Walls

Ross and I posed for the photograph at reception, holding defaced playing cards to our fringes. It was the night that the party suddenly relocated to reception and then they explained: "We didn't want you to miss out!" As the night rolled on, we sat together, attempting to deduce whatever was scrawled in pencil on our cards. We often failed to retain whatever clues we had just been given and so the game drew on endlessly with exasperated cries of frustration from those who knew the answer was LIME. It was one of those loud games I'd only ever watch in silence, looking up at the kitchen's security camera but that night, I was pulled in and included.

I saw that photograph again last night. Alex had sent it to me during the night but it was a photograph of a print. He typed across it: "You made my wall :D" Last winter, he had spent his nights with me, sitting up, discussing music, writing, politics, love and grief. We spent some time in the daylight too, walking around Primrose Hill and Regent's Park, recalling how we had once been loved. We agonised how we wish those that we loved would reach out, how we wish they'd somehow change their minds. I reiterated all the stilted advice I had been given, all the advice that I could never really accept. I said that despite everything, we would even yearn for this very moment in time. But much like my stilted advice, I'm not sure if he ever really believed me.

I don't own a desk here but I often find myself falling asleep and dreaming of them in fantastical settings. I've often yearned for a place to be alone, a place where I can sit and research and write without anyone asking why I am writing anything down. It never seems to be a particularly popular pastime, to think and reflect. This morning, I was reminded of my own desk and how much I missed my wall with all its photographs and emblems of love and loss. Everything from John Lennon Guy's threepence to a photochrom of Chillon Castle in Vevey. I had thought so much of the physicality of desk that I forgot what it meant to look up from it, to think and to miss.

I have recreated a similar sort of space next to my bed in the rave cave. I can't properly write there but each day I look up and see the 7" inch record of John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me. There's Kalyn's drawing of a sleeping fox on grid paper and Laur's blueprint of the Tokyo Disneyland Castle. There is a scrap of paper featuring handwritten Kaseva lyrics, lovingly translated from Finnish to English by Olli, the night-time successor of Alex. I get emotional whenever I think of the mere gesture: the handwriting, how the lyrics squarely reflect my grief, the pain caused by the physicality of love lost.

One of the greatest pains of existing as a sentimentalist is that regardless of any advice to the contrary, you live with this perpetual feeling of unrequitedness. You insist that you care more because you write and remember and reach out. Yet I have carelessly discarded those who have been reckless with my heart, I have establised a willingness to overwrite memories, to freely destroy the legacy of music held fast in time. I recently wrote that "I am in this conflict of wanting to remember and wanting to forget, wanting to reveal and wanting to obscure". I want to write for you constantly, but I am troubled by the thought that you don't write for me.

I try to adopt a gracious and grateful mindset. I am moved to learn that I am remembered, that my friends wish to look up from their desks and see me. I am moved that they relocate their parties and transcribe lyrics, they draw foxes that screech in the night streets of Bloomsbury and they make me food most nights, in the knowledge that I don't bother with that sort of stuff anymore. They make it clear to me that this is not an unrequited friendship. They make it known that they love and remember, in the same way that I love and remember.

Hauntings

It was still daylight when we emerged from dinner and we stood at the corner of Little Bourke and Russell Street. I said, "I'll be happy to think that I'll associate all these places with you, when you're gone..." He didn't really respond, in fact he said comparatively very little on that walk back. I suppose we both knew it would be the last few minutes we would ever see each other, but I remained largely unsentimental. I filled the silence, recounting various hauntings of those narrow streets. We walked past Ding Dong and I told him of the friend who carelessly volunteered her heart to someone she shouldn't have. I told him of her heartbreak and how a mutual friend ruthlessly dismissed her grief. He sarcastically summed up the story I just told, highlighting the similarities to us and I playfully smacked his chest. "That was completely different."

We returned to talking about music in those remaining moments, about Parlophone and Steve Osborne and that other movement we thought we had played a part in. We kept walking until we came upon a street sign, a lane bearing his name. We stopped and looked up: "That's so strange..."

