VALE, VIDAL

I shouldn’t really have been surprised to hear of the death of Gore Vidal, he was after all in his eighties; but he was one of those people you get used to thinking will be around forever. There are many, I’m certain, wishing he’d gone years ago.

Gore wasn’t a likeable fellow. In fact, he was something of a bitch; but he was funny, and he was brilliant (although probably not quite so brilliant as he himself was convinced he was). As a novelist and essayist he was prolific, but his true metier was as a raconteur. His tool was the word, but his art was provocation; the iconoclasm was merely a hobby. A shameless name-dropper – considering his patrician background, a tendency less irksome than it was in his friend Truman Capote – his memoir was barely three pages gone before he gave us the spectacle of his step-sister Jacquie Kennedy, upstairs at a wedding, one foot on the bathtub, showing the bride how to douche.

I first stumbled upon him as a teenager via the movies he scripted: The Left-Handed Gun, The Best Man, a tele-movie, Gore Vidal’s Billy the Kid; then there were those scripts he wrote or re-wrote without being credited, Advise and Consent and Ben Hur among them; and of course the appalling Caligula (he never, he often said, saw his movies – his blood pressure couldn’t stand the director’s vision. They were a means to a pay cheque).

After a decade in Hollywood - deliberately getting rich enough to never again have to do anything he’d find disagreeable – and following a failed tilt at a New York congressional seat in 1960, Vidal returned to his first mistress, the novel. Over the ensuing two decades his output was little short of staggering. He was still drawn to the small novel of ideas, knocking one out – seemingly in his down time – every year or so; some of these were truly thought provoking, standouts being Messiah and Kalki, with which he bookended the period, dual explorations of humanity’s sad tendency to follow charisma into the abyss; and of course the iconic (ironic?) Myra Breckenridge.

His reputation as a novelist rests, however, with the historical works. Beginning with Julian, a re-telling of the story of Rome’s last pagan emperor, he very cleverly, and with inimitable style, set about questioning not only history but the way it’s written and passed down. Although never quite achieving the heights of Graves’ Claudius novels, these books are accomplished, witty, and leave for dead the pulp that passes for “historical fiction” nowadays. In this genre he overcame the one serious shortcoming that hamstrung his other novels: his monumental ego. Never quite out of sight in his fiction, in the histories it became a veritable asset, since most of our first-hand accounts, from Cicero onwards, are left by tendentious egotists bemoaning the fact that posterity will have to pay them the notice due but unpaid by their contemporaries.

The histories also gave him scope to slash at his country’s sacred cows, as in Burr, where the narrator describes General Washington: “[he] was cold and grim [. . .] He spoke the way one imagined a statue would speak”. The same book gives us one of the first portraits of Jefferson as cold-eyed pragmatist cloaked in idealism, unable to keep his hands off the female slaves. His Lincoln, criticised at first, knocks the plaster off the saint and gives us a convincing portrait of a great man with a great man’s mixed motives.

As he got older we saw more of him as an essayist and talking head, poking at the America he said had always been “a sanctimonious society of hustlers”. Here he is on the last days of the 1992 presidential race: “Clinton’s greatest asset is a perfect lack of principle. With a bit of luck, he will be capable, out of simple starry-eyed opportunism, to postpone our collapse. After all, [FDR] was equally unprincipled”. He meant it as a compliment. And four years later: “The American takes it for granted that his moral fibre is never to be weakened by healthcare, education of the people at large or, indeed, anything at all except Social Security [. . .] Unfortunately for the American [. . .] the fund is for all practical purposes empty”. Congress “has, since 1992, been in the hands of zealous reactionaries in thrall to the foetus and the flag as well as at angry war with those who do not have money”.

Always dubious about the erosion of civil rights in the name of fighting terrorists (even back when they were American), he once compared the actions of Lincoln during the Civil War with those of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al: “A war against terror is like a war against dandruff; I mean, it’s a metaphor, it’s not about anything. Civil war is a little more serious”. He was convinced the US was an empire in decline, with all the historical perquisites – increasingly authoritarian executive government, a decaying polity, et cetera. Interviewed by Bob Carr a few years ago and asked where he saw the US in fifty years, he answered: “somewhere between Argentina and Brazil, with maybe a good soccer team”.

