That’s when we saw it on the news—a replay of footage of the first Twin Tower falling.
I couldn’t work it out at first—I kept spiralling into disbelief. Was this a movie? I kept saying, ‘Is this serious? Is this for real?’
Only a few moments later, live now on television, we watched footage of the second Twin Tower fall.
Marty’s phone rang. Nobody would be flying to New York tonight.
We watched as the world changed, not sure if this marked the start of another world war.
The shock was terrible, and after hours in front of the television, Marty and I finally lay down next to each other on his bed, and tried to fall asleep.
How were people, were families, supposed to go on after something like this? The scale of it was beyond my capacity to comprehend, and the old shaking came back again.
Marty cuddled me, told me I should get some sleep.
I couldn’t. What if Marty had gone a day earlier? What if he had been in one of those towers?
This was the night I was finally willing to admit to myself that, holy fuck, I loved him. I did. I loved Marty Brown. This was terrible—he was my friend. But I loved him.
Of course, this was not the night to declare that love, but I knew then that he was the person I wanted to be around, always. The thought I could have lost him without ever having the guts to tell him how I felt, or what he really meant to me, was almost unbearable.
In October 2001, indie band Art of Fighting surprised everyone, including the band themselves, by winning that ARIA for best Alternative Album of the Year. They were so sure they’d lose that they hadn’t even bothered to show up to the ceremony. Instead, they were in Germany, playing a gig. It was a big victory for the little band that could. The world still felt very dark that month and this offered a little moment of light. Indie kids in pockets throughout the world united online in celebration.
Marty Brown had changed—or his clothes had, at least. These days, he dressed remarkably like Nick Cave, all black jeans and Rocco’s boots, and seemed to walk with something of a strut. When he came home after the ARIA win, and we went to Brunswick Street for falafel, a young man in the ATM line asked him if he was Marty Brown, and he said, ‘Why, yes, I am.’
The young boy from Ringwood, made good.
Too late, I thought. I have left my run too late.
That summer, after returning from yet another tour, Marty Brown finally found time in his busy schedule to come through on his promise to record my demos—a set of songs that would, one year later, go on to become my first solo album, Autumn Bone. Red Raku never broke up. In my mind, my solo album would just be one of my side projects; something to keep me busy while John settled into parenthood, and his new working life as a music therapist.
In the wood-panelled rumpus room of Marty’s dad’s house, way out in the semi-rural suburbs of Melbourne, I drank tea on the couch and watched in quiet admiration as Marty set up everything a girl like me could possibly need: one eighty-kilogram sound desk, one Tascam tape machine, two microphones, one guitar and a stool to sit on.
Once it was all set up, he said, ‘Okay, you can sing now.’
We recorded all the songs I had. It took two days. I was nervous. John usually played guitar, and now I had to play it myself for the first time—but I had practised every day in Canada, and Marty was patient, encouraging. Take after take, he adjusted mics, gave direction, got everything just so.
The fact that I was singing songs about him, and my feelings for him, was not a thing we talked about, but with lyrics like ‘Big man, you holy Tardis of silences, so wise you always know what not to say, somehow better that way’ it would have been quite hard for him not to notice, surely?
I had no real way of knowing if he felt the same way, and it wasn’t time yet to talk of love. First, business.
Marty asked me what I wanted to do with the demos once they were mixed and finished, and I said, ‘Um …’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Here’s what I think you should do.’
First, we would finish the demos. Then, he would help me write a grant application—the Arts Victoria one for recording. It awarded a handful of artists enough money to record a whole album. If we got the grant, we could buy ourselves a month off from our other jobs, rent a proper studio, and get this baby out into the world.
‘Okay then!’ I said, turning pink.
As if you’ll get the grant, said Frank.
Guess what I said back? Fuck off, Frank.
It felt easier to say now that Marty was around.
It felt good, being a team.
The thing I remember most about these two days recording with Marty was how much we laughed.
On the kitchen bench at his father and stepmother’s house there was a bowl of apples which, I discovered, but only after biting into one, were fake.
‘Um, I think I just killed this fake apple. Sorry about that.’
Marty shook his head in faux disbelief and said, ‘Why did you bite it?’
I said, ‘I didn’t know it was fake! I’ve never seen a fake apple before!’
He asked me what kind of fancy family I came from that there were no fake apples in the house, and I asked him how it was possible that his family were such bogans that they thought fake apples were an actual thing you should put on your actual kitchen bench. Who does that?! He asked me whether I was going to be equally dismissive of the ‘actual’ fake flowers—‘as displayed here’ (he fanned his hand out) ‘in this high-quality
