big weekend, back to work now
THE DUDE IN THE COAT is proving to be a strange write. It's taking me back to a younger version of myself, a past time; but couldn't be written by any other than the twenty-nine-year-old version of me. It happens in places I walked first at the start of the decade - hell, old Loki would recognise a couple.
It draws on so many old memories, guts them and uses them for backdrop; the feeling of being in love in Treasury Gardens in the summertime, or of being in love in China Town on a Friday afternoon at the edge of winter. Walking the shore of the Yarra at sundown. Buying a mythic pint at the Elephant And Wheelbarrow and listening to the barman yell "Fuck off to Fast Eddies' if you don't like me bleedin' menu"... the exact feeling of knowing you can't go home because some poor bastard threw himself in front of the Tube train at Flinders St station and is now a hundred-yard-long stain on the rails...
Seeing a guy lay down on the corner of Smith Street, turn blue, and die, right there, and as his arm loses tension and falls, seeing a needle roll from it... watching sunlight dapple the roof of St Paul's from Queens Bridge... watching a beautiful women sink down in tears by the corner of King Street, among the pubs and arcades and stripshows and porn stores and the encroachment of the cafe society tables on the pavement, a priveleged balcony from which to watch the sleaze and dissolution and pain and collapse and hopeless doomed glamour of poor sinking Rialto...
Now, at twenty-nine, I walk the lines of the city. Spring to Lonsdale. Spencer Street to Exhibition, via Bourke Street. The tangle of Rialto. Prop up the old lady of La Trobe Street as I light a cigar. Step out of Flagstaff Train station, where she and I used to kiss (I discover last week that the station's site used to be Flagstaff's execution spot) into the Whisky Bar, where we drank, and where, I find, a witch lived, three hundred years ago. I walk the parks, stand in the open air theatre where another and I once saw the RSC do "Romeo And Juliet", poke around... the wonder's gone, but I'm left with understanding. And that's good enough.
I sit in Young and Jackson's, George Orwell's little dream of a bar given form, on Swanston Street. I transfer a few notes and thoughts into the handheld. Transcribing Melbourne. Gone are the days where Sydney was my girlfriend, and I was wrapped up in the newness and sexiness of her. I'm older now; the me of '96, '98, '00 all gone, gone as the women I shared Sydney with. I found my long-time love somewhere else, and now I shall be Melbourne's friend and confidant, her agent in the wider world.
Me and The Dude walk Melbourne's streets, only learning.
It draws on so many old memories, guts them and uses them for backdrop; the feeling of being in love in Treasury Gardens in the summertime, or of being in love in China Town on a Friday afternoon at the edge of winter. Walking the shore of the Yarra at sundown. Buying a mythic pint at the Elephant And Wheelbarrow and listening to the barman yell "Fuck off to Fast Eddies' if you don't like me bleedin' menu"... the exact feeling of knowing you can't go home because some poor bastard threw himself in front of the Tube train at Flinders St station and is now a hundred-yard-long stain on the rails...
Seeing a guy lay down on the corner of Smith Street, turn blue, and die, right there, and as his arm loses tension and falls, seeing a needle roll from it... watching sunlight dapple the roof of St Paul's from Queens Bridge... watching a beautiful women sink down in tears by the corner of King Street, among the pubs and arcades and stripshows and porn stores and the encroachment of the cafe society tables on the pavement, a priveleged balcony from which to watch the sleaze and dissolution and pain and collapse and hopeless doomed glamour of poor sinking Rialto...
Now, at twenty-nine, I walk the lines of the city. Spring to Lonsdale. Spencer Street to Exhibition, via Bourke Street. The tangle of Rialto. Prop up the old lady of La Trobe Street as I light a cigar. Step out of Flagstaff Train station, where she and I used to kiss (I discover last week that the station's site used to be Flagstaff's execution spot) into the Whisky Bar, where we drank, and where, I find, a witch lived, three hundred years ago. I walk the parks, stand in the open air theatre where another and I once saw the RSC do "Romeo And Juliet", poke around... the wonder's gone, but I'm left with understanding. And that's good enough.
I sit in Young and Jackson's, George Orwell's little dream of a bar given form, on Swanston Street. I transfer a few notes and thoughts into the handheld. Transcribing Melbourne. Gone are the days where Sydney was my girlfriend, and I was wrapped up in the newness and sexiness of her. I'm older now; the me of '96, '98, '00 all gone, gone as the women I shared Sydney with. I found my long-time love somewhere else, and now I shall be Melbourne's friend and confidant, her agent in the wider world.
Me and The Dude walk Melbourne's streets, only learning.