Vidal’s positions were often simplistic, bordering on paranoid, and always calculated to outrage. His arguments however were unfailingly intelligent, nuanced, and backed by his encyclopaedic reading. He might draw outlandish conclusions, or just ignore those facts that contradicted his thesis, but facts there always were. You might well disagree with him – I often did – but doing so required getting your own facts straight, and engaging in actual thought rather than relying on hackneyed opinions. He was an irreverent, prickly, prophetic soul of a type becoming sadly rare. In an age of noisy and ill informed punditry his style and erudition will be sadly missed.

We can only hope to see his like again.

SMASHING PUMPKINS IN SYDNEY - An Excercise in Mass Indifference

It was weird. Maybe it’s the proliferation of poker-machine emporia, I don’t know, but it appears that Sydney is losing the art of seeing a band play live; we just don’t seem to know how to behave. Let me tell you about it . . .

The Lady and I arrived a little late, the support act getting into their penultimate number by the time we were shown to our seats. It was a pity to miss most of Wolfmother (I later learned that we’d also missed a Stockdale rant against those Triple J bastards who helped build his career) but it couldn’t be helped, and at least we wouldn’t have long to wait for Smashing Pumpkins. Smashing Pumpkins: this was a life-long dream for both of us; which is why we were so surprised. It was the crowd.

We began to notice outside: this just wasn’t like any crowd we’d ever seen at a rock concert, they were so subdued. It was eerie, like something from a Hitchcock film, or that scene at the end of I, Claudius, thousands of them milling around the exits, shuffling quietly in and out, the ghosts of audiences past.

And so many of them were old. The Lady was first to remark that quite a few were even older than me. I began to suspect that those sitting near us had come to see Neil Diamond and mixed up the dates.

A third of the seats stood empty as the band took the stage; not that there weren’t punters enough to fill them; they just couldn’t apparently be bothered with being inside for the first few numbers.

 The acoustics in the Sydney Entertainment Centre are notoriously bad, but Billy Corgan is a perfectionist and a tech-head, and after he’d instructed the roadies to shift some speakers around it was as though we were sitting in front of the stereo at home. Literally. If you closed your eyes you could forget there was anybody sitting near you. And that was another thing: the sitting. Even though our seats were in the tiered section, I hadn’t expected to spend much time sitting.

Now, for any band that’ve enjoyed some success and managed to stay around a while, there’s a balance to be struck between old and new material when playing live: the punters expect their favourites, and the band wants to feel as though they’re still, you know, a band. Sure enough, three or four numbers in Mr Corgan announced that he was going to take us through their new album, Oceania. Had he not announced it, I would never have noticed – the music was that good.

The rest of the crowd, evidently, didn’t share our appreciation. With the exception of a couple at the end of our row, with whom we exchanged several puzzled glances, these people could barely manage a polite smattering of applause. It was embarrassing.

Eventually, after a sonic joyride lasting an hour or so, we were regaled with the opening bars of Disarm. At last, some movement; but only on the dance-floor, not upstairs near us. There followed a cavalcade of the Pumpkins’ hits, which the kids in the mosh pit responded to by getting themselves removed in large numbers by security for crowd-surfing and attempted stage-diving. Upstairs, they clapped as though they were at the Royal Garden Party. I’ve heard louder applause at a golf tournament. I can only hope it sounded louder from the stage.

After a searing rendition of Bullets with Butterfly Wings I finally lost it, shouting at the top of my lungs: “Jesus, will you sad bastards make some fucking noise!!” The fact that heads turned fifty yards away should give an indication of what I’m talking about.

They played their hearts out for the better part of three hours. I seriously doubted we’d generated enough enthusiasm to warrant an encore, but when they came back out and Billy Corgan humbly thanked us for letting them play the new album through, my heart came close to breaking. A musician of his stature shouldn’t have to grovel before ingrates.

 We dwell at the “arse end of the world”, but big name acts have always braved the long journey because our rock audiences have rivalled any in the world for raw energy and enthusiasm. I came away from this experience ashamed for us, and worried for the future. Maybe it’s the death of the live-pub scene, maybe we’re spoilt by festival overload, but if what I saw at the Entertainment Centre is any indication of how we reward international acts these days I can’t see why they’d keep making the trip.

If we keep this up, get used to seeing your live music on YouTube.

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

I’m working on a theory that the suspension of disbelief only really lasts forty-five minutes. You can believe almost anything for three-quarters of an hour.

I once got so stoned that for forty-five minutes I persuaded myself Kurt Cobain was actually an invention of Dave Grohl, who killed the character off when he, and the actor playing him, had outlived their usefulness.

