Some Werds by Kent Turkich (Published in Print in Foam Symmetry Magazine)
The Mean Psychedelic Streets of Sydney: the World Log Riding Exhibition
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…barefoot Wild Things gallery manager Jessamyn Jean is talking to Chelsea Rose in the early morning as a musty-granny-op-shop cassette player rattles out the Doors – Best Of.
“keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel!”
Typically Jessamyn needs about ten minutes quiet…alone…for every hour of social activity. Chelsea Rose is also a beautiful introvert. Yesterday’s World Logging Riding Exhibition (not) competition and mad night after-party at the wondrous Wild Things gallery have left them strangely talkative.
“passionate lady, give up your vows”
Jessymyn says something about the need for ‘going against the modern memetics of success over truth’ and also being ‘against the current generation trend for the singular entity to rule over the collective.’ Astute and acutely perceptive flowerchyld.
“same old city, same old city, same old city!”
Chelsea Rose is brilliant, if prone to distraction and impulse – “I’m gonna buy a mood ring. Then I can tell peoples moods.” The sounds seep through the wise antique floor of the gallery (a converted multistorey factory that looks post-nuclear in parts) along with last night’s spilt beverages as I begin to write-up the happenings of the World Log Riding Exhibition (hopped-up on cheap blueberry flavoured muffins and carton iced coffee from a supermarket that was early enough and near enough, laying on a damp borrowed mattress - ecstatic).
“Mr Mojo Risin’. Got to keep on Risin’. Risin’! Risin’!”
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
...Manly Beach glows orange skies as the mysty nuclear sun stages the start of the day in surfboard riding. Girls in black boob tubes and tights that have escaped from women’s health magazines carry-out ancient yogic rituals on the dog-soiled grass on the esplanade across from the orange surf club near the riders on the stormwater drain at North Steyne. A line of executives forms to the right of a hissing coffee machine glistening and spewing brown sludge into semi-recyclable cups with plastic lids for running with. We awake to this comic book and plant flowers.
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…a slow charge of nut-job fringe dwellers with waxy slicked-back fringes or fringes so long and limp that they conceal their don’t-look-at-me faces begins to trickle into the tea cup carnival of the World Log Riding Exhibition (not) competition. Conscious drop-outs. Skinny Californian tramps and Gold Coast van dwellers who can never find their keys. Runaways who make no distinction between surfboards and guitars. Painters as much as surf riders. Floppy hat people who sew things for repair or carpark retail. Wayward academics. Twitchy cat-like surfboard shapers. Social misfits and schizoids proudly disgusted by the obscene professional surfing circuit. Edgewomen. Edgemen. Catatonic planksters in a perfect stupor pushed to the peripheries of the institution and machinery of the surfing (cough) industry. A forgotten fraternity of surfies and artists (one and the same) no longer excluded – we’re tops now (or at least included). This is log culture.
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…the tuneful marbled Manly Beach ocean recognizes an old friend as four sessions of honest surfing missionaries ride waves for inner reasons. Myles Doughman is beyond involved. Way, way back in the spinning, splatting purist duck and stall curl. Not just running to the nose for show.
Myles – “if there’s no noseride there’s no noseride.”
Jake (Keven) Bevan polite rare-footed fiend going left on a pink dreamy - Cloudy Rhodes powerful sensitive art angel is covered over in the climatic speed section - Cookie executes the first recognized cannonball off the top of a hostile outside crusher. Cam – the lifeguard! – is fantastic in the whirl and jive of the inside toothpaste pipes - Justin Bevan documenting the frothcoming rebirth and outta-sight sights - like Midget Farrelly stances made enticingly relevant! - the new freek of do what you want surfing.
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…no winner is elevated to masculine better-than-everyone-else podium jerk-off. Flowers are distributed generously to acts deemed to represent the new mood according to a ‘Surf-O-Meter’. Jive. Wild nose rides. Involvement. Expression. Additional flowers are given to surfers who do not meet the ‘criteria’ but are otherwise outstanding. In the final session all at once the whole damn scene is kazooed into one wild all-inn surf-off as fifty log riders reinstate the dream as reality - feeding off one another – confirming stylistic synergies – a new cosmos. The (not) competition can barely contain the lunacy of over-the-moon rubber jump suit spontaneous sisters and brothers which now enter the water in celebration. They are giving birth to the future of log riding which had been circling around, including at recent events in Noosa Heads (Joel Todor’s Duct Tape triumph two weeks ago). The new epoch of surfing knows no limits. Rattle the regime!
