Why I don’t high-five

The abrupt tremor of the bed springs roused me into consciousness, but it was the duvet flopping onto my face that broke the surface of my sleep. Through the blur of my eyelashes I saw my girlfriend pull herself out of bed to begin her morning ritual of assessing her bottom in the mirror. She smoothed her pants over her cheeks, gave a brief head tilt and left the room. Her speed indicated a good mood. On other mornings she would shift from the over shoulder rump appraisal to a both hands on hips pout. If her mood were especially dour she would state that she was fat, which was less of a statement and more of a trap for me to wander in to.

There is no chance of oversleeping in our house. One of the windows directly faces the bed and once the sun reaches nine o’clock your dreams take on the luminous red hue of a closed lid. I was still able to recall my dream and when I stood up the evidence jutted out ridiculously from inside my cotton pyjama pants. Penises are only erotic in the context of actual sex, at any other time they are ugly and comical, like Winston Churchill in a skivvy. My dream had been arousing and unsettling. In it I had sex with my girlfriend, no fantasy woman or unattainable celebrity, just my girlfriend. It wasn’t even good sex. It was fairly awkward and it was on our own bed. My mind had conjured up a situation that could have been real if I had rolled five centimetres to my left. I took this as a sign that I needed to inject some excitement into my life.

I put the kettle on and sat on the couch to check my emails. I ignored the usual replies of people insisting they would soon pay me for some articles and opened the one from Steve Grimwade. Steve was the director of the Melbourne Writers Festival. I had met him the year before and watched a warm and friendly guy dissolve into a panic shaped blur that ran around the festival yelling into a walkie-talkie. Steve asked if I could come in to their new offices to chat about this year’s festival and meet with himself and Stephanie. I agreed to meet in the afternoon and started laying out the tools needed to groom my tragic hipster moustache.

I arrived at the address Steve had given me and rang the doorbell. A thin girl with the well-honed smile of a publicist greeted me. She motioned for me to be quiet and pointed around at the vast columns of books precariously stacked against the walls, explaining that they couldn’t afford to hire a new receptionist after the last avalanche buried her. The door slammed behind me and the girl’s face turned a colour called ‘hint of panic’. She covered her head with her arms and remained perfectly still. A faint papery rumble emanated from the walls and a loud crashing sound could be heard in an adjacent room. The girl exhaled in relief, commenting that it sounded like the young fiction pile and that we could still make it to Steve’s office, but it might take a little longer.

As we quietly walked through the office she introduced herself as Juliette, the new marketing manager for the festival. We engaged in small talk and I explained that I was looking forward to meeting Steve and Stephanie. She coughed nervously and changed topic, asking me where I bought my moustache. I was about to explain that I had grown it myself when she got on to her hands and knees and climbed through a small hole in a stack of non-fiction paperbacks. I crouched down and followed her through the tunnel.

After about ten minutes I came out of the bookish hole into a clearing. I stood up and wiped the dust from the shins of my trousers. Juliette pointed to a wooden door. Then she kissed me on the cheek before wiping away the beginnings of a tear. She dived back into the hole and I stood there looking at the door. I knocked and a small voice from inside invited me in. I walked inside to find a surprisingly neat office. Steve was sitting behind a large wooden desk. He smiled warmly at me. I walked over to shake his hand and when he stood up I noticed his shirt was pulled up to his nipples. Protruding from the side of his abdomen was a bulbous fleshy growth about the size of a Samoan bouncer’s head. Someone had scribbled big red lips and some eyes on the bloated bubble of skin that was sticking out of Steve’s torso.

Steve shook my hand and then gestured to the growth and told me that this was Stephanie, his stomach ulcer. They met at last year’s festival. Stephanie was helping with the preparations for this year, but purely in a consultary capacity. His eyes indicated that I should say hello to her. I offered my hand. Steve shook his head and made a kissing motion with his lips. I slowly bent across the desk and tried to commit as little of my lip to Stephanie’s cheek as possible. Steve seemed pleased, explaining that Stephanie had really grown into the role in her time there.

