To Footscray, via the city and back

 To Footscray, via the city and back to Cheltenham (my current domicile)

 

Namibia

Leopards or cheetahs

Attacking horses/

 

When hunters arrived

With guns

& domesticated foreign

Animal species,

 

The wild animals

Fled/

The occasional meal.

But now

Man builds

Into their small remaining

Tracts of land.

 

Man

(ok, mainly white

But it’s spread to most

Basically it’s agrarianism)

doesn’t

see it this way/

 

Or on that trajectory,

Can’t.

 

So he’s attacking

The wild, carnivorous

Animals

Who also happen to be NATIVE

 

(YUNNO POPE NICHOLAS 1455: ‘it’s ok to kill and dominate, the Church will protect,’ as it would also protect and promote rapists, etc) Anyway, just some backgound for the melonheads who’ll no doubt misinterpret what I’m saying (Need despairing emoji in the alphabet please!). //

 

--

 

Public sculpture

Melbourne

Policy:

Miscellany/

Novelty/

One offs.

 

In short no major statements/

 

Play to the room

Safely

Inanely/

Whatever:

Defensively/

Insubstantially. //

 

‘Art’ in Australia got spooked

On ‘Vault’

& Contemporary public art

 

And the melonhead’s

Fear expressed as rage

And violence/

 

It was renamed ‘the Yellow Peril’

And moved/

The ‘City Square’ terminated

For fear of the populace

& Australian’s racism/

 

& equally as present:

Participant Democracy//

(WE DON’T TRUST THE PEOPLE HERE, TRUST ME. LEFT RIGHT WHOEVER .).

 

Ridiculed by philistines*

Ignorant of art

 

As we still ARE

Reading ideology into aesthetics/

 

(WHAT IS NOW IDENTICAL WITH WHAT IS CALLED ‘POLITICS’ (2023))/

 

Anyway, the sculpture was moved

 

& never a daring statement

Would ever challenge

The ‘footy crowd’.//

 

--

 

I’d made ‘An Amateur Manifesto’

When I was living on FAT STREET.

 

Now I’m alone again

In the world

& I see it going crazy around me/

 

Even my old dog

 

I don’t live with anymore/

 

He prefers the comfort of a house,

 

To life on the road.//

 

Anyway,

Where was I? –

 

Hunter S. Thompson/

 

Famously spoke of his Generation

As DOOMED.

 

How right he was/

 

& when I look around the streets

At my fellow people,

 

It’s what I see:

 

The Doomed –

Angry, mad, hysterical,

Directionless,

Lost,

 

In short:

DOOMED.//

 

And so I say

To my earlier ‘Manifesto’:

 

 

“When the going gets weird,

The weird turn PRO.” (H.S.T.).//

 

--

 

Brass band with the footy crowd

Along Birrurung Marr –

Along the Yarra

 

Uplifts

Everyone’s

Spirits.

 

People are STILL TRYING

As am I/

 

Sure,

It’s not innovative,

 

But a lovely

Appropriation –

 

As Colonials do well at it.//

 

(Link back to sculpture/music).//

 

--

 

But the BANAL!/

--

 

Maybe I WON’T be going

To the Art Gallery (NGV Fed Square).

 

It’s TEAMING with people./

 

Is it

Post Lockdown RELEASE?

 

Or the latest fad/

 

Marking the end of the Comedy Boom?.//

 

INTERPOLATION MADE POST FACT:

MAN I SOUND LIKE A MISERY GUTS. A WHINGING, WHINING MIDDLE AGED GIT. BUT ARE YOU DEAR YOUNG ONE, ANY MORE UPBEAT, UNLESS YOU’RE HIGH ON SOMETHING?/

 

IT IS A SAD TIME.

I WISH IT WASN’T.

I REALLY DO.

BUT IT IS.

 

FEW PEOPLE CAN SEE HOPE.

 

A CYNICAL AGE.

 

SO I GUESS THIS SHIT IS WHAT YOU GET.

 

ALL I CAN ADVISE IS NOT TO DIVIDE AGAINST ONE ANOTHER.

AS THE ABORIGINALS TELL THE YOUNG: “YOU’RE AS GOOD AS ANYONE,

BUT YOU’RE NO BETTER THAN ANYONE.”

 

HOW ABOUT TELLING YOUR KIDS SOMETHING SIMILAR.

RATHER THAN JUST BEING TOO DRUNK TO WEAR A CONDOM

& ABSOLVING ANY RESPONSIBILITY TO YOUR CHILD OR OUR SOCIETY/WORLD?

 

THEN MAYBE,

WE WOULDN’T BE IN SUCH A PICKLE?

 

--

 

Back to this reflection from travelling on foot around Greater Melbourne for the first time in a while// –

Personally, I mistrust ‘travel writers’

as shallow self-promoters.

 

‘Th’Art Gallery’

As Les Patterson famously put it,

 

But today

50 years on,

 

The advantage of ‘THE CONSUMER’

Is that they are armed with smart phone cameras –

So,

One’s

Selfies

Can

ROCK!//

 

Social media

Like so much cubic zirconia

& Revlon

“Coz you’re worth it” propaganda.//

 

--

 

The YOUTH’s (bigger boys)

Macho posturing

Seems more exaggerated

Than I remembered it

(pre lockdown)/

 

Everywhere,

‘Shadow boxers’

It seems/

 

Hoping that they can be caught

On a friend’s ‘smart’ phone/

 

Evidence of their bullying tactics

 

& ‘sharing’

On ‘Tik Tock’,

 

In the hope of

‘going viral’/

 

AGAIN, NOT WANTING TO PUT TOO FINE A POINT ON IT, AS THEY MIGHT BE GIANT’S PREVIOUSLY BORROWED,:

 

VIRUSES!!!!!/

 

Repeat:

 

VIRUSES!!!!!/

 

Repeat:

 

I can’t remember it being like this before I entered into the marriage contract (Jah Bless)

& foreswore public transport

 

As UNBECOMING

For a married man.//

 

What strikes me most

Is the JOYLESSNESS

Of the EXHIBITIONISM:

 

Its sound & motion

AIMS at MENACE,

NOT CELEBRATION./

 

For THIS

I am sad./

 

Trump’s minions

‘storming the Capital’

 

Unleashed

Something wider:

 

HATRED as the new HYMN of the CURRENT GENERATION.

 

(AGAIN I PROTEST THAT IT IS THEIR PARENTS WHO FAILED THEM, US & THE WORLD! BY FAILING TO UNPACK THE ‘HATE SPEECH’)./

 

As RADICAL as an 18 year old from their grandparent’s ‘LOVE’ Generation –

this time as a perverse parody./:

 

All you need is HATE

The current day LENNONS & McCARTNEYS sing

 

Or rather rap,

 

(Their ‘tales told by idiots

All sound & fury

Signifying nothing’ (Macbeth)/)//

 

The only echo

That still resonates

From John Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’

 

Is that :

 

“You’re all fucking peasants,

As far as I can see.”

 

TITLE: ‘THE RETURN OF THE PINK FLANEUR’ – TRAIN TO FOOTSCRAY, FOOTSCRAY TO FLINDERS ST., FLINDERS ST. BACK HOME./ END//. A DOOMED GENERATION – ONE UNLIKE MORE OTHERS: IN THAT THEY ARE WITHOUT A SONG.// (An idea for a title.)

 

©Malachi Doyle 2023.