Guise and Proles

Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me.

Because if you don't remember it, I never will.

Around the time of the infamous couchtrip on Victoria Street, North Richmond.
People would come from miles around to sample the amazing roast duck, to bathe in the cultural melting pot and to buy Heroin. The Centrelink never really attracted the same vibe that you got down the other end of Victoria St, it seems sometimes people, just actually need money until they get another job. I felt more intimated by the occasional swarms of 16 year old semi-lads hanging out in front of the 24 hour fast food joint than the constant trickling of junkies, beggars, dopers and prostitutes that fell along the tramtracks further down the street. The price of young rock and roll success was blatantly obvious.
There was plenty of laughs to be had amongst the midst of the Golden Triangle, made up of the Richmond, Brunswick St and Fitzroy commission flats. In this triangle is where i met the ever present Rob.
Rob was an old boy living on Gertrude Street in an abandoned townhouse complex, with a special comfy seat. He suffered badly from piles, which was worded in most of his greetings with people. Cream wasn't helping and Centrelink wouldn't dole him his five hundred dollar loan for an operation, although he seemed pretty confident he would work something out, he always did. The security guard that was supposed to kick him and the rest of the squatters out, never did, and actually let them jack the electricity, providing they didn't "fuck the place up". Rob was kept in butane and dope by taxing drug deals that he'd get the younger kids to run, back and forth from commissions. He asked me to leave my typewriter there so he could "use it for a while", but after I smelt the familiar odour of White Ox being brought in and out by visitors, I decided against spending alot of time there.
For a while I didn't see much of Rob, until quite randomly I jumped off a tram and he was standing there, waving from across the road.

Rob was ecstatic. He'd just gotten out of hospital.
He didn't need that comfy chair, anymore.

There's plenty of shit slammed into paper around this time.

Untitled

Circa late 2008/early 2009, medicated for severe epilepsy, lost in the trees and forests of North Fitzroy.
Conveniently unreadable in this window.

We took a bite of the Apple.

Surrounded by examples of bad brainwork and betrayals of morality,
We, the bankrupt minions of our collective groups, crews, gangs and cliques,
All wait in the same lines for the same clubs,
All drink at the same happy hours at the same pubs,
All take the same medicines that we buy from the same Underbelly fans.

Yet, at least in the white loaf of middle class bread we call Perth, the youth seemingly need to find more and more reasons to divide and conquer all those we percieve to be our lessers.

To stupify them with dazzling displays of our knowledge of places to street drink, fixed gear bicycle parts, doctors to pilfer benzos from, new fashionable stores you can hang out in and niche band's complete discographies.

One could argue that the following of elitest and fashionable trends in meek backwater Perth is leading to a compliance to the Melbournian ideology of culture, and that this might possibly stop the flood of people catching the tram all the way from Mt Lawley to Swanston St. We are surrounded by the laneway phenomenon taking grip, the low brow art galleries and people willing to turn their backyards into stage space.

And this is a good thing. We are coming to grips, for the most part, that although we are the most isolated city in the world, we are still can be a willing contributer to the global village.

The only thing is that there is definately not a unity around the ideal of bettering Perth, for the sake of the future generations. The idea that we might have to strive to achieve an aim that we might not be able to reap the benefits from is lost on us. The curse of the hedonistic Generation Y. There is only those same groups, crews, gangs and cliques mentioned previously, all operating concurrent to each other, trying to step on each other in order to monopolise OUR city, to achieve a Pinky and the Brain type of high esteem.

Everyone wants to be the top dog, but when will these asiring pitbulls realise everybody living around the Swan River is a big fish in a small pond?

And that is the problem that we are facing at the moment in Perth. In exchange for the immediate recognition of peers, a seemingly upgraded social standing and a few extra useful contacts on your Facebook, we are selling our futures and our following generations futures at cost price. Perth has seen martyrs, trying to open up shops and nights and events, but blowing all professionalism all on a few cheap bottles of gin a week, in all what I could see as an attempt to participate in what I have just described.

Just like in City of God, the people you step on on your way up will have no problem shooting you to shit when you come to your senses and ask for help.