Dear Jack: A letters project.

I always have too many ideas for projects and not enough time. And as deadlines creep closer and the hands of the clock turn past twelve, they all seem to spring forth and demand my attention.

Letters are quite important to me. There is something about taking the time to physically write to someone that brings out things that  you would never say out loud. Once written, the idea is liberated, although sometimes never aired ever again.

I also love the other end of the scale, and the way that sentences take on a different life when spoken out loud. I love reading out loud, and would take a job reading to anyone would they let me. 

So here is the fruits of the marriage of these two. The working title is Dear Jack: A letters project. A mixture of my favourite letters from authors, strangers, friends and my own collection that I have never sent. Recorded, spoken out loud. Names have been altered where applicable. A little mystery never hurt.

Installment one includes my favourite letter of all time, an amazing piece from John Steinbeck, a letter about letters and one about, mailboxes. 

When I am less delirious, I will try and put this all somewhere a little neater and perhaps on it's own page. Probably not, I know me. But I have some other beauties up my sleeve hiding somewhere, so I'll record another few for posterity soon. Contributions welcome.

Write soon. 

The conversation.

Firstly, take a big breath everybody. Every single one of you. Read the review, not just the reaction. It is not a bad article. Yes, it does have a few negative barbs. It's a review. 

We must all realise that we do experience music within a small community. This is a blessing and a curse. I love having a family and a community, the ability to know I can wander into shows and say hello to someone. It is a safe scene, and that is much more than one can say about many that exist. The safety of the scene was never in question.

BUT. We cannot just rest upon this community and think that there is not more we can work towards. This is NOT a comment towards Andy or Poison City, but at our wider music group as a whole (even music full stop! All the bullshit 'top lists' are always male dominated). You would be kidding yourself if you did not realise that it is an extremely male dominated scene. This is NOT a critique of any men, this is a fact. It just is. But it is also a scene that has more potential and more ability to be inclusive than most others I have encountered. This is why I am here. This is why I persevere. That is why it attracts so many strong women.

So what we have is a foundation of number inequality, and a set of ideals that embrace equality. This means, that women and men from all ends of the sexuality spectrum need to continually work towards promoting their idea of the best possible family we can make. No one does this for you. You do it yourself. The more girls that get out there and start a band, or get behind the mixing desk, or design posters, or book shows... the better. Deep heat? They were my favourite band of Friday, because they were badass and inspiring. The more proactive people, of all genders, that promote our ideal community, the better it becomes. That is why it is flourishing, and why I hope it will continue to.

I have spoken to numerous people at one time or another who have become disillusioned with the 'scene'. Haven't we all? Within any group of people there will be politics and flawed human interaction. But if we all remember why we got here, how we got here to begin with, and know that there are multitudes of people out there that love, support and will continue to attend, play, book, create, mix... then we make the community we want. I don't quit just because I see something I don't like. I speak out, I change it, and I create the world I want to live in. I think both the writer and Poison City both do this too. No one can get complacent. It can always be better.

This is why I was saddened to see some of the reaction. Fuck you who have jumped to a personal attack. I saw one tweet that simply said 'Feminist bullshit'. This I will not stand for. The article said some things you didn't like, so respond in a constructive manner. If you get defensive then nothing good comes of it. You stop the conversation, and we can always talk more. We can always be more inclusive. We can always reach out more. It has always been about the music, so dispense with the normies, the kids, the oldies, the bros, the boys and the other devisive labels. 

Everyone should be welcome. We all know that, it's a no brainer. Let's continue to encourage the conversation and create the community, the family, we want. We're in it because we believe in it.

Where will you be?

That cliched question. You know the one, the one you used to try and dodge from ex-boyfriends/girlfriends/employers/parents/weird relatives at Christmas. 

Where do you see yourself in five years? 

I hated it, then. Back when I thought that having a semblance of routine or organisation in my life meant that I was working FOR the man, not against him. I don't know where I'll be in five years! I don't know where I'll be in five minutes! I do what I want! I'm really easy-going and impulsive!