Perhaps, after strapping on the explosive underpants, handlers have to express deliver the suicide bombers to their target sites before the clock ticks forty-six: maybe in the forty-sixth minute it all starts to seem like a bad idea?

I’m pretty sure it used to be a whole hour, but with modern media and shortening attention spans you work with what you’ve got. Cutbacks, you know; onward and downwards.

Most television shows once ran around an hour; in recent times this has shrunk to – wait for it – forty to forty-five minutes. Now, most people erroneously believe this to be due to the need for advertising space, but no, don’t be deceived. The TV moguls, in their omniscience, realise that we won’t buy anything for one entire circuit of the dial. Just ask Julia Gillard.

If you want proof of my little theory, set your . . . VCR? Okay, whatever damn machine it is that you use, to record the program after Master-chef. Here is the evidence that advertising bucks can be squeezed out without trimming program length. But only with reality TV – nobody believes that shit.

What, if any, are the effects of this phenomenon? Could they possibly be deleterious? I mean, sure, we’re making the world a much tastier place: I frequently sit, eating noodles from a Styrofoam cup and thinking “gee, that apple and berry crumble Matt Preston’s eating really looks delicious”. By a species of osmosis, I’m eating the crumble. The only thing more satisfying is the four and a half minute suspension required to convince myself that the brunette in the porn film actually would sleep with me.

The answer truly seems to be communications technology. In the days when a message had to be carved in stone, pressed in wet clay, or written on a scraped sheepskin before travelling for weeks, possibly months to its destination, you could believe the same thing for centuries at a time. People fought each other for land and wealth: the fact that God was on your side was just a bonus; God rode with the winner.

Movable type changed that. Suspension of disbelief was reduced at a stroke, sometimes to mere decades. God still rode with the winner, but nobody was quite certain anymore what was on His banner. All of a sudden however, it seemed much more important; belief, reduced in quantity, became qualitatively more potent: and more volatile.

The ensuing centuries ushered in a maelstrom of war and revolution, schism and genocide. Exponential expansion in the promulgation of ideas saw confused populations lurch between extremes, falling in for certainty’s sake behind strong or charismatic leaders; rushing in turn to tear them down again. Anyone with an eighth-grade education or a television knows where it all ultimately led.

We long ago ceased in the main to be believers, becoming consumers instead. The fact that none of us is certain for more than a few minutes at a time what we believe makes it easier to appeal to our appetites: and to our base instincts.

We face an explosion of information that most of our species is constitutionally incapable of assimilating. This renders us vulnerable. There are a few amongst us who know no doubt or indecision; very occasionally, they’re able to persuade people enough for long enough that something is important enough to fight for; discriminate for; persecute for. In a world where global annihilation is possible within a very few minutes, this should give us pause.

The only thing more dangerous than someone who doesn’t know what they believe is someone who does.

AFFIDAVIT

I never in thirty years realised quite how angry I was. It usually moves in identifiable stages: a pulse in the calf, then the biceps and shoulder; next, if the stimulus continues, an all over tremor as adrenaline storms the body; in the red-line final stage evolution ceases to matter as the top lip twitches violently then peels back to show the canines.

            Saturday, watching the investigative news program unfold the stages didn’t occur. When the journalist stood in front of Parramatta courthouse unable to say the priest’s name I went straight to the lip twitch. Father (initial)...Father (initial)...Father (initial – see I can’t use it either). By the time they showed his blurry face walking the streets of Armidale I didn’t know whether to chew someone’s throat out or climb inside myself.

            And then it’s the text messages, my desperately catholic mother watching the same program: his name was (......) wasn’t it? And weren’t you lucky, trying to persuade herself against what’s been there to see for so long, seeing the stories of boys whose trajectories mirror my own: the bright kid who ceased to be interested in school; the inability to hold down a job; the succession of troubled, abused, abusive women. The heroin. There’s no denial like religious denial; unless it’s maternal denial.

            In the end you crawl inside yourself and hope you’ll eventually find something worth saving. I’ve managed to make and hold on to a handful of healthy friendships; people as or more screwed up than I am, but with a sense of perspective and the desire to be better. I’ve managed, as yet, not to destroy myself; I’ve ceased actively trying.

The rage that jumped up and smacked me Saturday at last has a shape, a face, a name. You get into the habit of burying things, and sometimes they go so deep you don’t recognise them when they re-emerge. I recognise this. I can now capture and hold on to it, examine it like a nineteenth century naturalist, describe and classify it, and hopefully skewer it to the page of a volume I can consign to my library of read books: unable to be discarded, but understood, and rendered useful.