Steve looked at Stephanie and asked her whether they should tell me the news. I think she must have said yes, because he explained that they were keen to get me to come back again this year and be an official blogger for the festival. I thought back to the less than erotic dream I had earlier and decided that the Melbourne Writers Festival could be just the thing to give my life some much needed excitement. I told them I would be delighted to be a part of the team once more. Steve smiled brightly and Stephanie gave a wobble of approval. He raised his hand and eagerly high-fived me, welcoming me back to the team. I smiled at Stephanie and slapped her loudly in the best approximation of a high-five I could give her. Steve recoiled, screaming in horror. He asked why I hit Stephanie in the face and whether I thought it was OK to hit a woman. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Steve told me I had better go.

I got up and walked to the door, looking behind me to see Steve holding some tissues up to Stephanie’s face and gently patting her. I wanted to apologise, but I wasn’t quite sure how to address a stomach ulcer. I shut the door behind me and I could hear him consoling Stephanie from within. I haven’t heard from Steve yet, so I’m not sure if I still have the job or not, but I keep getting these late night calls. I don’t hear a voice on the other line, just the faintest wobbling sound.

Paradise Found

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to break character for my final post. No absurd whimsical short story, for today is the last day of the 2009 Melbourne Writers Festival. It should be a sad occasion, but there are still so many events to get through, that one doesn’t have the time to mourn the passing of yet another amazing festival.

One of the most notable elements of the MWF has nothing to do with the events and everything to do with the people attending them. They are all so different. Cast your eyes across the rows of an MWF event and you’ll see silver foxes and their balding gents, scruffy authors conversing with suited sharks, heads weighed down with warm woollen hats and minds inflated with new ideas, Mohawks and faux-hawks in deep talks, hands slapping thighs in mirth – when they’re not brushing tears of empathy aside, tiny hands proudly clutching at their first book with no pictures. All of them gathered for a shared purpose – the written word.

Despite this being a festival of the word, not one can come close to describing the mutual elation that erupts from the audience when a writer shares an idea that changes their thinking. I’ve witnessed these moments on an almost hourly basis in my time here. There is something wonderful about being seated with hundreds of other minds all glutting themselves on concepts and themes. Knowing that anyone seated in that theatre could be an instant friend. I can say that I have made many; I hope you can make the same boast.

The myriads of individuals that come together, to not only create this festival, but also to be a part of it is immensely comforting. It dispels all the nonsense talk of the death of books. For me, books are incredibly important, but it’s ultimately the ideas within them that are the key. I’ll confess to stroking the pages against my face and delighting in the familiar fetish of paper on skin. Though in the end, books are the method of obtaining the content. The book is just a means of engaging with concepts, and more importantly, with people.

The Melbourne Writers Festival is much like the covers on all of those books being verbally dissected each day. Take a solitary dot of ink and it means nothing. But when you combine it with thousands of similar specks, a larger image is realised by the millions of points pooling together.

It’s one book you can judge by its cover. You’ve just got to look a little deeper.

by Simon Keck
Festival Blogger

Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Great Exhalations

I had awoken to find a sparkling crust had formed on one side of my pillow. Either two slugs had taken residence in my nose, or my flu was progressively worsening. I could feel the gridlock of snot in the freeways behind my face, so I think it was safe to say that my immune system would be earning it’s keep. During one of the most illuminating, if not necessary, talks of the MWF my sickness began to take it’s toll. I was finding it hard to balance the urgency of bodily functions and maintain the solemnity of the discussions. I was desperate to cough out the residue of my illness, but the talk on the writer’s role in political activism was so important, that I was loath to interrupt in any way.

As Pettina Gappah was commenting on the important role fiction plays in subversively bringing political agendas to the fore, my person began to buckle under the pressure of ick. I knew coughing out loud would detract from the discussion, so my only alternative was to cough out quiet. I did my best slow motion cough. A painfully slow lung heave that sounded like a toothless dog gumming a chew toy. My gurgling exhalations had gotten so bad that a woman passed me a tissue. I gratefully snatched it, emptying my throat into the ply. Then she gingerly offered me a blue biro. I looked down at the tissue, which looked an awful lot like a petition against the parallel importing of books in Australia.

