Debut Novel out Now.
Anzac Day Tribute
Two Videos I created in dedication to All diggers
(particularly my family members who served).
It's dedicated to my Uncle who served in 1971 and to my Grandfather who fought in the jungles of New Guinea in World War II and returned forever changed.
It also acknowledges the North Vietnamese Vets and especially the civilians who deeply suffered.
Watch Here:
My Uncle is still alive. He suffered because of his experiences. I have asked him several times about his experiences but I do not know what he went through. I hope he leaves behind some record of what did happen.
A dedication to those who fought (and lived) in the Pacific and jungles of Papua New Guinea during WWII, especially my grandfather, who fought there and spent a long time in hospital there. He suffered greatly after the War, but like men of his generation (and perhaps men in general), never spoke of it.
Watch Here:
I miss my Grandfather. He died suddenly when I was 20. I wish I had been able to ask him about his experiences and to tell him that I was proud of him. I lived with him for a year at aged 17 but was too much a selfish, ignorant teenager to enquire.
Thank you to all Vets, past and present.
Your sacrifice is immeasurable.
(NB: This email was received prior to Covid19)
Hi. I want to be anonymous but I am passing this on,
to the writer Anthony J. Langford, so that someone may read it and learn from
my mistakes.
I am 22. Whether I am male or female doesn’t matter.
I’m not gender neutral. I just don’t wanna say what. I am writing from my
bedroom, where I spend 90% of my time. I spend some time in the loungeroom but
I don’t like being with my mum and my brother. So I hang out here most of the
time. It’s my hideaway. My Me space. It’s also kind of a prison. Because I
never leave it. It’s my own doing though. I can’t blame anyone for that. But I
kind of do in a way and I’ll explain why.
I was your normal teenager through secondary school.
Normal meaning like all the usual dramas, ups and down. And plenty of those.
But mostly it was ok, I guess. Then I went to uni. It was better than school,
at first. But then the work got hard and I had to get a part time job too to
help my mum out. She insisted. Thanks for that Mum. It could of made my life
better if I didn’t have that job.
Anyway’s I loved it for a long time. University, not
the job. Mostly because I had a group of friends and we had a lot of fun
together. Especially that first year. We had lunches, barbecues at each other’s
houses, lots of drinks out at bars and club. All the good stuff.
It turns you off wanting to hang out with them. Not
that we were hanging out so much, but it annoyed me having to see them at Uni
and sit with them in lectures and pretend we were friends, when I know they had
just posted some shit that pissed me off. They act all tough and warrior like and
pretend to care about this issue and that but I know they actually don’t do
anything about it. It’s just all talk to act cool and get some attention. I
hate that. Pretending to care is bad enough but the attention seeking thing is
really super annoying. I guess a lot of people do it? But I hate fakeness when
it’s so obvious because I know those people in real life and I know what
they’re like. And they’re not like that!
Take my friend Steph. Not her real name. She’s
obsessed with tatts. Hers and everyone else’s. And also nails. Her nails. Not
everyone else’s. She posts about the environment all the time. That’s fine. A
lot of people do it. But she never does anything about it. I mean, I don’t
expect her to chain herself to a tree in the Amazon rainforests but at least
don’t buy takeaway juice containers and throw them in the trash. They’re made
of plastic. She buys takeaway coffees and iced tea and I mean, her carbon
footprint is pretty big. She hasn’t changed a thing about her own life. Know
what I mean? If your gunna sprout crap all the time, then at least do something
about your own use of plastics and rubbish. She’s terrible. I don’t think I
even want to be friends with her anymore, because of her online profile. I have
had to snooze her profile so I don’t see her but of course she pops on all
plenty of other socials. And sometimes I have to go like her posts so she
doesn’t get agro. She can be a real bitch sometimes if she wants to be.
At least I don’t have to see her anymore. Which is
kinda my main point here. Which is why I started this in the first place. I
don’t want to see her anymore, or any of my friends, or anyone, period. The
thought of seeing people makes my skin crawl. Weird I know but here me out. It
began with people. The idea of being in a crowd. I started avoiding lectures
because I didn’t want to swallowed by the hordes. Bumping into them because they’re
on their phones. Its so annoying. The crowds on the bus to uni. The crowds on
platforms. I began going to Uni later so I wouldn’t have to hit the peak. It
was really stressing me out. I’d put my headphones in so I could at least block
the sound of them out. Them. The people. That worked for a while. In
time though, it stopped working. The music made me feel even more enclosed. I
couldn’t hear people behind me, then I was the one bumping into others. It was
creepy. Bodies ramming into you. Sweaty, smelly bodies. People’s leftover
lunches and body odour and sushi snacks and chips and juices and drinks and
more phone lights than a Christmas tree. I bet if you turned off all the lights
at an underground train station like Town Hall, it would be like a moving light
festival. A living Christmas tree.