The friends who’ve helped prepare me to do this know who they are, know I’d die for them, and don’t need to be named. Some of them are reading this now.

These are my last words on this.

HOROSCOPE (Is that something like "Colonoscope"?)

PISCARIEBRAGITARIVIRGANCEMINORPITAUREOQUARICORN

                        (23^rd April – November a.d.2735)

Be wary this coming weekend of stumpily long hairy bald things, especially near soup. Sometime around mid-afterelbow on Saturday an emu will kick you down some stairs. Meanwhile a romantic entanglement enlivens the after dinner abseiling, but a herring in a lime green cravat signals that the thrill may be short-lived – enjoy it while it whistles. Under no circumstances massage the 4:19 to Newcastle.

(Would you like to learn more of the exciting geraniums your spirit guides told me regarding your bouncing, bouncing, bouncing? Just send a chain-letter asking all your family and friends to leave cash under an inconspicuously painted rock at the corner of Park and Elizabeth Street; or subscribe to Tyranny of Glib using the icons on the site to choose your preferred method).

THE CAP SAYS "LION TAMER" ON IT

It’s a lion, Kings Cross. At a distance impressive, even beautiful, a mystery you’ve heard about all your life; it’s more than a little frightening. Up close and in daylight it’s mangy, scarred by a thousand fights; and it stinks.

It’s not proud this king of beasts, but happy just to lay there. Why would it hunt? You bring it all it needs. A few years’ familiarity fosters complacency. You may hear the occasional snarl, but always it lets you come and go. It lets you show-off to your friends, scratching its belly and sticking your head in its mouth. You start to believe that you rule the cage.

A big-cat routine; a love affair; a drug deal; the first time you know it’s any different from all the others is after it’s already gone wrong. It needs no provocation, only the Moment. You have time to remember, while its teeth tighten on your throat and the steaming breath chokes your own, the thing the lion never forgets: this is what it does, and is.

In junkies and fuck-ups what psychologists call the locus of control tends toward the external: it’s somebody else’s fault you’re here, scanning the winter street in spent, shambolic Kings Cross pre-dawn. If only that idiot hadn’t got in your way while you barrelled like a mad thing to the station, or insisted on defending himself when you abused him; and why can’t Cityrail run a train system competently so you can get to your methadone clinic on time? And anyway, why do dealers tell you they’re twenty-four-seven then refuse to answer their phones?

 So, here you are in the cold. An addict inhabits the tension between the urgency of withdrawal and the patient wait for the dealer. There’s been nobody around all night, and now the clubs are closing. Everyone’s got Ice, but not even you’re that crazy. The working girls always know, but it’s been a quiet shift so, best not to ask. Dammit, dealers have no industry these days. Your mind tries to calm you, but your muscles are attempting to peel themselves from bones that feel as though you’re being racked. If nothing happens soon it’ll be another long wait for your methadone. But hold on: that hooker’s calling you over.

“Wanna come upstairs sweetie, have some fun?”

“It’s not sex or rock n’ roll I’m looking for, love.” The upshot: she can’t get small amounts, but was looking for someone to throw in with if you want to split a half-weight. Us junkies needs to stick together.

So. Waiting. Cold. You’re certain you remember a dealer lived down this alley, but that’s not the back door to an apartment-block she and your money just walked through; it’s a sex-shop that fronts the main street. Dilemma: you can charge in after her and try retrieving the cash, or let the long shot ride. It’s not unheard of for smack to be available under the counter in a dirty bookstore; the guys who own the sex shops own the strip-clubs own the hookers employ the dealers and run the drugs. But barring physical violence or the threat, she’s likely to hold on to that dough; and even if that was your inclination, the guys who own the hookers tend to frown on them being beaten by any but themselves. Besides, if there really is someone selling inside you’ll screw the whole deal by busting in; not only that, you risk getting the hooker black-balled. Burning somebody’s connection is something you just don’t do, like overdosing in someone else’s bathroom. Or ripping-off another sick junkie.

You haven’t really thought through your intentions as you cross the main street, but a familiar face – at last – steps in and stops you reaching your persecutor. “She’s ripped you honey, she does it to everyone. Whattayou need, I’ll get it for you.”

