Wax

I brought in the new year alone. I didn't intend it to be that way, but it felt appropriate somehow. As I stood by the upstairs window and watched the fireworks over Northcote, I don't think I could have had anyone else there.

With any other year, I'd take myself aside moments after midnight to read a letter I'd written a year before. There'd be lengthy summaries, paired with annoyingly simple and familiar moral overtures.

As I sat alone, I recalled those instances where I was forced to reveal the contents of my yearly letter, to Gav in a gutter in China Town and to Min in a kitchen in South Yarra. In both instances, I warned of its intensity but they insisted I proceed.

They were both disgusted, but for very different reasons. Gav came up with the infamously ironic (and the fucking stupid) statement: "you have ephemeral attitude towards love". Min, predictably, dismissed my candour and depressive tendencies.

I realised it quickly, after I managed to pull the pages apart that were stuck fast together with silver sealing wax. A year ago, I wrote with the same idiotic naïveté that I displayed in revealing my words to those I had loved so much.

I don't think I'd have ever realised, in my ten years of doing this, that perhaps these letters weren't about resolutions for the new year. They were about an ideal: someone interested enough to excuse themselves from a party, to follow me out to calmly listen to private thoughts.

Everything is different now, everything is more different than I could've ever imagined. I no longer hope for connection, I no longer hold that desire to glorify passing moments. I hope for nothing, except for the ability to quash that pathetic propensity to talk and to trust.

Disappointments Diary 2013

Love Saves the Day

We spent forever anticipating the antics of this night. Yet no matter how long we spent discussing the intricacies of how it could all transpire, the music, the lights and atmosphere, it always seemed to exist in a fantastical realm. For its breadth and grandeur, we often stopped momentarily to giggle at the idea of even discussing it. After all, it would be the celebration of Billy's 30th birthday... and Billy was only 28.

Billy and I had imagined the party in many different places: we imagined surveying Melbourne's skyline from an inner-city rooftop, we discussed the prospect of dancing in a former industrial space. We contemplated the idea of projecting videos on the walls, clips of Deee-lite mucking about in their dressing room or else Grace Jones getting her hair cut. We thought about how we could possibly re-interpret the fairy-light portraiture of Laura Adel Johnson with the help of a projector and some double-sided sticky tape.


As discussions progressed, I became more devoted to this night and what I had imagined of it. I became engrossed with the idea of a heavily populated dancefloor. Sequins, strobe lights, sweat. The more we discussed it, the more I realised that I, too, wanted to have this night of unbridled Italo Disco decadence. Yet, somehow there was always this implicit acknowledgement between us that the night we truly wanted had passed many years before us. If only we could have danced at New York City's Paradise Garage, thirty odd years before?

Even as we stood against the white-washed brick walls of South Melbourne's Smart Artz Gallery, eyeing off the particularly inviting grand piano in the corner of the room, I always thought it would be in the far future. Perhaps it was something in the way Billy spoke about his plans. He had invested so much love, thought and attention in the philosophy of it all. Every aspect of it was full of personal and political significance. It was no longer just a birthday party, it was Love Saves the Day, an exploration of black and gay rights within the context of disco culture.

It became all the more significant when Billy insisted I dj for the early part of the evening. My mind reeled, considering the hundreds, nay, thousands of raging Italo anthems I wanted to blast out, compelling every person to move without contemplation. It would have been the first time in two years that I'd been behind the decks. Were it not for his invitation, I would still be silent and curious, imagining how it would have all gone down, if only I had the courage. In some strange way, his dream of this night made me think of the possibility of orchestrating something so perfect, something so synonymous with love, honour and expectation.

It's strange that it's all over now. What was once a fanciful imagining is now a mere memory. Disco balls hang from the rafters and brick walls are awash with a red glow. Floor to ceiling black and white wall hangings flank the DJ: to one side, Martin Luther King Jr emphatically addresses the masses, on the other, thousands of disco-haters charge towards a pile of burning disco records on Disco Demolition Night. The images are loaded, the message is clear. Suddenly, the politics of disco become apparent: if people can dance together, they can live together.


There are many things I want to take away from Love Saves the Day: how we screeched in mutual recognition of our anthems, how we surveyed the expansive nightscape of a 1972 New York City skyline, how our jaws dropped when a Mr Whippy van suddenly appeared from behind the shutters. Its startling similarity to Billy's original vision makes me want to retain this feeling of gratitude, hope and possibility. It makes me realise that anything could be as perfect and harmonious as one can ever imagine it to be.