originaluddite

Last time I discussed Public Transport it was to criticise the latest ticketing change. This time however I want to say how interesting commuters can be. Travelling on PT is a way of sampling society. Everyone who cannot or simply declines to drive a car but who still wants to travel beyond their own neighbourhood can be found mingling on the buses and trains and trams.

My old habit is to listen to music and stare out the window. However lately I have been listening to music at work and decided to forego more music to and from work. I have gotten the chance therefore to let conversations wash over me. Many are mundane and include such topics as what needs to be got at the shops (boring) and who needs to be reprimanded at the office (boring). But sometimes things get more interesting and a few chats I have listened in on lately have included a tipsy youth amusing a friend by saying everything (much of it rude) in rhyme and some uni students considering incorporating sock puppets into a tute presentation. I must admit I tend to find the discussions of those younger than me to be more interesting in general.

However even if I am listening to my device I still enjoy observing human behaviours. Interactions are fascinating and I sometimes wonder what connections I am observing. Are those two chatting in a warm and engaging manner friends? Are they siblings? Are they lovers? Or want to be? It is a bit voyeuristic I confess.

Many of us on PT however travel alone - I am usually one of them. And even lone commuters are interesting to glance at in passing - keeping in mind that there is a very short safe timeframe in which to glance at someone before it seems that you are scrutinizing them. I just look at expressions. Are they happy or sad? Are they thinking or just meditating. What music are they listening to (heck sometimes I can tell the exact song as they have the volume cranked to the max).

That is one thing that has changed. Many of all ages and backgrounds use technology to pass the time like never before. Work or study is done on laptops. Games are played on pads and phones. Books are now often in the form of those futuristic Etchasketches. And then there are always those who are asleep. We expend so much of our energy at work that sleeping on PT is a solution. However we are so much more than our jobs as all the many behaviours observed on PT show that.

Cross-posted here.

Both facade and facet are words that in origin relate to the word "face". I find it fitting then that I use both to refer to personality and how we present who we are to the world. A facade is the most public of however many layers our personality has. However the problem with that concept is that many will think that the facade is pure fabrication rather than an aspect of a more complex truth. As a result I find talking of facets useful - many different sides to who we are that come to the fore in different settings or circumstances.

I have a shopping me and a work me and a friend me and a family me. In fact I have different behaviours for different sets of friends - the closer I am the more layers are exposed. However the longer I have known them the more some older self-perceptions are preserved and reflected in my conduct. And there is now another aspect of our selves that I think we are still coming to terms with - our Internet selves.

I remember in school we were given a project of putting together some sort of poster telling the world who we were. In a sense it was like a resume but personal rather than professional. It was an interesting exercise in self-perception and selection of what is worth telling the world. And that is what we do with online profiles and with all the many things we commit to writing online.

Some present information more deliberately than others. I notice for instance some will list every tiny interest they have. I however tend to select a handful that I feel are important and representative and present a balanced picture. I possibly also do this because I have a sense that my 'public' can only take in so much info and that I am catering to that. Suddenly I have an audience and I am anticipating how they think.

I think carefully on what profile pictures of me look good and what sort of image they present. And then I try to empathise by looking at the images other present and ponder what that tells me of how they perceive themselves. It is a fun game to play. I wonder if it plays too much into my hands however. I tend to be overly conscious in what I do and this media may just accentuate that tendency. I can become too focused on public image - a ridiculous notion for a private citizen.

It can be another way however. I find at times this blog is very useful as a way of clarifying and expressing some very personal things in a frank way. Saying very frank things to the world can be rather cathartic. Still there are always some filters engaged and I enjoy the act of filtering. This post for instance says nothing much at all. There will be other times for more candid posts. For now just look at my pretentious mugshot!

Cross-posted here.

Some of my friends make a habit of regularly seeing popular live music acts. I have never formed this practice and yet over time I have seen several and am suddenly feeling rather satisfied by this accumulated experience. Here then are some anecdotes of these live gigs presented in more-or-less reverse chronology from the Teens and 00s and 90s...

