Paint by numbers
I was in Sydney the other week to have a mini holiday and do some gigs. The gigs were great for the most part, but the trip wasn’t especially relaxing. I don’t really know how to take a holiday. The last true holiday I took was going to Tassie for a week and I went camping by myself and camping solo is a giant muck around. It feels good to be in nature, but also exhausting setting up camp, making dinner, washing up, then trying to go to sleep not thinking about someone stomping you to death through your tent.
For the first part of the trip my girlfriend came with me. We went to the Art Gallery of NSW which I find myself at on most trips to Sydney. I have to get a little bit of culture in, I treat it like going to Europe; you gotta see the cathedrals. I try not to overanalyse why I like the gallery so much. Part of me thinks it’s aspirational; I want to be surrounded by high art after having spent 4 hours scrolling through Instagram reels before getting out of bed.
I saw this painting (the gallery has fuck loads of them) and it stirred something in me; I’ve been moved by art! The universe is shifting its cosmic power from the artist to me; we are connected.
As you can see, it’s someone sitting at a desk studying. We (the viewer) are looking through the wall, the wall might as well be glass! I spent a lot of time like this, except on the computer. As I write this I’m sat in a similar possie. I feel like this painting could be me tapping away at MSN, chatting away to Ebony a girl I spoke to for nights on end and worked up the courage to speak to once at school; I’m getting chills just thinking about it now.
I was fascinated by the internet, I felt like I was searching for something more on there. While I admit that sounds a little like the beginning of The Matrix, It really did feel like you were truely discovering something, I guess you were. Just a whole generation of people let loose on the internet, a thing our parents barely understood.
The painting gave me this feeling of what it was like to sit there for hours, like the internet was going to be so much more, or I would do more with it rather than just going on 4 websites owned by a guys you would hate to be bailed up at a party by.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is, Paintings: check’em out.
I’ll probably go back and edit this out after I publish it, but my partner and I broke up last week. I won’t go into the details BECAUSE THAT’S PRIVATE, but it’s amicable. The issue is the dread I have of telling people about it. Here we go, another break up to the surprise of no one. I was talking to my therapist about it and my issues in relationships that I tend to repeat the same patterns due to my lifestyle. It’s mostly around being so busy with comedy, working full time, and being pretty social too. I find the comprising hard.
My therapist suggested that I’m still figuring my life out and it would be like if I was at uni and also working, and this will lock into place later in life. I take the point, but I couldn’t help think “yeah, but I’m 35 and my life isn’t any longer than anyone elses”, while imagining squeezing his little head off. He’s right, I don’t have to feel embarrassed about it, but at the same time I am; cheers for that.
This has lived in my notes for some time so why not post it.
Luck
I keep thinking about the end. All the Sunday mornings I gave up. All the times we could have eaten breakfast in bed and we’d take turns to make a tea for you and a coffee for me. I keep thinking about being becoming deathly ill just to have an excuse to talk to you. “I’m dying you know; for a moment can we talk like people who used know each other”. I keep thinking about this man I thought I was, this idea of myself. How long I spent bowing to the pressure in my head. I see a photo of you laughing, and I’d give anything to be the one that made you throw your head back and show your teeth.
I keep hearing about the studies, how ineffective and unreliable your memory becomes. With each cell replication the memory distorts more and more. It was my birthday and we couldn’t leave the house. You’re cooking and I’m transfixed seeing how passionately you add pinches of salt, throw in more sprigs of sage, and a touch more butter. You fold the gnocchi in and crank up the heat to really get that burnt butter sage perfect. It’s the best meal I’ve ever had. I look into your eyes and feel something I’ve never felt before. I can feel how much of your love is in this dish and you still talk about how it needs more butter, and a bit more sage; ever the perfectionist. I don’t want to lose a detail of this memory, but I feel it changing and moving, being pulled out of my head like the butcher to the guts of the sacrificial lamb; hacked out, destroyed, mutilated by time.
Did it really taste that good? Did your face look that way? Did you voice sound like that? The rose tint grows more and more. I’m a passenger in this memory, watching on at a version of myself not realising how good I have it; desperate, pulling at the hand break to stop inside a shimmer in my cortex. It’s cinematic, it’s dolby, it’s popcorn. The memory is better than the shit kitchen this took place in, but that’s the point I suppose. I’ve read this over and over convinced myself this is pretty much it, but memory is a funny thing, would you want the photographic version of events?
CONTENT CORNER
People are absolutely chomping at the bit for this to come back. Here are some things I’ve watched and enjoyed over the last few weeks. Cheers.
Aftersun
You spend most of this movie waiting for tragedy to strike. I rewatched it and got a lot more out of it the second time. I spent a weekend with my mum on trip to Tassie recently and that trip felt like the flip side of this movie. My Mum gave me the full story on a couple of life events I only knew half off. You look back at those memories with more information and realise how human they are.
Chongo Bongo - Mix 7
I can’t remember if I shared this one already, but either way there are some new songs on there that I’ve been enjoying lately
That’s it for this edition.
It’s just under a month until I start my comedy fest show Hammerhead, you can get tickets here! Use the promo code “searlo69” to get $10 off the full price tickets :) Love to see you there.
Thanks for your time.
- Ben