A Note From My Memoir:
Writing songs and poetry has been an essential part of my life since my teens when I started writing music poetry, I was writing about what was happening in my life. My first song came about as a 13-year-old at my grandparent's house at St. Hubert's Island when my father said I could not have a second glass of orange juice. In protest, I took to the piano and started writing a little riff that was not too bad. Poorpa, my childhood hero, was impressed with my musings and said, 'That's not too bad.' That was all the encouragement I needed, so I started experimenting with various riffs and melodies and began philosophising words to go to the music.
Music of the Spheres
A Note From My Memoirs
My palpitation for music started early as Farter was forced to give me my first lesson just after my sixth birthday. Early in my life, Farter had given up his prestigious career as an English and History Head Teacher to teach piano from the baby grand piano at home. I loved music early, which would stay for me for the rest of my life.
Dad’s rule was that if we did our piano practice in the morning, he would make lunches and wash up. So, I started with timed eight-minute sessions. As I used the freedom of my music to escape some of the more mundane and traumatic aspects of my life, this would turn into one, two, three, four, and sometimes more hours of practice at school and in the evenings. I loved it. The free feeling of playing my own and other people’s music. Mine and other people’s masterpieces.
Music was in the family. Dad’s Aunty Bettie Bunnie had taught him and his sister Aunty Suzie, who too became a music teacher. Aunty Bettie also taught Aunty Helen, who teaches music at Mclean on the New South Wales North Coast. Aunty Helen has been fortunate enough to be the duet partner of David Helfgott, the infamous musician whose movie Shine proved his traumatic and eccentric life personality. At one point in one of our stays up at Maclean, she offered to take me to meet David. Still, I thought second about it due to being uncertain how I would take a nudie run considering the trauma I had recently experienced.
I have always played the piano every time I walk past the it. Farter started me on the more advanced Piano Koala Capers that he reserved only for me instead of the more favoured Jane Bastien beginner’s book. I picked up the piano quickly and soon got a 10-dollar Guild scholarship for getting the highest marks in the country for my preliminary exam.
I played at a range of Eisteddfods, getting mixed results. It was likely that I would win, but usually, it was in the top three. I settled into the Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) system, whilst many of Farter’s other students did the more Popular-focused Guild exams. I was born with a mixture of classical, jazz, and popular music. I did not get passed sixth grade, as I was traumatized by a mere B+ in the sixth-grade exam because my previous results had been much more favourable. Looking back, I should have been happy with a B+, considering the trauma I was going through. But I am a perfectionist. I did play much harder songs, as many of my AMUS songs would have been categorized in the AMUS level standard.
Poorpa enthused me with a love of jazz. He loved listening to various jazz musicians, from Fats Waller to Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Billy Holliday, and his king Louise Armstrong. He shared Duke Ellington’s love of trains, as train rides were often the basis of many of his songs. He explained Louise Armstrong’s unfortunate life, where he had to learn the trumpet in prison due to some of the most regrettable events, mainly because he was Black. He took us on a memorable trip to the Grafton Jazz Festival. I got to rub heads with some leading Australian jazz musicians at an early age. I remember going to one of his favourite bands as a teen, where he tapped away madly to the beat, with his Parkinson’s-ridden body, and waved his walking stick wildly in the air. He ensured that I was educated in jazz routes, soul, and blues and had a healthy appreciation of Boogie Woogie and Ragtime.
I always played duets. Growing up, I played with Alan Amor, who is no longer with us. Later, Spider became my partner. I would go up every week to Spider’s house at Bowen Mountain, where we would religiously go through our songs five to six times, trying to perfect any minor imperfections. We practised hard but never got the reward we deserved at Eisteddfods, maybe because our touch and style were slightly contrasting. Spider is one of those quiet and unassuming people who are perfectly happy in themselves. He would never make an issue of the fact that he even plays the piano, let alone practised so damn hard on these duets with me.
I also played duets with my two brothers. One Eisteddfod Philby just stopped playing. He either forgot where he was up to or just lost his train of thought for a bit. I am known for giving him an immense death stare, but we soon resumed the song. Because he regathered his thoughts and continued where we left off, we were rewarded with a high commendation. I also played a memorable duet with Davy where we won the Eisteddfod playing ‘All You Need Is Love,’ one of The Beatles classics anyway. It was a flawless performance where I played the melody as I was at the peak of my game at the time.
