Archive for November, 2008
Dust – A Poem
“Dust” is one of two poems I wrote whilst working in the Commonwealth Public Service. It concerns a lunch-time conversation Wendy and I had in the staff room.
Wendy had a white Australian father and an Aboriginal mother and sought to follow both cultures. She said white Australian people had not only understood the problem Aboriginal people had with dust, but were well on the way to fixing it as more and more roads were bituminised in the Flinders Ranges.
She also said that what white Australian people had done for the crocodile in Northern Australia was wondrous. By not doing something, not killing them, the crocodile had rebounded from near extinction to occupy virtually every niche in its former natural range.
She was proud of her Aboriginal heritage, but had a very high regard for white Australian culture as well.
Dust
(For Wendy, an Aboriginal Education Officer)
© Garth Dutton 2008
She asked if I’d ever
driven on outback roads
and felt the dust come down
alive,
angry,
closing in,
seeking tp smother
those who had disturbed it
I said, “No. That wasn’t my experience,”
so we left the topic at that.
But now, when I travel on outback roads
and passing cars leave plumes of dust,
I close car vents with a shudder,
and I see her wonder
at tarry strips of man-made rock
that keep the dust in place.
There were no raods at all
in the Dreamtime.
Child’s Walk – A Poem
This is a poem I wrote about my younger daughter Nicola when she had just learned how to walk. Once children learn how to walk there is no stopping them. The poem is set in Lower Mitcham, an eastern suburb of Adelaide where I lived during my marriage.
Child’s Walk
© Garth Dutton 2008
Some children
seem to like rituals.
A walk to the corner shop
past the house with
black and white hens
in a side garden,
and the dog next door
that usually sleeps
against the wrought iron gate,
the shop,a paper
and her usual demand
for a chocolate frog.
Then home at snails pace,
as she walks on walls
and in gutters.
Only occasionally on pavements
to grab overhanging flowers.
She takes home treasures
of a jacaranda pod
and a handful of gravel.
Adelaide Songwriter (Career One)
One of my favourite songs is “Summer Of 69″ by Canadian songwriter Bryan Adams. Read on and you’ll find out why.
Adelaide Songwriter (Career One)
© Garth Dutton, 2008.
I began playing guitar in January 1969, and soon learned enough chords and songs to play and sing at parties, barbeques and beach picnics. About mid-year I discovered the Catacombs Coffee Lounge at Hackney, which had folk evenings, and soon became a regular performer there. I used songs by Donovan, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan.
Early in 1970, I went to Africa as a backpacker. I took my guitar with me and used to play in pubs to earn some money as I went along. Often, after I had sung some of the songs I knew, Afrikaner people there would ask me if I could accompany them for some of their songs. I was usually able to sort out the chords needed quite quickly, and a good sing along would follow. They usually ‘put round the hat’ to give me some money to help me on my travels, and I often got an offer of somewhere to sleep for the night. I enjoyed the lifestyle.
In June that year, I was in Lourenço Marques in Mozambique, and managed to get a short term job in the Department of Tourism and Propaganda. One of the Portuguese girls in the office taught me how to write poetry in the local dialect of English to help me to speak Portuguese correctly. I soon learned to write my own songs, as well as publishable quality poetry. My first song was about the city I was in. I wrote it first as a poem, when I was across the harbour on the beach. I was used to singing Joni Mitchell songs unaccompanied, due to the obscure guitar tunings she used on her records, so I worked out a tune for the new song unaccompanied.
I didn’t get back to the backpackers’ hostel till a few hours later, and when I did, I picked up my guitar and worked out which chords would be needed for an accompaniment. To my surprise, I found that the chord sequences that fitted were quite unlike any other song in my repertoire. So my first song set up a methodology that I have used for every other song I have written since. Lyrics first, then melody unaccompanied, and at a later stage put a chorded accompaniment to it on guitar or keyboard. So far every song has been a unique creation. I decided to write up my entire trip as songs and poetry. I had another rule. I tried to make every song readable as a poem, singable as a song and also just be used as a piece of music. Most times I succeeded. I wrote about 20 songs in Africa, and another 20 in England, when I went there later in the year.
