Paranoid Commuters

I had the most bizarre experience on the train thursday morning. Boarding the 9.01 express at Camberwell station I sat down opposite a middle aged man, suit-wearing and respectable looking, who was reading the morning’s paper. There was nothing particularly different about this scenario to any other train ride, except for the fact that I had been able to find a seat – a rare occurrence indeed. After a few minutes the man got up, apologizing as he bumped me on his way into the aisle, and sat down on the next row of seats over in front of a young Asian man with pond shaped metal framed glasses. He began talking to him, and I assumed they were friends. Retreating into my own world of headphone assisted music I thought nothing further of it until the song I was listening to ended. Suddenly I noticed a palpable sense of agitation and confusion amongst my fellow commuters. “You’re harassing me”, my former seat-mate stated to the young Asian man, in a remarkably measured tone.
“I’ve never seen you before in my life, sir,” the bespectacled one replied in a similarly even and nonplussed manner.
“Maybe you haven’t. But this is the same sort of treatment I’ve been subjected to for five years, maybe not from you, but from a wide network of people just like you”
The affable young man just smiled pleasantly.
“Sir, I don’t know what you are talking about, you are mistaken.”
“You’re stalking me,” the other continued, “This is harassment. I would like you to get off at Flinders St with me and talk to the police’
“I can’t right now, I have a meeting, but maybe later this afternoon.”
“Well, I can’t later this afternoon, I also have a meeting.”
The accused jotted down his mobile number of the man’s paper, promising he would be able to talk to the police later, and indeed, even seemed to relish the possibility. The train reached Parliament, where he got off, the suit man satisfied enough to allow him to leave, having drawn some sort of concession. It was a remarkably efficient negotiating process that belied the utter weirdness of the preceding conversation.

The obvious conclusion is to be drawn from this encounter is that middle-aged suit man is affected with some sort of condition that induces intense and unjustified paranoia. But who knows? Maybe there really is a vast network of people out there, following his every move, scrutinizing his every activity. A shadowy government agency perhaps, or maybe he owes somebody important money. Farfetched, sure, but a couple of things bothered me. If pond-shaped glasses didn’t know this seemingly disturbed soul, then why did he not seem more flustered? He seemed merely bemused, as if it were all in a day’s work. If I was in his situation I would have been thoroughly disturbed.

Still, it is without doubt the most bizarre exchange I have witnessed on public transport, and I have both seen and been part of many. I’ve been offered unsolicited tips on how to get on food stamps, and when, where and why to take acid - considered casual conversation on the Portland bus I was on I’m sure. I’ve been shown bullet wounds from gangstas and servicemen alike, one caused by South Central LA, the other by Iraq combat ---- but this well and truly takes the cake. In Melbourne, it takes mental illness or drunkenness to initiate these left-field encounters. The only time its acceptable to start a conversation with a stranger sober is if you are going to ask the footy scores. Anyway, it’s the ‘wide network of people’ that does it for me. That guy’s been watching the X-Files.

Sugar Man

Sixto Rodriguez. Creates two beautiful albums of Dylan inspired Psych-folk in the early 70s. Nobody buys them, he disappears. Develops a following through word of mouth and bootleg tapes in the southern hemisphere, but doesn’t find out until his daughter reads about it on the internet in the late 90s.

It’s a tale that gives hope to all of us out there just waiting to be discovered: the self-satisfied, self-anointed creative elite - the scandalously ignored artistic geniuses among us. Of course you might need to be willing to wait 30 years, and may only develop a cult following in countries that don’t have markets big enough to financially reward you for your patience.

Sixto’s story shows the kind of luck involved in commercial success. Producing good music is not enough. You have to whore yourself out to promotion duties, which Rodriguez was unwilling to do, and catch the ear of the right radio DJ or A & R exec. Nothing is guaranteed, and talent often goes unnoticed. If manufactured pop stars are rewarded for their meager abilities in the millions, then it is only just that Sixto should be able to afford a nice beach house somewhere. But justice and the music business do not share strong ties. Bad taste conquers common decency, which turns out not to be as widespread as its name would suggest. Yet Sixto is still out there, pedaling his decades old tunes to those with the sense and goodwill to listen, playing the old dive bars he sung about, searching for the sugar man. Turns out you can’t keep a good dog down.

Drops of rain, bullets of truth.

I am sitting in my car as it pours with rain, I don’t dare brave the conditions outside. If I make a run for the ticket machine my laptop could get soaked. I haven’t bothered to get a protective jacket for it yet, so it just sort of floats around in my bag. It’s a set up that asks for trouble.