In my teen years, I was mesmerized by the piano playing of my friend Mark Heath. He had a much darker style than me, which reflected his personality at the time. He would often come over to our house, and whilst we were all hanging out downstairs, he entertained himself by playing his freestyle music. He improvised and struggled with more structured pieces, but his music was beautiful. For his HSC, he performed a beautiful composition that ensured that he was awarded for playing his song at the Opera House as part of the Encore Showcase, a performance of all the best young musicians of the HSC for that year. Although he struggled with performance anxiety like me, a professional player played his beautiful composition to a warm reception. Mark came running onto the stage in the encore and showed his big and often misunderstood personality.
I first heard Mark’s composition at school one day when I first performed the best song I have ever written, the Weatherman. This is a song I wrote whilst September 11 was playing out on the TV screens. I believe it accurately portrays the mood and sentiments that were being felt at this touch-and-go moment in history. Everyone was impressed when I played my song, but when they heard Mark, they just said, ‘Mark’s shits on yours.’ I was frustrated at the time but could see the funny side. Mark’s composition aligns with any of the great romantic period songs with drama; he played it with such a feeling. He did so much more feel than when the professional played his music.
I also spent a lot of my time playing the clarinet. I had a clarinet that I received in the post from my grandparent’s friends in California. It was a 1920s clarinet with a pure tone. After the frustration of the typical squeaks, I got to learn a complex instrument, and my embouchure tightened as I practised more and more. I would catch the bus up to Bowen Mountain for lessons from a beautiful lady, Alison. I came second in the one Eisteddfod I played in and was starting to show improvement in my music theory at the time. I was good at the clarinet since it was my second instrument. It was like learning a second language.
I played in the School Band and Hawkesbury District Concert bands on a Friday night. Playing the clarinet was an excellent way for a young man to meet ladies. Talented, intelligent, and gifted young ladies. I used this opportunity to flirt with a young flutist, who now plays for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a beautiful young lady who supplied the painting I used as the front cover of my first book, The Consumer Journey. Despite spending most of the time following what the more senior clarinet players were doing, the school band and concert band sessions were full of joy. And well. I was getting distracted by a lot of flirting.
As I practised more and more, my repertoire grew. I played a few classical songs, some jazz classics, and many great pop and rock standards, including songs from musicals. I began exploring all the great songwriters and their tricks. I did a songwriting course at TAFE, where I learnt the structure of music and about the music industry. I always kept one week ahead, as I was learning from a piano teacher up in the mountains. I was starting to get my style.
At school, I often beat myself up for minor errors in exceedingly tricky songs, and stage anxiety took hold of me. I could not play in concerts. Even at Eisteddfods, I could win a section and be completely down on myself for not playing it flawlessly. At school, the compromise was that I would play at all the major events and functions instead of the concerts, as I thought no one was listening. I would play some of my songs and the repertoire I had built. I would play melodies as the official party walked in. I would give them all sorts of beautiful tunes as they walked in, including the Dark Vader song and ‘Here comes the bride.’ Whatever I thought, it would be condescending. This always got a little chuckle.
Now, the piano is more relaxing than anything. I do not have to think about what I am playing; my voice always warms up a little more. I have always struggled with my voice to the point where I was told that warming off milk would bring about a better tone. So, I did not drink milk for nearly fifteen years. Nothing improved. I am now happy with my voice and glad to play whatever comes to mind. Some bits of songs, improvising, and playing chord structures at will. I enjoy asking people to choose their three favourite chords and playing whatever comes to mind. It is about knowing the scale and chord patterns and letting your fingers take your mind wherever it is at any one point in time.
My First Songs
A Note From My Memoir...
The first complete song I wrote was Lonely Hope. This was an extension of the riff I experimented with at St. Hubert's Island. It included words about the questions I was asking then with the insight to make any dreams come true. We need hope. I wanted to know why we have war, always compete, and how you achieve in life. These are all questions I still ask today.
Around this time, I was going through some tough times and had started my first relationship. Summer Breeze is a song about how I was looking for positives in my life. The Summer Breeze itself was the relationship that 'blew me away.' I was hoping it would take me in a positive direction, but I was uncertain. 'A red, red rose as the summer breeze blows, where it takes you only the summer breeze knows.'