I met a South African girl on the boat to England who was a singer. Her name was Shirley Lucas. We sang some songs together at parties on board and we were offered a number of spots singing with the ship’s band. We continued to see each other when we were in London, and soon became a popular duo on the folk circuit. She had a vocal range that was far wider than mine, and some of the songs I wrote for her to sing are now ;long forgotten as I didn’t have the vocal range to sing them myself. Paul Simon had the same problem with a famous song he wrote called “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” He is unable to sing it himself, as it is far beyond his vocal range in parts. He wrote it specifically for Art Garfunkel’s exceptionally wide vocal range, and it was a big hit.
Her voice was so good, that I lost confidence in my own singing. One night at a folk club, a patron asked me to sing a song. I said I had nothing prepared. He said, “Well, write a new one to sing yourself, and sing it here next Friday night.” So I wrote a song called ‘Accompanist’. It is a very honest song about the breakdown of the relationship between Shirley and myself that was happening at the time. It goes like this…
“London town snowflakes are falling/ and in my heart the highway’s calling/ to Johannesburg for there’s someone there who’d want me/ from the letters she writes, I know she has a place in her heart for me./ But tonight you’ll sing, I’ll play guitar/ and it’ll still feel good for still friends we are./ At some pub down town, smoky atmosphere/ and your lovely voice soft and sweet and clear./ Everyone just stops and listens./ Then I’ll take you home/ but there’ll be no after/ beyond the coffee cups and the talk and laughter./ You’re afraid to walk late at night from the station/ and your company is a gift and consolation/ for loneliness is London’s desolation./ But we’ll be alright when we see the morning/ picture post card white in clear bright dawning./ Cold dark night, clear bright morning./ Cold dark night, clear bright morning.”
I sang the song the following week, and the audience was shocked. They thought we were just a happily married South African couple. A male fan who had a car offered Shirley a lift home, and a female fan took me back to her place for the night, and that was the end of our duo.
I came back to Adelaide at the end of February 1971 to continue with the University course I had dropped out of at the end of 1969, as my lack of qualifications were a major impediment to getting well-paid employment overseas. Some friends from a traveller’s club were also musicians, so we formed a group called ‘Folkwyze’. It was a multicultural group. Bob, on banjo and guitar was Australian, Marianne on vocals was Dutch, Ken on harmonica, guitar and vocals was Welsh, and I was English-born but had adopted Mozambican Portuguese culture as an adult. I was the only songwriter in the group, so we did a fairly standard folk repertoire of the time, plus a few of my songs for good measure. We sang regularly at the Catacombs till it closed a few years later.
I married in November 1974, and the commitments of marriage and children meant I became less active as a performer. I did, however, still try to pursue a career as a songwriter by making two LP records, a self-titled album in 1976 and an album called “Sea and Highway” in 1980. Both failed for different reasons. The first just wasn’t done well enough. The cover wasn’t up to scratch, and the folk musicians who backed me were unwilling to do more than one of two ‘takes’ of a song for fear it would lose spontaneity.
It turned out to be unsellable, and I lost all the money I had put into it. There was only one record press in Australia at the time and their minimum production run was 1,000 copies, so the financial loss was considerable. My wife Lynette thought the money would have been much better spent helping to pay off the mortgage. The failure of this record and the second one were a major cause of our eventual divorce in 1994.
I had enough of my own songs to record three LP’s. One for an ‘African set’, one for an ‘English set’, and one for an ‘Australian set’. Regrettably, I chose to record in chronological order for in 1980 the Anti-Apartheid Movement was at the height of their power. Everyone who worked on the project wanted to get ongoing work out of it. My wife Lynette designed an absolutely beautiful cover that was a work of art in itself. (She hoped to get work in LP cover design.) Dave Barry hoped to get a lot more work for his mobile recording studio. All the musicians who played on it wanted to get well paid session work. The mixer to whom we took the final master tapes did his best to give us a great soundscape. We all needed it to be a success…
But it was not to be. Whoever mixed from master tapes to vinyl in Sydney made a complete hash of the job. The main rhythm instrument was 12 string guitar, and on the master tape it was a solid driving force. On the vinyl it was ‘thin and wiry’. A bitter disappointment. It was obvious that the engineer in Sydney was quite unfamiliar with 12 string guitar music and also with the genre of the songs. Record pressing was a monopoly in Australia at the time so there was nothing we could do about it. I lost all faith in vinyl after that. I was overjoyed when it was finally replaced by CD’s, because that brought local control over final product.
