The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

summer lays down 100 degree grand slam in spades
perishing my rubber
making me play a dummy hand
i stand in the orange room with jb and mk
i write 11 new songs in 2 days….because i can
(2 of em arent much good)
i sing n write n sweat n sing some more
always australia everywhere
the heat i groan to love
like on new years long ago eve sitting with my family
out on the lawn
dad in his ever present white singlet drinking his one beer
mum coming out with mince pies or whatever
the neighbours pop by as they go in and out
they smell of cigarettes n aftershave n beer always beer
i have always been surrounded by beer
the stuff scares me i never understand the appeal
but i have lived amongst its smell n customs all my life
the senseless roar n din of the australian pub
as a thousand sloshed diggers promise each other the fucken moon
pissing in each others pockets slapping each other on the back
this is as truly bullshit as the stoned giggles or the junkies whine
i sometimes stood outside of pubs with their sporting pictures
from the fifties
my dads old bosses tom phillips and charlie roberts
slaves to the booze
red faced and merry 24 hours a day
my dad is never drunk
my dad is never out of control
my dad never cries or complains
he sits on his deckchair in the front garden on new years eve
drinking his one beer
‘ow ya going, mr kilbey…asks john from next door
his mum n dad n brother n sister are olive skinned black haired
but john is a pale redhead like archie in the comics
he drinks a bit
he gets married n divorced
he drives a restored old holden
he drives me to the swimming pool one day
i float around in the back seat
my dad doesnt like american or australian cars
he doesnt like european cars neither
he likes english cars like morrises and wolseleys and stuff
he only likes certain brands of petrol too
he doesnt like shell
he likes bp better than the others
he spends a lotta time polishing his car n tinkering in the engine
im just advancing the blah blah he says n gets me to rev it
now im just retarding it a bit he says
new years eve up the top of lyneham in 1968 is not a big deal
no fireworks no champagne or much of that
some of the rellies drop in and i very reluctantly kiss some of my aunts
their lipstick n mustaches scared me
their sour breath n harsh words did not make me want to kiss them
there were girls at school i wanted to kiss and actresses on tv
but i did not want to kiss some of my aunts
i played records in my room
yes i liked simon n garfucknuckle …what of it…?
next year i’d be fifteen
i was torn between the adult life which beckoned on the horizon
and my child-life i hadda leave behind
yeah i told you bout the playboys under my bed
i had a hankering for the erotic
but nothing much would happen to me for a while
i got my hands on some classic dirty books
and my head was filled with perverse ideas from henry miller
and the story of o
and lady chatterlys lover
(now on sale at the post office…then a banned book…)
anyway australian summer was all around
always there
as i gawked at the women on the pages
as i thumbed through the early 20th century erotica
as i got ready for school
listening to the radio
listening to the bee gees and neil diamond and cat stevens
n one hit wonders (like me)
who came n went like ripples in a pool
the black clear hot summer nights of canberra
the swampy damp humidity of sydney
where everyones on permanent holiday
and the weeds push rudely through the cracks
sydney the wild bohemian to canberras “straight”
people at my school married other people from my school
n settled down near that old school
i mean wtf
didnt they wanna see more of the world than that…?
i had to go to london n stockholm n hungary n atlanta
i had to meet all those wonderful characters that burnt through my life
i had to bestride the stages in a million clubs n bars
i had to look in a million backstage mirrors
watching myself get older n older
as the music morphed outwards
n i shed my seven skins
to reveal the current me
as revealed to you here on these very pages
as i allow you to see me
in all my pseudo-honesty
still type type typing away
despite my 11 songs
despite my 2 yoga sessions n my 16 laps
the kids shine on
the moon is white like a white hole
a big horserace finds women with stupid hats at one end
n stupid shoes at the other
a bunch of horses get flogged round a track
more beer
more beer
more beer
who won?
who cares
they all get pissed n flood into bondi
i come home n my wife smiles at me
with the look of love
i’ll have my own celebration
on this hot hot night

dear subscribers
please send money!