A Flower was written by some school friends who spent time wagging school and fell behind in their schoolwork. I wrote this song to demonstrate that sometimes things are complicated and need hard work and dedication to succeed. While you may not achieve things the first time, if you continue to work it out, things can be beautiful.'
Country Air was more a riff I wrote and a jazzy little interlude that I never really finished. I wrote a big, improvised interlude that I have since added to other songs, as it is cool. The lyrics began as a protest everything that was going on at the time, but it was more the music that maintained the test of time rather than the other lyrics, as only one verse remained. The riff was based on Song for the Dumped by Ben Folds. I can improvise for hours over the descending bass riff that created the verse and will make a great song when it is kicking with swinging drums.
As trauma impacted my life, my songs took on a depressed tone. Slowly Through the Night demonstrates my difficulty sleeping. I wanted to experiment with a simile, so I added 'like' a candle burning through the night. In Another Man's Mind was my masterpiece at the time, asking God, 'Why are you laughing down on me?' The Human Spirit is a story of my experience in which I got alcohol poisoning for the first time.
I had many crushes throughout school that made their way into my writing. My first flirtatious adventures can be found in Song for You. 'Is this real laughter? Is there love forever after?' expresses the uncertainty of this venture. This continues into All My Love, which explores an early failed drunken adventure that ended in a good friend agreeing that it would be better if we remain friends. Who Knows Where explores my fascination for a young girl called Matilda Julian, whom I had a thing for a while. Matilda ended up getting over 99 in the HSC, so with this intelligence. It was apparent why I had such a fascination with her musings.
When a childhood friend, Cameron Hallam, had a skiing accident, he was left paralysed for a fleeting period with severe neck problems. Walking on the Moon was a letter to him when I first heard of the injuries that he sustained. I wanted to write a small letter to let him know that even though I lost contact and was no longer a close friend, even his old friends were thinking and wishing him the best for his recovery. I am unsure if he ever read my poem, but I was thinking about him. He made an almost complete recovery and is doing well in life now.
Flooded Tears was an assignment written as part of the TAFE songwriting course that was a part of vocational in the 11th grade. I wrote this song about the generation gap between the Baby Boomer generation and Generation Y. During the 90s, there seemed to be a significant gap in the understanding between the generations, which I believe was a big reason that I am so misunderstood and continue to struggle to understand who I am.
At the same time, I was learning at TAFE, I was also beginning to play with lyrics and learning from a piano teacher up in the Blue Mountains. One week, my music teacher asked me if I knew what chakras were. I had never heard of the term before, but I started reading about them and learning how chakras relate to colours. My music teacher said it would be cool if I could create music that somehow used the chromatic scale in a song. So, I combined the two ideas, thought of how colours could be creatively combined into lyrics, and created the song Chromatic Chakra. I never created the music, but I know how a melody could bring the lyrics to life.
The most defining event of my life has been September 11. As I woke up to this event unfolding, I closely watched what was happening on this momentous day. On the way to school, I was eagerly writing down my thoughts, and by the time I reached my first class, I was talking about a weatherman. 'What weatherman are you writing about?' my friend Brad Jones asked me. 'I'm not writing about a weatherman, just the idea that this day will be important in forecasting the future.'
As the events unfolded on TV and the Twin Towers collapsed, the day's emotion enthralled me. So, I continued writing my ideas down and put music to the song I created throughout the day on the night of September 11. By the time I fell asleep that night, I had the Weatherman complete. This is a lyric and song I was and continue to be incredibly proud of to this day. When I moved to Canberra in my first year of university, I fell in love with my First Love. I completed the bridge to this song and recorded it on an old eight-track recorder with my First Love singing and me doing a dodge backing vocal.
My high school years and my most prolific period of lyric and songwriting were concluded with my HSC composition. This song unfolded over many months, with the conclusion coming to me on a particular day. I recorded with song at a recording studio with the support of Drummer Clark, Carly, and her singing teacher. We took immense pride in getting the backing vocals right. Because the sound was a bit muddled, the sound engineer thought it would be a clever idea for the strings to be an octave higher, giving space for the vocals to sing. I stayed late into the night notating this song and was incredibly proud of the outcome. It was almost 12 months in the making. The song was called If The Sun Didn't Shine.
