Review courtesy of Ben John Smith (Contact Ben)

Could I be a writer?

Me? Sure, I could be a writer. Living at home with my parents, two cars in the garage and unmade beds, writing for my friends and strangers. Or is that just too mediocre? Or is my distorted view of an artist too far from the mark? Does literature need integrity?

I mean artists usually bore the shit out of me, I bet they are very interesting singularly, but collectively they are a bunch of assholes. Art is for the phonies that fall apart without reason. The great liars, who are not, but pretend to be. I think it’s a beautiful coexistence of people who LOVE stories and people who obsess about where the stories come from, the varying levels of perspective and interpretation in the mind of another. So today I'm going to see some writers, like at a zoo, and I’m even going to try and disguise myself as one. Infiltrate, record and then remove.

Federation square is busy with morning crowds, it always is. A homeless man plays a harmonica using a McDonald’s coffee cup as a wa-wa. He has a sign that says “Smile, be happy. Take a photo if you wish.” It’s written on a piece of paper inside a beaten briefcase. This guy is a better writer than me. Behind the beige windows at the atrium box office sits a young guy, he looks like a dude, so I relax a little and say “I’m going to be fine, right?” He is not a dude and he looks at me like I’m the poser, well fuck you and your plaid beret buddy. I’m too early to enter the Atrium and across the road near the old yellow rendered theater is Melbourne’s “City Lights district[1].” It’s a series of back-lit boxes given by the government to showcase Melbourne graffiti works. Being the real writers they are the alley way has been enslaved and swarmed and infected with color and slogans. Asians with acne and people saying “chaoi” walk down the alley way smoking cigarettes, posing with the “Fafi[2]” character.

The bins are tagged and someone has scaled a wall to get higher than anyone else, people will write on anything if it stays still long enough.

My first seminar is at the BMW edge, the entrance is covered with a big grey marshmallow balloon monster, filled inside with cafés and trippers. I walk in, feel the lights, take a deep breath and check my exits. It’s too early for beer, so I get an O.J. The waiter is a funky, oblivious, fat gay man who makes me feel more comfortable. As I read the paper a crowd masses into the auditorium, so I gingerly follow. I take a seat on the aisle, alone. Another man walks in, he looks awkward, and when he sits down he scans the room, his eyes coming to rest on my avoiding stare. Oh shit, I think, he’s spotted me.

The topic is called “What went wrong at Abu Ghraib,” in regards to the photos of torture/pranks played on Iraqi prisoners of war. The speakers are Philip Gourevitch (Writer for The New Yorker), Julian Burnside (Human rights activist, worked on the Tampa case) and Gerry Simpson (Teacher). Philip is an establish writer, his first book being We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, and is defending his new book Standard Operating Procedure[3].

He starts off by reminding us that today’s date (August 29^th) is not only the anniversary of Martin Luther’s “I have a dream” speech but also the inauguration of the first black presidential candidate, it’s a defensive strategy, but we speak with applause. This poor bastard was always going to have a tough day. It’s hard enough to defend photos of torture without being American, but he names the images singularly. The “leash photo[4]”, the “human pyramid” etc, etc. He is a serious and funny man who doesn’t hide from facts that might jeopardize his credibility, he is far too smart for that. His arguments are strong and convincing. Claiming that there was never any “leak” of these photos by journalists, rather the soldiers foolishly exposing themselves. A “distorted view of reality” as he repeatedly put it. Julian “the bleeding heart” brings up a Vietnam comparison, this poor American dude can’t get a fucking break. It’s a good debate, but there is no clear winner, as there never is in cases reliant on moral ambiguities. I think the conclusion was best put by Julian, however, mirroring the public's view on war crimes as “wanting to eat grilled steak without seeing the abattoir.”

I look outside the window a lot, the Avery, as its called, is a glass and metal shell. Outside the sun shines, I look at my hand and the shadow of my iris remains burnt to my skin.