Jump forwards to a time when I actually might have a five year plan. Or, at the least, I have thought about what I want and worked backwards from then until now to figure out how to get it. This doesn't mean that I am a victim of the system, all it means is that I am thinking about something other than the sandwich in front of me and my hangover.

It is here that we find my utter, guttural, tangible rage on the state of political affairs. 

No you dolt, not in the sandwich. In the plan.

We don't have one. If you asked a politician today whether they had a plan for Australia's future, they would most definitely say yes. They would have a little slogan and maybe even a colourful pamphlet. But how can we possibly have a plan if the state of political debate amongst the populous is so incredibly short sighted? We all yell about immigration policy, about refugees, about boats.

THIS ISN'T AN IMMIGRATION POLICY. This is refugee policy at best, and one that is in violation of international law. And while we are distracted by the shiny 'issues' of whether they are going to take our jobs, we are missing the point. The question is where do we see ourselves in fifty years? We have an aging population, which means less people in the work force, less available taxes and therefore a decline in our precious economy. How do we solve this? I don't have the answer, but we start talking now. We start thinking, 'Hey, perhaps we need more people here, and perhaps we need to educate them, give them the opportunities to learn skilled trades'. 

While we yell about whether the carbon tax and whether it is fair on working families and how much compensation we should be given, AGAIN we are missing the point. It has been agreed at the UN that we must limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees in the next century in order to avoid significant consequences. 

"We must limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees. We are far from there, and even that is enough to cause dire consequences. If we continue along the current path, we are close to a 6 degree increase".

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations (February 2013

The original target to turn around emissions in order to keep below 2 degrees? 2015. Well done everybody, we have already cemented our future. Short term policy focus has meant that it is already too late. It is not a debate about the greenies versus business. This is a global issue that is fast slipping out of our grasp. Think we have refugee problems now? Just wait until we have climate change refugees. This is not far off. 

What what about the economy Rachel? We have to manage that. Surplus surplus deficit deficit. Riddle me this then: Where do we want our economy to be in fifty years? Still growing? Think we have enough resources to sell? Perhaps we should stop trying to prop up old industries and start investing in higher education, in innovation, in technology, in infrastructure and support for the new generations. We have the fortunate position of having the resources now, but if we only think about reinvesting in the same, we are putting all our eggs in one basket, and eventually the chicken will stop laying. My rage is inducing bad metaphors, excuse me.

I have voted. I will watch the results trickle in. No matter who gets in, I will not sit back and dust my hands of politics for another three years. It is now that it starts. If those at the top won't change the conversation, I will. You will. We all will. 

Let's start asking the big questions now. 

Where will you be in fifty years?

The Insomnia Sessions

There used to be a time when I was known for my sleeping ability. You name it, I could nap on it. Train. Bus. Cupboard. Standing. Curled up. I could do it. Anytime, anywhere.

Insomnia is an odd state of being. I was listening to a podcast the other night, as I tried my very best to quite the neurons starting a war in my head. It spoke of how only insomniacs understand the quietly tangible cloud that is being awake when you shouldn't. That is exactly what it is. A thick cloud which slows and speeds up time as it so pleases, leaving me to sit here and hit myself with a book until it clears. Try and be productive, your brain suggests. 

You can't. At least, not with the useful things that would make your life easier. Your brain is more than happy to oblige enough processing power to lead you onto all sorts of useless endeavors and down creative rabbit holes. Ones that seem life changing at the time, but in the light of day just seem a little bit askew. I have a very odd short story about the moon trying to crush my house that I thought was the next post modern classic a few nights ago. Turns out it is just crazy dashed with jagged punctuation. 

What I wouldn't give for a good nights sleep in a cupboard. On a plane. Give me a rattly, hell-raiser of a bus ride goddammit. I used to sleepwalk often, and have come to think that it must be the same active neurons that are making my life interesting at the moment. I hated them then, I hated waking up in odd rooms and without any knowledge of how you came to be there. Do I hate them now? I am too tired to know.