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…the lavender light afternoon comes through the ancient factory windows of resplendent Wild Things gallery blending with the jumpin’ vinyl psycho-billy sounds of post-war teens rejoicing and liberates over the racks of not-brand clothes and earnest jewellery, and all over the present collection of magic souls twisting and stomping on the illusion of corporate non-truth until it’s mashed-up together with the shards of glass and spit and poison on the dance floor. Gidget Duck electrifying the bop-a-de-bop congregation from 44 gallon chemical drums. Amen-shake! The Moonlight Cowboys howl as night descends. Psychlops eyepatch psych-out! The underground speaks! In the roof cavity beyond the industrial beams and mildew and arthropods and grime of the factory ceiling, the spirits of passed-over surfers hold a quiet celebration - Bobby Brown passing the chips to Keven Brennan.
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…Robbie Kegel Gato gypsy from nowhere describes a vision he had with that wizard grin and zoned-in conviction (the jungle acid scriptures) –
“There were all these space roaches feeding off my manic lithium energy. The most obscene looking things and I was literally seeing the particles of my brain as they were coming up into my face behind this…cling wrap. And it was insane and some of them would come back but they couldn’t get there because they were wrapped in cling wrap.
I’ve got to brush my teeth. (walks out)
(returns) They were like pushing through this bread packaging and the only way they can get there is through a perfectly symmetrical prism. I felt like I was the slave and they were feeding on my brain and almost human but this poison would make them go back to like a stack of cosmic cockroaches.
(abruptly) The end!”
In the surf he is maniacal-brilliant. His hands are monstrous alien frog claws held wide apart and flat beating African drums like Michael Peterson trembling tic-like but these gestures are not borrowed for the benefit of style rather they stem from the same genius psychological spectrum. Before shaping a surfboard he is a hot gully wind like a rockin’ out Charlie Feathers flying spinning and leaping around the heavy nuts and bolts and gadgets and pipes of the factory frantically getting organized. His lucid crystal blue eyes pop out like a praying mantis having a sugar spike and then he begins to shape the foam and the whole damn bird cage rocks with the fervour of the far-out fantasy coming together! The resulting surfboards are holy grails attributable to a sparkling mind which (when its various streams and diversions and obsessions converge) is capable of fantastic feats of design and symmetry.
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
… a microgram of paranoia is creeping in! In the dark inner sanctum of the wild beat evening a longhaired longhair has wigged-out and is wrestled to a rat nest mattress by Wailin’ Robbie Warden – the world’s nicest security guard. From a plastic shopping bag Myld Matt unravels a copy of Lord of the Flies – sun damaged. Cuts Doloro tumbles over into a rack of clothes made by the heavenly Ali Mandalis - “Whaaat!?” - while the pre-historic spider web factory walls cannot contain the menace of Marcie O’Neill shouting obscenities at the sweaty swaying audience of the Wild Things happening as the greased stream of concreteness poet offends the microphone while the drummer compounds the energy in a wild roll then thud…thud…thud…
“when our faces are masks
our words become code
(enigma vibrates within its fragile construct)
cages rattle, wing bone and skin, abstraction and fabric in finely spun time,
the literal lateral delineation of line,
then a rhyme
then a line
then a rhyme
then another line
the reader the writer, the hunter the kill
your conditional free will
quantum temples big bang fingers stroke mechanically godless brow with cool indifference
ssshhhhhhh....... shhhhhh............ there there ........
eehhhhh whats up doc?
eehhhhh whats up duck?(hahahaha)
eeehhhh whats up dick?!”
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…Ozzie Wright Jesus in a footie beanie circles the audience watching his own band until he steps up to the microphone and everyone becomes horny. The band relieves the tension with Manly art house estate burning the midnight oil chugging rusty factory pipe guitars spliced with moments of sweet jangle jangle. The whole bughouse gyrates, bottles dumbly dropping off the balcony. Mataoes Pedrosa (Levi) confronts me in the fungus house loft wide-eyed speaking of his (religious) tattooed crustacean body in a trance -
“My tattoos are an inner reflection of my soul.
My heart has been pierced.
My brain has been shattered.
My heart is broken.
My body is crushed.
These tattoos hold me together like Band-Aids”
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…the cops arrive at 11:50 to turn down the Goons of Doom as the factory heaves like hell! By this time the joint is so screw-balled that Andy Findlay has become coherent enough to easily negotiate a ten minute concession.
The fuzz - “Do you hear that sound?” (crash, wail, scream!)
“We’re coming back in ten minutes and by that time it better have stopped”
WHHHIIIRL!
The sound is cut. Buzzzzz. Five hundred teens in torn stove pipes crack scrape and skank down the shardy stairs and ramp. Also gnarled rockers. Sockless mods in modified db’s. Sixth generation bohemians descending through the dim stinkin’ bowels of the factory. Out in the street. Sharpies in cars flash by on hopeful Condamine Street strip -
“Get a haircut!”