Question time rolls up and an old man in a green parka stands up. He flips through a notebook with shaky fingers, looking at Philip and his pink shirt. He speaks in an Irish accent, and after he finishes he sits down, his hearing aid bouncing up and down in his hairy ear hole, out of breath and tired. I hear his wife clapping as I walk up the stairs towards the next exhibition, separated and feeling a little down.

Eleven thirty arrives, and I'm booked at the Acme Building 1 for “How did you get THAT idea” with Olga Lavecchia, Daniel New and Trisha Garner. It’s a gathering of artist and book designers, so as expected the crowd is diverse. Shorter skirts, less grey hair and at least a handful of foundation covered emos. Olga Lavecchia is a pretty looking Mediterranean woman with focus and style, more a corporate vibe than the other two slightly boho hipsters. Her cover is “Communicating as a professional,” her buzzwords are “team,” “journey” and “Sera Font.”

Trisha Garner is a quiet spoken artist, the kind you find on Brunswick Street. Her book was beautiful and stylish, about wallpapers I think. In comparison to the Abu Ghraib discussion everything in here is muted slightly. This is more expression of self than an embodiment of elemental truths. This is pictures of red and white flowers on a pitted wood floor; this is pictures of alley cats sitting on books. Which is nice, it's refreshing, not too many hard facts. Replace human pyramids with spa retreats. There is however still the deep veined roots of commercial elements, money and the power of social economics. The narrator is from Penguin Books, she explains everything to us because the next artist is tripping balls, mostly caught up in his own hype.

This is Daniel New and I’m jealous of him because his book was amazingly fantastic. It’s called “Maggie’s Harvest[5],” a cookbook by Maggie Beer. It has woven red oranges on its cover, beautifully stitched green leaves, a total feast of a three dimensional object. He makes Hugh Grant’esk bumbling jokes and the young girls in the crowd giggle, even one guy with stockings on his arms. He added slides of production into his presentation. Sterile pictures of Asians in white smocks, in some dank production basement pumping out books that will eventually sell for about a hundred bucks each.

Ah it’s nice to be on the glamorous side of art.

He’s hurried along however because time is out. Daniel works for Penguin publications and the narrator calls him a “naughty boy”. Come on lady, your kidding me right, this guy looks like a corduroy jacket in a Coldplay film clip. The lights come on and I slip out with the other feebles for lunch.

Lunch is at the atrium bar. Two guys at the table next to me talk about fitness régimes and order ridiculous food, weird cunts, something about crotons and strawberry jam. The waiter is probably 36, singing loudly to Italian pop. Grown men acting like children. He is the type of fat idiot who thinks his friends call him “outrageous” as an act of kindness and not passive aggression, boredom, even.

The ticket for the next show sitting in my hand says “The mysterious Miss Jolly,” but the one o’clock show says “Snap, crackle and porn.” I hand it to a reserved looking Japanese girl and as expected she leads me to the box office to sort out the ticketing mess.

“This gentleman has wrong ticket, he should have ticket to snap, crackle . . .” She stops and looks at me with frightened eyes, that awkwardness is here again, then in a croaky voice she whispers “porn” to the dickhead with the beret. I hang my head and shuffle my feet, “I’m from Deakin Uni, I’m doing a project.” Ha-ha, yeah, almost . . .

The auditorium is almost empty, even though I enter unfashionably late. Catherine Lumby, Emily Maguire and Gaylene Perry are sitting on stage with their legs crossed and designer boots. The topic is supposed to be about the electronic society’s addiction to porn and how it is perceived by general consumers and relationships (in which porn is a hidden pleasure). Catherine Lumby starts off by letting everyone know that she is a feminist, the word resonates loudly around the bird cage walls. She stumbles three times when saying “what is porn” and the words bounce around the walls again, quicker. She collectively and warmly includes us all as “porn consumers,” making sure we know that it’s totally normal (and thank God for that). Using research she figures men want their porn to include attractive actors, realistic bodies and, however heartbreakingly, enthusiasm. Catherine says that men want to see “real woman having sex,” she says it almost smiling; I know she can see the metaphorical impotence and failure of man behind these childish pleas of acceptance. She runs though a few site names as a shock list and sits down to a scattered applause.

