Roma Street Gardens

The water makes a sound like trickling as it falls down, not very far – it's almost quiet. Mother and daughter, speaking between awed faces with voices that drift away, they barely disturb the silence. A friend is with them, leans down and takes a picture. Construction-site noises in the background, the melodious grating of a circular blade winds through the greenery. See trees moving but hear no wind. Feel no cold. Breathe shimmering stillness. The water, trickle, trickle.

“Come on!” urges the little girl with her mother and friend, they're behind me now. Some distant crashing is muffled by the all encompassing surrounds, these sounds enter and bounce off a craggy rock face. Maybe a plane, up above? Or just the unidentifiable rushing movements of the world, keeping pace. Staying in movement. Never stops

That was a bird, there was a definite chirp, unmistakeable. Tiny insects hover in front of this scene, too close for eyes to focus. More voices drift in, and out, and the water falls, and then ripples off into the reeds. The constant sounds of silence. Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Peace, Taco.

Understanding Cliches

I'm starting to understand a few things a lot better lately. Things that other people have said, and yes, some of them are cliched to the hilt... but things are cliched for a reason, namely, that they are often true.

Hunter S. Thompson said – and no, I can't remember where, but he did say it – that “music is fuel”. He sort of approached that realization by talking about how most people have a very sentimental attachment to music and they over-complicate their relationship with music by making it into some all-mighty force, some god to worship that saves them from the black abysses and carries them through life. I feel you there, Hunter, there was some video by a fairly run-of-the-mill late-emo band whose name I forget that I remember had the band playing their song life, interspersed with footage of their fans, all emoed out, staring into the camera and saying how music had 'saved their life' while choking back tears and shrieking. Ok, fair enough, if you feel that way. But what HST said is beginning to resonate very much with me because even though I still have an intense connection to some of my favourite artists, music as a whole is more like a thing that I find keeps me going when I get bored. The sensation of finding new music and listening to something – discovering it for the first time – is pretty hard to match, and that's where the analogy to fuel comes in I think: finding a whole bunch of new music over the last few days has given me so much energy and from feeling pretty shitty on Saturday afternoon, I suddenly feel pretty damn good. Great, even. And if we are going to get really picky or defensive about the 'music saved my life' thing, well music is just the medium through which amazing artists work, really. It's not music itself that saved you from ending it all when you were fifteen, it was the artist – The Used, or Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, or Bullet for my Valentine, or whatever guitar-saviour you happened to stumble upon when you needed help. They are responsible.

The next thing that I've started to understand a whole lot better, and I realize now that there are only two 'things', even though at the start I said that there would be 'a few'. Oops... the next thing is that thing that comedians tend to say about comedy, that they, “feel like they can be themselves when they are on stage.” Nothing sounds more cliched and over-sentimental, I recoil at the thought of ever saying those words to someone without a meaty preface and some damn strong context, but it seems that they are starting to become true. For me. That's right. When I first thought them I thought the speakers were trying to say that they don't have the courage to be themselves in other situations, or trying to imply that they are somehow being brave by getting up on stage and 'being themselves'. Those explanations don't really make complete sense though, and so when Rach and I were in the middle of an afternoon-long 'talk' ('talk' as in 'we need to talk' talk) and the conversation came round to my love of standup, it started to hit me. On stage, it's so much easier for the things that I say and the way that I am to align with my internal monologue – that ever-present voice inside my head that represents the way that I would ultimately like to express myself but that I can never perfectly match because of the limiting distance between my brain and my mouth. On stage, there is no one talking back, and diluting my thoughts with their silly external opinions in real time: this is both a good and bad thing. It's a good thing because I can get whatever thoughts I have out there without interruption, even if, admittedly, at this stage the thoughts that I'm 'getting out there' aren't that groundbreaking or important (“it's not so easy for guys to pee standing up, you better RECOGNIZE!”). It's a bad thing though because sometimes it's good to have someone else keeping my thoughts reined in, in real time, because if they are allowed to run wild and unchecked then there is the very real possibility of my unrestrained ego having a field day and saying something stupid and regrettable. Something that I don't really mean, that maybe seemed fair at the time, after five straight minutes of me, me, ME!!!

And I think that's just about enough of exactly that, for now. I downloaded a pretty cool skip-hop/ambient mix yesterday from the Friends of Friends mixtape series, and it feels like my day is amping on the up-and-up. Day time. Yes.

