The beginning of the one way conversation Part One

It's 12 pm in a suburban Tasmanian shopping centre. I have left behind the woes of office life and a flashing orange Instant message that may or may not be important to step into the bewilderness. 1ne of the local businesses has an angry sign about centre management affixed to his window, and all I notice about it is the shoddy way it's taped to the window, as if his impotently angry hands couldn't wait to put the message up, shabby or otherwise. I peer in the window and he's handing over a pen to a customer to sign his petition. Something about air conditioning. His cheeks are puce and crimson in alternate angry streaks. The customer drops the magic word to describe just what he thinks of centre management. All together now, it's the most wonderful time of the year...

Its 3hree days before Xmas and the centre is frothing with activity. I've acquired a neck injury, a sign of rapid aging. It went off like a shotgun my neck, right in the middle of the day. On a green bench sit 2wo middle class university students in matching school leaver’s tops. One of them is talking rapidly and preciously about whether the protagonist in a particular novel is "fascinating or trite". The girl in the conversation is staring ahead blankly, as if she's heard the conversation a million times before or maybe as if she can turn the next table into ashes simply by staring a hole through it. I'm walking with a purpose I notice. I'm very self conscious today. Every gesture is for some reason bothering me, as if I've become an awkwardly strung puppet in a giant play I didn't sign up for. What is with my walk? When did I start walking like this...

Xmas is not my favourite time of year. I've already regaled most of our casual workers with what has almost become a Seinfeldesque rehearsed piece of conversational fluff about how tedious Xmas dinner has become when people ask me every year how work is. To be honest, it's so rehearsed, it's almost ready for the stage, and I even pause for laughter round the photocopier. Truthfully, if that's not a sign of middle class ennui...

Xmas, so says a gaudy neon pink sign stuck with Blu Tac to 1ne of the store windows, is for the children. Sadly for me, my Dad has taped over 1ne of my Xmas mornings as a child with an old repeated episode of the Vicar Of Dibley. Tragically for me, the last vestiges of any evidence I may have been a free spirited innocent cherub have been erased and replaced by the formulaic scripted comedy of Richard Curtis and someone liners from the bloke who played Trigger on Only Fools and Horses. Those years now only exist in anecdote and whimsy, exaggeration and memories that coated in sentiment. My Dad has chosen to mostly remember the anecdotes that end with me looking foolish. That is his right as a parent. I have to peer through the veneer of Scottish cynicism to find true sentiment and affection. My own Xmas card in my hands will soon possess, in my own handwriting, a heartfelt and jocular plea to tell me who my real parents are, part of a long running family joke about me being a long last member of the Packer clan. My Mum usually ripostes with some remark about how they'd have sent my back by now. Yes, I was born this way, so any VHS based evidence of a sickly sweet family gathered around the Xmas tree learning would clearly have been staged nonsense for Grandma, and best taped over by a Trigger joke, since it would bear no relation at all to my memories, and how they have come to form the person standing drinking Red Bull before this storebound Santa at this particular hour...

"Do you believe in magic!" yells an emaciated sickly looking woman in skin tight green elf pants. She pumps her fist in the air like a bewildered out of place rock star as a single faint trace of mascara rolls down her cheek, and holds out her megaphone to her audience of bored looking children and . The rain on a tin roof emulating small round of applause that reverberates around the shopping centre suggests our shoppers not only don't believe in magic, they don't even believe in it enough to drown out the faint hum of a corporate CD chain store's Mariah Carey CD. She doesn't care - her enthusiasm for Xmas isn't shared by the sleepy looking store Santa who woozily huffs and forces his red jowls into a forced smile as a small child with cherubic features affixes himself to Santa's knee to aim for the only things important in a child’s life. I envy his simplistic view that life can any only get better if he acquires a particular item or possession. And yet, not only 5ive minutes later is the cherubic angelic child fizzing in strange anger about not getting a Samboys chip, but I'm forced to ponder just how emotionally mature I am when there's only one thing in my life that makes any sense, even when my thoughts are being Careyed at a suddenly noxious level...