steve

the time being is on holiday

i am becoming shocked and bemused
at whats happening with my little song
in 1986 i was up at my mothers house at smiths lake, nsw
she had a lovely house on a lake just across from the ocean
there were birds and flowers and snakes and everything
i was up there with my then girlfriend karin jansson
who would later give birth to anna miranda and elektra june
my first set of twin daughters
identical as 2 peas in a pod
but exact opposites of each other in almost every other way
miranda being like karin
and
elektra being like me
anyhow this was 5 years before those twillies showed up
i ate my dinner…i believe my mum had cooked something
so we ate upstairs with her
she had a big deck you could sit on n see the sea
sometimes we had sandwiches n sat outside n ate
the nightsky was much much blacker than the sydney sky
because we were in the country
and the stars were verily a’twinkling
karin missed sweden a bit and was always trying to find certain stars
in the australian sky…tho she mostly couldnt
so obsessed with finding the big or little dippers was she
that some people started calling her k.j. dipper n then
just dipper
anyway
believe it or not
this has nothing to do with the song, really
so after dinner
i probably snuck off to get out of any washing up
and i had a smoke of neils purple heads
or maybe it was richards caterpillars
at any rate
i became
as we druggies say in our vernacular
“stoned”
however unlike a good 95% of people who get stoned
and switch off in front of the telly eating toast
or retreat into headphones world with their fave music
(tho i do that too n heartily approve of course)
some people
like me
n ricky rene maymi
n grant mclennan
n a few others i know n know of
(the beatles fr’instance)
we harness the incredible ability of this plant
to inspire new works of art n music
listen to me n listen fucking hard kids
pot may stunt yer growth
it may send nutty people nuttier
it may give ya cancer of the balls…even if youre a woman
it may promote laziness dirtiness lasciviousness
n a bad attitude towards work n war n phoney baloney bullshit
it makes yer teeth yellow
it makes yer breath stink
it makes you eat toast n watch telly
yes i agree
it is definitely addictive
SO MAKE NO MISTAKE!
but something
no one can argue with
no n.a. no scientist no sensible “straight” or whatever
can bloody well argue with
is
it is extremely condusive to certain types of art
ok
that is my claim
and if you contradict that
then you dont know yer arse from yer elbow
yes this is important to the story
no i am not advocating the use of marijuana to anyone
other than geniuses about to create art
alex grey whom i consider the greatest living artist in the world
says this in his incredible book art psalms
cannabis allows the flowing tongues of bards contact with new modes
of knowing and speaking
(and then)
opening the third eye allows the artist
in everyone access to the divine imagination

amen!
alex cautions to use cannabis as a sacrament….wise words indeed
anyway
i drift to the piano
in the garage/flat out the back
it was an old pianola n slightly out of tune
old childhood toys of my brothers sat on top
the flat was set slightly high up with a little balcony
out onto the lake and the bush
the insects were out there signalling
the nightbirds were singing etc
i sat down at the piano
i played a standard A minor chord with an A bass note one octave down
actually that was probably the way i always approached a piano
just like i always start on a guitar with one of my G chords
anyhow
being stoned
i could hear a world of possibilities in that chord
to most other muggles
they wooda heard an A minor chord
but me
being a pseudo genius n being loaded on that sacrament
i go
a ha
a ha ha ha ha
and out comes a little chord progression
gee the second chord sounds good with the A sus chord
but a ha ha ha
on the bass note is a fucking F#
not anF or a G or a D but an F#
cool
the rest o the chords kinda unfold without much effort
indeed the whole thing may have taken a minute if that
my chord progression fell out of the sky
into my random half stupid half genius lap
and guess what?