Seal

The thing that has prompted this reminiscing is that I saw Seal last week. I have been a fan of this UK vocalist and songwriter since his hit Crazy. It is difficult to describe his sound but I have settled on ambient soul. I am happy the gig I saw at the Palais in St Kilda involved a lot of his original songs, rather than just his more recent work in covering soul classics of the 70s and 60s. I enjoyed having a familiar recorded voice emenating from a human body on the stage. It was also fascinating to hear Seal talk to the audience between songs and, suddenly, the Transatlantic accent of popular music would fall away to be replaced by his own London speech patterns. I enjoyed the performance of both him and his band but I was a bit miffed by much of the audience. Some of us were fans and keen on getting into it but many seemed to just be there to observe the work of a popular artist and politely applaud.

Vicka And Linda

Okay now some of you may say "who?" The Bull Sisters came to fame as vocalists with the Black Sorrows but then went onto record their own albums. They are of Polynesian origin and they draw on that background in some of their music. But in the performance I saw at the Melbourne Zoo they were focusing on the soul music they listened to on the radio in their teens. It was a bit like seeing two Aretha Franklins coming at you with volumes of attitude.

Crowded House

Some years ago I saw a re-formed Crowded House at Rod Laver Arena. We were far away from the band and yet we still had an excellent time getting drawn in by (here I go with my invented sub-genres) the ambient rock of this seminal Australasian band. It is impressive for a handful of players on a faraway platform to somehow encompass a big crowd with the emotional connection produced by music.

Midnight Oil

I had a chance to see the Oils round the time of their Red Neck Wonderland album. I saw them at the Corner Hotel in Richmond. A small and packed venue full of fans of this hugely successful group (in Australian terms) was an awesome thing to experience. They had a wheel-of-fortune with songs named on it and that would determine what they would play - sometimes to amusing effect as they were given a song they were very rusty in performing. It was also interesting in terms of the kind of mixed audience Oils get - both the bogan element that love rock and the political element that enjoy the message of Hirst-Monginie songs. At one moment Peter Garrett noticed some yobby giving another audience member a difficult time and he admonished the shit with how uncool his behaviour was and refused to perform till he behaved.

Jethro Tull

This was another time I went to the Palais. Had dinner on Ackland Street with some friends then we went to see these British eccentrics fronted by sing-songwriter flautist Ian Anderson. Anderson was losing his voice but his flautistry was in top form and the band as a whole transported us to a world that is somewhat displaced in reality from the ordinary. The ageing Anderson, however, kept his standing-on-one-leg antics to a minimum, thankfully, as such stuff had caused a previous tour of theirs to be cancelled.

B B King

I remember - way back in the late 90s - thinking that I had to see B B King while I got the chance because the blues legend was elderly and who knew how long he would last. Well the irony is that he is still touring to this day. And back then he looked old and spent most of his gig (at a venue in the Crown Complex) sitting. It was still an awesome night as King and his band presented his more polished brand of the blues. And then it was something to see King kissing spare guitar plectrums and throwing them into the audience for the keenest of his young white fans to snatch.

Faith No More

This gig was at Festival Hall and it was one of the few times I have been close to a mosh-pit. I made sure to stay back from the ever-shifting line that separated mere audience from writhing amorphous mass of human flesh. I enjoyed the show but remember wishing the band had chosen more songs from the album they were supposed to be promoting - Album Of The Year - rather than all the songs they performed from the preceding album (King For A Day Fool For A Lifetime). I think FNM are best as innovators of musical fusion (such as the blending of funk and metal) and I feel the gig lacked that.

Steeleye Span

This is a band that play folk music with contemporary instruments (including electric violin) and they were a lot of fun to see in a pokey venue above a bar in Prahran. Both vocalists Maddie Prior and Gay Woods sang well and got well sloshed as the night wore on and they regularly took sips of wine. It was one of those intimate gigs in which one felt a part of something very primal and human - the telling of tall tales set to music for a gathered throng.

Glen Miller Reunion Band

This is the oldest and in some ways most unusual recollection I have of seeing a well-known act live. Glenn Miller was killed in World War II but his jazz band has formed and reformed many times since. The incarnation I saw was fifteen strong, of which seven musicians had performed with Glenn Miller. The show was held at the Glasshouse and included space for the audience to dance if they so wished. I was definitely one of the younger audience members there but it was a lot of fun nonetheless and, as with many of these other anecdotes, a chance to feel a sense of history. The brass was hot, the reeds were cool, and I even got a chance to swing someone round the dance floor.

