Dark and Stormy.

1.

"And so, as the wind changes, so does the mood…

A great depression shakes me from my bunk and I am charged nocturnally with nightmares and terrors the like of which I have never known. Each time the rum soaked day cajoles me back to sanity my own mind pulls me back into the gloom, creating ever more painfull and disgusting ways to taunt me, finding ever more artistic and macarbre angles with which to draw sorrow screaming from my dry mouth. Seeing things so eternally hurtful and being unable to shed but a single tear. Hearing words so hateful I can but only wish to haul the world from its roots, yet when I try to scream my throat is mute; bereft of its chance to mourn. Being laughed at again, and again, and again, and again, and again, by the one I wanted the most.....She.

The dream world is a cruel and remorseless plane.

I awake, exhausted, to wish I could sleep, but am only too aware of what may happen if I do. So I sit with crooked neck and stare out of my small cabin window. The skys are no longer the rich blue they were but have turned a heavy grey. The temperature has dropped too, effecting the spirits of all. My own are laden to say the least. The wind batters the glass, and I admit to wondering how I will ever lift this haze of depression that so clouds my mind and judgement.

Having reached news from afar and seeing my fellow countrymen celebrating queen and country into the night with such wonderful music, it is fair to say that there have not been many occasions on which I have felt the arc of distance between them and I quite so keenly as I do now, nor do I wish there to be many more.

To my own regret and alarm I have felt a great many dark thoughts melt past one another, slickly sliding like the many other monsters of the deep. It is beyond me to know what to do for the best, except to traverse this grey day, try to sleep off its ill effects and start all over again on the morrow. No part of me was fool enough to think that this was not a possible outcome of a lonesome 12’000 mile journey, nor did I think that the sailing would always be plain, but I feel the hold of melancholy so tightly that I fear I may lose my own grip. 

It is not unknown for a man to succumb to such sadness and decay on such lonely nights on a dark and stormy sea…"

2.

It has been an interesting week. At least, I could never say it had been uninteresting, though interesting may perhaps be the wrong word. I think my last caffeine and adrenaline fueled post was written very much in a state of change and displacement and while I was excited I think my brain was yet to adjust to its new surroundings and distance. Not that everything has been woeful, far from it; but I have found this week challenging and alien in equal parts.

It was always my intension to detail my time away with whatever openness and honesty I could muster and so please forgive the slightly darker tone of these scrawlings. I would do myself a disservice if I simply wrote about milkshakes and haircuts (though I will indeed tell of them both) so I'm gonna give it to you straight, all be it probably with a healthy dose of pretentious rhetoric thrown in for good measure.

I have found myself feeling very alone at times, despite the growing group of nice people I've been lucky enough to meet and hangout with in Fitzroy so far. Feelings that I for the most part left behind a month or so ago have returned with a vengeance, only this time with the added weight of a 12'000 mile void. I suppose in a sense I'm lucky that i've never really felt truly alone until now. Thats what I came out here for though, right? To face this shit head on! To face loneliness, to confront insecurities, to overcome bitterness, anxiety and sadness?

Well, in theory....yes....however the reality of the situation was something that I was in hindsight probably not all that well prepared for. The one thing that is for sure, however, is that I do not want to be that person anymore and I'm getting totally fucked off with depression and nightmares.....I mean how many 30 year old men suffer insane nightmares nearly every night? Not recurring nightmares, but a truly symphonic, rhapsodic, theme and variations on the same jagged melody of painful experience. I mustn't let this crap define me though and I must learn to take my own advice.....everything seems so neat and ordered and black and white and left and right when I set it down like this for you all. It's oddly cathartic to write this shit down and intensionally invite you to become voyeurs into my weird life.

Onto the good stuff......the stuff wot i've been getting up to.

On Thursday I went to see a graffiti battle! Just like a rap battle but with two apposing street artists from Melbourne facing off over two huge canvases placed side by side....90 minutes, no spray, black on white only. I was there with my new group of friends, Kyle, Shayli, Albert, Liam, Ruby and of course my old comrade Doug. We we're all on the side of Chris "Hancock" (Kyle's fiance), all-round good guy and sick artist.... just like a rap battle, the audience members were in support of one artist or the other and just like a rap battle the artists endeavored to use their talent to diss their opponent. Our boy Chris won both the judges votes and the audience 'scream-o-meter' vote. Three out of three. Smashed it! You can see pictures of the event here. A hectic night of partying ensued and I awoke with a dull, thudding head and painted nails. Also somehow during the night my brain took a dive and I spent the next two days being darker than hell.