I once hated Melbourne for its hauntings. I would emerge from the house knowing that almost every street and intersection would bring up some unwelcomed association, some memory of a loss or mistake. I've never been able to shake that habit and I'm beginning to think that it's not even possible. I'm always attaching a memory to a locality and it was only recently that I learned that this mental process is called Method of Loci. It's a device which relies upon memorised spatial relationships to recall "memorial content". Even as I sit here now, I'm randomly generating geographical associations, namely the east side of Little Lonsdale and Russell Street, for no other reason than I want to remember what it is to be writing this.

Each morning, I take the train and between Flinders Street Station and Southern Cross I survey many places I associate with him. His hauntings don't bother me so much, in fact, I'm happy to think that he's somehow attached to the physicality of this place. I think about Little Collins Street and his thoughts on quantum physics. Through some ridiculous theory, he suggested that it somehow meant that we could have already lived out every path, every choice and possibility together. I said it was completely absurd and without even thinking, I pointed out the half-demolished building on the diametrically opposite corner with its crumbling Art Deco façade. "I don't understand why it needs to be destroyed." As the green man flashed at us and I instinctively stretched out my hand towards his, a thoughtless gesture to ensure we crossed safely.

Tantrums

I've recently developed this exercise to combat creative self-doubt. It's only a small act that takes place in my tatty magenta-coloured Claire Fontaine A6 cahier. I sit there and with Winston Churchill's Parker pen, I write the heading: What's the Nishi? It's Japanese Cockney rhyming slang my friends and I had made up: Nishinagahori / Story / What's the Nishi? We say it to each other all the time now as a kind of nifty in-joke salutation and in this context, I use it to drain out every fret and anxiety.

It's been hard, embarking on the Consequential Lyrics project on my own. I haven't had any sort of creative consultant on hand, someone to shriek and shake my arm enthusiastically during late night conversations. I've struggled in those moments when I've been compelled to pitch what it encompasses exactly. The premise is simple and intimate, it's both personal and universal. It's been hard but I've risen to the challenge of doing what the project actually requires: faithfully describing the consequence of these songs, sensitively describing the meanings I've assigned to them (without embarrassing anyone too much or getting sued).

In my practice of writing What's the Nishi?, I feel as if I'm sitting down to talk to a hysterical seven-year-old, one that has been throwing a tantrum for no discernible reason. It's important to to listen that raging child, to address them, to allow them to safely express their every angst and plague. At some point, there comes a moment when the anger recedes and the tears stop and there's no longer any rational basis for that anxiety. It's plain to see, in the matching magneta-coloured cursive print, that each of these anxieties can be broken down and addressed in a perfectly rational way.

There's another heading that comes after What's the Nishi?, I write in big letters: How to Progress? Under that heading, I try to combat those anxieties by being kind to myself. I try to think up practical solutions as to how to get over it, whether it be a practical obstacle or an emotional concern. I consider everything one at a time and I break it all down, thinking about what can I do today, this hour, this minute. I congratulate myself on how far I've come, the great amount of work I've already done and I acknowledge how good it will feel once it's actually completed.

I realised some time ago how much I've relied on other people for that creative confidence, how much I drew upon those shrieks and arm shakes. I thought compliments could fill me. I thought if I had enough of them, I would suddenly believe that my work had value. The problem was that I'd neither accept compliments or if I did, they would fade quickly. I never had enough to combat the self-doubt I harboured, but at the same time, I never wanted to quit. I just thought I was doomed to anguish: never believing, never accepting, always doubting.

I wrote a note for my desk:

Consequential Lyrics is worthy of your time and concentration. It is unique and it will encourage others to share something beautiful and important. A compliment won't make you feel better. Completion will.

I realised that's what I need to do to feel better, to calm the hysterics. I need to follow through, I need to complete this. I have forever dreamt of a creative compatriot, a Marr to my Morrissey (or even the other way around) and I wish I could have pulled this off with someone by my side, but I just can't. I just have to sit and push on through alone. I need to consistently convince myself that there is value in this. Whenever I begin to feel that hysterical child pipe up, I know that it's alright. I'll always have time for her, I'll always stop, listen and ask: What's the Nishi?

