The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

yellow period

gouache should be applied at the consistency of cream

all the music up till now is only a tiny fraction of what is left unwritten

if richard dawkins is the best atheist they got heaven help em

try to always turn off the battery to your noise cancellation headphones

everyone is a contender

everyone is an idiot

my daughters all astound me

a nameless anxiety takes up residence in my stomach

a yoga session and half a valium slightly mitigate this pressure

the secret transmission of yoga has begun

my ears and eyes are shot and its no fun

i go to rehearsal with glide and the songs are excellent

20 years on the songs of williams shine on n on

tricky weird idiosyncratic words

impression of S and M then sudden spiritual insights

cruelty and mercy within one line

william found spaces in music and ways of singing

no one had ever thought of before

except maybe shayne carter from straitjacket fits

its mean and tender at the same time

how do you fucking pull that off?

well thats what william could do

this is gonna be a couple of great shows

this music has not dated one minute

songs you can get your teeth into

meanwhile bondi is rainy

i work on art

pick scarlet up from school

she is such a little compliment giver

when i was a kid i’d feel sudden rushes of love for my dad too

this happens occasionally to scarlet

she squeezes my hand and says kind things to me

and gushes her appreciation of the way i discharge my fatherly duties

she is not a ray of light every day tho please dont think that

lately the child has begun to really fascinate me

she runs deep and true and she has access to something special and indefinable

tomorrow is a stint in hobart for macbeth

a bit of everything in that cold city way down south

pastel is a lovely art form

there is something so cool about it altho you mightnt think it

pastel has become my bass

and gouache my guitar

so i paint and i write music still on rapid learning curve ball

fuck its fun to be me ha ha ha

but i wouldnt know anything different, would i?

anyway gratitude to the one true god of my understanding is due

hare krsna !

dead bees still sting

far arching shore of my heaven

soon i will be sucked into the sky

a shell whispered to me on the forlorn afternoon

scarlet and i walked and talked

this otherworldly child god has rolled into my arms

placed under my protection

scarlet and i eat potato cakes

she is a child from another century

her heart on her sleeve and her steve

her pale blue eyes look into your head searching for irony and sarcasm

she says i love you dad at random and sometimes inappropriate moments

she talks quietly and slowly with a slightly adenoidal twang

like a cartoon character

we sit together

the old father

the young daughter

my arm round her shoulder

we are friends

an honour and privilege to have a kid like this

the sea is calm

i play some buddhist chanting

scarlet says

dad this music makes me feel calm

she plays quietly for a while in the courtyard

until its time to come inside

the child is a blessing

i am filled with gratitude

the church announced as the top of the bill at BIGSOUND September 10-12. They will also be keynote speakers discussing their time in the industry and will play a very special new album preview show. Click photo for link

