Parable

On the Boxing day of 1569 Saavedra Miguel De Cervantes, an insomniac, was taking a 5am stroll through the centre of Madrid when he came upon a long line of citizens waiting outside John Lewis Superstore. Intrigued, he asked one who had left the line momentarily to relieve himself in a nearby font, the meaning of it. Without pausing, the man pointed to a sign in the superstore’s window which said; “70% discount on saddlebags, bonnets and ribbons.” As he was digesting this information he witnessed a turbulence in the line; a man attempting to enter his house was trying to force his way past the unyielding queue who thought that he was trying to gain an advantage in procuring the 70% discount and set about him with fists and feet so that soon he became unconscious. As he lay, the door to John Lewis opened so that he was trampled underfoot in the rush to gain access. The door being so narrow and the urgency so great that there was congestion and altercation there, with flying fists and clubbing handbags as each sought to be the first to gain the Golden Fleece.
Saddened by what he had seen, Cervantes slowly and thoughtfully made his way home where he sat for a long time at his desk without moving and as dawn came, began writing the tale of Don Quixote, an elderly and wandering knight in rusted armour with a tree branch for a lance and on a horse rescued from the knackers yard. He made the knight battle with giants in the form of windmills and in the name of virtue and honour. He cared nothing for money or discounts. Some said that he had lost his mind and mocked him but in truth his many years had taught him that all is folly and that only dreams matter.

Cervante’s story became famous across the land and beyond as a victory for the spirit over the material so that the profits of all midieval superstores dropped sharply, disturbing the dark Wizards who controlled them. They sent forth rogues to obtain and destroy all copies so that the brave Don was almost forgotten as their profits rose again and ignorance prevailed.

However, not all were lost and the wisdom was passed on by a few through successive generations even unto this day.

So next time you come across a Boxing day queue filled with wild eyed avarice, view it with the disgust and contempt that it deserves, but also temper those thoughts with a little kindness, for it was it’s ancestor in a distant land that indirectly created the wondrous dreamscape of Don Quixote de la Mancha that mists the eyes of all who would never queue for a 70% discount even if their lives depended on it.

“Are you so blind? Are you so contented with your life of safety, of eating and drinking, of acquisition, that you have forgotten your dreams, that you know longer follow them, that you do not even remember that they existed?”

Don Quixote de la Mancha

Before the Zealot

You can’t smoke at Kings Cross Railway Sation now because it is supposedly an “enclosed area”. The fact that it is not really enclosed and that the roof is at least one hundred and fifty feet high so that it would take 5,000 people smoking constantly for a week before the level of “harm” would fall sufficiently to assail our delicate nostrils, is apparently neither here nor there. It is simply another unmissable opportunity to kick smokers in the head.

Once there was something called individual choice and the waiting rooms of Kings Cross being the bars, cafes, restaurants and even hot dog stalls were smeared with fatty foods and heavy layers of smoke that comforted like a warm embrace, hightening the senses. People did not live in fear then, they understood that life was finite and made the most of it.

During this holy time, Jo and Mary would meet after work at the cafe which is still there, for tea before catching their train home a few stops down the line. Jo, who was seventy, still insisted on working as a messenger for some company a short bus ride away from the station, and Mary, who was a year younger, worked as a cleaner at a nearby hotel. Sometime the work tired them and they felt their years, but more often they were so pleased to see each other that their step would quicken and they hugged like lovers.

“Let’s go home quickly and make love on the kitchen table”, I once heard him tease. They saw my smile and we laughed together. Over tea, we told our stories and a bond was formed. We met often at around five in the cafe where rock cakes were exactly that and with a waiter who always had a cigarette dangling from his lips and sometimes the ash would grow so long that you fear for the purity of your cream bun and the tables were still greasy from the fat of spilled lunch. If there was no ash you knew that you were safe and wondered whose tea it had fallen into instead. We joked about it as we did everything and I looked forward to our gatherings. Jo had been in the war time Navy and had escaped into the sea from his torpedoed destroyer. He had almost drowned because of the heavy sea boots that he was wearing. He gave a hilarious account of how he managed to remove them which was typical of his ability to find amusement in even that dire situation. Mary had been in London during the Blitz and had seen things that she was reluctant to speak of.

I learned a lot from those two in the short weeks of our meetings. We didn’t say goodbye, they just stopped coming and I did not want to know the reason; I think of them still, Jo trying to remove his sea boots in the Mediterranean and quiet Mary with eyes that had seen much.