Inventions

It was a cold brisk night and Noreen and I had just walked past the cemetery. She said: "Just because they don't write essays about it doesn't mean they don't care. It doesn't mean that they don't remember everything..." I could only laugh a little, what with my wheezing and shortness of breath. I responded quite flippantly in that trade mark sardonic tone. "What are you talking about, no one remembers anything! I'd be an idiot to convince myself otherwise."

I don't know when I started believing this, but at some point, I thought that comfort comes from invention. It comes from that ability to convince yourself that they do care or they do remember or they do regret. There's always that scope to do that, if you spend enough time alone with your thoughts. In the silence, you can construct an alternative reality, one that need not be true necessarily, but one that is not quite so painful to live with on a day-by-day basis.

Lately, I've been sceptical of this practice. That's not to say I don't think it's worthwhile, I believe it encourages the imagination to provide solace at a time when it is so inclined to do quite the opposite. Saying that, I've started to resent the idea of measuring requitedness. Trying to figure out what they think, what they feel. You can stand in front of a person and they can insist that they love you and you can insist that you love them, but ultimately, it means nothing if they go on to remorselessly squash your heart.

Are those moments meaningless? Are they void of sincerity if you can't reconcile words with actions? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps I've had too many conversations to know how easy it is for other people to shelve such incidents in the mind. They don't need to invent imaginary regret or regard, they just distract themselves and move on. There's no desire to glorify passing moments or conversations, they don't even need to wonder if I care because I advertise that I do, in the most vulgar way imaginable. I advertise that I care on here.

I've been experimenting with damnatio memoriae, the Roman practice of completely wiping out a person's image and memory. It's just like carrying on as if that person never existed. It's strange and it's powerful and it's completely at odds with who I am. Yet, I've taken to it, not because it is easy to do, but because it is much easier than having to understand why. No comfort can be derived from that old practice of invention, there's no way to imagine their care or regret because it is impossible. It just doesn't make any sense.

The irony of all this is that I've started to see value in the meanings I create. I've started to see beauty in my own inventions. What they think is almost irrelevant at this point, I create consequence. I will always create consequence. I love how empowering that notion is, how it is not at all reliant upon detecting any semblance of truth or sincerity. It's all about establishing a kind of ownership: it's not meaningful because they care, it's meaningful because I care... and I express it all in a way that other people might care too.

Viktor Tsoi in Igla: get stabbed, light cigarette, walk away...

Compliments

Missy Laur said something curious to me the other day. Compliments are like advice, we only tend to accept them from people who don't know us very well. It was a timely bit of insight and so thought-provoking, too. At that point, I had been contemplating the nature and the function of compliments. How desperately they are craved and how difficult they are to accept.

I once thought I was simply echoing the values of my family. On the face of it, I would consider humility to be of paramount importance to us, but then I would think of my brother and his sickening bouts of narcissism. He thought he was absolutely amazing at everything, so smart, so handsome and talented to boot. Yet he would follow me from room to room, begging me for a compliment. Any compliment at all.

My instinctive response to a compliment is to swear. I've never thought to rationalise why I'm compelled to react like that. Do I feel like they're lying to me? Do I feel like they're attempting to combat my self-loathing tendencies? Perhaps I simply never learned how to gracefully accept kind words. I never learned how to use them, to rely upon them in moments of doubt.

I've slowly trained myself to respond in a more congenial way, to smile and say thank you very much. I often tell myself out loud to respond gracefully. It is a purposeful cue, knowing how inclined I am to aggressively argue them down. Most kind words get lost that way, after all, it takes such energy to act appropriately, to act in such a way that would suggest that I agree (even when I don't).

I'm uncertain how it happened, but things have moved on a little. I suspect I must have been subjected to thousands of these things and they snap back at me occasionally: a friend saying I cannot wait until you write a novel, another describing my designer freckles, a lover referring to my touch. Do I believe in those words now? Does it make me a narcissist? An egotist?

You sat across from me, not too long ago, at a table at China Bar. I'm going to give you some advice. You said. I was alarmed. Am I not going to like this? You smirked a little. That depends. Don't doubt yourself so much. You elaborated a little, referring in part to my shyness, referring in part to my detailed disclosure of my desire to exist solely as a brain in a jar.