Paul Simon caused a huge furore when he released his landmark album “Graceland” in 1986, because he had recorded it in South Africa. He had the stature to withstand the storm. I didn’t…and had to withdraw all copies from sale. Anti-Apartheid activists seemed to have a particular ire for my wife for designing such a beautiful cover for an album about a white person’s travel in Southern Africa. I got the message and gave up performing altogether for the rest of our marriage. We separated in 1991, so I became an active member of SCALA (Songwriters, Composers and Lyricists Association) and began a new career as a songwriter.
The Eagle – A Short Story
When I write romance short stories, I specialize in looking at the infinite ways men and women get together in the first place. Library was a short story of this type, The Eagle is another.
The Eagle
© Garth Dutton, 2005
Peter had been to this restaurant before and he really liked the painting of the eagle on the wall. It flew serenely, high above a beautiful tropical landscape that reminded him of the Philippines.
But unseen in the picture were skirmishes of war, landlords growing richer and peasants poorer, and all the time the population growing, growing… A volcano brooded silently in the background. A conflict waiting to explode. The eagle saw all, but was above it all.
The purpose of the occasion was that a very heavily-pregnant Pauline was leaving to have her baby, and this was the office luncheon for her farewell. Most of the staff had arrived and were having drinks. Pauline looked very fit and a picture of health, despite her bulk. Peter talked to her, and Anna joined in the conversation.
Anna disturbed Peter. She was thirty years old and divorced. Her marriage had fallen apart before there were any children. His marriage was falling apart after three children. Rather against his will, he always found her very attractive. She kept herself slim and trim and always dressed very tastefully. But it seemed to him that her experience of marriage had left her rather tense and embittered.
Others came to talk to Pauline and Peter found himself alone in conversation with Anna. This was just as the waitress told everyone to go to their booked table and order lunch. As usual there was a bit of a rush for seats, and Peter found that he and Anna were a bit slow off the mark. He ended up sitting at the end of the table with Anna seated next to him. It looked like their conversation would last the lunchtime. They ordered lunch and more drinks. Somehow their conversation got around to Pauline having a baby at twenty eight years of age.
“I was thirty-five when Michael was born and Alice was twenty-eight,” said Peter. He was immediately aware of the age gap between himself and Anna. Twenty years…for he would fifty in three weeks time.
“Not that I look fifty,” he told himself. Plenty of gym work and jogging kept his figure more or less in trim. It didn’t hide the fact that his hair was beginning to thin, however. But compared to some others in the office, he would be a young and healthy fifty. If stresses at home didn’t wear him down, that was.
“These days, many women have first children when they are well into their thirties,” Anna was saying. “ They are much fitter and healthier than they used to be. Once someone forty was really old.”
Peter felt pre-historic, but for a moment glimpsed a touch of desperation in Anna. He felt she saw her childbearing days ticking away…
He saw that he was twenty years older than her and felt the happiness of the occasion slip away a little. Had he married young he would be old enough to be her father. As it was he had married late and had three children, now fifteen, twelve and eight. A family young enough for him to be in his late thirties. He wondered for a moment if that was how she regarded him.
“Does age ever worry you?” Anna asked him. “ It does me. Time seems to fly by… Years go…Where to?.. I don’t know… It’s been three years since my divorce. I seem to have been marking time since then.”
Peter was taken back by the question, and nonchalantly answered, “Same problem as you… It’s when I start looking back that I can’t comprehend the passing of time.”
“How did that Carole King song ‘Going Back’ go?” said Anna. “ I think I’m going back to the things I learned so well in my youth.” She paused, then continued. “That seems a long way back. I’m not sure I’d like to be back in youth again. Too painful.”
Peter laughed, “Too true!” he said, and they each related an incident from their youthful years that had left them stranded and awkward.