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney
…Chelsea Roses’ torn and dyed shirts hang on a late night clothes rack salvaged from verge collections where presently Sailor Jerry tumblers litter the paths and teens on the loose have created maps of their ramblings with fried chicken boxes and post-mix cups on poor Koorala Street. After a party the toilets are always the cleanest room in the house. The sun has yet to look over the black vinyl sea. Matty Chonoski the Greaser drives Gidget Duck across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a 1950 Series 62 Cadillac running an original 331… on and on into the celestial Sydney log riding knight.
The World Log Riding Exhibition has pulled-off a repair job on the seamless web of connection at the heart of surfing.
May the circle remain unbroken.
On the mean psychedelic streets of Sydney…we are jazzed.
Robbie Warden pic
FEEL CAULIFLOWER, TASTE RAINBOW – ENTER THE AGE OF INFINITE SURFBOARD RIDING!
The World Log Riding Exhibition 2014
Take the tryp! tonight into the extra-ordinary Strawberry Alarm Clock world defining the present era in defiantly independent, switched-on BEAT surfboard riding . Do not be alarmed! as we reveal the un-scene world of Australia’s SORDID beach happenings and bizarre pulsating dance-hall rituals! Try not to flip your gourd! as we strip-back the DISTURBING lurid dress-code and black-van-squaller of these psyched-out surfie outcasts! Loose hipped sisters. Bare-footed brothers. Teens in ex-tradie-vans listening to a disruptive Doors jazz rhythm loud enough to drown-out the sizzling needle-valve engine of the over-heated corporate regime. Scared of squares! Of the 5-10 man. Empty bank accounts yet hearts that beat so strong they wake-up the temporary lover dreaming on the other-side of the opportunity shop tent. Always one step ahead of the current main street fashions until they can’t run anymore; forced to change tact again in a sea of sameness, in favour of strangeness, in favour of being themselves - and so the cycle goes fiends. Take the tryp they announce! Into a world of Crescent Head bacon, avocado and tasty cheese mournings. Never-dried stubbies. Back-seat dharma bums cramped in Daewoos on low-credit phones negotiating leave from social security meetings and Victorian university semesters for the sake of one more sweet week in the ghostly hallucinating hinterlands far-away from the screwed-up offices of banal urban non-existence. Then back on the road to Sydney for the gathering, communion, Love, love The Babe Rainbow - The World Log Riding Exhibition 2014. These are the lives of the surf industry rejects. Your children! Shocking! At the very least - perplexing. Ladies and gentlemen and children of the sun, enter the grassy point break perspective of the stringently garage surfer, the city dwelling freak making his or her own equipment and barely legible logos, the introvert, the self-directed surfer, the new era in liberated surfboard riding. What is the new era? What is the new era!? What is – the new - era?
The piercing whine of a harmonica starting-up pierces your brain like early schizophrenia or a cheap Doctor Who sound effect on the ABC. You can’t shake the sound.
Ride ride ride! the cycle of tyme that curls on top of itself like a cold dusty tiger snake in fantastic plastic speed and explosive acceleration strikingly-sharp cutbacks and tyrns then climbing like Andy Findlay on the wave of tomorrows thinned-out Hot Generation dream citadels conjuring-up Russel Hughes in the magnificent Manly Beach sun structures of love at the World log Riding Exhibition Not-Competition. Matty ‘Cookie’ Cook weaving spells from a magic track-suit and bum-bag combination casting wholeness over the umbrella congregation and appearing not from a van or bike but from the very sand in a mysterious transformative presence like an illuminated guru in ancient Egypt to casually pick-off the biggest waves in a dumb-founding display of respectful surfboard riding (and sartorial elegance). Makala Smith unfolds in the water like divinity creating new-primitive impressions and tiny eras pulled from the past present and future cosmos and representing the superior feminine nature stance and sensitivity of the Chosen Syster as the harmonica starts to blow louder in the unconscious cellulose of the flower-decked theatre giving birth to the next chapter in log design at the artful hands of obsessive rail and rocker and fin foil craftsmen such as Kegal (Progressive Pig era), Saul, Leckie, Bexon, Warhurst and the Reverend Bob McTavish bat logo boards pushing the limitless boundaries of 1967 unending and entirely NOW and captured in the jerky-smooth style and mood of the present frontier in uninhibited, on-edge Sydney…Australian surfboard riding . The wildest riders from the first four sessions of the Not-Competition gather at the umbrella for the final exhibition. The Greaser Matt Chonoski! Lachlan Leckie from Koolangatta. Andy Findlay. Robin Kegal. From Sydney, Australia…Sean Finnelly! Carl Gonsalves. The Messiah Mark Matisons. And from France – Roban Falxa. The magnificent manic air is permeated with the dawn of the now-space-age odour of time and expectation in vivid new wave riding styles which show empathy for the wave as well as the innermost urges of the unaffected beast wild board riders post-doggin’. The great journey starts-up again. The cave comes alive! Drive that log further back and further in and Further the bus stirs in a museum somewhere. Smiles. Purrs. Ken Kesey stirring to The Babe Rainbow chant - ‘Evolution 1964. Slightly-delic 1964’. Flying high in castles in the air. The last wall of the castle is tumbling down.