Emily Maguire floats to the stand, the chubby eye melter who talks about loving people's stories and hangs her hands in the air as she speaks. This woman scares me more than the feminist. She is one of them slow burning passive aggressive woman that says fuck once or twice a day to clear her conscience of being a prude. She feeds from stories because, as horrible as my perception is, I'm sure she doesn’t have any of her own. It's some scary shit, you know, that this is how semi-intelligent Oprah Winfrey raised female writers can influence the world with the chunky moans of “me time” and “how does that make ME feel.” Her book is about a woman’s husband busting him with porn, and the “serious” emotional battles that arise. The emotional battles that arise in this whimsical façade are in fact an “undistorted view of reality,” but that’s like, my opinion, man.

Gaylene Perry is by far the most intelligent and hinged woman on stage. She has strong arguments with enough common sense to use humor as a vehicle, regardless of how black. Her arguments are against the portrayal of woman and men of color in Internet pornography, which does make a lot of sense. Instead of a site inciting you to see a beautiful woman make love to her faithful husband, the tag line will often read,

“watch a big black dick skewer my whore wife’s insides” or something like that . . .

“In her mind she imagines his muscled chocolate thighs clenching and unclenching while huge dark black rod stretches her hungry cunt wide open. In her mind's eye she clearly sees each thrust and the sweat glistening on his deep cocoa brown backside.”[6]

It’s the emphasis of vulnerability and degradation that raise points like this to the gallery as worthy. She is still soft spoken when she says hairy words, but I’m sure most of us are too desensitized to bother looking shocked. She quotes the tag line from a nameless site, and with disgust in her eyes she quotes verbatim a porn star's account during an interracial scene . . .

“You’re hitting all my organs!”

An Indian guy in the middle tier loses it, completely.

He knows it’s too late to stand up and walk out; his eyes are watering as he tries to control his laughter, hiding behind the color of his jacket. I very nearly join him, one of them hard moments of stiff upper lips, trying harder than hell not to piss myself laughing alongside the embarrassed Indian dude. God knows what these feminists would do to the pair of immature laughing hyenas.

Question time is guaranteed to be a shit fight. A blonde dreadlocked dude stands up and I can tell by the shakes of his voice that he is about to get served. He says something about misogynists and rambles about a book I've never read. I’m begging him in my mind to sit down and shut up, he’s going to get us all killed, or at least castrated.

As expected the “feminists” rip his skin apart like rabid hell hounds, grinding his bones with words he doesn’t understand and finishing with

“Only a misogynist would use the word 'misogynist.'”

The second question is from a woman with grey hair and a Russian doll physique. She stands on pin heeled toes with tired color washed tracksuit pants and a beige pull over. Behemoth sized sagging tits saddled in a bra that deserves an engineering award. She adjusts the elastic on her pants and clears her thought with a wimpy little cough.

“Hello, what do you think about porn in which the female is portrayed as the dominating figure, perhaps the protagonist?” She looks around with her button red nose and orange skin, and continues “I have watched things like that and I came to find it . . . very arousing”

The Indian guy completely fucking loses it.

He turns his whole back on the stage and hysterically howls into his hands on the back of his seat. His body is shaking and bouncing as the crowd around him almost cracks.

It’s too much for a mere man like me, a little higher, this was the kicker.

I grab my jacket from the floor and turn to run out the door, leaving the writers and feminists in my wake.

The alley cats, the prisoners, ribbed black penis’s, fat white virgins.

Fuck being a writer,

I’m going home to Google some porn . . .