This is my studio in Footscray. It overlooks the Nicholson Street Mall. In the late afternoon, after the shopkeepers have closed up and the locals trickle back to their homes, the junkies gather below my window and shout obscenities at each other. They swap phone numbers, tell jokes at each other’s expenses. There is one girl who cries like a cat, screeching at the others, ‘Give me back my phoooonnneeee….” she whines. She’s always losing the thing. They shoot up on our doorstep, leave their fits and swabs where they sat. We told the council about it but they didn’t do anything, the stench of stale urine and the half dozen or so needles that lay around not enough to prompt them into action, until one day, someone left a huge, black and obscene turd in front of our door. It didn’t look human; it’s girth was beyond reckoning. It was a heroin shit. A shit that spoke of days and weeks of constipation. We took a photo of it and emailed it to the council and the next day they sent some poor sap around to clean and disinfect our alley. For a couple of days it stayed that way but then the heroin and the waste stole their way back, like a tide that wipes out any effort to change it.
In the summer it gets hot and in the winter it’s cold. I throw a tennis ball against the wall when I’m thinking and I play music all the time while I’m working. I put together a set list before I start; lately I’ve been listening to a bit of Al Green. When there is music I’m not alone, and while I work the music interweaves with what I’m doing and it helps me find my colours and it helps me find my rhythm, but most of all it stops me from thinking stupid things that make me want to stop painting.
It’s a wonderful space where I work. I can see the seasons changing out the window and I can see the people below me in the mall come and go; the Somalians and the Sudanese, the Vietnamese and Italians, the Maltese and the Filipinos.
kathleen
,
6 months ago
you have a studio?... you lucky bastard… i envy that… sorry for the junkies… they need help… why aren’t there places to do that where they are safe?
kathleen
,
6 months ago
btw… that work on the wall is look very spiffy…
Lucan Industri..., 6 months ago
Uncanny, I listen to Al Green when I take heroin., particularly his cover of ‘light my fire’.
I recommend Cymande for something smooth and rhythmical to paint to, particularly ‘brothers on the slide’. They actually came from Brixton, London, but left in ‘73 probably due to the staunch British racism at the time, and found fame in America, especially with their late ‘60s New Orleans sound.
Hop Dac
,
6 months ago
apparently the junkies have an abandoned theatre around the corner they go to at night to convalesce. One of them is probably called Fagin.
I’ll check out Cymande, Lucan, sounds grouse.
Lucan Industri..., 6 months ago
Good show. I also recommend Betty Harris. the lost soul queen, quit singing in ‘69 because she believed the industry to be a stomping ground for heathens. She wasn’t wrong. Then Otis popped his clogs in that plane crash, which confirmed it for her. Some say she inspired Aretha, but I care not, she inspired me, Betty only discovered she was actually famous in 2004 when her daughter bought her CD off of that old internet thing. CHeck out ‘Mean man’ and ‘Trouble with my lover’ for some classic stabs of anti-Motown gut busting funk.
Oh and that’s a nice studio, am I meant to say that? Sorry about the addicts, surely they give you perspective. In San Fran they pour water on them.
Hop Dac
,
6 months ago
oh, i don’t mind the junkies, they mind their own business – it’s mostly commerce that they get up to. it’s just the pissing and shitting that bugs me. I caught a Burundi man pissing on the step this week. He said that Burundi’s were peace-loving folk. He was out on a drunk and had stopped momentarily to piss. I asked him to kindly stop pissing on our doorstep and he said he’d only pissed on it four times, I told him that was four times too many.
Betty Harris I’ve heard of, but am not familiar with. Will crank up the downloading machine for a listen.
Evangeline Than, 6 months ago
You are a braver person than me, HD! Do you live there as well?
Jessica Tremp, 4 months ago
sounds blissful
Hop Dac
in reply to Evangeline Than’s comment,
4 months ago
yep, i do live there evangeline. i was in south yarra before this, and south yarra, whilst it has lovely elm trees, is full of crazy people.
Hop Dac
in reply to Jessica Tremp’s comment,
4 months ago
yes, it’s lovely. they’re digging up the mall at the moment and the sound of cracking concrete thrills up my back.
Jessica Tremp, 4 months ago
aah, yes, music to one’s ears…hope they got rid of the birds too…can’t stand their squawking…maybe they can have some drunk people throw bottles against the wall…that is pretty too
ManaMoon, 4 months ago
Will your “heroin shit” photo be posted on red bubble? LOL. i totally dig your description of that turd, sounds so poetic. u make it sound like a model turd and its all your fault that poor sap had to clean it up. no matter what ,they are still gonna use your door as an outhouse. try putting some cactus or thorny plants at the entrance that’ll fix em!. it works for dogs.