I return to work. I'm humming a public domain carol. There's a crazy man standing on the steps of the centre. He's hitting himself in the head and talking about knocking his haircut into shape. His carer - not as I sometimes say, his "handler" - is patiently waiting for this fixation to stop. I feel no connection to my fellow man at all these days. Everywhere I look, I feel tired. I've stopped making sense in my conversation, and no one is making sense in return to me. Truly, I feel as though everything around me is a crazed one way conversation. If I speak to someone, I feel as though my words are meaningless, bouncing off and falling to the floor in a slow agonizing motion that I can see. In return, people talking to me are mere disturbances, interruptions into a private obsession that can never be truly explained. The crazy man is quiet now, but smiling the demented smile of those about to stab. My simplistic life begins again when I re-enter my work place, spin another one of my tedious anecdotes, receive in return a mild response of fake laughter, smooth my suit down and receive on Instant Messenger a comment from the only person in my life that makes any sense to me, truly the ship through the fog, if that ship was Tasmanian and the fog was a series of small children running into my shins and making me feel every bit of my world weary age...

Her name was BJ, and she was going to save me from all this...

Portishead take on the metal version of John Williamson

It was a strange day today, an eerie grey gloom encasing not just my workplace (unsurprisingly, one of my work colleagues went home due to an ingrown eyelash - yes, really, someone with a voodoo doll didn't try hard enough) but the entire city where I work. Despite that, the strangest thing that happened today involved my local McDonalds. I don't often go to the McDonalds where I work, the one where I live being full of depressed single parents with visitation rights sitting reading the paper while their progeny bounces the Happy Meal toy off their head in a plea for attention. The one where I work though is obviously owned by some kind of American motivational speaker, as it's always clean, the staff are uncharacteristically upbeat, and the food is even vaguely food (OK, that's stretching it). For some reason, the girl behind the counter today got immensely hypnotised by her service training (or my fly Scottish patter) and wouldn't let me go. "Thanks!" I said initially. "No worries! You have a great day!" "Thanks..." "A really great day!" "Er..." "Enjoy your food!" and so on until a vague sense of absolute discomfort came over me and I genuinely thought I would have to provide a written report on the quality of the pickles. One of the things I've really been talking about to my friends lately though is that fact that the Australian actor Bill Hunter - a lovely man, who we all thought had a great integrity to him - is doing adverts for the evil empire the AFL. On top of the fact that I read once that there's basically about two acts in the entire world (and one of them the tedious Bob Dylan) who have never done a private party for wealthy Arab sheiks when asked, and I think my search for a hero with integrity and dignity will forever go on. We know far too much about our heroes these days to truly idolise them - David Boon, for instance, is idolised by everyone in Tasmania except people who have met him. And that's before I get to the lovely Monica Daggar throwing her integrity away to date the boofhead from Aussie Home Loans...Jane Fleming, I'd expect nothing more from her...

In the midst of discussing this (and various betting options) with my friend today, I had another discussion about intelligence vs dumbness, my friends oft being concerned with my propensity to be able to remember cast details of Kate Bushs The Line, The Cross and The Curve but not do anything about my career or job prospects or sit and pen the great Australian novel. I can't explain this - but my entire life I've been confronted by the battle between culture and lowculture, and I don't feel my life has suffered because I can recite the last 28 Brownlow medallists and not a single line from Nabokov. However, I will give you an example of a time when culture and lowculture have clashed in my life. My school once had a battle of the bands, hosted by a slightly plump bogan girl who often had the hots for whats in the box with the dots. We all gathered in the school assembly hall, resisting the temptation to spend our lunchtime more productively in the library or avoid knife wielding muggers in the park. The first band were pretentiously arty, a little bit trip hop, but with a mesmerising mainland vocalist who was not only beautiful but had a whole Beth Gibbons Portishead nervy energy to her. They sang this really beautiful song about taking a journey (not the band Journey, that would have been ace) and it was amazing. I really fancied her, but of course, I was much too shy to say anything, and I had a cheese sandwich that was taking up my attention anyway. And of course, they got really tepid applause from the shuffling populace, shuffling like livestock in danger as the chords failed to move them. Then, without warning, on came the school dirt band, a long haired unintelligable headcase called Penman leading the way on vocals, throwing himself into some sub Pantera wailing and screaming. As I stood there blinking under the lights, I realised that everyone but me was thoroughly enjoying the performance, without irony, and rocking out. I hated them for it - could they not see that this was just unintellictual, thoughtless noise - in fact, as I listened closer, I realised that they had actually more or less taken John Williamsons "Rip Rip Woodchip" and turned into a metal song. After about three or four hairwhips that probably showered the front row with grease, the plump girl ran on and declared that Penman was the winner, oblivious to the fact that it probably should have gone to a vote, and incidentally, she was his woman anyway. Defeated, I skulked away from that assembly hall with all the righteous fury and unrequited indignation of a Triple J request DJ. Oh, how could they not appreciate the art instead of...that...that loud artless noise (I of course spat the word noise in horrified disgust)...now all I needed was friends to discuss it with...