It's just as Missy Laur said. Compliments are like advice, we only tend to accept them from people who don't know us very well. It takes me a couple of moments to recall your compliment, maybe even longer than that. I deliberately try to get used to the prickly awkwardness of its sentiment. This is what it must feel like to believe you're alright.

The Hypocritical Headband

Missy Laur and I would often preface advice with the expression, "please excuse the hypocritical headband". It was a reference to the large 1960s headbands I used to wear. Like the headband, the hypocrisy of the scenario was so dramatic that it could never be avoided and instead of being sensible and attempting to take our own advice, we would use the hypocritical headband as a mechanism to deliver lectures, guidance and comfort.

We wore the headband in good faith, we did. We were deathly aware of our mutual propensity to obsess, in spite of our reassurances that there would come a time when we wouldn't. She told me repeatedly that things would get better and after a very long time, they actually did. I would reassure others too, sitting across from dear friends at Sousou. I would tell them that no matter how painful it is now, everything will eventually numb out in time.

Those reassurances now seem so wildly insincere, so desperately hypocritical. I can't believe I ever forgot how painful it could be, but then I find it hard to believe I ever managed to endure it all before. I know on some fundamental level that it will be their words, the words of Missy Laur and Louise Sucre that will ultimately cure me. I have no idea what words could make for any immediate cure but I will try and listen. I will try and get better.

Nocturne

I have an attachment to the night. I love its stillness, how time becomes vague. There is a comfort in being alone with the thoughts and notebooks, it's as if I am lost and unaccounted for. There's no threat of aggression or confrontation and the possibility of ever having to defend myself is removed. I can be alone.

I've used my love of the night to my benefit, my job is at night. I can do what I do when the office is empty. I'm not subjected to the silliness typically associated with office politics. That, and my tendency to flirt and argue can be quashed. Instead, I sit alone and listen to my documentaries, plays and ripped episodes of Heartbreak High.

I emerge when it becomes light, when men in suits walk purposefully down Bourke Street, nursing their take-away soy lattes. I love the sunrise too, even though it signals the end of another wasted evening. The horizon glows with ever-changing pinks and flossy yellows, there are creamy clouds and unfamiliar hues.

Stephen Fry says that people who stay up to see dawn perceive it differently from those who awake early to hear birds frantically chirping. He described the phenomenon in some degree of detail, however, I'm not sure if I quite believe him.

Alexandre Cabanel's Phèdre
When I get home, I go to bed after many hours of distraction. It's mid-morning and I sleep deeply, for too many hours. My dreams are highly involved, typically including detailed scenes of fantastical foreign cities I'm yet to visit. There is often kindness and redemption as I meet the people I so keenly miss and admire. All is calm and blissful.

Dreams are interrupted by the vibration of my phone. Another call, another text. In that moment of disorientation, I fool myself in thinking it had all really happened. It all passed as I dreamt it, with Johnny Marr in that Indian marketplace. I see the daytime dreams as another aspect of that addictive attachment I have to the night, my conscious imagination could never be as compelling as the subconscious.

As much as I love it, I have decided to give up the night for the month of March, the month of my birthday. While I feel safe and autonomous in the indefinite hours of darkness, I know that I forgo the possibility of a real existence. That is, doing things that I really want to do in the hours of daylight.

Perhaps if my hood had a 24 hour gym or even a coffee house, perhaps if I produced more essays or podcasts, I could have kept this up forever. The truth is that I'm just too curious to see what life could be like on the other side of dawn.

Clandestine

I moved out of home for the first time approximately three weeks ago. I didn't give it much forethought. I was at work when I had received a call from my Dad that my brother had found my diary and trashed my room. I knew then, covering my face so not to draw attention to myself, that there would be no way I could go home.

When I describe what it has been like these past few weeks, I usually start with some ironically snide remark. It's just funny that I don't feel safe in my comfort zone, I would say. I used to think I was safe, simply locked up in my room. In addition to hiding myself, I would hide my writing, in fear that he would find it and read it out loud, pausing to cackle loudly in my face.

But how can you ever escape? I can sit in a rented room on the north side of town, with my suitcase unzipped and my notebooks in full view. I can sleep without having to lock my door for the first time in fifteen years. But I am yet to escape somehow. I know I will continue to punish myself, just as he punished me.

There's nothing more I can say.