Peace, Taco.

I Don't Care

My eyes are heavy and my shirt is on the floor, it's hot tonight in Richmond. I'm listening to this album called 'Poor Boy/Lucky Man' by some guy called Asaf Avidan and his band, The Mojos. I had never heard of these strange people before today, and I never would have if I hadn't met a couple of people on my tour today, had lunch with them, and then told them to add me on Facebook. The guy added me first, and then the girl. I checked both of their about sections, (god, this is getting a bit to 'twentyfirst century social interaction' isn't it? Ugh) noticing in the girl's, whose name I refuse to write because I cannot pronounce it, that she keeps a blog. So I went onto this blog, and saw a few quotes – some really nice stuff actually, but the thing that really caught my attention was a song called 'Your Anchor' by the crew I'm listening to right now.

So I downloaded their album, and I'm listening to it, and because the only torrent (jargon, jargon, jargon) I could find of theirs was their discography, I have their other two albums as well. Maybe I'll give them a listen. This music, this vaguely folky, rocky, guitary kind of thing... oh look, a horn has started playing, lonely over an acoustic guitar riff. That's quite nice. I feel that this music is passionate and impressively raw – someone cried over this I think. Someone at least shed some bodily fluid. Someone cares a lot about the sound that is coming out of my speakers right now, and I'm really making an effort to be that person that cares as well.

Fuck I wish I could find something to be passionate about, I really feel like I have all this pent up energy inside of me, but nothing to throw it onto... and I can't just 'use it up' – it doesn't work like that. I'm sitting here, listening to this undoubtedly beautiful music, but I'm finding it really hard to relate it to anything real. What are these people singing about? What machine are they raging against? I feel like I'm almost at the point where Winston ends up at the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four when he has fought all his life against the creeping tendrils of the party and their mind-controlling propaganda machine, but then just as his final opportunity for redemption is at hand – when the party finally has him killed – he finds it within himself to submit to them and become one with his meaningless, lobotomized contentment. I feel like I am so close to saying, “well, that's it, who cares if things are bad for some people, who cares if I'm being marketed to, who cares if I have designer products thrown at me every day – what if I like it like that?”

I feel like I have to get angry at things, or be upset about something, in order to 'find a voice' in comedy – but what if I don't see the world like that? Fuck, I know this is even wrong to think, but what if I see the world as an inherently happy place? That is such a confusing statement to have just made – look at what I just said. Look at what you just said Aidan. “This is wrong, but I think things are good.” WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THAT? But apparently everything really is fucked, and as an intelligent, rational, observant human being, I'm supposed to notice that and be angry about it. And if I don't, then I'm naïve. Stupid. I'm enjoying my life, but I know that there are so many people out there that aren't – they don't even have the opportunity to enjoy anything. The vast majority of the people in this world are born, feel hungry, and then they die – that's a Louis CK joke, and it's so terribly true. But I'm having a good time though... fuck... what am I supposed to do about that? Do I stop having a good time? Should I be angry about the fact that I'm having a good time? Or should I just be happy with the fact that I've drawn the lucky number in life's ridiculous lottery and continue on with my easy life and simple pleasures, trying not to think about the writhing hell that continues to burn daily in most of the rest of the world?

I want to end this by just deferring to another one of my, 'oh well this is too hard to think about now, let's all have doughnuts' punchline/endings. The ones I'm so good at writing that tie everything up in a little bow... but I shouldn't. I can't. Fuck. This stuff really doesn't work like that. I just don't know what else to do... I can't offer myself a solution, I want to care about the bad things that are happening in the world, but every day as I wake up and find myself feeling good about everything, I am stared in the face by the harsh truth of the matter – I really don't care. I just really don't. What am I supposed to do about that? I hate my indifference, but it's mine, and I'm so indifferent that I don't even care. Catch 22. The ultimate trap. Staring truth in the face, it hurts, or at least, I know it should. Help me, someone, I am stuck in a paradox.

Peace, Taco.

Waiting for Inspiration

I don't really know what to write about today, or this week, I feel like my juices are a bit used up at the moment... ew that sounds weird, I kind of want to backspace that, but I won't. Unblinking honesty, that's what I'm all about. Breaking down boundaries. I'm such a fearless crusader of truth.

