Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Hey – cue the Mexican hat dance , da da da da   da  – da  da da da  – da da …..I see men with large sunshadey sombreros doing Mariachi classics, handle bar moustaches drooping to their waist. A floury taco shell filled with minced meat and chilly that bites your tongue off and the sun flapping its huge wings. Dancing in the street, Ondre ondre Yee-pa- Speedy Gonzales running up and down at the speed of light and those cartoon crows sitting around with outrageous hats, sleeping or being lazy… there I think I’ve exploded all the Mexican stereotypes that were planted in my brain as child. The power of TV ! 

It seems I’ve only had one or two amigos at a time – a real close friend, lots of aquaintances, but only a few who I’d rely on thick and thin. Like that time I was driving Betsy back from the bush on a Sunday afternoon and she expired [she's a corrolla by the way],  just about the last thing to go wrong before she was put down. In the space between Geelong and Bannockburn, at a grassy patch on a bend with an audience of sheep I rang my friend and said “how do you feel about driving to Geelong”. Without a qualm he was in the car – a real amigo. I suppose I could have got a train or something – as I did on return. But it felt reassuring while I sat on the grass with the crickets buzzing and the sun beginning to tuck itself into bed that there was someone to pick me up. 

Amigo doesn’t mean that someone’s in your pocket all the time either. Sometimes I don’t see my amigo for weeks – don’t talk but, I know we can rely on each other at a moments notice. Once I thought JC might have been my amigo and maybe he is, but there’s been a few let downs, a few expectations of where the friendship might go that have not been fulfilled – we talk rarely these days. Sort of like he’s in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean of my consciousness and he can’t communicate – maybe he’s trying – not sure. I owe him one at the moment for a small [oops -LaRGE] answered prayer a couple of weeks ago. Waiting for it to be called in- is that how it works?.  How do you know? Is it a voice in the head, is it someone else speaking to you about something that sets your mental bell ringing or something clicks and you go ‘a-ha’. 

Where would we be without Aesop I say? Surely everyone knows the tale of the Hare and the Tortoise.  Yep, there’s the super successful entrepenurial, high flying Hare, dressed up in his wall street pin striped suit, barreling along toward what he assumes might be his first billion, and there’s the Tortoise plugging away at his menial white collar round the neck chain attached to his feet job, plodding through each day thinking of feeding the kids. Will he meet the next mortgage payment? Small visions , small expectations. 

It all seemed to be going well for the hare until a couple of years ago, that runaway stock market rising like a Chinese firework rocket, scheme upon scheme being layered on fellow competitor and bank, the mortgages of the lowly plodders being  sold on and on and on and on as collateralised Debt obligations. The hare happily building his house of cards until the foul wind of reality caught up with him. Probably while he was lounging about in his cruiser moored off the Bahamas or something. Maybe the tortoise was downstairs mucking out the stalls, just plodding along, plod plod, heavy feet sucked into the ground as if it were magnetic, his hard lumpy unattractive shell keeping him safe from a falling sky, but the hare, on that day when the noose began to tighten started loosing his fur, turned into a quaking mass of jelly, but Mr Tortoise kept plugging away. He’s done the hard slow yards so this ‘financial crisis’ wasn’t gonna touch him, with lower interest rates it was gonna make it better- but he’s not sure what his house is worth anymore, he’ll plod until the next housing boom, while the hare has to sell everything to meet his over extended credit lines. At the finish line who’s gonna have the most toys?

He’ll get there, the tortoise, maybe with a couple of grandchildren and a home, but Mr hare- he might wind up in a retirement village alone, because he loved money more than he loved someone. 

Was it really ready yet? That was the question that seemed to be grating like a cement mixer at the front of everyone’s mind. There’d been a month of rehearsal and argy and bargy and tweaking and tuning and now the evening was upon them All the big names would be there, the local press, the critics, the mums the dads, here for the full dress rehearsal. Backstage there was a sway in the swagger of the Chinese dragon, at this point nobody had given much thought to the inconsistency of  it’s first appearance as a Chinese dragon and its second appearance as a pair of stilted legs reaching all the way beyond the lighting grid. 

The critics of course would later in fact name the play ‘Joy’s disaster’. This musical realisation of ‘The Hobbit’. It had been a great journey though for the kids, new friends made, new loves formed, getting out on the platform and showing oneself. Feeling those galloping nerves today and right now before the first launch of the ship into the cosmos of uncertainty- how would it go? Who would forget their lines? Would the make up melt? Will there be enough people coming along?

Many many worries were orbiting in the minds of the participants and organisers, but, at the lift of the curtain it all unfolded like a Chinese doll, one scene leading into another. Green clad elves and dwarves, Bilbo Baggins singing his way to the dark mountain. Smaug the dragon laughing into an early version of a radio microphone with lots of echo and reverb, and at the end, a welcome hand of applause. It felt good, even though apparently it was so bad. When the preview was over, the aircraft hangar auditorium maintained a quiet brooding, collecting its energies for the real show the next day, while the players all stole their own nerves and bit on their own tongues waiting for ‘performance night’.

Why I ever thought it would work for me I don’t know. It might have been something about overcoming my fear of water, that grey changing stuff that has unplumbed depths, or maybe it was sheer boredom, but I joined the sailing club- I was skipper of the Blue Ant-  I recall now I joined ’cause my friends were in it. Despite my father being in the navy for 27 years he gave me not hint of the principles of the sail and the wind. Me and Russ – my crew would drag down the flying ant like a non-flying elephant from the clubhouse, its hull sailing through the springy bullgrass. In plimsoled shoes we crunched on the sand at the edge of Bullen-Merri rigging the beast. The varnished mast erecting itself and being pulled into place with thin metal stays. A screwdriver through the centre of the mast tightened it up- so it didn’t fall out when capsized [as happened one day!]. 