Ah well. When you finally give into the fact that unconsciousness isn't coming, the rabbit holes are quite incredible. The moon story, perhaps less so. It is still to be concluded (will the moon crush the house? We just don't know. Stay tuned!) but for now you can have this. Part 1 of the Insomnia sessions. Feel free to call me at 3am to tell me what you think, I'll be up.

Some things that mean the world to me.

I have a memory for places. For intangible qualities in the sunlight. For the feeling of the joining rubber fixings where the bus window meets the plastic frame, just above the dimpled and broken armrest. For how the window shook the whole way from San Francisco to Sacramento. For the deep belly freedom that I held close, like a secret. The kind of secret that is like holding in laughter, like when you are planning a surprise birthday. For the dry heat that hits when you get to the very odd, planned grid that is Sacramento city centre.

How the sun shone and I was sweaty in my denim jacket walking up 24th street in the Mission. How I got lost on the way to an old friend's house, but didn't mind. The bright orange hues of the trees and the blue of the sky, which I had not expected when I had left my hostel in the fog of downtown. How I wandered til I was certain I was wrong, and then how he spotted me out the window and met me in the street, after 2 years and little communication, with a flower and a smile. How we drank wine around a kitchen table and then got high in Dolores park. Of how he was a new person in so many senses, but an old soul trapped in a sadness. Of how I haven't seen him since.

I sat at my kitchen table three days ago and tried to recall the names of books that I had read while travelling two and a half years ago. There were four of them that I couldn't recall. But what I could tell you was the place where I acquired each one. Exactly what shelf in an Edinburgh bookstore, the kind with a coffee shop attached. How I sat in the red patterned bucket chair and read the first chapter, having known from the spine  that this would be my book. The book that took me around the world to the Canadian wilderness and taught me about death, and that I left on a white bookshelf that was afixed to a wall in a large impersonal Dublin hostel by the river.

Of the two books that were exchanged for one another in a house in East LA. The house that was half a house, a cupboard under the stairs, a cave with fairy lights that shone blue, green and red with tinfoil around the globes. One book was set in LA, the other in New York. The house where I met my San Franciscan friend (an Oklahoman at heart) and his housemate, who was a wanderer and his lioness of a cat. How time stopped for a while. The climb up the hill behind the neighbourhood park, while everyone was resting, and how I saw and drew pictures of a menagerie of animals to keep the wanderer and the lioness safe. Of the one chapter of that book in which the protagonist created his own language, which was simply the word dorky with different inflections. And how the chapter was just the word dorky, over and over, page upon page. Of the wanderer, who will continue to wander in and out of my path.

The fourth book, I couldn't remember the name. I knew it was a name that jumped out at me, that could have either been wonderful or a self-help book. I knew the cover was yellow and white, and that is was set in the Mission, and that I had bought it in the Mission. I remembered it was haunting, and that the main character broke his arm and did not have enough money to get it set, so it healed in a deformed banana shape. I managed to work out the other three books by tracing my memories back, and a little help from google. This one was stuck. And there it was. On the bookshelf under my stairs, inbetween my housemates things.

It is called 'some things that mean the world to me'.

And I guess that's it. This is an insomnia rambling of the things that mean the world to me. The unplaceable, the intangible. The incredible, incredible things I have seen and done. The imprints of people who I will carry with me forever, even if I never see them again. The ones who I have seen again, and miss again. The ones who have visited, the ones who can't. All the decisions they help me make on a daily basis.

I could not sleep, so I started reading. And as the character walked down Valencia, I could feel the sun and sweat and see the orange again. And I could see the smile and flower from a kind stranger turned friend. I stopped reading. I held it close, like a secret. I hold you all close. Thank you.

Post script: A past script.

