Rock Gods

He was the wrong side of six foot and every inch of his five eight
body seemed to reflect that windswept and interesting vibe. His hair
was long and wavy. Shaggy wisps hung around the frame of his small
face, coming out in wavy locks at the back. His facial hair was
intricate and neatly trimmed in a revolutionary style, like something
Trotsky's barber would have done. His jeans looks duly lived in and the
stripped shirt he wore had an op shop cool about it. He wore a light
brown fitted leather jacket which could have been part of the uniform
of an 19th century Prussian general. His grey beanie hung out of a back
pocket and went well with the green bowling alley style shoes he
wore.

He had swept into the room like a breeze from the ocean, so fresh that
few could ignore it. He sidled up to the bar. An expectant pint of
draught and the welcoming smile of the publican awaited him. They
chatted like old friends and pointed to others in the room of their in
the know crowd. After a brief back patting and high five tour of the
room, he finally sat down with friends. They too bore all the hallmarks
of rock and roll's great clich?s, but somehow you got the idea they
liked it that way.

There was the new age Travis guy, with a slight Mohawk and clothes to
match. He wore a dark blue '80s zip up jacket which may have once been
part of a suburban dad's tracksuit. It went well with his white shirt
and funky jeans. The amount of thought he'd put into the outfit and
hair style made you think he must be something utterly boring and beige
in daylight hours, an investment banker or insurance broker perhaps.
The third rock stooge took his cues from the Strokes with genuine '80s
skater runners, short pants, fluffy hair, odd shirt and a scarf. The
colours of the scarf might as well have been from something out of
Harry Potter, as they bore no special relationship with local football
teams in any of the three codes. But there it was hanging around his
thin neck neither keeping him warm nor doing him any favours on the
fashion front.

As such tragic rock clich?s they never should have caught anyone's
attention. But there was something curious about this trio and the
world that revolved around them. The band said hi on their way through
to the green room. Management and record company types dressed in their
Country Road turtlenecks also paid their dues. In time the band sluts,
the post-modern groupies dropped by the table for a brief flirt, slight
if accidental feel up and moments of witty banter about country being
this year's rock, much like brown being this year's black. People paid
attention and said hello. It was only a small venue but you knew these
guys could fill an auditorium with their respective mobile phones. The
one with the Strokes hairdo gave a guy across the room the
international sign for keeping it real for the kids and he caught your
eye as he did it.

The band started and suddenly all other thoughts drifted into the back
of your mind. You could feel the base guitarist's licks through the
humming in your jaw and the lyrics came through your throat in horse
whispers. There was nowhere else you wanted to be but in that moment,
in that beat and moving through that set. Between numbers you clapped
with energy and force, not speaking to the table for fear of breaking
the sacred setting. You could stare at the same background setting,
lighting and musicians and find something new in each song. That tricky
fifth at the end of the chorus or that affectionate tribute to the Dave
Matthews Band in the second verse all caught your attention. And as you
swayed in your own way to the sounds you heard, you could see the
entire crowd moving to the beat of the band. You were part of
something, a select grouping of those with both inside knowledge and
taste.

Essentially you came to live in that moment, you became part of the
song hearing it live. Rather than it just becoming a part of you, a
part of your endless musical expeditions you joined with that rock
moment. Unlike previous rock generations there were no anthems of youth
here for you, just a kind of wistful wisdom which seemed to reflect
some experience you could recognise as part of your own narrative. "How
long must you pay for it?" Coldplay has once asked of the world in a
way that you understood. The seemingly plain lyrics hung out on a
breeze, exposed to the world for all to find their own meaning within
them. "It's a tender trap to plan ahead all the time/when you measure
the world by what you left behind," Powderinger said of life on Odyssey
number 5 and you thought you knew what it meant. It was never hard to
find yourself in amongst the simple poetry of a good song, on more
cynical days you could argue that such revelations were just good
marketing. Disney-fied rock you'd call it, poetry for a PG audience and
set to a catching tune.