My nose is still running, but nowhere near as fast as I am.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Earnest Phlegmingway

I woke this morning to find the influenza fairy had piped a fresh sack of mucous into my sinus cavity. The dull bloat of head pus interrupted all my thoughts. Even the regular erotic daydreams I play during my morning shower seemed slackly monotone and somehow more mucousy than normal. How was I to fulfill my role of festival blogger when the theatre in my mind couldn’t even screen a decent pre-breakfast skin flick?

I decided to dress in a full suit and tie in the hopes that my fashion would trick my mind into feeling better. It didn’t. After ruining a bowl of cereal with something midway between a sneeze and a cough, my flatmate Michelle suggested I try some antibiotics. She galloped up the hallway and returned from the bathroom with a handful of small blue tablets, explaining that they were left over from the time she’d been seeing this guy from Bluejuice. I thought about the number of times my paintings jumped off of my bedroom wall after she had met someone at a gig. I decided I would probably only need a half. I washed down the portion of the pill with some water she handed to me. I almost gagged when I discovered it was gin.  Michelle told me she used to work in a student bar where they served the exact same concoction, named Hemmingway’s Shotgun.

My train ride into the MWF is somewhat blurry after that. I half recall chatting to a group of school kids about why my hands were suddenly so huge and how my feet seemed to be a long distance from my head. By the time my faculties returned, I discovered that I was in the Fed Square Atrium chatting to a group of young writers whose black jeans were so tight, you could count the change in their pockets. The shortest of them had a lisp and $4.25, he asked me what my writing credentials were. I explained that I was blogging for the festival. He smiled a grin of private schooling and told me that I was merely an aspiring writer. Through his supercilious teeth he stated that he himself was an emerging writer. I asked what the difference was. He told me that emerging writers drink free champagne at functions, whereas aspiring writers serve it to them. The denim ring guffawed in unison.

I slid my hand into my trouser pocket, fingering the round blue pills that my flatmate had given me in case my flu began to exit my body via my face again.  I smiled at the stovepipe dohnut asking if they’d all like to try a drink made famous by Hemmingway.

The last I saw of them, two of girls were licking each others face on the floor of the Atrium and the short lisper had pulled up his own chair at Steven Amsterdam’s book signing. He loudly slurred that he’d be signing copies too, as he was almost certain he’d given Amsterdam the idea for the book after sharing a pinger at a lock-in in Fitzroy.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger

Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

A Tale of Two (Hundred) Kiddies

I crept in to the back of the theatre, watching frustrated teachers herd hordes of kiddy cattle into empty rows. The shuffling of hundreds of small feet was drowned out by the dim squeal of ipods, mobile phones and bubbling hormones. I fear some of the elderly MWF volunteers received a contact high from the sheer volume of adolescents in the room. One grey-haired lady, who was inspecting my festival pass, asked if I thought she was pretty. Without waiting for a response she burst into tears, then started laughing before telling me she was really hungry and that Lady Ga-Ga was a musical revolutionary. I nodded out of fear and pulled my scarf around my nose and mouth in an effort to filter the airborne child vibes.

When the author Isobelle Carmody began her talk, she struck a deep nerve in the quivering mass of lanky girls and fuzz-faced boys. The point she imparted was how powerless young people are. We often hear stories of wayward youths in the media. The blame inevitably leads to drugs or a lack of education, but if you mull it over, you realise they can’t smoke, drink, vote, or engage in carnal satisfaction. If those same restrictions were placed on you, chances are, you’d behave like a bit of a shit too. Perhaps we should go easy on them. After all, they’re people too, just with no rights whatsoever.

Having said that, the talk of powerless youths brought me back to the time some toddlers escaped from a crèche in my neighbourhood. They had ambushed me in an alleyway and Weeboked my face to a blood mush. After they severely bootied my head bits in, they crawled off with my trousers, my drivers license and a pack of cigarettes. I was relieved when I woke up and saw the two police offers standing over my crumpled form.