* * * * *

I was thinking of making this entry a bit more technically rich with, confirmed years in which I saw each act, and links and things. But bugger that. These are just my words and I hope they give some sense of what the experiences were like. Music in its many forms is amazing.... whether recorded or live... whether made by the famous or the obscure... whether absorbed alone or shared with friends. Can anyone remember seeing these with me?

Cross-posted here.

In my life of actively using Melbourne public transport I have experienced four different ticketing regimes with the latest starting this week. The monthly and weekly Metcards are gone so now I am getting familiar with MyKi.

And naturally I am whining over this forced change on my routines and habits. I am sure I did the same for the Metcard with its automated vending and validating machines. I may even have done it for the amusing scratch tickets. And with every change I adjusted. But for now I want to express my concerns with MyKi.

Forget even asking me to comment on the price. I have to pay whatever I am charged and that has always been the case. I can hope for price rises to slow (as I did here) but I am a captive audience to public transport and am interested in other criteria too.

Convenience and confidence is a big thing for me. Every time I remove my wallet from my pocket and remove a ticket from my wallet is a moment of thinking and judging and getting it right in a constantly shifting and changing environment of the milling crowd – well on work days anyway. I like to get it done swiftly and smoothly. I get fumbly sometimes and then I am suddenly bothering others getting stuck behind me as I try to fit a ticket into whatever interface allows me to escape the station.

A concern then for me with MyKi is that as far as I can tell I need to be flashing it about a whole lot more than I did with Metcard. What I once did for every journey it now seems I have to do for every leg of every journey in order to get those barriers opening at the end. This was a stressful notion to me. It is fine for the MyKi itself – the sturdy plastic smartcard will last and last. One advantage it has over all the older methods is its reduction of wastage – gone are the days of me throwing tickets away every day or week. But away from the environment and back to me!

I have discovered one thing that addresses my stress over my dexterous performance in handling a MyKi and it is another bit of plastic – a lanyard! I currently have one for work and I have inserted the MyKi into it. This makes things a whole lot smoother for me and safer for my wallet. Now all I have to do is actually remember to touch on and touch off all the bloody time – a small interruption to what is some of my best absent-minded thinking time of the day. I hope I can keep the lanyard beyond the end-date of my contract.

I feel like another anecdote from my past that has never been described here (due to my more usual "subject-oriented" take on blogging). It is an amusing story involving friends Sean & Olivia. It also involves a car that went by the name of Sonja - she was a Hyundai Sonata you see.

The three of us were road-tripping and visiting friends in the Australian Capital Territory. We exhausted all we had wanted to do and had two days to spare for getting back to Melbourne. And so we had to debate which route to take getting home. The choice was between the short and boring way along the Hume and the interesting but long way via the coast. We all were keen on the scenic route except there was one contentious thing to consider - the state of Sonja.

Sonja was a good car but Sean had driven her to the limit of her suburban limitations. I think she was onto her third engine! Anyway there was something the matter with her and I was arguing for a speedy return to Melbourne on a major freeway. Sean was arguing for fun and adventure and new things. Olivia had the deciding vote. What did she do?

She felt I had the better arguments but she sided with Sean because experience was the only way he would discover that rash decisions produce mishaps. Both Sean and I are older than Olivia but nonetheless she felt that you can teach an old dog new wariness. And so off we went and set off towards the coastal town of Batemans Bay. We never made it.

As we were driving along surrounded by yellowing farmland the engine started emitting a cacophony of clunking. Clatter clatter clatter CLUNK! Something had shaken lose and punctured a hole in other parts of the engine as it exited the car. Vapour started decorating the windscreen and the car started slowing of its own accord. What was to be our fate?

Sonja managed to continue moving till we rolled into the township of Braidwood. Luckily this mishap occurred while we were in farmland rather than the hilly wooded territory that was between us and the coast. Even more luckily - surprisingly so - we came to rest alongside the local motor mechanic and agent for car insurance. Sean still had his luck it seemed but Sonja had driven her last.

We had to kill a few hours in the small township and it was there that I speculated on what sort of population is needed to support (say) two pubs (Braidwood had two pubs and a population of over a thousand). We walked round a few of the blocks of the town and had some food and made arrangements for a friend to come collect us back to stay another night in Canberra. We were happy once she arrived coz Braidwood was getting boring.