It's weird that I want to be a comedian, or a writer – something where I get to have views, and then express them skilfully to a large audience through whatever medium I choose. I want to be this thing, but right now I don't really feel like I have very strong views on anything much. Like I care about shit like global warming, and music, and people being free, but I feel kind of abstracted from these problems because I live such a comfortable life... but this comfortable life that I live is what is currently allowing me to develop my craft (that's apparently what I'm doing here) as a writer and comedian, and this period of development right here is what will give me the voice to say things that I want to say, when the time comes that I figure out what those things are.

It still sometimes feels like I'm cheating myself out of real living though; sitting around here writing trivial little jokes and churning out random thousand-word chunks of writing. What am I working towards? Just the abstract goal of 'being a comedian'? 'Being a writer'? What kind of goal is that? I have always said that I want to be someone who says something meaningful with the things that I do, not just someone who does them for the sake of doing them – these things, flimsy semblances of life direction that they are, are only worthy goals if I have something worthwhile to say. But right now I feel dangerously ambivalent and hazy in my convictions. I don't feel like I care very much about anyone except myself, and I don't like that, but I don't know how to change it either.

Five months ago when I moved here I was sure that I had found the thing in my life that I wanted to pursue, and I still believe that, but I still wouldn't say I have definitely found something to be passionate about. I think the difference between a hack comedian or writer and a great one is as small as the strength of the convictions and beliefs they express through their chosen medium. Any hack comedian can talk about politics, or religion, or suicide, and any great writer can put down forty-thousand words about the differences between men's and women's toilets... these simple distinctions between topics are not what make careers trivial. An artist's work becomes trivial when they are only expressing superficial feelings – feelings that they know they are supposed to express, and may even be aware that they want to be expressing, but they don't really, truly have. Bill Hicks wasn't an amazing comedian because he talked about politics and conspiracy theories in the second half of his career, he was an amazing comedian because he actually cared about something. So it's all well and good for people to say, “you just have to speak from your heart and speak about what you actually care about” – that's obviously very good advice. That's not the hard part though. Everyone is speaking from their heart, all the time, every day people say what they really think and say it with conviction because they don't want to be misunderstood. The hard part though, is finding something to care about that strikes so deeply within yourself – myself – that saying what you really think is no longer simply a monotonous exercise in honesty, it actually becomes important.

When I find something to care about – like something that really, instinctively makes me give a fuck – I know I'll stop peppering my writing and comedy with disclaimers about how 'I don't really know where this is going' and 'I guess that's what I'm trying to say'. Conviction will come, at least I hope it will. Fuck, I am sick of waiting.

“Don't wait for your dreams, Taco! Go out and get them!”
Fuck off dickhead, I'm busy watching rap battles on YouTube.

Peace, Taco.

This Post is a Little Bit Arrogant but Eeeeh...

Karmon's 'Wowshit' is blasting from down the passage, bass is shaking the floorboards and the fifteen-hundred dollar sound system in our living room is being given its daily workout. I love living with these cats, every week during the day the sunny ambience of the house is inevitably broken when one of the three DJ inhabitants of my Richmond abode decide to jump on the deck s and have a mix. Deep house and techno are the staples of this summer, and while the weed smoke sits heavy under the ceiling and soaks in to the plaster, the pounding bass sends ripples through the air. I sit in my room and write. Listen. Focus.

Then every weekend at sunrise a new horde of loud, obnoxious freaks crawls through our front door and pile themselves on couches and empty floorspace and throb with the music. They are messy and uncouth and ugly and their eyes twitch and their faces are dirty from sweat and alcohol. They are fucking brilliant.

What I have noticed, pretty much since I moved into this place, is that this is the house I have always wanted to live in. Constant parties, a parade of new faces and stupid conversations, drinking, drugs, people... this is the place I wished so hard for every weekend from the moment I turned eighteen, but never managed to secure. I always felt like I was on the outside of some huge social network, forever looking in through the tinted windows, trying to make out the figures within. I strained to see the people inside as they did all the amazing things I thought I could see them doing, I beat myself up wondering why I could never find the way to acceptance. I now realize that this very desperation which has so shaped me the last few years was the reason that I never felt like I was in the middle of things – that I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

Now, only a year or so later, I have stopped going out and looking, begging for that acceptance and trying furiously to get into the middle of that scene; the town scene. Ironically, after all that fruitless toil, it is only now that I have stopped trying that I somehow find myself sitting in the middle, in the room with everyone else, behind the tinted glass. Of course that's not how it feels, it still feels like I'm on the outside of something, and when the people come into my house on a Saturday or Sunday morning, I don't feel like these are my people coming home, or that I am one of them and they are here to see me, because they're not... but I know that to anyone sitting where I used to sit, out in the world of clubbing and partying and weekend benders, I must look like I'm running the show back here.