I finished that last five hundred words and was still not satisfied. So, I was just going through a jumble of old notes and writings, trying to satisfy the gods of insomnia with some substance. Amidst some rather stupid drunk thoughts (Egad, I can be pretentious when I drink!) and songs about cheese, lo and behold, it seems I wrote a guide for the dark days on one of my powerful ones. It made my erratic thoughts quieten a little, so I thought I best put it here so I know where to find it again when things are a little grey. It seems to sum up what I was trying to say earlier, in a much warmer way.

No one and nothing is infallible. 

To any big question, there is no simple answer. That being said, sometimes all you can do is to trust in your own complexity of instinct.

Learn to recognise honesty and that incredible intangible quality that is your own self reflected in another's eyes. These people will carry you when you cannot move forwards and will complete the puzzle when you are out of pieces.

Take chances, do not settle for less and do not let anyone make a decision for you. Not society, not anyone.

Do not be afraid of the lows. They too will pass. Do not be afraid of what they can teach you. Do not be afraid of feeling. Do not be afraid.

Value critical thinking. In yourself and others.

It is ok that you do not know. It is not ok to be satisfied with ignorance. The path to education is arduous, and there will not be an epiphany awaiting you at the end, because there isn't an end. But look back every now and then and you will realise how far you have come.

I wrote a few weeks back that I wanted to write a letter back to my past? This is why. She still helps me out when I least expect it. Thanks past Rachel, we'll try our best not to fuck it up too much from here.

Writing into the void

It is a scary prospect to leap into nothing. It is the cause of much of my procrastination, generally coupled along with a fear that I don't know enough, or anything at all for that matter. So I sit on the edge of the world and wait until something pushes me. I do not have the confidence to insist that it was my choices that lead me to this point. Instead I look to luck, to chance, and to that invisible hand that shoves me off the cliff. This protectionist mentality shields me from my failures but also my successes. My winning days were never mine, the world gave them to me. My failures were not mine, for I did not take that leap.

I was pushed.

I sit so often and try to unpack the human condition. It fascinates me. What makes me think like I do? What leads someone to believe so differently to me if we are in essence, the same? I look for answers constantly, but always knowing that the void is a breath away. Just out of reach, but leaning on me in everything I do. The pervasive tangible feeling that in order to succeed completely, I have to completely trust that there is nothing, that complete knowledge is unattainable. Only then will I dispense of the fear that holds me back. Is this why ignorance has such a power? If I am completely unaware, am I freer than when I am chasing the void but always losing out to my fear? Fear is a prison that I am well aware of, and yet I sit comfortably within its walls.

I am beginning to hate these walls.

Obviously the current theme to my thinking is this process of growth as a human, and that as we move  forwards, it becomes increasingly clear that we are smaller and more insignificant than we ever knew. The loss of the idealism of youth is not a simple change from optimism to pessimism, or at least, it doesn't need to be. I am seeing now that even two years ago, one year ago, I was riddled with youthful idealism. Here I sit now, not that much older, but so much more unsure. I have lost none of my passion, quite the contrary, I think it has grown and I am channeling it better than I ever have before. But I am now seeing that idealism is so easy when you swim in a small pond. It is easy to talk big when you feel like you have some kind of control on your system. I begin to see now (and I emphasise the word begin) that I could not hope to constrain or control my pond, my world. No matter how much I know, or will know. Education has not unlocked the one answer, but it has shown me one definite thing.

There is no one answer.

I say this with all the optimism, all the hope and all the love I can muster in this world. I cannot control it, but I begin to see that trust in the void, in humanity, in myself and in those around me is the only thing that can change the world.

Big breath, big jump, here we go.

Rational thought lives on a lonely plain.

I am all too wrapped up in theory and philosophy wank at the moment. Not in this very moment, but those preceding it, perhaps. 

Well, certainly. That opening is not meant to be a grumble either, I am reveling in every second of my theoretical wanderings. Returning to university has been an incredibly engaging experience, and I have thrown myself headlong into every page, every class. I try to retain some sort of decorum, but I know for certain that I am that overly opinionated mature age student who loves to hear the sound of her own voice. At least I am self-aware, and thanks to a certain disgruntled wannabe philosopher in the corner, not the most disliked in the room. 