We stayed that one more night in Canberra then drove home in a car provided by insurance. I had gotten my way in the sense that we went home via the Hume. Sean however had gotten his way in that life had once more shown him that risks are rewarded. I think Olivia was just happy that we were homeward bound. And Sonja? Well she exists in our memory still - I was rather fond of the dark blue duco which had in it an accidental abstract hologram. That was a nice defect. A disintegrating engine is another thing entirely! Something I wish to keep my distance from despite our good fortune.

Cross-posted here.

I prefer prose to poetry. It is far more versatile and can be just as expressive. However I do get the inclination to produce short verse very occasionally. Possibly once per annum? And it will come on at short notice. I devised this during lunch at work the other day following a rather late weeknight spent with friends...

Pancake powered conversation
Lemon and honey with butter then port
Solving the problems of the whole planet
Sleeping is always our last resort

This is as much poetry as I can produce at any one sitting. Anything longer is rare. Still I hope it gives a feel for what I had experienced and is celebratory of the kind of 'good life' I feel my friends enjoy. There is something in its vibe that is reminiscent for me of the B52s song Deadbeat Club (yes I am citing silly pop music in a post on poetry).

The unusual thing with this poem is that it has nothing to do with the two topics that have provoked all my poetry over the last several years. One is my medieval fantasy setting, The Lands, which I have written short poetry for to provide the world with a bit of texture. Fantasy worlds need some things to make them seem well-rounded - maps are one and poetry is another.

The other provocation for poetry in me is intimate relations. Somehow the format of poetry helps me to process such intense experiences. However such writing is also rather personal so I feel is best left offline for now. Mind you there is one thing of mine that conveniently fits into both boxes in that it is set in the former but mimics the feel of the latter. I shall reproduce the entirely fictional The Selkie here:

The stranger came in need of shelter
I welcomed him that sunset hour
He partook of my open larder
And more we shared in bed together
At dawn I rose to find him gone
My jewels I'd lost yet still I'm warm

This is hardly anything good. As I say - I do this rarely. But I do deem it a bit of fun. Do you think this is worth entering into a 'poetry slam'?

Note: Take a look here if you want some background on the Selkie of The Lands.

Cross-posted here.

This blog entry had its genesis at both a party and while sitting on public transport. A party conversation some months ago provided the subject matter and my reminiscing on that conversation while sitting on the train recently produced what I think is a novel response to the problem of that conversation.

The topic was the old chestnut that we have too few words in English for "love". An acquaintance I was chatting with declared this as a matter of regular frustration. There are many feelings and dispositions and decisions that are thrown into the cover-all term of love. This produces all sorts of confusions and - on matters personal - can result in much consternation and even conflict. I agreed that it would be nice if we had the however-many ancient Greek words for different kinds of love but I also suggested that there was another solution - defining our terms every time we need to.

It may take time and effort but conversations can be had in which all involved say "this is what my definition is in this case". If something is as important as we say human relations are then we will invest in those conversations rather than allow confusion to develop. In fact I think this would be necessary even with more words.

Imagine we had fifteen words for love. Imagine a map of these loves arrayed in space. Now imagine that something you are feeling falls annoyingly into a space in the constellation of loves between three of the named coordinates. You have to talk anyway! Will this happen or do we suppose that fifteen words will cover every kind of positive-attachment-motivating scenario that everyone will experience ever? I suspect that talk is useful however many words we may devise.

And we do try and devise new words or re-use old ones. Consider the invention by a psychologist in the 1970s of the term "limerence". Personally I think "infatuation" will do but one could argue that. Still we can and do have lots of words we can use alone or in combination - admiration... affection... attraction... (a lot of them seem to be alliterative)

This I was pondering on the train and I admit I was nodding off as it had been a long working week and the slanting sunlight of a late summer afternoon was playing with me. I think what follows is a pretty cool concept but you may think otherwise. If discussion ensues then my half-baked notion may get fully cooked.

It can be good to have just one word for love because what all the loves have in common is the thing that is most worth focusing on. That one thing is that anyone we feel love for matters to us. The quality of our interactions with them become important to us. And we will care for what happens to them. Love provokes compassion. In saying this I am revisiting my Mammalian Morality concept.

If the bottom-line of close connection is caring for what impact we have on others then communication in everyday language will facilitate that. There is a practical problem however - talk can be difficult. We are conditioned to hold back. Saying things can be scary and we cannot be sure that the response we provoke from autonomous persons will be what we hoped for.