Writing in Times of Learning
A Note from my memoir...
When I first went to university, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people and that it seemed like a hub of culture and knowledge. When I moved down to Canberra, I did not have a piano, so I found a small room with a piano to practice in the conservatorium at the Australian University. Here, I wrote A Young and Shining Mind, a summary of all the theories I, the young and shining mind, was trying to internalise at the time. This song was an epic trying to piece together all the fantastic concepts thrown my way at a time of great learning.
One of my assignments in my first crack of university was psychopathy and sociopaths. I was not seriously academic then, so I asked the lecturer if I could write a poem instead of an essay. The lecturer agreed and said, 'It better be good.' So, I wrote That's Justice, a story about Johnny Radar. It progresses into a future where there are no jails, but instead, criminals are given one last chance through surveillance to prove that they can exist in society. This is too much for Johnny, and he buys a gun to shoot himself. This poem explains that this ideal society has now been wholly ridden with psychopathy, with Johnny Radar being the last one. I am unsure what marks I got for this poem, but it is truly an epic that tells a great story.
Addiction is a lyric I wrote about what it says: addiction. When I tried to start a band up down in Canberra, it was initially aimed to have a separate songwriting and a lyric writing team. The lyric writing team aimed to come up with topics, brainstorm ideas and then put the lyrics together. I wrote addiction as an example, thinking of all the ideas concerning what addiction is and putting them all together in a rhyming, flowing lyric. When we later formed the band, Addiction became the hallmark song as we added the harmonies, 'Ooh baby, get addicted to love now,' to the lyric.
Diamonds Girl is a love song written to my First Love. She asked me to sing it to her as it was initially an acapella masterpiece. As time passed, Steve and I recorded it with acoustic guitar in his studio in Penrith before Steve made it a range of peaceful, relaxing songs. The chorus was added later by Steve. Apologetic was written during my first traumatic stay at Nepean Hospital when it was known as Pialla. It talks about Aboriginal rights, the importance of reconciliation, and the need to say 'sorry' to the Aboriginal people to 'do justice for the sins of the past.'
In our early days on campus, Luke brought in some words he had written about his recently failed first relationship. This formed the first verse of Lessons, to which I quickly put the words to a melody I had been working with. Next, Romi added half the chorus, 'Life is like a fading end,' to which I added, 'It's hard to find a friend until the very end.' Over time, I added two verses to create a song with a strong melody and interlude. Once the solo was added, this song was complete and became one of the favourite songs at our one and only gig.
In my time after my master's and at HAC, I was doing a lot of voluntary work, writing songs for various reasons. I wrote For the Moment as my peace offering to the world. The Divine summarises my spiritual perspective and the life I would like to live. Nina is my ode to the planet and our need to sustain it. Self-Mastery is a song for my friend Sigrid, and a summary of what she has taught me over the years. I wrote two songs to my childhood heroes growing up that I read at their funerals. I would sing Poorpa downstairs at Nan and Pa's place in Kurrajong. Pa said he sometimes cried thinking of his influence on my life. Faith and Don are merely a summary of my grandparent's life that I proudly packed into one lyric.
One Night At The Jolly Frog
A Note From My Memoir...
One Saturday night, I was having a night out at the Jolly Frog in Windsor when I came across a familiar face from high school. His name was Steve. I went to school with his brother, Craig, at high school. I knew about him as he was in my brother Philby’s year, and his reputation preceded him. He was well into a bottle or two of Canadian Club when he approached me. ‘I hear you play a bit of piano,’ he said. We got talking. He told me about his recording studio and invited me to do a bit of recording. The night progressed, and Steve drank more and more. As a schoolteacher, Steve clarified that ‘it doesn’t matter because I’m on holiday.’
I went down to Steve’s set-up at Kurrajong. The recording studio was set up in a small three-bedroom shack his family lived in while their grand family home was being built on top of the hill. The shack was down the hill, but the set-up was remarkable. In the room you entered, Steve had the photography gear he was trying to set up a photography business. In another room was the band room with a drumkit, Steve’s guitar amplifier, microphone, microphone stand, and enough room for my piano and another musician. The third room was Steve’s recording studio, with two computer screens and the most impressive recording set-up I had ever seen. We got to work and recorded several songs in the coming weeks, including Losing All Meaning.