They were less than happy to find a grown man covered in crayon graffiti wearing a nappy.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Even Cowgirls Forget Their Q’s

It had been more than a decade since I had to sit in the sin bin. Little had changed in my absence. I was sandwiched between a shiny spherical child, who offered me a flaky ball of his earwax in what I assume was a gesture of friendship, and a girl so slight, she bordered on becoming transparent. I had wound up in this state of exile after attending one of the many events that make up the MWF Schools Program.

I had popped in to see Geoff Lemon panel a discussion on performance poetry. I’ve been terrified by poems ever since I was a child. Just stepping into the event was like hooking a fingernail under the crisp edge of an emotional scab. Each poet launched into a personal tirade, expressing just enough feminist anger to be labelled art. The emotional weight of their words could be felt in my chest. By the time Urthboy was on stage rapping, I was knee-deep in a childhood flashback.

Standing in front of my year 3 classmates. I was pouring my heart out in the form of a poem titled The Fifth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Upon finishing, my teacher burst into laughter and yelled “Bad poetry, oh noetry!” The phrase became a favourite taunt of my classmates, family, and one time even a homeless woman bellowed it at me. When I came to, I found I was standing on my chair and had inadvertently screamed the tormenting phrase several times. The poets on stage looked as though they were going to evil my face with kicks. At that point, a teacher badgered me into the sin bin. The adult in me wanted to argue with her, but my Pavlovian response to a teacher’s hand claps was to sit with my hands on my head, praying that I didn’t get a note to take home to my mother.

When I apologised to the teacher, I was allowed to leave my invisible cage and moved on to the next event. This was a discussion between Scott Westerfield and China Mievelles’ arms. The two authors were talking Science Fiction and the swollen biceps invited the audience to ask questions. The room was filled with the awkward silence of a crowd mustering the courage to speak. The adolescent sitting next to me had been twitching throughout the talk, but at the prompting of audience participation, his spasms blossomed into a sweat-drip seizure. His arm jutted past chin to roof, whipping an arc of sweat across several teachers in the row before us. I knew by the level of anxiety displayed that he was a public freaker. There is one in every event. When the floor is opened to questions, at least one person will start what seems like a deliberate and well thought out query. This however, quickly decays into a panic fuelled word loop. The words sputter out of the prober’s mouth at an increasing rate until an “Um” collides with an “Ah” and said asker either bursts into tears, passes out, or spontaneously combusts.

Luckily for the boy, the MWF have a crack team on hand to resuscitate and distill the gist of any public freaker. The question they got out of him referred to the popular Twilight novels. Unfortunately for the boy, the MWF have a second crack team on hand to remove anyone who brings up these novels. Upon hearing the question “do un-dead hearts break?” Scott Westerfield slammed an alert button and a group of realist-fiction authors abseiled down from the ceiling, absconding with the fan. One of them told me not to worry, and that they were going to fix him.

I saw the lad towards the end of the day. He sported a tweed blazer and was touting Sartre’s Roads To Freedom Trilogy as the impotent masturbations of a French poser, decked out in the beret and scarf of existential philosophy.

I’m not sure if I agree with him, but the tweed was persuasive.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Too Much To Think – Part 2

Welcome to the 2nd installment of Too Much To Think.
The concept is simple, all you have to do is release your inner smart arse by submitting a caption to go within the thought bubble in the picture. The thinker/victim today? Chris Flynn. A man vying for the title of most dapper gent of the MWF. If you’re curious about creating your own publication then you can see him chair Fly Like a Butterfly...

Happy thinking!

Chris Flynn - Creator & Editor of Torpedo

The Boy Who Cried MWF

I was standing in the blank square of the Official Program for the MWF. If you were to look at the easy view guide, you would simply see the flat fibrous grey of news pulp. There was nothing written after 6PM in the BMW Edge Amphitheatre, but I promise you, there was indeed something within that blank panel. That something was the Official Launch Party for the festival.