Friday saw some winter sunshine and I sat on the porch at the front of the house where I'm staying like a proper redneck drinking beers, smoking cigarettes and reading Hemingway. I even wore shorts for a while. Before long an impromptu gathering occurred and most of our household sat like rednecks, singing country songs and trying to keep our feet in the dwindling rays. Doug bought me a knife to start whittling with....there is a banjo here too. Yea-haaa!!!! Later that night we drank Dark and Stormys (rum and ginger beer) and talked shit into the night until I felt I had to sleep and throw myself into the nightmares again (joy).

The 'Deliverance' porch at Napier St. where I'm staying.

On Saturday, after some pretty serious sitting around and drinking too much coffee I went out on my own to see a local band called Mesa Cosa. They ruled. Mariachi thrash punk. Much fun.... I'm determined to wrangle my way into playing a mexican trumpet solo with them at a show next week (you know how much i'd nail that right!!!???)....anyway I was talking to their drummer 'knives' and he said I could, so there. After that we drank and danced the night away.... I went to bed with a feeling of foreboding..... Justified.

Having slept for a turbulent and almost pointless three hours Doug and Siena got me up at 8 a.m to take me to a crazy antique warehouse op-shop thing in the middle of nowhere. We had tea in a train and looked at old stuff till our eyes nearly fell out.... Cheese burgers, the beach boys and the best chocolate milkshake i've ever had finished our day at an American diner in South Yarra called 'Soda Rocks'.  

Monday was very......ummm......Monday. You know how Mondays are sometimes, right? Well it was like that only stormier and colder. I was darker than hell again so I cooked everyone a phat stew and it lifted the dulldrums a little. Monday, thankfully and unsurprisingly gave way to Tuesday and that was much better (waking from nightmares on tuesday morning having been the lowest of the low)! 


I went into the city on my own, a simple thing one might think. It very much is a simple thing, but something I've never really attempted before. I realise how lame that sounds, but, well, you know the score, confidence and all that. Anyhow I visited the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and had a great time on my own. I didn't even have the normal sickening levels of insecurity and uncomfortableness whilst getting well involved in all the interactive stuff that place has, so not all bad. I even got a brilliant souvenir! A flip book of myself flipping the infamous Dobson birds. Sick. I decided not to bother with the tram on the way home and walked from central Melbourne out to Fitzroy. Nice.

Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). Skills.

So, Fitzroy is great. But, for me, almost too hip. I've never been anywhere this hip. So hip it hurts. And is confusing. And makes you feel unhip. All about haircuts. And Ironic Goth chicks  (yeah, uh huh, Ironic goth chicks)...however the people here seem pretty happy, and other than one guy (who was so up himself I wanted to jump of the roof of the bar we were in) nearly everyone has been sweet to me. It's just.....well, everyone here is either a pro graffiti artist, a model, a DJ or a tattoo artist. But, it takes all sorts, right? And I'm not mocking it, its certainly lively, but I'm from Plymouth..... I'll get used to it. 


The Fitzroy street art is up there with the best in the world and is genuinely something to behold. I seem to have already accidentally met most of the most famous street are crews in town.... Check out the walls here.


I've seriously never been to a place where coffee is so important... its so good here. I feel like i've spent the majority of my money so far on coffee. Money well spent. If a place don't do good coffee here, it shuts down. Hardcore, but once you've tasted the coffee and heard how passionately people talk about it you'd understand. I do like this place, and if I'm honest it's almost certainly my own mindset and headspace that has made me feel so low this last week and not my perceived vision of the area and its inhabitants. 


So, I'm gonna get a new tattoo next week, courtesy of the wonderfully kind and thoughtful Jim Nolan....what else? Oh yeah, and a mohawk too. I'm hopefully gonna conduct the local brass band here in Melbourne tomorrow night, and am going to a sick jazz gig on Friday night. Hopefully things will start looking up and i'll be able to lose this funk that is plaguing me so. It's getting pretty cold now, so I'm scheming a trip up North on the East coast to Brisbane, some winter rays and some old friends.


Don't let my dark words worry you too much. I may sound pretty fucked up, but i've no choice but get through it no matter how hard this is.....


My thought are, as ever, with my beloved blood soaked gutters of Plymouth and my ever supportive friends and family. xxxxx


Until next time, oh brothers and sisters, much love.


...And So it Goes.


xxxxxxxxx