oh happy day
the melody was simply the notes in the chords modulating a little
so i start humming away
after a while (about another minute) i’m bored with this
and ive lost interest in my little creation
n just about to start mucking around with something else
when karin comes in n says thats good
i say you mean this
i play the progression again
she says yeah..thats good
we then worked on it a bit
sketched out some words
and later that night
i did a really wonky version of it on my ensoniq keyboard
which had a little sequencer in it
its the sound of most of earthed n hex etc
anyway this version was pretty rinky dink
i shrugged my shoulders
whatever…and didnt think that much about it
after all i wrote 4 or 5 songs a week….it was just one more
sometime later
i re arranged it for guitar n bass on my home 8 track recorder
the bass guitar playing that low F#
against the acoustic guitar A sus 4
is much more emphatic than when it was being done by the piano
it had a strange feeling when it hit that bit..it was unexpected
but after you heard it once
it seemed so obvious
a weird effect n i’m not sure how its done
anyway i just chuck the C and G and A minor in the middle bit
the bit where the bagpipes are…
when i did my demo
( which is very much the same as the final version)
i had left some space for something there
ie i had 16 bars or whatever of just drum machine
after that second double chorus
i was gonna put something really strange in there
this wasnt gonna be a church song after all
because the church wanted to just write together
which was a very good thing
i probably thought this song a candidate
for what would become the slow crack or something..
so i was gonna do something ambient or electronic in there
after having done the guitars n electric guitars n bass n keys n stuff
but i was tired by then
so i stuck in these most obvious of chords
put a bit of e bow on
and wrapped it up
it sat there on a reel for a while
on a shelf
unaware that it was going to be one of the most covered songs ever
to come out of australia
richard ploog heard it one day at my place n was struck with it
he insisted i played it to the group
the other 2 kinda liked it
but our manager heard it n he insisted it went on next record
me..i was kinda like the other 2
i thought it was ok
but richard (who ironically never played on it)
and manager lembo really dug it n thought it was special
the rest is history
arista immediately saw its potential
promising me it would be a mega hit
i scoffed (as did a few others )
but arista were right
now
on you tube
i was on there yesterday
i searched utmw
n blow me down with a feather
but everyone n their grandmas hyaena has done a version
theres some walloping successful acts
theres some humble gooseballs at home
just so they can post themselves on youtube playing an easy song
“its a great song..its hard to get it wrong”
says mr brandon flowers very kindly at the end of the killers live version
and thats why on youtube
there are tons of gooseballs at home strumming it on the geetar
and posting emselves on the net
utmw has become this decades knocking on heavens door
can you believe it
your humble scribe has written a fucking gen-u-ine standard
they get the fucking words wrong
they almost always get the chords wrong
they leave out bits…who fucking cares
ITS THAT KINDA SONG!!
play it how you like it
it doesnt matter
its a standard
instantly recognizable
for any occasion
from a mega-gig
to a bedroom webcam
for weddings funerals parties bar mitzvahs bah humbugs
birthdays celebrations official ceremonies whatever the hell it is
utmw is yer song
easy ambiguous inoffensive yet with that slight sense of intrigue
a bit of ye olde yearning …or something
check em all out on youtube
some fucking woeful versions there are too
get ready to have a good laugh
i did
i wasnt laughing at them though
i was laughing in delight
that my simple easy song
has gone on to become
an institution in its own right
its an extremely funny thing to watch
coming very soon you will hear more of it
in a big hbo series
and in a big movie just out
hey…its that kinda song
and……..

my mother joyce is 81 years old today
she was born in london a long time ago
one of 8 kids
her mother n father working class strugglers
she spent much of her childhood vaguely embroiled in ww2
getting bombed and hiding out in the underground or in shelters
her dad was a bit of a leftie
and her mum was puffing on cigs as she made the dinner
the kids ‘ad a bath once a week n all shared the bathwater
they all slept in the same bed too except the biggest 2
joyce was third
not a good position to be in i guess
better to be oldest or youngest
my mum was quite a good sort
sometimes i get shocked seeing pictures of her i havent seen before
you can easily imagine why my dad fell for her
she is so thoroughly english
she could live in australia or india or iceland for a hundred years
and she would remain staunchly herself
she would not pick up an accent or change her anglocentric worldview
as opposed to me
who is so changeable and wanting to be whatever i’m not
my mother doesnt change
she bears good fortune and grief stoically
thats what happens when you spend your early days in a war
you toughen up
you dont sweat the small stuff
and you get a bit of a distance too maybe
i tell you this
i never saw my mother gain or lose weight
her hairstyle didnt change much over the years
and the blonde turned to a lovely ash silver almost imperceptibly
she always had a load of energy
and she still does except her dodgy knee has slowed her down
but she still hops around
bombarding you with loads of confusing choices
ie me n the fambley drop in on her
joyce : what do you lot want for lunch…..?