Losing yourself in a moment with a band whose appeal went no further
than an inner Melbourne pub was something else entirely. It was a
bizarre kind of belonging, creating legions of the converted amongst
those who regularly attended gigs. If you got good enough at it, you
could pick which group of strangers was most likely to request any one
song just by looking at them. The guys in weird corduroy jeans and
sports jackets would ask for something in the back catalogue, the
ladies in tight clothing standing right up front would ask for the
latest single and the guys in surfie t-shirts would want to hear any
song which featured sex, beer, football or non-Hallmark romanticism.
Judging complete strangers in this way would lead to the inevitable
wonderings about their CD and record collections, about the album they
wished they'd never bought because it spoke volumes about their uncool
- a John Farnham original for example- or else you wondered what band
or singer was the first they ever saw live, wondering what their
musical framework was by the way they danced.

You stretched your neck between songs willing your body to work through
the dull aches and strains which standing on your feet for so many
hours had caused. You tried to think of things other than the nasty
turn your body was doing on you right now. Instant to do lists you may
never follow or what he looked like when you walked away flashed before
your eyes. You let your mind wander till the music interrupted your
thought process all over again. You tapped away, having decided a
tapping foot and slight sway were appropriate dance formations given
the laid back crowd and the retro fittings of the place, not to mention
the size of the stage. You let time stand still again. That haunting
melody played sweetly over the deep base caught up with you. "Been home
lately?/ Or does your key no longer work," struck a chord with you in
the wrong way, reminding you of long discarded ideas and events in your
recent past which you had momentarily forgotten. All of a sudden you
realised your body had come through the test zone and you were ready
for your second wind.

As the lead singer finished on a few soft numbers that could easily
slot into the soundtrack to The Panel you felt a sudden chill. Someone
had gone outside to reconnect with an old friend, to fill their lungs
with tar, to blow smoke literally rather than figuratively. As the cool
breeze entered from that side door it cast a spell of sorts over the
room. You could see others cupping their hands together and couples
snuggling into each other for warmth. The tall willowy woman with that
all too eye catching scarf began going through her mental to do lists,
the middle aged but not hiding it well guy who wore no colour but black
flicked through his phone for messages and that group of twenty
somethings in the middle began to yawn as if their bed time had long
since passed.

You gave into that thought you had been pushing away. You wondered
briefly who you would end up yawning into old age with, who would be
something other than a ship passing through a single gals' all too busy
port. It was a brief moment of weakness, when being by yourself wasn't
enough anymore and it killed you to give into that feeling for even a
moment. You gave yourself the lecture about being worthy and
achievements in work as more than most could ask for, you told yourself
that you were no better than the snotty high school girls you once
loathed. And that's when you struggled to meet my gaze, not because you
lacked the strength to return my meandering eye but more because you
didn't want to invite me in.

At least that's what I thought when I met your gaze across an all too
crowded pub. You asked me once what role I assigned you in my life,
where in the rock and roll clich? hall of fame I placed you and I told
you the answer was in the method. I doubt it was up there with your top
ten romantic moments and as I look at you now I can see why. You didn't
want a sonnet or a revelation at that point, you just wanted me to come
out of that shell and let you in for a moment. All those years of
bullshit and beers, of gigs and endless summers, of nights that only
sometimes became days could never about things that mattered and all
you wanted to know was why you mattered to me. It was a simple request
but it seemed to ask a lot of me, it wanted something I couldn't let go
of- not yet. The moment itself just passed quickly but I know now it
came back to haunt you every time we fought or when you thought I was
being a prick. You'd get this look on your face that was somewhere
between why am I here and I don't want to be a deer caught in these
headlights.

You used to say you could forgive us rock gods almost anything from
mediocre looks to bad retro clothing to dating Hollywood actresses- and
I wondered then as I do now if you truly meant it. I can see your face,
all serene as your body quietly sleeps through the drug induced coma
the medics felt you needed. I wonder what you're thinking about. I saw
Vilijia earlier and asked her to do a card reading for you today- it's
Friday and you always have your cards read before the weekend, before
all the exciting shit goes down. She said that the cards couldn't tell
me if you would wake up again but that I should tell you that there was
magic before you in some form or other, that things would be wonderful
for you regardless of whether you sleep forever or wake up right this
minute. I told her the cards would never say that but thanked her
anyway and paid her in chocolate and lotto tickets as you always did.
Vilijia said the cards had predicted this, that I was a dangerous and
exciting force you couldn't control and I wondered why you didn't just
leave well enough alone.