A similar problem began happening in other places, like supermarkets. I would be walking along looking down at my phone, and someone would deliberately bump into me, that’s what I felt like anyway. It was really freaking me out. I guess I had to put my phone down because that didn’t happen so much but the last thing I wanted to do was to look people in the eye so I would look anywhere else but at them. The Floor. The Isles. In the middle of nowhere. When I went to the checkout I would never go to where there was a real-life person. I would always go to the self-checkout, no matter how busy it was. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with any one.
Now I don’t go to the supermarket at all. I couldn’t think of a worst place to go. Those people with their baskets and trolleys and kids and old people and people on their phone who are more obsessed than me, getting in your way. It’s just horrible. Actually, there are worse places than the supermarket but you won’t find me there either. I used to enjoy getting a takeaway juice. I still like a good blended juice but I don’t want to have to line up in a cue. Worse than that is waiting for it afterwards when there’s a pile of people standing about and if you’re really unlucky it’ll be some older person who decides they want to try and talk to you. What’s with that? I don’t know who they are. Why can’t they all just let me alone?
A few weeks ago,
maybe a month ago, I had to go to the Service Centre as there was a problem with
my car registration. I tried dealing with it online but no one responded to my
emails. So frustrating. If I
didn’t sort it out very soon, I was going to have to pay a lot more. I was out
of time. I was forced to go into a suburb I hate. It’s a long story but it was so stressful. I
had to ask Mum to come with me because I couldn’t cope with the stress. She was
really unhappy about it but I’m glad she was there because it was a freakin' nightmare. There were people everywhere there with numbers and tickets and
counters with all different people behind them. I don’t think I would be able to
work out what was what. I hope I never have to go through anything like that
again. Certainly not by myself. And most of the time I don’t have to.
That had to end. It all had to end. It only got worse.
So here I am. Alone in my room, sitting at my laptop, writing this to you. I
have a small desk at the foot of my bed. I’ve got plenty of Wi-Fi so I set it
up on the edge of the desk, turn all the lights off, put on my wireless
headphones and pretend I’m at the cinema. I like it. It’s fun. That’s at night.
During the day it’s a bit different. There’s too much light, even with the
blinds closed, and the screen is a pasty grey. I don’t like the days much. .
I’m aware of where I am. Trapped. Enclosed. That’s when the 10% comes in. I’ll
go out. Get some sunshine, as my mum says. Ill walk around the backyard. I do
two -laps one way then two the reverse way. Sometimes I’ll do that two or three
times a day. Or if I’m feeling really flat, ill just sit on the grass and stare
at it, imagining the life between the blades. Microscopic insects, doing their
thing. A life beneath us, in the dirt and clay. Life on top of life. That’s all
we are. Larger insects running around like we’re all insane, on top of the
ground, while just as frenetic, (that’s a good word) but more organised life
teems below us. And so, it goes on generation after rotting generation.
Milling, scrambling, fighting, killing, reproducing, pausing, finally dying,
quickly replaced, so fast in fact that we never really notice it. Just a slight
gap before its filled with new beings and the whole messy journey begins over,
unable to pass on life’s learning and experiences. Just make the same old
mistakes.
You know, I saw a sign a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe
it was on my phone or something. I don’t even know what they were advertising but it
said, ‘Does your puppy chew your furniture?’ or ‘Why does my dog chew my furniture?’
something lame like that. I didn’t take much notice of it at the time. Then
later, I was thinking about it for some unknown reason. I thought, do people
really not know why their dogs chew their furniture? I mean, human beings have
had dogs around for thousands of years. If we haven’t learnt their behaviour by
now, then we must be really stupid. We don’t pass on the learning. We should
all know these things. Yes, I think we are really stupid. A stupid species.
That’s why I don’t want to be a part of them. They can turn on you. You never know
who or when. Even your friends. They can stab you in the back. You can walk
down the street and a car runs off the road and bang. Or you can walk down the
street and some creep makes a grab for you. Or work in retail and someone
abuses you. Or the boss perves on you. And you get underpaid. And have to work
too much. And spend years trying to climb the ladder but there’s always another
step, another person above you and too many with you. It’s all so pointless. I
don’t want anything to do with it anymore. And I didn’t then and that’s why I
got out.