us : oh anything…what you got….?
joyce : but its too late for lunch
us : why cant we have lunch
joyce : well sonny jim, you should have gotten here earlier…
us : well can we have dinner…?
joyce : its too early for dinner son, dont be silly
us : well ok…we wont have anything…
joyce : but you must be hungry…!
us : then lets have lunch…..
joyce : well you should have come earlier then…
etc
now my mum n dad were married for eight years before i arrived
so no one accuse em of a shotgun wedding please (not like aunty X!)
and i dont think they were expecting me to be me
and i think i was a hard child to like
i am still hard to like
despite being vaguely goodlooking n talented
you might assume this makes people like you
but it doesnt
there is an inherent selfishness
an almost cultivated stupidity combined with flashes of brilliance
an embarrassing lack of social skills (asbergers lite perhaps)
i still dont know what to do with people
i didnt know what to do with my parents
and they werent sure what to do with me
you see it was peace time
and we migrated to australia
thus accidentally denying me the chance of being a much bigger rockstar
had i remained in england
where i wouldnt have kicked against so many pricks
and i wouldnt be compared to geezers i preceded by years
anyway
they wanted to emigrate from cold bombed britain
either canada or australia
both woulda had pros n cons for me
i guess i could have been a half canadian bloke without much trouble
anyway
we come here
dad does well coz hes a charmer with the cockney malarkey down pat
and the aussies used to be impressed with poms n yanks
they still are a bit…its true…not all poms n yanks natch
but if youre a classy pom or yank in australia you gotta foot up
anyway i turned out to be cheeky
not nice cheeky neither
i had a big rude mouth and i opened it a real lot
i pissed off all my dad n mums brothers n sisters that were here in aust
and then pissed off all their other friends n rellies
my mum did not namby pamby me much n all that
neither was she cruel or hard
but she was stern
and she had that true grit to back it up
much more afraid of her than my dad
my mother didnt really have much of a philosophy
about raising kids
a wallop if needed
a good dressing down frequently
a bit frosty if you played up
she was pretty even handed
she didnt really seem that jazzed about being a mother really
i always felt that my mother could have dedicated herself to a career
like being a librarian or something
she never would have missed having a husband or kids
she always seems to have a detachment
she never worries too much
she never counts her chickens
she just kinda gets on with it without any soap opera
my mum was a good tennis player
even tho she was often attacked leaving the tennis court
by our very own boxer dog, lionel
who had a strange fetish of hanging round the tennis court
and nipping womens backsides as they went in n out
(!?)
