyway with a mix of guitar and the tapping of drumsticks. I like the singer’s voice as well – it’s quite unusual and for some reason appeals to me. Although this could be because it sounds very similar to the music played on The O.C. The song becomes dull towards the end as the chorus is repeated way too many times, and I have a very short attention span.

2) Bjork – Human Behaviour

I have nothing against Bjork. I love her voice. It is so unique. The clicking mixed with the drums as well as the vocals makes a very interesting combination.

3) Massive Attack – Unfinished Sympathy

For some reason this song reminds me of my childhood. I don’t know if it is because of this, or if it is the combination of different sounds, but I like this song. I enjoy the sound of the voice and its echoes. I also love the rhythm. The lyrics are easy to follow and as I listen to the song I find that I am bopping my head…. that’s got to be a good sign.

4) The Cure – Love Song

I can’t like this song. It starts off well with the drums and the guitar but I find the voice so frustrating. A lot of the words are lost in the singer’s exhalation. It just doesn’t appeal to me.

5) The Smiths – Panic

This song is a definite reminder of my childhood. My sister and I used to spend alternate weekends with our mother, and when she dropped us back home, this song, and others like it, would be blaring from the house while Dad did the weekly ironing. I quite like this song. I really like the lead singer’s voice and the overall rhythm of the song.

6) Belle and Sebastian – The State I Am In

The fact that the song starts with the vocals is quite intriguing. The lyrics don’t really appeal to me, but I’m not sure why. I don’t mind this song, but it is definitely not something that would voluntarily listen to.

7) Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees

I don’t really know what to say about this song. It is slow paced and doesn’t appeal to me straight away, although I do like the sound of the voice. There is something I just don’t like about it… I just can’t say what it is.

8) Kraftwerk – The Model

I am sure that I have heard this song before. No doubt it would be due to the paper-thin walls that separate my room from Dad’s. The electronic sounds are different, although I don’t think I like it. The song reminds me too much of the music that my dad and his friends used to write and record. I know this is probably the sound that the artist wanted to achieve, but it is definitely not something that appeals to me.

9) New Order – Temptation

For some reason I am a fan of this song. It seems my Dad has picked a lot of the songs that he used to listen to during the nineties. I like the song, but I’m not sure why, as the singer’s voice really doesn’t appeal to me.

10) The Stone Roses – She Bangs The Drum

I really do like how this song begins. But when the vocals start I just switch off.

And that’s that! I loved Bjork, but I’ve always enjoyed her music. I liked revisiting some odd childhood memories. However, I am still quite disappointed that Dad didn’t include one of the ‘depressing man music’ songs in his list. It would be nice if people knew what my sister and I were talking about, rather than think we were just being disagreeable teenagers.


To read The Generation Rap, Part One click on this link.

May Daze

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My daughter moved to Canberra in January. Not long after, we made arrangements to visit her for her birthday at the end of May. Since then, delays in the sale of our house have meant that settlement, and our subsequent move to a new house, have ended up coinciding with our return from Canberra. It was likely to be a hectic few days.

My anxiety levels were already at ‘eleven’ before landing in Canberra. I spent the entire flight worrying about all the things I had to do when we got back. My daughter, E, and her boyfriend met us at the airport. They then proceeded to argue all the way to our hotel. Canberra is a small city, but its road system is designed to cause the maximum frustration and confusion. Often, traveling from point A to point B is no simple matter. E and her boyfriend argued about the best way to get to our hotel, then about their comparative driving skills. By the time we got to our hotel I needed some tranquilizers and a soft pillow.

We were only in Canberra for five days, but it seemed a lot longer. Every morning I woke at 3.00am and lay huddled in the freezing dark worrying about things I had forgotten to do at home, or imagining all the things that could go wrong on ‘moving day’. I imagined the removalist’s van bursting into flames. I imagined them not turning up at all, and our possessions left by the side of the road. By the time I got up I felt sick. I spent the rest of the day stumbling around like a zombie.

Concerned about my debilitating anxiety, my daughter gave me a hypnosis cd that promised to provide peace and tranquility. I listened to it in the evening after we’d returned to our hotel room. A monotone voice soon lulled me to sleep. Unfortunately, I still woke up at 3.00am the next morning. I didn’t feel at all tranquil or peaceful. I was cold, tired and pissed off. I tried listening to it a few more times and either fell asleep or developed a headache.

Meanwhile, our time in the national capital passed pleasantly enough. We visited galleries, museums, restaurants, shops and monuments. We also went to Cockington Green, a village of miniature buildings. I wasn’t as awful as you might imagine, although I did find myself fighting the urge to impersonate Godzilla and stomp on the little people and buildings.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I relaxed the entire time I was in Canberra. It wasn’t the fault of the city or my daughter or even the hypnosis cd. I just couldn’t stop worrying about the upcoming move. From the moment we arrived back in Adelaide I was busy packing and making lists of things to do.

On the day of the move itself I awoke at 5.00am. By the time the removalists arrived at 8.00 I had all of our possessions ready to load into the van. I’d done everything but actually drag the stuff down the driveway. The removalists were two beefy guys who made moving enormous pieces of furniture looking simple. I tended to heighten this impression by attempting to move things on my own and appearing weak and pathetic. Within an hour or so they had everything we owned stacked neatly into the back of their truck.

Of course, the van didn’t burst into flames, and everything was delivered to our new address and unloaded without incident. That night I slept more soundly that I had for several weeks.

I have to remind myself that worrying doesn’t achieve much besides encourage stomach ulcers, tension headaches and wrinkles. And the things I worry about never actually happen… do they?