You used to say rock gods had an aura, a way about them that you could
smell a mile off. A rock god's aura and his inability to move with
trends yet define an era all at the same time - these were the things
you cherished. That and mounds of thin pasty men who look like they
haven't seen daylight in a few years, guys who haven't entered the
ageing process and seem doomed to look like they're in their early
twenties forever. A sense of poetry and an ability to speak in subtle
tones, someone with a deep respects for rock's back catalogue but with
an ability to re-interpret the classics - this was also good for a rock
god you used to say. More than anything a rock hod had to able to
create rock moments for others. Whether it was through a philosophical
discussion on the nature of the industry and its gold fish like memory
or the hello to a fan who never expected to be recognised or even the
tips on how to make it with your centre of emotional gravity intact-
these were rock moments for you. Seeing Phil from Vultures walking down
Brunswick street with pushing a pram and holding some woman's hand but
still managing to say hello to you - rock moment # 25 you said.

I sometimes wonder how it is I managed to qualify as one of your rock
gods. Our rock moments were about bullshit and not the magic you had
intended - sure there were BBQs in St Kilda with Tex and his mates or
the midnight breakfasts with Paul Kelly's manager. Mostly though it was
about you watching in the wings and waiting till I was free. It was
about putting up with AJ's habits and being in the house of filth which
only ever got tidied when you came for visits. It was about being too
busy for your friends because I had shit to do and not visiting your
parents because they didn't like me and I never made time for that kind
of thing. It was about you sitting beside me with a drink or something
in your hand and listening as I spun shit on my latest theory and
pretended I was going to take over the world through music, that I had
that something special and that I could inspire others to rock moments
as I had done for you. You patiently waiting as an endless queue of
women ran by offering more than they should and you smiled politely
when the record company types kicked you out of the green room so that
the band could have a strategy meeting. And all the while with you
being the after thought I didn't protest or tell you that you put up
with a lot of shit that had nothing to do with rock moments.

In the car before it all went wrong I said to you that I needed an
awakening, that life should shake me to the core. Be careful what you
wish for, that's what you said as we both laughed. I didn't feel like a
new man, like I'd had that awakening when your parents got here with
their long faces and questions about how the fuck this happened. I was
pretty silent then, did the cowardly thing and let the doctors tell
them. You'd have never done the same, for a start you liked my Mum.
You'd have sat her down and explained it all yourself not because
you're a saint and I'm a prick but because you'd have felt like it was
your responsibility to tell her, to have her hear it all from someone
she knew. Ajay's still on the table and they don't know when they'll be
finished putting him back together but given the shit he was on and how
fucked you knew him to be I'd doubt you'd be surprised. The surprise
package is me with less than a scratch and awake for 48 hours as I see
your fragile body punished for what I did. They keep telling me to go
home and sleep but I feel at home here talking to you and not knowing
how to say it, how to tell you that life with you was my real rock
moment.

I imagine you sitting down in a couch that's been living in pubs for so
long that it naturally sinks in when you sit in it. You've got half a
pint waiting for you because you're having one of those conversations -
rock as the ideology of the future, excess with some limits of
commercialisation. You're surrounded by all our band friends and they
hang on your every word because we both know how they all like you and
barely tolerate me. You hold court as you always should have instead of
me and this time you're the rock goddess and I'm just the boyfriend. We
have rock moments and you start to get big and I love it all because I
know you've earned it and that you are the voice of your generation.
The doctor interrupted my fantasy to tell me that Ajay didn't make it
and you will wake up a different women from the muse I always knew you
to be. And then it feels like a movie or a dream, not the fantasy but
the part about you not having that same mind and having to put Ajay
into the ground. Our rock moments are over and I'm left with the
feeling that I can't repay the debt I owe you.