Time for a brief post. It's nothing to do with meditation .. or anything ... just something I find interesting.

I’ll really try to discipline myself on this one and keep it short.

I found this drawing in one of my folios, of two people I met a long time ago. Most of my drawings are of nobody in particular, but this couple and the brief acquaintance I had with them was so strange I remember doing this drawing to document something I couldn't explain -and still can't.

Slapface

One night in the 80’s, when I was a singer in a pop band, a strange couple appeared at a gig in a club we were playing. I'd seen them as we played, standing up the back of the room. They looked like they'd stepped through a portal from the 1930's, him in what looked like a tweed suit with his hair slicked back, her in some kind of frock with rigidly permed curls flattened like a helmet. Among the suburban new romantics and Kmart kids, they were very noticeable. I heard later that he was very rich - inherited a fortune from his parents – something to do with chocolate.

Anyway, we finished playing and they must have schmoozed their way into the dressing room, apparently to see me, because they totally ignored the rest of the band. Herded me into a corner, where they began talking at me with bored nasal voices, long streams of words as if their mouths had brains of their own.

And it was very odd, because even though I was (perhaps rudely) signaling disinterest, boredom, impatience, to get rid of them, they seemed not to notice, their mouths talking softly from below lidded eyes which gazed watchfully from above, as if I was a long way away, as if I were one of their own thoughts.

So little of import was spoken that I can't remember ever knowing their names, though I'm sure they must have introduced themselves. The stuff they were telling me was totally disconnected, self enclosed - about friends I didn’t know, places they’d been overseas, parties they'd recently been to. I couldn't work out why they were telling me. Like, I remember them saying how they’d been skiing in Switzerland the month before, then stopped off in Paris.

"Have you been to Paris, Roger?"

"No ..."

"Oh you must go, it’s gorgeous, like a tiny-town ...," and so on...

They told me they were holding a party the following week: ‘you must come ...’
So after writing their address on the inside of a torn up cigarette packet, they tottered off and disappeared.

I was intrigued to say the least.

So the following Saturday I went, taking my girlfriend of the time, and it was the strangest party I’ve ever been to.

The house was a huge Edwardian pile in Toorak (a wealthy suburb here in Melbourne), though the grounds were all overgrown and the pool was filled with green sludge.

Inside was wood paneled walls, pile carpets, paintings and mirrors, and that mahogany and velvet furniture that seems to lurk about like weird stuffed animals. If it were not for the dust, the filth embedded in the carpet, and the sour reek of cigarettes and grime, it would have been very impressive in a dark, solid kind of way.

As we pushed through the double doors into a huge darkened lounge, milling to the distorted noise of a small stereo turned up past 10 were hundreds of the most grungy and opportunistic street trash I’d ever seen gathered in one place - punks, musicians, junkies, barflies and western suburbs hot-boys in stretch jeans and sneakers – I knew some of them from around the traps, but never seen them all together like this. And there were the hosts - still attired in the post-war tweed suit, brogues shoes and pearls they’d been wearing when they cornered me at the gig – only now he was smoking a pipe.

Seemingly oblivious to the mismatched dregs they’d filled their house with, the two of them were swanning about the place, she with a ciggie held out to the side, him with his pipe clutched between his teeth – and as they passed like ghosts from another time through the roil of grimy guests, they scattered inaudible small-talk to the air in front of their faces, eyes unfocused and faraway, their smiles inanimate and seemingly oblivious to any reason for existing.

As we passed through from room to room, it was mayhem.

In the kitchen the slate floor was awash with spilt beer and wine and broken glass, the white walls were marked with footprints and cigarette smoke swirled like murky water. There were about four bins filled with iced bottles of beer and wine, and lined along the bench were bottles of every spirit you can imagine and trays of glasses, half empty, together with a box filled with 10 pack cartons of cigarettes that were rapidly being gutted. They'd obviously spent a fortune on the essentials.

But the music was so loud and distorted that conversation was impossible unless it was shouted into the ears, which had the effect of making people drink and smoke more, glancing at each other then looking away. Nobody danced to the music, and nobody was laughing. They just drank as the host and hostess kept circulating like programmed apparitions.

We only stayed for about 10 minutes because the atmosphere was so leaden and dissonant. I didn’t even have a drink. We thanked the host and hostess for inviting us, to which they graciously mouthed things I couldn’t hear, then we left.

But the most extraordinary thing was when I glanced back as we opened the front door.

Having waved us goodbye, they turned away, linked hands and pulled each other into an embrace - then they kissed, and it was such a beautiful kiss.

I think a lot can be learnt about people from the way they kiss. Some kisses are hungry, some greedy, some possessive and unkind.

But theirs was none of these. Their kiss was light and affectionate, and full of love - taken as if everybody had momentarily disappeared and they were all alone.

Then the door closed and I followed my girlfriend up through the garden to the front gate.

Many years later I saw the two of them in the society pages of a local paper - they'd donated a whole swag of money to a hospital, and they hadn't changed a bit - still dressed in their tweeds, brogues and pearls - the same impervious, faraway smiles, the same unfocused eyes.

Cya