Serendipity
when onwards is not forwards
it's waywards and best
it's leftwards and rightwards
it's waywards and best
it's sidewards and backwards
it's yes-wards and go-wards
when onwards is not forwards it's waywards and best
go waywards!
By Mystical Rose
Come! to the sacred afternoon car park at Wild Things – a carnival of back-street surf culture delights where the ethereal harmonica maintains the melody through the industrious afternoon glorious market of hot not-brands and cauliflower smiles and the hypnotic power of people who make utterly real things for little financial gain, rather taking the higher path of producing post-industrial, post-corporate and sometimes posted-out merchandise hinging directly on the clear, urgent, natural impulses of the maker, the creative, the picture framer, the short-rough film editor, the blank tee shirt dyer, the vinyl record purveyor. For here you will see fulfilment; self-realisation of the vital forces of millennia crystalized like acid in the ragged whole beings crouched and couched and cracking-up in the car park and in the knowledge that they have shaken the tyranny and the lies and the slavery of the combine by sewing, nailing or screen printing the wares now on display - a small selection but an enormous gesture against the undifferentiated, the company-compromised, the dark dead prism of main-street retail. Involved! in their own minimal means meaningful life. Striking expressionism. At last. Subculture. Rest. Then urgent. Medieval. Uprising. Mad broccoli archetypes forging a floral pattern jump and flash bright existence as the ostentatious signage of the multinational landscape decays and falls right down, down, down! (The dust sprinkles between the stones of the asphalt parking lot art markets triumph, where mites and new-born centipedes feed off the force of the occasion in alien light. See them march. March into the fields of Byzantium.)
But what drives these blessed souls? A case in point - Sister Ebony is from Wollongong and makes jewellery in small, earnest amounts. Ebony, why do you do this?
Ebony:
This is just what I love doing.
So I just lounge around doing it.
But I’m not really…
I’m standing around doing it.
In the knight now! and the collective mind harmonica begins to pierce your brain as the evening explodes in a GUSH of light and sound and pounding Marcie O’Neill heartbeats taunting the throbbing Wild Things World Log Riding Exhibition party and Burn Atares re-imagining The Stones in John Lennon lenses and then the harmonica appears wailing in the hands of the beatific sunshine-pop-star Angus Starseed Dowling fronting The Babe Rainbow and tempting the crowd into the dazzling-light-carousel playing the Oriental blues, the rock and soul, into the sunshine lollipop circus playground daze of forever. The singer channels The Seeds’ Sky Saxon –
You're pushin' too hard, uh-pushin' on me
You're pushin' too hard, uh-what you want me to be
You're pushin' too hard about the things you say
You're pushin' too hard every night and day
You're pushin' too hard
Pushin' too hard on me
(Too hard)
Well all I want is to just be free
Live my life the way I wanna be
All I want is to just have fun
Live my life like it's just begun
But you're pushin' too hard
Pushin' too hard on me
(Too hard)
Life before death! Life before death! Go-go gyrls vibrating and frantic like Beehives. Kool Breeze zooms above the crowd with no wires attached! Elliot Love-Wisdom is elation. Breezey coaxes Andy to the heaving fleshy pulmonary crowd as neurotic cohesive individuals shimmy together. Dead surfies come forth in flowers and euphoria to partake in the richness of the physical realm. Alive! Keven Brennan jumps into the present dimension awakened from peaceful eternity by the rousing jungle madness and criss-crosses the dance floor with Bobby Brown beaming from ear to ear somewhere between here and heaven – and what’s the difference? And what about Miki Dora scheming in the shadows, preparing to enter the shindig as the whole vegetable soup begins to shudder and then bubble with the energy of ages ringing-out through the dark night of Manly Vale and into the forthcoming era of wave riding where, as Dora prophesised, a ‘future genesis’ has been started by those individualists who have survived and continue to see through the death of surfing at the hands of professionalism. The harmonica squawks the loudest now then into a beautiful blues progression announcing the new era - this is the Age of Infinite Surfboard Riding.
I am sitting on a moon rock by an ancient ocean at the end of space and time and comprehension. It is quiet now. The scent of sea creatures is in the air. Friendly dinosaurs are all around me. There are monsters in the caves.
A beautiful space-angel appears from the forests. She is saying –
Live, love and do what you want surfing.
Robbie Warden pic