Lunch duly arrived as did more drinks. The background music was a bit too loud for conversation with others at the table. Anna suddenly asked. “How are things at home?”
Peter flushed, and said, “A bit like politics… Things somehow get by from crisis to crisis.” He immediately wished he hadn’t said that.
“I can tell,” she said sadly. “You need to do something about it.” She meant it. Peter looked up at the painting of the eagle. He wondered how many relationship crises it had looked down on in the course of the year. Then a feeling if desperation set in. “Like what?” he asked.
“Just follow your heart,” she whispered, quite intimately, and grasped his hand for a moment or two. Peter was sure that everyone at the table had noticed, but no-one seemed to admit to having done so.
He looked at her and she looked back at him. The eye contact seemed to last minutes, but was probably only seconds. There was nothing that could be said.
Storm Boy Country – A Poem
The poem Storm Boy Country was first published by Artstate Magazine in 2005.
The lakes were then in the beautiful condition depicted in the South Australian film Storm Boy, which was based on the novel by local author Colin Thiele. Sadly, things have changed.
Due to 3 years of severe drought in south-eastern Australia and over use of water for irrigation upstream, the Lakes are rapidly drying out exposing mudflats that turn acidic on contact with oxygen. The only way to stop that process may be to open the barrages and ‘let the sea in’.
That is wrong terminology…
What we would be doing would be to allow the Lakes ‘to revert to an estuarine environment’ like they were before the barrages were built. Already we have had our driest spring in many years so the drought looks like continuing for another year, so the likelihood of major inflow of fresh water from the River seems almost nil in the near future.
So sad…
Storm Boy Country
© Garth Dutton, 2008
(Written after seeing the South Australian film, “Storm Boy”)
The lakes and the Coorong
could break Prussian hearts.
Their minds are cast back
to the cold Baltic Sea.
To the ‘nehrungs’ and ‘haffs’
of the East Prussian coastline,
that World War 2
left divided in three.
NB: a ‘nehrung’ is a sand peninsula, and a ‘haff’ is the lake or lagoon behind it.
Accompanist – A Song
The song “Accompanist” is about a sexual relationship broken down, but the both of us continued performing as a duo because of ongoing committments at music venues.
Eventually it got too much and I set out to travel to Johannesburg via Portugal. I called it quits at Dover in heavy snow, as I didn’t have adequate winter clothing for such a journey.
Even though I wrote this song a long time ago, I still perform it as this song means a lot to me.
Accompanist
© Garth Dutton, 1971.
London Town, snowflakes are falling,
and in my heart the highway’s calling,
to Johannesburg, for there’s someone there who’d want me.
from the letters she writes
I know she has a place in her heart for me,
But tonight you’ll sing, I’ll play guitar,
and it’ll still feel good, for still friends we are.
At some pub downtown, friendly atmosphere,
and your lovely voice, soft and sweet and clear.
Everyone just stops and listens.
Then I’ll take you home, but there’ll be no after
beyond the coffee cups and the talk and laughter.
You’re afraid to walk late at night from the station,
and your company is a gift and consolation,
for loneliness is London’s desolation.
But we’ll be alright when we see the morning,
picture postcard white in clear bright dawning.
Cold dark night, clear bright morning.
Cold dark night, clear bright morning.
Book Launch – The Apricot Tree
My new book of poems, The Apricot Tree, will be launched at the S.A. Writers’ Centre at 6 pm tonight, Thursday 13th November 2008.
The venue is at 187 Rundle Street, Adelaide on the 2nd Floor, All welcome.
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Some Spring Haikus
As we are in the middle of Spring I thought some recently written haikus about this beautiful season would be most appropriate. Here are five of them for your enjoyment.
Some Spring Haikus
© Garth Dutton, 2008.
A blue tongue lizard
comes out of hibernation.
Wild life in my yard.
On a warm spring day
flowers and falling petals
on the apricot tree.
Bees pollinate
apricot flowers,
make fruit for me.
The spring rains have come.
Last night there was some thunder.
Lightning lit the sky.
Sunny spring morning.
I need some vitamin D.
I read in the sun.
The Blue Tongue Lizard Diet – Report One
The Blue Tongue Lizard Diet.