I guess the lesson here is something that I've been repeatedly telling myself for quite a while now, something that is undoubtedly, irrevocably true, but that never seems to fully sink in, no matter how often I say it. Everyone is insecure, everyone is troubled, everyone stresses about things and no one really has it as together as they would have the world believe. We are all struggling to fit in somewhere, or impress someone, or live up to some lofty ideal. I look at some people and just think, “wow, you are just fucking cool”... some people just seem to have it and exude positivity and excellence wherever they go. But those people are looking at someone else too, saying the same shit, and wondering the same things. “How do they do it?” We're all looking to someone else, wondering how they built their house of cards... well... like maybe not Brad Pitt or something.

Brad Pitt is the apex of humanity. He is the monolithic idol from which all subsequent human endeavour can be traced. And with that grand, overreaching statement, I think I'm just about finished for today.

Peace, Taco.

Comedy Laundry

My Beautiful Laundrette is on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, contains a number of washing machines in varying sizes and dryers of varying noisiness. It is a pleasant, if bare environment, and always seems to be kept at optimal room-temperature by fans – I haven't counted how many – positioned in above eye level and hanging from the walls or ceiling. I go there every couple weeks to do my laundry (duh, fuckhead) and... wait... hold up... ok, what the fuck was that?

In the past months I've become increasingly frustrated by what I have started to understand is the biggest problem with my comedy. As much as I pet and cajole myself after every gig, and as much as I mentally prepare myself beforehand, I can't seem to reliably win the audience over. Every now and then I'll have a great gig, but that's nothing to celebrate – everyone gets lucky every now and then. For the majority of my mediocre spots I seem to have the audience steadily suspended somewhere between vague enjoyment and frightened annoyance and as great as this may sound, it really is not gold comedy territory. So I've been thinking about why this is and what I can do about it, and I think I've hit upon a small something... hopefully? Maybe? We'll see I guess.

Firstly, I mentioned that I've had good gigs, but I mentioned it dismissively, and with good reason – it seems to me that most, if not all, of the really good gigs I've had have been mostly down to luck, and I say that not because I'm trying to get down on myself, but because it's true. The approach that I've been taking with comedy has been very much along the lines of “write material; decide whether it's funny enough to do on stage; do new material on stage; decide whether I should keep it; compose predetermined sets from bits of new material that worked mixed with old material”. I guess there's no problem with that approach, in theory – ah those beautiful words – in theory it should be fine. In theory I can continue to push through a wall of silence after my opener falls flat, or receives a lukewarm response. In theory I should just keep going and try the next joke. Maybe they'll like this one better? Maybe that was just a false start? NO! That's a stupid fucking theory; comedy isn't about theories, and comedy isn't about robots getting on stage telling joke after joke after joke and crossing their fingers in the hope that a few of them stick... fuck... FUCK... COME ON...

I had noticed that my gigs had been falling in quality – maybe a better way of putting it would be that they have been lacking in consistency or predictability – and I tried a few things. You'll notice up top there at the start of this piece that I reached out for anger and attacked you, my gentle readers, when I realised that I had gone three sentences into my intro without cracking one joke – I got nervous and lashed out... it was a cheap shot borne of fear, and I need to dead those cheap shots. Put them away, and start really reading the audience. Connecting with them. I need to tell them – let them know? – that it's ok, that I'm in control. Maybe first it would be nice to actually be in control, but hopefully one will beget the other I guess... ugh, thinking about comedy is hard. Comedy is hard. Look guys, all I'm trying to say, and all I will say for the moment, is I've realised that in order to regain control over the quality of my gigs, I'm going to have to go out on a limb and break the fourth wall. Break it, smash it, shit on it, and eat it for breakfast. The audience need to feel like they have some control over what is happening so that when the comedian jumps out and surprises them from behind his cleverly placed misdirections and traps and cleverly constructed sentences, they aren't so surprised that they turn on him. They need to trust me. Trust me audience... please?... Ok., working on it.

By the way the laundrette really is quite nice. Four dollars for a wash cycle, one dollar for fifteen minutes of drying, and everything I said about the room-temperature was true. My Beautiful Laundrette Brunswick St, Fitzroy – I recommend it.

