I missed Henry something dreadful, and told him so, often. I took it rather personally that he hardly ever wrote back, or called. If I received two pieces of communication a month, it was a good month. He tried to reassure me. It wasn’t personal, he said. It just wasn’t his way. He loved me, he said. Don’t doubt it.
But I did doubt it, terribly.
It is cruel to make comparisons but Marty Brown, on the other hand—now what a model of good communication he turned out to be. What a great friend he was! He wrote often, beautiful handwritten letters. (And some emails too. Bloody fancy!) In one letter I re-read a number of times, he said that he wanted to thank me for all I’d done for him, and then wrote a list of all the reasons it was so good to be my friend, and how grateful he was to have me in his life. It was so beautiful! In it, he also said that, believe it or not, Triple J had played one of our songs on their Australian music show! It was a song from Roda Leisis May called ‘Father’s Daughter’. No way! And from what I could gather, Marty Brown’s own career was now very much on its way. Our friendship groups—Henry’s and John’s and Ilka’s and Defah’s and Marty’s—had all started merging, and new bands were springing up left, right and centre, many of them employing the increasingly popular drummer and recording engineer, Marty W. Brown. He sent me mixed tapes of all the different bands he was now recording, and playing in, and I sent him mixed tapes of new songs that may or may not have been about him, and the poet, and the cowboy, and the others. Through letters and tapes, we grew closer—I got to know and appreciate him in a new way. One night I fell asleep imagining what would happen if he ever came over to Canada to visit and we had to share a bed, how his feet would be hanging over the edge. Didn’t he get cold feet at night? How was it he was so tall?
In my absence, Marty had joined a new band called Art of Fighting. Melbourne music lovers will know them now as the legendary Art of Fighting. Back then they were just … very fucking cool. And very fucking quiet. No one spoke much. With Ollie and Miles Browne, and bass player Peggy Frew, Marty Brown was in excellent company. Their album Wires was, we all agreed behind their backs, pretty much the best album we’d ever heard. Ever.
He had worked so hard for this moment of convergence, and we—his mates—could not have been happier for him. Marty and his band came back from a tour of Europe with stories of how artists were treated there: respectfully. At the very least, venues fed them and provided accommodation for the night, meaning there was a chance, at least, of breaking even. Just the tiniest bit of respect made everything so much easier. It looked like all those years of teaching himself to record songs and play drums—while also studying for a degree just in case—was going to work out. He was going to make it work.
(When I think back to this time, think back to some of the exceptional musicians we knew then and heard later had ‘given up on music’ I can’t help but ache. For most of them, after years of living on the poverty line, attempting to create valuable art, art which contributes to how we understand our world, they have had to give up, because they can’t pay their rent or support their families as artists in Australia. Yes, our population is relatively small, and it can be a challenge to find your audience, but I still can’t understand why, in this day and age, we don’t, as a country, better understand the contribution and early struggles of developing creative talent, and offer talented artists a basic living wage, even just for one year of their life? It should not take fame to get us to stand up and pay attention to the contribution artists make to our lives. In fact, I have always found fame to be a very poor measure of talent, or contribution. But, forgive me, I shall now step off my little box, and carry on with the story at hand.) At the end of my studies in Vancouver, I was encouraged by one of my teachers to apply for a further scholarship, one that would allow me to continue my studies in Canada. I was extremely happy there. I had proven to myself that I could take care of myself. More than that, I could go overseas and absolutely thrive. My fear of the breakdown returning left me that trip, never to return again. Yes, I still had to FAFL sometimes and, yes, I still had to FOF, but now, thanks to some excellent news, I was ready to return to Australia, head held high.
Defah rang and said, ‘I have something to tell you.’ What she told me next made me squeal: John and Defah were having a baby!
‘Oh my God, you’re such an adult!’