There’s no such thing, it goes without saying, as the whore with a heart of gold. A couple of years in the job will kill or harden the sweetest girl. A few would be deceitful, callous monsters in any trade. You can’t begrudge this second girl the fifty she’s charging to score for you. Nothing for nothing; everything has its price. Hard. Brutal. Honest.

Mixing up the shot, standing against a concrete fence in an unlit back-street park overlooking the Illawarra Line, it’s time to play the odds again. “...Hell for that little slut?” the honest girl, Sam, had broken in, trying to finish your sentence; “no, only what I said: I wonder how I’m going to make this week. I couldn’t afford what she took, let alone what I’m giving you.” The gamble this time is the solution to that problem. Since President Bush in his wisdom tilted at Afghanistan and unseated the Taliban, Sydney’s had an inexhaustible supply of strong beige heroin. Sam couldn’t score small deals either, so you’re about to whack-up nearly half a gram of the good stuff, alone in a park at five in the morning.

Like a bad first marriage, no matter the damage done you never really fall out of love with the needle. That cold spike sliding into your tied-off arm ignites adrenaline-fuelled fire in the loins; you’re high before the drug hits. Also like a bad first marriage, again it lets you down. You’ve mainlined enough to euthanize a bear, but somehow you’re still standing. Played and lost. Have to find the rent after all.

The ‘Cross has shifted into that half-life between the clubs closing and the start of a regular morning. A few of the die-hard homeless argue drunkenly up and down the strip. You’ll find yourself a coffee and wait for the day to start running. Your thoughts stumble a moment over the girl who ripped you off, but that problem will figure itself out; best to quietly, anonymously forgive. You’ve lived here long enough, should’ve known, and know something else as well: your revenge is to know where she’s headed. It needs no effort from you. You’ve seen it.

It’s little wonder so many artists, poets and writers have made homes here over the decades. For all its ugliness, Kings Cross is a world entire; empathy is a handicap, violence, deceit and cunning are rewarded; honesty is a virtue, but only in its coldest expression; it’s a microcosm, a concentrated essence of the world beyond. Kings Cross is Poetry.

FAAAAARRK!!!

I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those cranky middle-aged “the world’s going to hell” type bloggers, but this is too much. Let’s see what you think...

                For years I’ve put off reading Joyce’s Ulysses, intimidated by the master’s masterpiece. I finally pulled it down this week. Saturday, in fact. That is, Saturday, 16th June: Bloom’s Day; the day during which the entire novel is set. What’s more, it was a Bloom’s Day upon which fans the world over celebrated as the book’s copyright expired, all of this unknown to me until I turned on the news that night. Now, I’ll admit that’s not a story of earth-shattering importance, but it is a fairly amusing example of what Jung called synchronicity – a set of acausally connected events; a meaningful coincidence, beyond statistical probability of, but still technically, chance.

                I told this same story this evening to an acquaintance who, just this month, completed a master’s degree in humanities. I was met with a long, puzzled stare, and then: “so, what? You want to steal the copyright?”

                I drink my coffee within walking distance of three of the nation’s leading universities. Uni students often end up working in cafés, so I get to hear an awful lot of this kind of shit. You’d be surprised (or, maybe not). The most frequent complaint is the workload. Not, you understand, from the foreign students, the ones working two casual jobs while trying to squeeze food and sleep between course-work; It’s the twenty-three or –four year olds, living at home with their parents, doing two shifts a week, and always stressed about their latest assignment. “Oh my god,” they’ll say, “how am I ever going to write five thousand words?” Here’s a suggestion: put the fucking tequila bottle down, stop stumbling around hung-over three days out of every seven, and WRITE THE DAMN THING.

                My problem (one of them) is I write too much. I haven’t posted a blog in three weeks because I’m having difficulty keeping them under three thousand words and, as I was informed tonight (guess who) that’s probably too long. What would these people do with Mr Joyce? God only knows.

                Allow me to leave you, in the interest of brevity, with a piece of modern genius. David M. Bader published a beautiful, funny little book a few years ago which has been a prized possession in hard-cover, and has recently made it into Penguin’s orange paperbacks; it’s called Haiku U – 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables. I haven’t committed Ulysses to memory, but here’s Finnegan’s Wake:

                                Riverrun on and

                                          By Jaisus s’dense! Bien alors,

                                                    Scribbledehobble.

                Short enough, I’ll grant you, for the generation of morons we’re unleashing on the future; but I wonder, would they get it? I’m off to pound my forehead with a hammer ‘till it all makes more sense.