Sometimes you tuck people away in your memory and bring them out like comfort blankets when you need them. Jo would no doubt have something to say about Kings Cross Station being an enclosed place and a man whose ship had been torpedoed defending his country, would not take kindly to the erosion of civil liberty. Mary would probably just smile.

Family Ties

Loudon Wainwright III is an unlikely name for one of rock’s journeymen who has given great pleasure over the years with his odd mixture of humour and pathos.

He writes of his solitary life on the move and of the family he once left behind.

Eccentric, frustrating, very much his own man, he is capable of the profound or absurd.

Any new album of his is to be approached with the caution of an explosives expert. You never quite know what’s going to happen.

He has two children, Martha and Rufus, who have entered the family business ill equipped; especially Rufus who thinks that by standing on top of a piano in his underpants, he can disguise the mediocrity of his music.

Loudon has no doubt opened doors for them although by now he may regret having done so, perhaps wishing that he had steered them along other paths.

Apparently, Leonard Cohen is a frequent visitor to the Wainwright house and I wonder if the two veterans have discussed the matter and if they ever have, perhaps it went something like this:

Loudon: “I’m worried about those kids Leonard, Joe Public isn’t stupid and they can’t fool everyone all the time. I know Madonna has but she appeals only to REALLY stupid people. I wish they had other skills to fall back on. I tried to find Rufus a plumbing apprenticeship but he kept taking off his clothes and walking like a model. You just can’t DO that in people’s houses. And Martha, she’s a sweet kid but sounds like death. Almost got her a job as a professional mourner, you know, the ones that wail all the time at funerals but she wouldn’t change her religion. You got to help me out here; whadya say ?”

Sitting at the kitchen table, Leonard is dressed in a Saville Row suit with eyes half closed as if falling asleep.

He straightens and rolls his eyes upwards, passing a hand slowly over his face.

Leonard: “Well, I…”

Loudon: “I blame their mother; she’s hatched some kind of plot with them to ruin me. Hell, I know I left but these things happen. If they would just change their names I could pretend they weren’t mine. At least they haven’t crucified my songs yet like yours. Have you heard Rufus singing “Hallelujah”? You would cry.”

Once again there is a long pause as Leonard considers his reply.

He is distracted by this conversation, having just thought of a possible final couplet for something he is writing.

Leonard: “Er, well…”

Loudon: “It’s God’s punishment for my wayward life. Things come back to get you. Doesn’t that freakish Buddhist shit your’e into say that? For every action there is a reaction? Some crap like that anyway.”

He raises his arms sideways, looking like a crucifix; a hopeless gesture of defeat and walks to the window, staring out.

The radio pauses for the D.J ‘s annoucement.

“You have GOT to be in New York tomorrow night. Martha and Rufus Wainwright are playing. This is a MUST SEE event.”

There is a prolonged groan from over by the window while at the table a voice like Dracula’s gatekeeper or Lazarus rising, practices the final couplet which has just come together.

It’s almost done.

The Great Escape

Donny Tourette at Cambridge APU

Towers of London are a punk band with a reputation; much of it due to the antics of the lead singer Donny Tourette who frequently commits antisocial acts resulting in his arrest and incaceration in the cell of some local constabulary.

All good publicity of course although sometimes causing shows and even tours to be cancelled. Tall and with a blond shaggy mane, his very height was the cause of trouble this particular evening.

The Cambridge APU student bar had decided to hold a punk night thinking perhaps that the aggression of the genre was mostly bravado and that really they were all good boys and girls at heart.

Donny did not quite see it that way and when the Towers came on as the main attraction for the grand finale, the problems began.

To be fair, he was provoked. The stage was too small and all the previous bands had huddled through their acts.

Donny however, was taller by far than anyone who had previously occupied that inadequate space and he did not like it.

Cables brushed his hair and fell across his eyeline. He was not a happy man.

The glint in his eye like that of an enraged bear, grew ever brighter until halfway through his allocated time and the situation exacerbated by his own music and lyrics, he could bear it no more and began to dismantle the stage.

Cables, stands, decorations of various kinds left the stage at remarkable speed and in all directions.

The police were called.

As all this unfolded, my friend Chris, who is into photo-journalism,was snapping away at a potential money spinner.

SNAP the decorative lights pop and fizzle as a big hand rips them from their sockets.

SNAP a mike stand cartwheels across the auditorium as the crowd dives for cover.

SNAP the management plead with him to no avail and are forced to beat a hasty retreat.

Like a child in Disneyland, Chris did not know where to look or snap next.