My parents carried on like you wouldn’t believe. Or maybe
you do. I don’t know. I don’t know. I only know that they wanted to categorise
me with a big stamp so they knew how to deal with it. Deal with me. Depression, they said. You’re depressed. Blah blah. I’m not. Not really.
Anxiety they said. Well, maybe. I’m not even sure that I know what that is. I
know they wanted me to go to the doctors, which I had to. And get put on
anti-depressants. Which they tried to do. I bought them, well my mum did, but I
refused to take them. What if how I’m feeling is completely normal? What if
this is just a reaction to the world around me? Is it my fault that society is
set up a particular way? This way. The way that were supposed to all be content
with. Is this life? Is this all? Surely there’s more ways than this. Work until
you die. Is that it? Maybe a holiday occasionally. If you can afford it. Gotta
pay for the car. Or the public transport. All the bills. And save up, so I can
maybe get a mortgage of my own that will take 60 years to pay off. I’ll likely
be dead long before that happens. Doesn’t sound like much of a life. With or
without the fucking mortgage.
Mayne I could move to Vietnam or China or Russia and try
the communist way of life. Then it doesn’t matter if I have a good job or not.
I still get some money, right? Ill live in a hut in a village at the edge of a
jungle and knit baskets and raise goats and kill chickens and smoke tobaccos
leaves and sweep the dust from my loungeroom floor. And sleep in a hammock and
plant rice in a paddy. And ride a bike and read books or maybe I won’t even
have those. We’ll sit around and tell stories and make up shit and entertain
ourselves and those stories will get passed down to the next generation and ill
grow old there and sing songs about the old days and Ill be able to play some
sort of instrument by then. A bamboo guitar or pipe. And ill have plenty of
hours for sitting around watching the clouds gather over the mountains and dump
rain everywhere and half destroy our village but we wont care so much because
we had nothing much to begin with. And the next day we’ll begin repairs and
we’ll whistle while we do it and we’ll be happy because being happy is living
the simplest kind of life and not being a slave and not being surrounded by
thousands of people constantly all with their self-important missions on that
gravy train to fame that never reaches its destination. That won’t be me. I
want no part of that. I won’t be suckered in by the lies like everyone else. I
don’t buy those lies. And its all lies. They’re all in on it. The media, the
social media sites, the government, the television, even the movies reflect it
because they’re all inside it. I’m not ready to give up watching my movies and
shows just yet but the day is coming. I can feel it trying to pull me back into
the vortex. Sucker me in with those false promises. But they won’t get me. I’m
not out to impress others. I don’t care what they think of me. I don’t need
their approval to justify my existence. And that’s what most are suckered in
by. Especially my generation. Well, all young generations, I guess. They see
the glitz and glamour and the glory. I don’t. I see broken dreams and lies and misery.
I know that sounds negative but I’m just telling it straight. It’s a dog chasing
its tail and never quite getting it. Never satisfied. Nope. I’m out. No phone
either. Ill get rid of mine soon. I’m slowly extracting myself from those
sites. Closing down certain people is just the beginning of the process. The
last person I close down will be me. I will have opted out completely. And I won’t
miss a thing. It’s a no thing, dressed up behind a never-ending scrolling
screen.
As for relationships, well, there’s no one I’m really going to miss. They know where I am. They could have come and see me. Just because I’m available by the tap of a thumb doesn’t mean they’re really communicating with me in a meaningful way. They could come and physically visit me. Give me a hug. Ask me if I’m okay. Not all but maybe one or two I would have thought might. Just possibly. I would have gone to see them if the reverse have had happened. But that’s too much to expect, I guess. Then they weren’t my friends. Not really. Not the sort of friends I would have hoped for. Not the sort of friends I’ve got. Or chosen. Or ended up with. Who knows how you end up with certain people? Maybe no one would have come to see me. Maybe I’m the problem. Or maybe everyone’s just on their own fucking journey these days, as there all so self-important with their selfies and their bullshit posts about things they don’t even care about and their animals and their food and their fakeness. That’s all it is. A big screaming ball of fake dressed up in superficial emotions with pathetic icons to represent something so vast that it’s a literal joke. That in itself, shows you how fucked the world is today. The essence of humanity boiled down to a cartoon face. Wow. We really have regressed huh. I think we must have gone backwards. About a hundred years, I think. Soon we’ll be back in the Dark Ages, all fighting over each other, ripping each other apart from the inside out. It won’t be like World War 2. It’s not country against country anymore. Its individuals against each other. Little groups of Me. Thousands of them. Millions. We’ll rip each other to shreds from the inside out until there’s nothing left. And our precious technology won’t mean a thing. Not that it ever did. Its all set up to make a select few rich and the rest just follow along, consuming as they go. The Sheep. Sheep People. The Sheepeople. And they think I need medicating! Oh, that's really ironic!