Somehow mum had bought me a life jacket at a clearance sale, straight out of the 50’s I reckon. It seemed to be filled with polystyrene blocks that squeaked each time I moved. In faded yellow it held me in a degree of safety until the moment we capsized – when the panic levels of being sucked into the eternal deep over came me , just about the same time as that stupid life jacket rode up over my head. It was always a shock, that moment of dunking, especially at the tail end of winter when the sky had been a congealed glug of grey clouds and the squalling winds had cut through my pimply skin. Yes, in the drink, cold cold hands welcomed me, taking my breath away, a  taste of briny water, a mild panic to make sure I wasn’t getting sucked under the billowing cloud of the sail. Making sure that Russel’s head was bobbing somewhere nearby. 

The circus of raising the boat then followed, both of us standing on the dorsal fin of the boat, the mast rising up like a baseball bat to hit a home run with the sly. a sodden clamber back into the boat and then the horrid wind sucking away our last strengths and hope and an admission of defeat. If only I knew how to point the sail right we’d get back to a nice steaming mug of tea. 

Clap trap, gibberish, mumbo jumbo, Like someone’s mouth is moving but the sense is lost it all hits your ears like a wet tea towel, a big ‘galumph’ of senselessness. Sometimes it’s a bamboozlement of bullshite, but other times it might be someone rabbiting on about something they know intimately and they think you will, but, instead its just a clag of sound filling the air. Teachers and lecturers standing at the front of the class, politicians standing in front of ridiculous barrages of microphones all know the language, all know the secrets of mumbo jumbo. Politicly correct language , Lawery speak mumbo jumbo. It’s like trying to eat one those foot long subs, except it’s your ears that’ve gotta do the eating and surely your brain is bigger than your tummy, but no, soon enough you’re full, don’t want to know any more all the bidding is done and you’re walking away with shopping bags full, rustling as you walk down the street, weighed down by a shopping expedition of mumbo jumbo, the things that weren’t on the list, but you bought them, have to invent some sort of excuse some mumbo jumbo to convince your partner that there is some validity behind this unplanned excess. Might need to talk about the need for some mumbo jumbo to make up for things, that is if you want to use mumbo jumbo as a syllogysm for something else! 

Surely I’ve written enough now but no, there’s still another four minutes to fill – who chose this stupid world? And why did the random word generator even have it in it’s memory banks? Some clever arsed programmer thought yeah, lets make them slip up on this one, there’s been other words too, allowed to slip through to the short stop the wicket keeper, depending on what code you follow, just imagine that bullet zipping through the air, ready to hit you square behind the eyes. Imagine the mumbo jumbo you might be speaking if it did, if you weren’t wearing a helmet. You’d be hearing those tweety bird sounds and have those classic cartoon stars and suns orbiting around your head, perhaps be concussed and keep asking what happened I feel like I’ve just come out of it…….Thank god only another minute – think I’m over it for today, been too long, to much going on, just filling the next sentence with more mumbo jumbo to fill in the next minute the next sweep of the keys the next springy step back that they make, that clitter clatter of the keys, all just MUMBO JUMBO – there- capitals does that work better!  

Wash and wear- almost sounds as if it’s something out of a science fiction novel – Imagine the washing machine spinning away on its bearings with a high speed whine, stopping, opening the yawing lid and wearing the goods right then- ironed and pressed- Impossible or not? Has someone thought of it- do i need to copyright? The marvels or evils of polyester weave, crimping our clothes into straight line neatness, formula one home straight edges and pythagorean angled arms almost as if the short or pants has a memory. Certainly a memory of your skin, moist, supple, sweaty, rigid under different circumstances. 

Do I need to mention jackhammers, demolition balls swinging from side to side inside my head,  a barrage of explosions on the Somme – in fact the whole first world war is replaying right inside my head. Dead neurons littering the battlefield, consciousness just a series of pockmarked craters through a hazy veil of fog. God!, I just want to reach behind my eyes and scratch and itch and soothe and pat that pulsing core. Pulsing with  each squirt of my heart muscle, the constricted blood fighting through the capillaries of my brain. Trapped inside that dome trying to take off like a Saturn rocket but having nowhere to go. 

I take a headache tablet, it sits on my tongue just a little too long, it tastes flat and plain almost makes me want to gag, before I swig a round of soothing water and try to find somewhere to rest and be still and slow my heartbeat down through some meditation, but I can’t find a place to put my head without feeling that white hot pain. Just a slight movement left or right sets off another round of the blitz inside my head. Lying with my nose in the pillow, smelling the sheets that need changing – like my head – and finallly the medicine kicks in. I won’t be doing anything too ambitious tonight, won’t be pushing myself to the limit. Recovery mode, docile, watch TV, do nothing that requires thinking, that requires effort for it may come back again.

Sometimes it might go on for two or three days – never fully disappearing, just lurking like a spy in the shadows and then leaping out with a knife  for a quick stilleto turn in the centre of my brain, then gone again. Once again I wish I could reach inside and disconnect the yellow flashing light that seems to be in there, the sirens and alarms – and maybe that’s what it’s about – What? Too much of everything? Over- indulgence- that’s not me at all is it? And when I look back over the littered trail of obsessive indulgence I realise that yes there’s been too much and I need a disconnect, a time sitting in the railway siding to let the express trains of other thoughts sweep by before I get back on track and do a Thomas the Tank Engine for a time, chug chug chug and then the whirlwind starts again and it’s on. Those little wheels in my mind spinning faster and faster into a crazy blur and the cycle begins – again.