I imagine myself, as perhaps you do, something like a film projector - with the images projected being the story of our lives - as witnessed by ourselves. The funny thing is that this projector, the lens and casing, is influenced, twisted, shaped and changed by the images it projects - which in turn produce images of a different quality again. This feedback process goes on and on causing transmogrification of the projector-being (ourselves).
Despite this we still recognise ourselves in this Thesian displacement but the result is that the past becomes something of a stranger to us, like forgotten remnants, artefacts from the antiquity of our life. The lens wobbles as does a mirror in a carnival hall and what we used to know shifts by degrees into a different relationship with ourselves.
Sometimes we can lean on logic and make sense of the drift; “Oh I used to think that way because I once valued those aspects of existence, whereas now I no longer do.” And other times the salvaged thoughts from the past percolate into the mind as nothing but strange apparitions, wearing nostalgic ill-fitting coats. Warm and fuzzy, dark brown and pale yellow, poorly contrasted in the low light. And all of it is sealed over with a filter called Sepia Somnolence - the acute feeling of where the past is remembered but you know - not very accurately. You know you are inventing it for the most part and the coat it wears was not the same when you lived it. Still it is there and it is your memory, your life. Of this you are sure.
I lived in Fremantle for a time when I was young. I had reason to go there again the other day and I walked the streets of my youth, ducking down alleys of memory and taking shortcuts of nostalgia. To be sure it has changed. It’s much bigger for one - shops, cafes and bars radiate out further than they used to and the distinctive gloss of affluence and gentrification has swept over the old facades. Not in any meaningful way in some places which one might call a blessing. The old charm retained, just a little refurbished: a lick of paint, new windows and a gate. Sometimes this attempt looks like lipstick on a pig and other times you might call it an improvement. Doubtlessly better than the wholesale destruction in other areas, where old buildings are completely gone, to be replaced by what we now prefer - that neo Brutalist style that so infects our cities the world over.
I ducked my head under the tired old roofline of the ‘Up Markets’. It was run down when I used to go there. The food was average but cheap. Now it is closed, probably condemned. Through the filthy windows I could see the stacked plastic chairs and behind those the familiar signage of the various food stalls. And they were all wearing the odd clothes of memory - familiar but not. It was quiet there now and the dark cool air inside sat motionless. It did not swirl like before with the rush of youthful limbs. Gone were the brightly coloured light bulbs that hung in festive chains across an evening orange sky. Nowhere were the smiling faces of my friends, all just happy to be out, eating, chatting and being seen. There was no one there at all now and maybe there never will be again.
It was not a journey through the aesthetically pleasing West End, it wasn’t even much of a ‘trip down memory lane’ although there was a little of that. I did bump into an old acquaintance by the name of Horatio T. Birdbath. A local “eccentric” artist although he is one of the most positively sane people I have ever known. He didn’t remember me and that’s okay, we weren’t close but we did have a mutual friend who died. Birdbath said that he thinks of our mutual friend whenever a leaf falls from a tree. He explained that when he asked our friend what the dying experience was like he said that for him it was like being a leaf falling into a deep well. Some days you get a little up draft but you are always falling. He then complimented my girlfriend on her “wonderful laugh” turned about in his most magnificent clothing and went on down the familiar street, a street we had perhaps walked down together before with our departed friend between us, one balmy summer night, long ago.
I think about the nights of my youth, in that port city. The ‘Fremantle scene’ was my first introduction into the world of art, literature, music and philosophical ideas. Previous to this enchanting and intoxicating experience I was fed on an anodyne diet of football and television. My new share house abode didn’t even have a TV and sport wasn’t something that much interested us. We wanted to talk big ideas and find magical chord progressions. We wanted to see how closely we could align ourselves with each other, how we could find the miraculous in one of the least miraculous of places. Well … that’s the coat it wears now when I think about it but I am sure that at the time it was animated by more humble aspirations. I dare say paying rent and still having enough money to get some weed were the more pressing concerns of the day.
It is strange to think of all the myriad of sliding doors that have opened and shut since - how goddamn impossible it all is! How completely one can be sure of almost nothing. Striving for a sense of personal happiness might be a worthwhile goal but with all that random chance flying about, like birds in the evening air, I wonder how much of life we have any control over? What if I had stuck around Fremantle and bought property, which is now worth a pretty penny. Maybe I would have done that and then been struck down by some unfortunate event? But perhaps not. Probably these opportunities were never going to be open to me anyway and I wonder if my own current impoverished circumstances haven’t, quite by accident, made me happy and content.
It’s curious to think about and impossible to know what circumstance dictates and what decision and action bring forth. As Hunter says:
Pray to God but row away from the rocks.
But does that make sense? How much is prayer and how much is rowing in our little life-boat adventure? Dumb luck has gotten many very far and effort and struggle has, for some, resulted in a miserable life and an early grave. And how do we weigh such things anyway?
I think, like Birdbath’s art, life is a crazy nexus of interconnectivity - some things intentional, some not, some of it unseen and hyper dimensional, some of it literal and obvious. How much of it is either and how much is everything in between is like trying to discern the truth from a distant memory or dream.
Please enjoy my music:
I am terrified to go back to where I grew up.
In any case, your fine writing stirs many emotions in me, DB thank you.
You have taken me on my own stroll down Memory Lane. I also frequented Freo as a young teen and then when I started working as a fisherman on the trawlers. Freo is still my favorite place to visit when I am back in Australia.