(Defeating Permanent Weight Gain Caused By Psychiatric Drugs.)
By Garth Dutton.
Report One.
I was first classified as suffering from a mental illness in mid-1995. The diagnosis was ‘garbage’. I had just released my first book of poems called “A Day In Melbourne”, and I showed it to a psychiatrist. Simple as that. In the previous November, I had managed to write 42 poems in one day, that was all it took.
I had reached Melbourne by overnight bus from Adelaide at 8.00 am, and I had all day to spare before I attended an ‘alternative economics’ conference in the evening at Melbourne University. So I decided to see some of the parts of Melbourne I hadn’t seen before. I also decided to try and write some poems called ‘A Day in Melbourne’ as it might sell well there if I wrote enough for a book of them.
So I went by train to Frankston and wrote a series of poems about what there was at various stations and occasionally what there was to see between stations. It was easy. All the poems were short and the first drafts came out perfectly.
I did snatches of Zen meditation now and again to keep a calm relaxed focus when I was observing, and then writing down. Whilst having morning tea in a café at Frankston, I decided to combine all the short poems written on the train into a long narrative poem that is ‘episodic’. I had a full hour and a half in Frankston so I had time to walk to the beach, where I wrote a few more poems.
I then caught the train back to Melbourne and set out on another journey to Belgrave at the south of the Dandenongs, then up and over that range by bus coming out at Lilydale on the northern line, and then back to Melbourne by train late in the afternoon.
As the number of poems written grew I decided to try to write 42, as I had just finished reading The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the week before. In that book 42 was the answer to ‘life, the universe and everything.’ Once I had set the goal I managed to achieve it without difficulty, as everything I had seen on my journeys was new and interesting, and the conference was very good indeed. So had plenty to write about.
No-one in Adelaide had any interest in a book about Melbourne, but it did do quite well there.
With the book I made one catastrophic mistake I am still paying for. I showed a copy of my newly published book to a psychiatrist I had to see once every six months to keep my Public Service pension going. I showed it to him because I was proud of it, and I explained in full about how I had written it.
To my horror, he didn’t believe a word I said. He flicked through the book without actually reading a single poem, then announced,
“It is inconceivable that anyone could write 42 poems in one day unless they were on a ‘manic high’. Bi-polar disorder. Mental illness!”
He put me into a psychiatric hospital, where I was forcibly put onto Lithium Carbonate. I had been 75 kgs for twenty years till then, but on that drug I went up to 106 kgs in 18 months. As of 30th April 2008 I still weighed 106 kgs, and the prospects of ever finding a partner for the rest of my life seemed zero.
All sorts of diets and even a ‘gutbusters’ course had failed.
I decided to use my own way of reducing the weight, based on the annual slow but steady weight loss of the blue tongue lizard, my totem animal in Australia. They semi-hibernate for some of the year in Adelaide’s climate. I decided to do the same.
The results so far have been very good. My G.P. Dr. Dianne Walker is supervising my diet and I got the following information on my weight loss from her on 4th November 2008.
30/4/08 – 106 kgs
6/6/08 – 103 kgs
16/7/08 – 100 kgs
13/8/08 – 99 kgs
10/10/08 – 95 kgs
4/11/08 – 93 kgs
Weight loss so far = 13 kgs in six months.
The diet works! Yippee! More reports will follow. I am now working on my first ‘diet book’. I have 18 kgs of weight loss to go to get back to 75 kgs. At the present rate I should make it in 8 or 9 months. Then I’ll publish my‘diet book’.
So many people are affected by permanent weight gain caused by psychiatric drugs that it should be a best seller.
Downstream – A Poem
This is an environmental poem called “Downstream”. I was inspired to write this after seeing the ABC Television series “Heartlands”
Downstream
© Garth Dutton, 1998
Yellow afternoon light
invades a country school classroom
as the soils of The Mallee
take flight from the plough.
Dams, bores & tanks,
stock troughs & windmills,
become eaten-out dust-scapes
at the first signs of drought.
It’s a long way back…
Sometimes, almost too far it seems.
The Murray’s salt channels
creep relentlessly onwards,
and in Adelaide we are living
downstream.
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