I really was angry though that this beautiful music had to suffer in the cauldron of the thick, but just as I was about to write some angry letters to Backchat about the state of the nation, I found my friend Matthew. Matthew was a man who loved his air guitar, and could be relied upon to cheer us all up with a bit of rocking out when he needed to - oh, and sometimes he would cheer us up by rolling a nerd up in a carpet. Always big laughs in Burnie. Anyway, he was kicking a football, and no doubt saw my incredibly tortured sub Morrissey face as I strolled across the playground. "Sup dickhead!" he said affectionately. At least I think it was affectionate? I couldn't explain to Matthew that he was part of the problem - a man who loved his metal, and the simple life, where as I craved far more intellectual fare, far and away from Burnie. Matthew saw me shrug, and punched a Sherrin football from hand to hand as he walked in my direction. "Dicha see that wicked band! Ferkin awesome!" he said, putting his fingers in an air guitar position. I shrugged again (gee, I wonder why I didn't have a lot of friends - I might as well have wandered around with a duffle coat and eyeliner) and he looked me dead in the eye. "I bet you wanted to root that moody chick" he said, smiling. I looked back at him, and said something meaningful like "Er..." "Fucking hell, you are a dickhead! Why you'd want to go out with someone that fucking miserable, you'd have to be a miserable bastard! Go out with a metal chick! They fucking rock!" - he then turned away and kicked the football as hard as he could, enjoying it's flight as it trickled down the hill. "Cheer the fuck up! Metal rocks!" he said, running away giggling - I no doubt had some pithy remark prepared about how metal and rocks were actually different elements that would have gone down a treat on the Left Bank, but this was Burnie, and to say something like that, well, someone get the carpet...

I saw the Penman guy and his missus pashing behind a tree as I walked, the trophy and the Kmart gift voucher he had won propped up against a nearby bush. The more I walked, the more I realised that I was being a bit stupid, and stuck up and judgemental. After all, all of the people I looked down on for their lack of intellectual qualities were, in fact, really happy. They were getting pashes, they were kicking footballs, they were hanging out with their friends and debating issues about marbles, while here I was, unsure of myself, bewildered, lost...sounding like a Calvin Klein advert. As I pondered this moment in my life, I happened to look across the school car park, and there was the Beth Gibbons girl, shimmering in the sunlight, stunning, poised. In every way, my intellectual salvation, a sign of a smarter world...and she had in her hand a large brick, and she was obviously about to break into a car. At which point, a large man in tattoos came, tapped her on the arm, and pointed to a more expensive car for them to steal. I didn't know what to do or say or how to think - this wonderful girl that had moments before been so arty and talented and wonderful was now swearing her head off and calling her boyfriend a cunt because they had missed their opportunity to steal a Selica from a financially strapped school teacher. Her speaking voice sounded a bit like Nick Riewoldts anyway. I stood, watching, wondering about the duality of human expression, the mask she had put on a few moments before, when Matthew came back up the hill, bouncing his football. "Sup dickhead?" he said, shooting me a handpass. "Oh, moody chicks trying to steal a car," I said, softly and sadly. "Is that a metaphor?" he said, raising an eyebrow. I said no, it wasn't, she was really trying to steal a car. He looked across at the car park, at the tattooed man dragginer her away as they argued, stroked his already stubbled chin, and nodded. "Oh fuck, that's all we fucking need...next year, she'll be back, fucking whinging about cars and prison in her songs...count me fucking out!"

I never quite to make of that day, but one thing I do know...The Line, the Cross and The Curve is not a film you want to put on any time of your life...