Also, if I just wait around in my car for another ten minutes I won’t have to pay for parking, thus rendering redundant the dash for the ticket machine, and minimizing the possibility of drowning my cherished macbook. Yes it’s another horrible, grey Melbourne winter’s day that threatens to destroy my goodwill, but all is not lost.

I am just finishing Hunter S Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, a non-fiction novel that is constantly interesting and occasionally brilliant. I don’t hold Hunter in quite the same esteems as others, because I think he is a little inconsistent, but when he is at his most potent he is unrivalled in the field of creative journalism. His best passages make you wonder why he can’t write with such intensity the whole time. Take this stroke of genious:

“This is the generation that went to war for Mom, God, and Apple Butter, the American Way of Life. When they came back, they crowned Eisenhower and then retired to the giddy comfort of their TV parlours, to cultivate the subtleties of American history as seen by Hollywood” – p 270: Penguin Modern Classics Edition

It’s the sort of statement that few writers could make without sounding ridiculous. But Hunter writes so assuredly and with such conviction that his generalized analysis becomes truth. You can’t define an entire generation, but you can define the prevailing spirit of the times, and its overarching problems and characteristics, which is what Thompson does so vividly here.

I find Mailer and Fitzgerald to be the same way. They lull you into a state of casual interest, and then stun you with moments of zeitgeist defining analysis and wordplay. Bullets of truth penetrate from an invisible literary magnum you were not even aware they possessed. I think that is what separates literature from entertainment. If you stick with it, you will be struck with answers to the questions that cripple your sub-consciousness, even if they never make their way to your present mind. To be honest, there were about five pages in Gatsby that were memorable to me, but they made such an impression as to dwarf some of the far more entertaining fiction I have read. I still think that the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series has one of the most engrossing plots going around, and I don’t care how that sounds, but its prose style and existential depth holds no match for Fitzgerald. If you can combine both of these elements you are really on to something.

The rain has stopped, but I’m inside now so I don’t really care. That’s always the way though isn’t it?


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There was an article in The Age today about elites in Toorak buying up the properties surrounding their homes. Apparently they didn’t want to have to put up with the hassle of having neighbours. What the hell is wrong with these people? Their plots of land are so big they would need binoculars to even get a glimpse of anyone at an adjacent property. Allegedly, this is a long-seated tradition of our beloved Bailleus. It’s nice to know that the man who wants to be Premier of our state is part of a family that loves Victoria so much, they wouldn’t want any of its inhabitants moving in next to them.

Unfortunately this is not an impersonality that affects only our bluebloods; it’s also a defining aspect of semi-affluent inner suburbia. Yesterday a friend of mine told me that there was a complaint against someone I work with for being “overly friendly”. This city is full of cold barstards, I swear. We’re only happy when we’re being ignored. Warmth fills us with distrust. The only time it’s acceptable to talk to strangers is when you are intoxicated. Where is the sense of being in this thing together. Perhaps it goes back to our convict roots; maybe we’re still all scared of having the larrikin from the neighbouring hovel on Little Bourke St steal a loaf of bread when we aren’t looking. In any case Melbourne, have a little heart.

Anonymity and Hot Chocolate

I have gone to the same Starbucks a couple of times every week for years, and yet they still ask for my name whenever I show up as if they had never seen me before. The impersonality of the place is awesome, and one of its greatest attractions. I can place myself down on a generic padded chair and be ignored for hours on end. No, ‘Would you like another coffee?’, and definitely no subtle hints to fuck off. Friends are still dismayed by my utter lack of hipness in café choice, but I don’t need a double shot of pretension in my drink. What I need is to be left alone and treated as another piece of furniture, which is exactly the service my ambivalent neighbourhood baristas dutifully provide for me when I present myself for an hour of reading at 5:30 on a Monday afternoon.

The pressure of jobs in marketing or public relations fade into oblivion as customers are soothed by the semi-alternative music aired over Starbucks radio; the sounds of Bob Dylan, or The Cult, or even Sixto Rodriguez. I might retreat to my headphones for a dose of Dinosaur Jr., and enjoy the irony of listening to slacker rock in a multinational coffee house chain. Most others appear happy to let the Starbucks music stand educate them.

In my travels, Starbucks provides a reassuring familiarity in places where I don’t know a soul, recognize a single street corner or possess knowledge of public landmarks of any kind. It is a beacon of comfort in a sea of cold faces for whom I hold no interest. Does that not have some value? For every time I am willing to step out into the unknown world and take a chance, there is another that I simply want to retreat to something I know.

I am sure many Melburnians will scoff over their Chai Lattes as they read this, no doubt listening to the new Dirty Projectors album and looking out onto a Fitzroy street front of skinny jeans and angular fringes, but hopefully they will not choke mid-sip as their throats swell with smugness.