So as I am meant to be writing event briefings, I sit here procrastinating/musing on liberal thought and social contracts. My fingers hesitate to type here though, for I know that once I start, the drivel that erupts will only be of interest to my own mind, and perhaps a drunk reader. Luckily for all concerned, my readership here should be low enough that I do not need to personally atone for my narrow and perhaps boring interests. If you have made it this far, feel free to press the eject button now. Safe landing to you.

Still here? Good bloody luck. 

I wrote last about my enjoyment of the string-like connection of time and its continuous nature. I was stirred by my readings today on the subject of universal history, and rational society as a goal for humankind. Immanual Kant wrote his nine pointed thesis for a universal history in 1784, which logically details an overarching rational idea for our progress as a race. It is not meant to be a blueprint, but almost a comfort for those delving into the question of why. It gives context to our many follies and failures, and the characteristic optimism of the Enlightenment period shines vibrantly. Tomorrow, will be better. 

The idea that got me square between the eyes was the notion that as living entities we strive to follow through with our natural capabilities, but, that the human quality of rationality cannot be completed within one lifetime. It is such that even the most learned, the most enlightened, could not achieve closure on this one. We look for answers. We look for them in relationships, in religion, in knowledge, in money, in alcohol, in drugs. And we all come up short. The pervasive grey seeps in and it feels as if it is all in vain. What the hell do I even know and why should I even bother? My brain yells this often, usually as I am trying to do something constructive.

'This task is therefore hardest of all; indeed, its complete solution is impossible, for from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built.'

I cannot win. My competitive nature detests this.

Reason, though, is bestowed upon all of us equally. With the added fertiliser of time, perhaps, perhaps this crooked wood can become a forest. It is this continuity that drew me in, that gave me comfort, that made sense to my gray brain. Perhaps I cannot win, but the pursuit of the end will add to the pile, and one day android Rachel will be able to climb to the top.

Here ends another pointless, insomnia -driven word vomit. Do not think that my arrogance is such that I think that I have spoken any new truths here. This was merely an avenue to clear my brain, and write my five hundred words. Goodnight, whoever you are.

It was a fiercely warm Autumn evening, the night that I decided I would not sleep.

An idea caught me the other day. This heat makes it a whole lot easier to slip into delirium, which is a consolation prize of sorts I guess. My headstone will read: 'She died from the heat, but at least she had an idea before she went into the sun'. Or perhaps it would read: 'Look behind you! ACK! HELP!'

Who knows. All we know is that this wouldn't be a written piece by me unless it began with a ramble of sorts.

Right. Back on message.

I like the continuity of time, and the fact that even though we are chemically the same person we began as, that it is more like a string of different people held together by a common thread. I used to write letters to my future self, wondering what we were doing, what life was like, if we still liked Tina Arena. You know, the important things. So I guess I want to write back to her. But involve a few more people this time.

I have met some pretty amazing people on my various travels, adventures and long nights at the bar, and I think the world and your past lives would like to hear from you (and your friends) too. So I ask a simple question:

If you could tell your fifteen year old self one thing, what would it be? 

I will compile your answers and then post them anonymously for the rest of Melbourne and the world to share. I have a romantic vision of guerrilla-esque street posters, so if you have a little time, drawing/design skills and want to help me create, let me know.

My answer I hear you ask? Well, that would be influencing the blinded nature of this social experiment if I told you. Send me yours and when I post them, you can try guess which is mine.


EDIT: First click here https://www.amnestybox.com (anonymous email service)
THEN
Send all correspondence to: ifihadmytimeagain@gmail.com

Thanks in advance comrades. You are making a 25 year old wanderer and a 15 year old nerd punk very happy indeed. Please pass this on to whomever you reckon would like to join in. The bigger, the more voyeristic payoff you get when you try to guess who wrote what. COME ON YOU ALL WANT THAT.