mo jo

spring has come to sydney in the middle of winter

my life is stranger than most strangers

a long time ago in another universe

i was a junky

and every day a very good friend of mine

who was also a junky would pick me up in her VW

and we would make the long drive out to cabramatta in sydneys west

where in the mid nineties there was very good heroin to be had cheap

my friend was a musician and we drove out there which usually took an hour

and on the way out we were sick and twitching

we arrive and she always waits in the car while i duck up the stairs

up to a karaoke place but no one up there is fucking singing

theres a guy at the door

hes got half a gram of smack in a 150 buck wrapper

you can have as many as you like

the stuff comes straight from vietnam presumably

its fucking deadly good

it was killing people

man you bought your stuff and you fucked off quick

these cats selling it are hard faced bastards

jump in the car

we drive to this weird remote kinda park thing in the middle of nowhere

and me and my friend would hit up our sweet poison and the mood would change

everything looked so refreshed in the light of that fix

as we drive home we are relaxed and loquacious

drive so politely and within all the laws to the tee

this happens day in day out for a long time

on our drives out there and back

we chart the courses of other junky musicians

my friend has all the latest goss on whos using the stuff

at the same time i came across these records by glide which really impressed me

glide were chucked in with shoegazer but in fact they were much more than that

they were around mid nineties

hell they even did a gig with us

william approached me

its an honour to be playing with you he said and shook my hand

i think i told him how much i liked glide

and how good it was to have them playing with us

i listened a lot to a record called shuffle off to buffalo

it was no surprise when my friend began to mention williams name

on our daily pilgrimage to sydneys heroin mecca

the music somehow suggested as much in some subtle way

only a junky would understand

a lot of shoegazer is perfect heroin music

anyway glide really had something going for them

before william who was the singer and mainman went and overdosed

one day when she picked me up

my friend said

william died . he OD ed

i sat there feeling sick and worn out and sad

my first impression was to envy him

that he had found some warm safe haven in the embrace of an opiate overdose

this would not be an unpleasant way to die

youd go out on a carpet of dreams

obviously my thinking was warped twisted and totally fucked up

but in the end i just shrugged

another victim of her-o-in

i imagined i’d probably be coming along pretty soon myself

i didnt care

life as a junky was a half-life as Karin used to say

my impression of william arthur is that he had some real fucking talent

these songs anticipate a lot of what was to come

he was an audacious witty poignant writer

the band play with impressive fury and restraint

the guitars often sound orchestral and ambiguous

anyway

i am having the pleasure of singing 7 songs at a glide night

vanguard newt-town 21 and 22 of august

one day i wrote a song about those days

and its called keeper

the speed seems to have slowed me down

we talk about william from glide

the names of the towns go past

im driving on the wrong side

another shot

and the land of light was peel back and reveal

as the brooks rush down into the the thirsty sea

as the cloudiest baby zephyr still within eos

invoke then the solemnity you needed

fiddling around with buttons and diodes

man you hammer on and off

some constraining angel harkens to your tune

you persist beyond death

you increase within time

just when they were gonna give up

hit and blindsided and run

some chick took off her pants in a strobe

while you sucked on the cola betel hula hooper

you hoovered up a line of prose straight up your little nose

you cried poor at the door of in-laws as the snow thaws

flying in the face of shredded decencies

you vacillated between the grotesque and obscene

holding third or forth on the life of some queen

under the blankets the best darkness i never seen

the trembling is still upon me or is it writhe in remorse

i hurl the chasms frame over my name

switch on for the next game

ive got babylon sister what about you?

a tremendous feeling of smugness and superiority crushed by a feather

gliding i pull alongside you

i decelerate to enter the intimately lit space

the eyes in your face

the solar panic flare of the cameras flash reflect off your lenses

forming your past in regrettable future tenses

inside my chest my heart must still beat

although i am virtually hidden to the world

in an arcane inn where i winter in austerity

my conscience pricked by thorny problems

i paint away at my lathe bathed in sweet sweat

in yoga asanas i am receiving a confidential transmission

but the years have their hooks in me

the days and their barbituate ways going under again

down by the transparent sea where you can see anything

i whirl upon the shells in my rubbery wetsuit thrusting shoals aside

i embark upon the lilting underwater trees of the coral corridor

i am knight of spades a real conquistador

my theatre of war amour

the residue still on the balcony

blue ray

when the electric strike hits the sky vein

and explodes in the earths head like a whiteness opaque

this whole reeling planet is circumambulating a little son

if you took just one minute to look under the rivers hood

and search the pockets of a woodland strip

hipped to the waste of blue max alpine air

lake redolent ripples away and away in water coloured waves

the owl busted the mouse falling out of heaven in dread beating wings

and art nouveau frog left croaking on a dying tree

their reflections are the shadows of other days other times

when i lived as another faraway in some painting

oh yes a lovely world slipped out from vishnus gorgeous pores

as he dreams in the causal ocean

and from him emanate baby universes like this one you hold in your hands

from the great unnamed event that has at least one thousand names

as scientists get nearer to god in a queue outside a bank

they begin to approach him in wonder

with their little measuring sticks and their little gauges

like ants who argue over weighing the moon

the guys in suits who say only war will save us

but blessed are the peacemakers

i looked before i hesitated

and i leapt before i was lost

my words are some mere distraction

from the horrors around you

it was a real pleasure

to feel you read me today

fuck

some weird infection got me the other night

freezing and boiling and recoiling in horror

i lie in bed and follow rivulets of reverie

in deep dark places i come across the strangest things

i exchange information

the banging in my head continues

i hobble around

my much vaunted vim dimly remembered

singer poor eyes

as this century begins to rush by

whilst slowing drab hours into years

i pause and wait for the next thing to say

i cause and placate and sing for today

i call upon the melody of the moonish lark

unfurling her stratospheric elegy in a mourning sky

how i

would love to climb up there into the realm she promises

but there are no women drinking or gambling on the premisses

and on the premise of all these things i began to sang

and sings about the sea lyin’ beneath this sand

in another time and in another land

i would put my hands together and pray for that ray on demand

and the secret transmission of yoga

that emanates attracting all animals of the spectrum

the red setter

the blue finch

the gold fish

the black cat

the whitest horse snorted up with derision

i am everything at once a diagram of what i could be

humble men dont say they are humble

so how do i say how humble i am?

humble as a tiny krill be sucked into some whales maw

humble as the jumbled jimbo in the bath

dreaming further and further away

yeah i too have seen these crystal scenes of eastern architecture

in the darkness as your lungs just become slower and shallower

seized by the seas tranquilities

you follow a whisper to your own doom

whose hand in that night was laid upon my shoulder

and who guided my footsteps to the shore of life..?

out there in space and in my wilderness

drifting over the pharaohs tombs in another egypt

the sight of myself in my daughters eyes

the shift of good and evil

trick of perception

a dance or a game

it will always hurt to love sang the women with me

my reverie gone i am revealed as wanting

a chorus follows me around an immediate mirror

i sing now from truth beaten around a little

imagine the stupidest lie recontextualized as a killer line

a gun that blows even ghosts away

imagine the world outside no longer is there

we are together in this song so light heartedly

and then wonder again

at tiniest things

he sings of these

forever please you