Peace, Taco.

Socks: History's Greatest Monster

(NOTE: This post was originally written for The Aristocrat comedy blog and can be found here)

Socks; what a racket to get into. Those little, cotton foot-pouches that stand between your skin and the abrasive inside of a shoe. You can wear them high – even up to your knee with rainbow coloured hipster-stripes. You can wear them low – those little ballet affairs that barely cover the heel. You can wear them just above your ankle, over the calf, hell wear them on your fucking ears right? YEAH! Socks people, what a wonder of modern comfort. What a mainstay of Western sophistication. Indispensable and Priceless; socks are the only thing that separate us from the beasts. Without socks, where would we be right? WRONG.

You are being oppressed.

No one invented the sock – at least no one that I can find on Wikipedia – which is annoying, because the lack of a definite target for the lynching that is sure to ensue after this vitriolic piece of hate-speech reaches the masses is, at best, worrying. I know for a fact my readership consists mainly of crowbar-wielding, high-blood-pressure knife enthusiasts, and I like to give you all what you want. Scapegoats, we hunt them by the dozen. But NO! No traceable lineage for the inventor of this idol of capitalist oppression exists for us to direct our rage towards, but come with me, my people, and we will find our villain.

Socks are shit. I buy about fifty of the fucking things a year. (ok, probably fifty individual socks, so maybe twenty-five pairs... and to be fair even that is an exaggeration, but fuck off who's counting?) No sooner do I get them home from whichever store was in my line of sight when I realized that my shoes were carving flesh-holes out of the bottoms of my feet, than they start to fall apart. Socks aren't built to last guys, they're not long term investments... and yet they cost SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY. Why do you think homeless people spend all their time sitting down, mournfully propped up against shop-fronts on busy metropolitan streets? Is it because they are so weak from lack of energy, and the depression at their sorry situation pervades their souls so completely that they cannot bring themselves to fight against gravity for another second? NO! WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?... the homeless are no stupid few, they are some resourceful fuckers. They refuse to walk, to stand, or even use their feet, because they KNOW that as soon as you put pressure on your three-dollar cotton bonds, they'll wear through and you'll be back in the line at target, forking out another five dollars for a piece of material barely worth half as many cents.

I bought some new socks the other day. “Why did you buy socks Taco? What's the deal with that? You sit here and rail against the capitalist oppression of superfluous pedalian apparel (pedalian, it's an adjective, it means foot. LOOK IT UP!) but you can't even give us a solution? WHAT KIND OF REVOLUTIONARY ARE YOU?” I didn't know when I bought them; the lightning bolt was yet to strike me, but strike it did, and from the ground up too – like a huge mass of electrons being discharged from the surface of the earth and dispersing into the atmosphere. (oooooooh clever) I have it people, it was all so simple.

Why wear socks, which always, always, ALWAYS fucking break or smell or get lost and then you only have one left and your housemate goes “hey dude why are there all these odd socks under the couch in the living room” and you say, “THAT'S NOT EVEN MY SOCK DUDE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”... Why let that happen? When there is a perfectly accessible and reasonable substitute sitting just under our noses. I'll say it once, and only once, and you can all try it for yourselves. Baby Powder.

Just let that sink in for a second. Allow yourselves to be swept up and carried off on the wave of understanding. The tide of knowledge. The inevitable winds of change... they blow, my friends, and the blow for us. Why should we pay fucking eighty dollars a year for socks that will inevitably frustrate and infuriate us when they are lost, will become thin and pathetic after two washes, and will smell like SHIT, when you can just sprinkle a little baby powder inside your shoes before you chuck them on every day? I'm not saying it's perfect, but I'm going to give it a shot. An honest shot. No revolution was won in a day, comrades... I'm willing to take the plunge.

If any of you are still loyal to your precious foot-gloves, then by all means, keep beating your heads against the steel girder of planned-obsolescence and pay, pay, pay to the overpriced overlords that control our society's sock supply. But if you, like me, and so many others before us, wish to affect REAL, TANGIBLE, PALPABLE CHANGE IN THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE... then throw away your socks today. Go out and buy some Johnson and Johnson baby powder, and begin your life anew. And to make up for the sock's other use, guys... stop being a lonely weirdo and do it into an empty bag of chips like the rest of us.

Peace, Taco.