Happytime came to an abrupt end as the cry went up: “The cops are here” and everyone dived for the exits.

It seemed that the law being the law, photographic evidence was required to enable the police to prosecute poor Donny whose lawyer was by now quite experienced in these matters and would find a means of escape if the case was not watertight.

All photographers were ordered to surrender their cameras to this effect.

Chris was having none of it. A big payday beckoned on his first big scoop and nothing was going to interfere with that.

A fire escape was ripped open and the brothers fixed me with a stare. “Brian, we’re going to have to run for it – are you okay with that?”

Not one to let down my friends and made ageless by several drinks, I nodded eagerly.

Down the stairs we stumbled and through a side exit to an unguarded alleyway and thence to the road, but behind the police cordon.

A classic legal terminology rent the air: “Oi, stay where you are.” But we did not.

The sixty year old body is not designed for sprinting – especially long distances and although the pursuit was short lived, we had to be sure.

Eventually, panting and with hands on knees, we found safety in a deserted cul de sac.

At least the boys were panting; I felt as though I was being prepared for consumption by an anaconda.

Each breath was harder than the last, my ribs ached, knees wobbled and a strange mist rose before my eyes.

I have always prided myself on being fitter than most people of my age, an arrogance supported by the fact that my heart attack, when it came, was relatively minor – the ambulance did not have to be called and the paramedics remained untroubled.

In fact, after I had been assisted to a nearby hotel and consumed two double vodkas and smoked a calming cigarette, I felt perfectly well again.

Oh the merriment on the journey home as we celebrated our victory; surely we were the stuff that heroes are made of.

Somewhere in the cobwebbed and wrinkled corridors of my time-worn brain, a fresh wind blew.

“Look out kid, it’s something you did,
Lord knows when but you’re doin’ it again.
You better duck down the alleyway
Lookin’ for a new friend;
The manin the coon-skin cap
Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten…”

The Long and Short of It

Beach Boy Brian Wilson

There used to be a big hall on top of the hill at Kings Cross in Sydney. Local bands would play there all afternoon and into a Saturday night.

Most of them weren’t very good but enthusiastic, with front men gesticulating wildly as guitarists screwed up their faces in the torment of artistic expression and the crowd danced, shouted and drifted in and out from and to the nearby pubs.

Sometime during the evening a fight would break out and the police would arrive to arrest all those with long hair as it was obvious even to a uniformed constable that they were communist subversives intent on undermining the fabric of Australian society.

On the road that runs parallel to Bondi Beach, ‘surfies’; tanned young men with short dyed blond hair and tight white t-shirts that had “Beach Boys” emblazoned on them, would confront ‘rockers’ wearing dirty coloured ones and even filthier jeans, being the uniform of individuality (I like that) and with inevitably long hair; over a half forgotten slight.

There, fists and feet would swing wildly, rarely making contact, fingers would point, insults swapped and honour satisfied.

Once again the constabulary would arrive and with great enthusiasm, do their patriotic duty by arresting any communist subversive wearing long hair – all the rockers. The ‘surfies’ would then slap the policemen on the back, exchange a joke or two and return to the beach where they would smoke dope and pop pills.

Things were so simple then; you were good or bad and wore your heart, quite literally, on your sleeve.

All the very old men – anyone over thirty-nine, wore ‘demob’ suits and respectable ladies their hems an inch below the knee while the young, wild, spiritually free wore mini skirts an inch below their knickers to prove that they were no longer slaves to male domination.

If you were a man and cool you wore shoulder length hair and cotton shirt with Indian designs on it; hipster jeans and a thoughtful look that showed how intelligent and creative you were. Your woman would not be seen dead in a mini skirt , wearing dark subdued garments and possibly a Red Indian headband.

How quaint it all seems now. Walk the streets and the subversives have their heads shaved, but even more sinister is the fact that there are so few of them, with the great mass of pedestrians wearing the same clothes and haircuts.

Enter a bar, join any conversation; most of them will be similar and connected to the mundane. We just don’t seem to have that sparkle anymore. Perhaps it’s just too hard to survive now and no one has the time for posturing or to do something just plain crazy.

There’s the rent to pay and CV to update; organised and efficient we plan our portfolios, pensions and funerals at the age of twenty. Jesus Christ. Sometimes it’s not so bad to be an old man.

You can’t be like that or you wouldn’t be reading this – would you? Perhaps you’re thinking that you are different as you pull on that faded Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and worn out trainers, but you’d better watch out boy – run your fingers around your collar – could be time for a trim. The boys in blue might be watching.