anyway when she retired she become a state champion bowler
with many cups n trophies till her knee stopped her playing
i dont think my mother double guesses herself too much
which is one of my faults
in that she is like eve
they just do things and thats it
whereas me n say aurora
we always talking ourselves out of things
my mother was never phased that much by my ups n downs
she didnt change her attitude to me when i got lucky in show biz
it was business as usual for her and thank god
i wouldnt impress her much if i won the gold whatnot or whatever
shes like a constant in my life
no matter what joyce is joyce
and she cant n wont change
whether youre some bigshot manager
or some humble fan looking for an autograph
joyce will be the same
a few years back she wrote an amazing book
the tale of the old iron pot
my brother john helped her immensely in getting it published
it is quite an eye opener n should be rated AO for the language
tho my mother herself rarely swears …she quotes others freely
yes it is a great read
i’m not in it all that much
just towards the end
but wow it was an entertaining
if sometimes ever so slightly farfetched book
so thats a talent i inherit from her
and i hope i inherit her longevity and her energy
and i wish i could have her cool detachment from highs n lows
anyway 81 aint a bad innings
and i’m glad i had a mother who treated me fair n square
she let me be most of the time
my parents forced no manifesto on me
other than their intrinsic englishness
i was free to become me n luckily
the times permitted such a selfish luxury
because at the age i was discovering trex
my father was killing geezers in europe
so you can imagine it was a bit different for them
anyway
i love my mother
shes a real brick as they used to say
and i am thankful to her
she did what she could with me
and it all turned out ok
(in the end)

what is the secret
what is any secret
what is the secret of secrets
the master secret that unlocks all others
it turns on the tap that makes it flow
well yes this universe is endless my friend
like all the universes gone before
i see it all now
i see it thru my damaged raybanned eyes
i see it with a pinch of salt
i see it and i cant hang on to any of it
time has its tides
the waves of the past dump you on the future
you got a knew song in yer head
yeah a regular sailor on the seize of fate
fate tosses you up in africa
fate tosses you up in greenland
you arrive in australia
a convict
you escape and join a band of bushrangers
you play the bass
you grow a little pointy beard
you ride into dodge city on the back of a falcon
critics takin’ potshots at ya bang bang bang
ricochet zing zang sssssssss
you mount your career
flogging a dead sea
takes a long time to warm up
dad can i buy a new amp?
what happened to the last one, son?
dad, that was in the last century….
in a shop on cyprus buying a postcard i run into nap b
hes reformed his group the imperial french army
and theyre gigging in europe soon
late for an appointment off floral street
a rare sunny day in the garden of whispering winds
the cafe is stocked with generals and peacocks
i notice im dressed in black velvet
and the stage is thru those yonder curtains
i walk on
the lights dazzle my blurry retinas
someone hands me my axe
and i slay em
thats right
i blew their minds right out
a bloody good show
in the lear or leer jet
i relax with a canister of ether
and a bi carb soda
we head into miami despite the hurricane
and i get scared when i see the pilot
runnin’ up the isles singing
take me to the pilot of yer soul
exiting thru a rear door
after tampering with the nosmo king device
i am back in baines place with my mother joyce bennett
she will turn 81 tomorrow i mustnt forget
the boys are in their pajamas
and dads out watering the lawn
in his ever present white singlet
its a warm canberran night i suppose
quite still and quiet
exams tomorrow
dad n i smoke a cigarette together in the gathering dusk
a quiet time in our lives
a plane always flies overhead
back in my boyhood bedroom
i pick up my old bass my old violin bass
and i cant believe how lightweight n mickey mouse it is
compared to a fender jazz the king of basses
i look thru my old vinyl..hawkwind the small faces jethro tull
etcetcetc
stuff i got from the record club
the sprinklers come on next door
i gotta do some study
i’ll fail my exams n then….and then what…?
who will want me if i fail my fucking exams…?
a gloom falls across my poem
i seek solace in the radio
2CA…..gee they love neil diamond
suddenly then
its over

well lakshmi n saraswati go into a bar
no
they dont
why would they?
lakshmi the goddess of fortune
saraswati the goddess of music n art
if you ever get those ladies on your side….
what do you have to do to get their attention….?
imagine this supernatural guiding light
the gift
the masterpiece
the esteem
the kudos
the grace
the knowledge
i wish i wish i wish i hope
perceive the singularity approaching
tiny differences cause huge deviations
artists are born and made
look carefully
listen hard
go soft
watch out
easy
now
goddesses in some imaginary heaven
whose to say
bestowing their favours willy nilly
the money and the art….oh wouldnt it be nice
it doesnt work like that does it
its like
this
you take these ideals
fortune and art personified
and you focus on them maybe at first
breaking thru into fuller realizations of what they represent
let them in let them in
listen if they say something
its a subtle tongue they will talk in
you have to disengage yer mind
concentrate
but dont concentrate
wait
wait
patience
wait for patience to come
ponder the levels of interconnection
unlock it for yourself using the keys you found
ask the goddesses for help
it cant hurt…can it..?