Candy – a Review

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I really wanted to like Candy. After all, it’s not often I get to review a movie bearing my own name. But despite my best efforts to embrace the film, something about it fell short, and I came away feeling somewhat disappointed. Given the strength of the source material it really should have been something special, rather than a solid but unremarkable drama.

Candy is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by acclaimed Australian poet Luke Davies, and details the relationship between the titular Candy, a beautiful young artist, and Dan, her aimless heroin-addict boyfriend. The movie makes some alterations to the story, omitting some scenes and characters, while developing others. Candy’s parents, merely background characters in the novel, have been given a higher profile, and the couple’s heroin-addict friend and mentor, Casper, has also become a more important figure.

The movie follows the couple’s gradual decline – from the first euphoric encounters with heroin, to the descent into prostitution and petty crime, and the inevitable madness and dissolution. It’s a grim tale, and there’s not much in the way of a plot beyond this sketchy outline. Candy and Dan experience the occasional glimmer of hope, a lighter moment or two (thanks mainly to Geoffrey Rush’s Casper), but for the most part it’s pretty desperate stuff.

Candy will remind you of other ‘heroin movies’, however, it has neither the humour of Trainspotting, nor the visual style of Requiem for a Dream, to offset the relentless squalor. Apart from a handful of scenes, the incidents are generally mundane and unspectacular – Candy and Dan shoot up, sit around, steal things, and shoot up some more. In its favour it does offer a more realistic portrayal of the addict’s lifestyle than either of the aforementioned movies. This is due, for the most part, to the fabulous performances of the two young leads – Abbie Cornish as Candy, and Heath Ledger as Dan.

Cornish and Ledger are well supported by Noni Hazelhurst and Tony Martin as Candy’s parents. The few scenes featuring all four actors are among the best in the film (in particular the doomed ‘country lunch’).

There are a few other standout scenes. The sequence detailing Candy and Dan’s efforts to stop taking heroin is appropriately horrific, and the couple’s marriage reception is cringingly awkward (Dan shoots up in the toilet then falls asleep while talking to Candy’s relatives).

The film’s conclusion is one of its weaker points. Unlike the novel, in which Candy and Dan’s relationship just fizzles out over time, the film attempts to end their romance in one dramatic scene. The resulting encounter is somewhat forced and doesn’t quite ring true.

Go and see Candy, if only for the performances of Abbie Cornish and Heath Ledger. It might not be the best film you’ll see this year, nor the most entertaining, but its portrayal of love and addiction is honest, insightful and quite moving.

Corduroy & Cabbage 5 – The Lucky Socks

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I don’t think I ever had a real conversation with my first ‘girlfriend’. We met in the shelter shed of our Primary School during the summer break. We held hands and kissed. She was buck-toothed and greasy–haired and I was a skinny, scrawny kid with pimples. I don’t even know if I liked her, or she me. But it seemed like the thing to do, and it was certainly something different, so I went along with it. When we went back to school after the holidays she sent one of her friends to tell me that I was ‘dropped’. I don’t blame her.

Then, as now, I only seemed to really like the girls that had no interest in me. There was a short dark girl called Lesley in Infant School who I told was ‘sexy’ without having any idea what it meant. And a skinny English girl called Carol whose house I used to find reasons to loiter outside on the weekend. Much later, towards the end of High School, I developed my first teenage ‘crush’ on a girl called Marcia.

I been in the same class as Marcia throughout most of Primary School, and saw her often in High School, but I’d barely ever spoken to her. I’m not sure why I suddenly found her so attractive. She was a bit of a tomboy – loud and boisterous, even a bit obnoxious at times. She hung around with the ‘sports crowd’ during recess and lunch, played football and soccer with the boys. We couldn’t have been any more different. But one day I woke up and decided that I loved her more than anything else in the world and couldn’t live without her.

I began to structure my days in order to spend as much time in her company as possible. I tried to sit near her in class. I tried to walk where she would walk, and hang around the areas she frequented. I even feigned an interest in sport and sat around the oval hoping to ‘bump’ into her. But despite all my efforts she never seemed to notice me. It was as though I was invisible.

Even my efforts to enlist ‘supernatural’ forces failed. On the days I was most likely to see her I wore my lucky socks. I even had a ‘special’ Thin Lizzy song I played in the hope that it would somehow plant a loving image of me in her mind. I tried spells and potions, and all manner of ‘magical’ chants, but nothing worked.

As the months passed, and the obsession with Marcia started to form an ugly knot in my belly, I decided to confide in a friend. His advice was simple and to-the-point. “Tell her you like her,” he said. “I can’t do that!’ was my horrified response. But the choices were that simple, either I told her how I felt, and lived with the consequences, or forgot about her, and concentrated on other things (like my schoolwork).

The following day, I was careful to leave the school grounds at the same time as her. As we lived in the same direction, the fact that I was walking behind her was not all that unusual. But normally I would keep a safe distance, too scared to actually communicate with her. This day I sped up and drew alongside.

“Oh hi,” I said unconvincingly, as though I had just noticed her.

“Hi,” replied Marcia, with a not-too-unfriendly smile.

“Um…er…Marcia,” I stammered, wanting to get straight to the point. ”I really like you.”

“Oh…er…I like you too,” said Marcia. “But not in that way. I have a boyfriend y’know.”

“Um…er…oh,” I continued. “Okay…er…goodbye then…”

I then pretended I was heading in another direction and disappeared down a side street that would lead in the opposite direction to home. I felt embarrassed, foolish, stupid, clumsy and heartbroken. But I also felt relieved. The tension that had gripped me for months was finally gone.

When I got home I threw my lucky socks into the incinerator.