I was pushing my way through the crowd, trying not to clack my rather ungainly glasses on the assortment of thick-framed black spectacles threatening to engulf me. I never do well in crowds. The voices in my head get particularly jealous competing to be heard over the throng chatter. A small girl in a bright outfit stopped me, asking if I was one of the Festival Bloggers. She introduced herself as Estelle, my keyboard colleague. Estelle explained that we were both updating the festival blog each day. This came as quite a relief. I had become increasingly paranoid I was somehow turning into a petite female book reviewer in my spare time. She was wearing a one-piece suit and held a large glass of red wine. Each sip of her glass brought her closer to a onesy toilet dilemna. She bravely drank on.

She began to talk to a gentleman in a cravat with matching wife accessory. He told us he was a famous poet who pioneered the field of scat haiku. I ventured to ask if that meant he simply said five bops, three diddleys and at least one pow. Everyone in the circle took one step to the left, inflicting a humiliating state of sans circleness.

I opted to locate the bar and bludgeon my shyness with wine. As I crossed the floor, I remembered the advice of an old friend. He had imparted that whenever you attended an important function, you should always find the best-dressed person and strike up a conversation. They would almost certainly be able to help you climb the success ladder that leads to the balcony of achievement. I stopped a man in an impossibly beautiful tuxedo and introduced myself. I quickly rattled off a list of interests and even dropped an anecdote about the time I met Keanu Reeves in the pool of a Sydney hotel. I’ll never forget Keanu’s expression. After warning him about diving into the deceptively shallow water, I attempted some humour by stating that the world already had one Reeves in a wheelchair and we didn’t need two. Keanu had actually been able to muster a real expression on his normally blank face. It was the performance of his life.

The man in the tuxedo rolled his eyes and asked whether I was going to take a spring roll from his tray or not. I yoinked a fistful and placed the hot tubes in my pants. I grabbed my first wine from the bar and approached a circle of well-dressed people. No one introduced themselves by their name. Instead they each yelled a publication title at me in quick succession. After the one next to me yelled The Age, I panicked over what to say and blurted out MWF. Except the editor in my head was mucked about by booze and the acronym came out phonetically.

After you yell MWOOF at a group of literary critics, you can pretty much kiss any hopes of scoring a job goodbye.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger

Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Orwell That Ends Well

The crowd behind me was getting angrier by the moment. I turned around to behold a sea of silver haired women, all jostling for Jolley. Their equally grey husbands had already reverted to the vacant stares of a lifetime of being dragged along to quick shoe shopping sprees. The red beret was refusing to let me in without a ticket. I told her I didn’t need one, because I had a lanyard that should allow me entrance into any event. She explained that I wasn’t wearing a lanyard and had in fact written my name on a beer coaster and tied it around my neck with string. She had a point. I wanted to explain that I had lost my pass after a rather long incident between a train door and myself. I decided not too. Especially after the Connex guard called me a tit when cutting me free.

I took a different tact and told the volunteer that I was a festival blogger and I was required to be at as many of the discussions as possible. She asked me to show her the blog as proof. I did some quick thinking, turned away from her, and fumbled in my bag. I then produced a napkin with the word blog on it and waved it under her face. Her expression was midway between angry and bored. The heaving crowd of older women behind me also looked quite angrored.

So I found myself sitting in on a discussion titled Visions of the City. This was chaired by three people who looked very much like they had written books. My guess was correct, they had. The Deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne had also been invited to read a small introduction to set the tone for the discussion. If that tone was confusion, she succeeded admirably. I too enjoyed reading A Brave New World, except I had no idea it was written by Albus Hudgley. Nor was I familiar with Joel Orzell’s book 19-um-4.

Still, when she finished her piece, the person that clapped seemed very earnest.

Too much to think?

Ever wondered to yourself “What on Earth were they thinking?”
If so, you now have the chance to speculate on the ruminations of the awfully large brains that make the MWF so utterly wonderful. During the course of this busy week, you will see a large fluffy cloud of pure thought floating from person to person. The challenge I issue forth to you good reader, is to submit what you think the person in the photograph is thinking. The most amusing entry will get their musings placed smack dab in middle of a thought bubble. Sweet deal.

Basically give us your thoughts on what their thoughts are. Happy thinking.

Steve Grimwade: Associate Director of the MWF and dapper fellow