Well, I think I’ve said enough, and perhaps I didn’t
actually say what I wanted to say to begin with. I’m not even sure I knew what
I wanted to say. It was a warning, a letter of advice maybe, in case there
was anyone else like me out there, somewhere. I hope there is. There’s got to
be. But I have to say, I’m really losing faith. Fast. I thought I could help
someone else somehow. But maybe I was the one seeking help. Or maybe just
making my peace with the outside world. Yeah, I’ve said enough.
Thanks for listening. Or reading. Or not reading. I wonder how many who started reading this actually got to
this point. A sliding scale I reckon. Sliding into disinterest. I don’t blame
them for that. I’m disinterested too.
Maybe I'll have more to say another time. When I’ve
learnt what my next move will be. Or maybe I'll just disappear one day. And find
myself in that hut by the jungle, standing in the rain, singing my song of
life. The simple way.
I came across an old diary recently and am typing it up. I haven't read it since I wrote it. How strange to be communicating with yourself 25 years on.
You might find this interesting. I had just turned 26.
22/4/94 2.30 am
Paranoia. Surely one person's struggle for individuality. Setting oneself away from all
the rest.
The artistic
battle. The method of exploring the mind and it's limits.
The art of self
expression.
I write this
with no influence, a clear head.
The film (Born in a Storm*), is in its preliminary online stages and I'm
beginning to accept that I've done everything I possibly can to make it work.
Ultimately, I'm the one that has to be satisfied with it, but it's nice to
receive praise for the hard work.
My sister returns home from New Zealand on the 29th.
She is exploring herself in her own way.
My brother appears too young still to contemplate this struggle,
but the confusion is there. I hope he finds himself.
Issues of the day.
The lead singer of Nirvana commits suicide. The
unofficially appointed representative of teenage angst. Generation X, they call
us. Everything has to be labelled. There is no grey areas. According to Them.
Same day. Different perspective.
Life has changed.
Current culture affects the youth.
I should not forget.
Kurt Cobain
Was the inspiration behind
The death of two teenagers
Only age 12 and 15
Don't lead us down this path
Give us some hope.)
Back to the original entry;
Bosnia rages on.
Wars, famine, crime. Same old shit, different year.
The self destructive cycle continues, spiralling
inwards. So advanced, yet still, unable to get along.
Pink Floyd releases The Division Bell.
Rumours of a Beatles reunion continue.
Another murder.
Another lost cry.
Someone pockets a dollar.
Most fight to just get by.
Some Green movements received small victories. There
remains hope.
For me and I guess for all of us, the weeks go by and
we continue on. Working to live, trying to find something to do, to make our
lives worthwhile. If only we could avoid fucking each other over. Yet society
or just us, seems to have this trait inbred. The classical Do-or-Die approach
seems to have relevance, perhaps too much so.
----
(This next part I've updated to provide the fuller story, that I did not know in 1994, but it was the year I changed my name)
I've changed my name, back to Langford. My convict ancestor lied when arrested in Cheshire for stealing a watch and used his mother's maiden name, Sidebottom in 1825. No I.D. in those days. He had to stick to the lie and eventually, after 7 years served he started afresh. He did well for himself in very early Melbourne, when it was a mere town of 300 (making him one of the original pioneers).
He had business dealings with both John Batman and John Fawkner, the two men who established Bearbrass as it was known then (Batman infamously signing a treaty for 900,000 acres of land with local Aborigines) and later paid for the voyages of his brothers to join him from England, as long as they changed their name to Sidebottom too.
Fascinating story. (I will do a more comprehensive post on this in future)
----
* Born in a Storm - the finished film.
I found it an interesting insight into the times, myself as a young person and as a creative.
I hope you found it interesting too. The Beatles did reform, producing the Anthology series. The Bosnian War ended at the end of 1995. Has much else changed? We are still labelled and divided it seems.
Did you write in a diary when you were young?
And still they judge with impunity. Demonise without basis.
Create hysteria based solely on emotion and cancel with discrimination.
Wokeness creates problems where none existed.
It's a masturbatory illusion.