After a couple of months of recording and hanging out, we started a band. Nath became our bass player, and we had heard about one of Dad’s piano students, Sarah, who was learning drums. By that point, Nath was working as a music teacher after spending years learning music at university, and Sarah was studying to be a music therapist at university.
As we practised, we had a wonderful time and enjoyed each other’s company. While the songs Steve and I were practising and recording took the focus of our practice, we all had a chance to contribute our own songs. We all had a high degree of music theory behind us, so it was a true collaboration, an opportunity to contribute the music we had created in our personal practice.
After about a year of practising, we got to support the classy piano pop band Happenstance, led by the talented Nick Woodford, at the Jolly Frog Hotel in Windsor. Davy’s friends all sat around and listened politely. My cousins Wendy and Michael came along, Orlando made the trip out from the Southwest, Philby’s best mate Newts rocked up, and a host of other locals were either eager to hear the talent in our band or waiting to see Happenstance. Regardless, there was a rather good turnout.
We played the best we had ever played our songs. We played 10 quality songs, including Poof’s classy All or Nothing and my Diamonds Girl. The song that got the most positive reviews of the night was my song Lessons, which Steve introduced as the song that was introduced as the song that would make the girls fall in love with me. The gig concluded with our jazzy Addiction; the audience seemed to get behind. We played well; even if the audience did not enjoy it, we ‘felt addicted to love.’ Steve was on a high for the rest of the night, and Orlando told me that he would be my biggest fan for the next two weeks.
We had one fantastic gig at the Jolly Frog. One unforgettable night where we could showcase the work we had practised for nearly a year. It was, however, our only gig as I went to China a few weeks later. When I returned from China, we practised a couple of times, and then Sarah dislocated her knee and could not play the drums. When her knee healed, Steve broke his finger and could not play the guitar. We all moved on a bit and decided to call it a day. We ended the band that never really had a name. We played with a few possibilities. The one we had on our one night at Jolly Frog was Monkey Knife Fight.
Recent Musings
A Note From My Memoir...
Although I don’t write as much as I should anymore, when I do, I try to make the poetry meaningful. When I do write, I feel that the tone of my writing has turned from dark and sometimes depressing to insightful.
Out-There was a poem that I started writing when I was having a psychotic episode. In this episode, I lost track of reality after thinking that I had seen my grandmother die in front of me. Although the reality of this situation was brief, as she resumed consciousness reasonably quickly, it had a profound impact on me. The experience pushed me ‘out there,’ and it was only when I returned ‘in here’ that I completed the song. I think this will be seen as an accurate perception of what it is like to be psychotic because it accurately portrays what many of my experiences have been like.
If My Name Was Love is my favourite ‘love poem’ I have ever written. It accurately portrays the nature of love, and I believe is quite clever how it turns around. You’ve Got Each Other To Hold was written as the first dance at my brother Davy’s wedding. Steve gracefully took the lyrics and made it into a beautiful love song with beautiful harmonies. The Thought of a Cloud was aimed to be a meditation for Aunty Janet as she was dying. Unfortunately, I never completed it in her lifetime. A Pride of Lions is my anthem, explaining how the younger generation has the potential to transform the world. It highlights the importance of older ‘surrendering their guard’ so that the younger generation can take over.
Runs and Runs is the last poem I have written, and I hope to make it into a song soon. I wrote it during my time at the Hills Clinic. It highlights key themes of trauma explored in this book. It talks about my early success at crickets as a child. It talks about the trauma that made it difficult to talk about in early psychiatry sessions. Runs and Runs continues by exploring the years when I used to run as an outlet before this outlet was taken away. When I got ankle injuries, my outlet turned to poetry and then songwriting, ensuring that I have created all these beautiful songs.
Runs and Runs concludes by talking about how this process of writing my life story has been transformational in helping to process the traumas that have occurred. It explains that the exploration of a range of theories has allowed me to be in a position where my mind is now free. Now that the trauma is out of the way, I am looking forward to seeing where all my learning and hard work will take me in the future. I believe there is a lot of potential for good. It is only a matter of time until the positive manifests.