I do think that saying stuff gets better with experience. Mind you - every time I jump into a pool I still get a momentary thrill but by the time I am over the water I cannot do anything but fall in. Opening your mouth and saying something can be a very similar experience.

Cross-posted here.

I was stumped for a short story concept till I decided to tell the tale of an inanimate object in my possession and of its most recent experience...

I have many powers and serve many purposes but it takes a human to discover and awaken those in me. As such I am nothing if I am alone but once I am held and worn by a person I can be many wonderful things. Recently a new power was discovered for me and I am still abuzz with the thrill of it.

I had been taken to a picnic and lay inconspicuously by the purpose-made picnic blankets. I have been a picnic blanket many-a-time but most of those events involve adults only - this one also involved children of a very playful and imaginative age. Yes I grant you - the adults I interact with tend to be playful and imaginative too. Nonetheless it has been a while since a new power of mine was discovered and this one is a doozy!

In conjunction with a child wearing me I became a boulder! It was fantastic. We blended in well with the setting and fooled passers-by. However the children there could all still see us and soon each child wanted to take a turn using me to become a boulder. One of the adults expressed concern for my welfare but my owner dismissed such concern, knowing, as he does, that I am made of sturdy stuff and have passed many tests of endurance. I did, however, notice that he was monitoring my activity just in case my wild magic exceeded safe proportions, making intervention necessary.

I was made at a workshop along with others of my ilk a long time ago. I lose track of time, spending as much of it as I do in wardrobes, but I suspect that if I were human I would now be granted the vote. As it is, however, I am aware of the passing of time in the form of a shifting array of scents and forms. The coterie of humans that I meet has slowly changed over time.

I need humans to make me more than just a pile of cloth in a corner, and likewise I sometimes find it useful to work in conjunction with other objects to work my magic. With a few other items including a big stick (redefined as a "staff") I became one of the Istari - a wizard from Middle Earth and the character that had originally inspired my grey colouration. I have pockets which allow me to hold such things as sparklers and a small jar of glitter which helped me evoke the image of Gandalf The Grey at a masquerade ball.

At other times I have partnered with a toy light saber to help depict a Jedi. What fun light saber duels can be with all the swishing and swirling around and feeling the wind of our movements. The light saber told me that the joy for it, however, came from making hissing and crackling sounds, which I must admit is something beyond my ken.

And yet another time I worked with a card-paper model skull to become some sort of eight foot tall puppet death. At a party we scared some of the machismo from someone who was very much in need of having his mere mortality exposed to himself. You have to trust me, however, in saying that I am usually employed to enhance positive, rather than negative, experiences.

I have often been an extra blanket at sleep-overs and camps. I have been an instant tent in which between two and four friends can gather for some warmth. Some startling things have happened under me. If only humans knew just how much items of cloth notice and remember, they would be rather nonplussed.

There have been a few difficult experiences in all of this. On a walk once a part of me was ripped by thorns. Luckily I was mended. Mind you I do wish my owner would attach a proper clasp to me - this button and loop-of-string is hardly the most attractive. Yes I am a functional garment but I feel that some bling could give me a bit of a lift as I get older.

I hope for much more of this. I enjoy sleeping in wardrobes but I am only truly me once I am taken and worn and shared. Also if I can become a boulder what other powers lie in my future for others to find for me? Life is good for this grey cloak.

The word "sindacollo" is taken from the Elvish invented by J R R Tolkien and its definition is "grey cloak".

Cross-posted here

I spent a week between Boxing Day and the start of 2012 in tents with friends at a camping and caravan park in Stony Point. This is an annual practice (at different locales) that I have participated in a number of times now and it is more becoming a part of my life. The setting in 2010-2011 even inspired some short fiction.

I started in 2006-2007 by only visiting for an afternoon and then somehow staying till the next day. Bit-by-bit I have allocated more of my holiday time to the event. Eventually it just becomes difficult to depart once I am there. Some of what follows is descriptive of what we did and some is an exploration of why such vacations may be significant to humans.

The Setting

Stony Point is a very different location from a Balnarring Beach or a Rosebud. It is a natural and legal cul-de-sac wedged between mangroves and military land and accessed by just one road and the last train station on a line. It is dominated by fishing and this diminishes the attractiveness of the beach itself. However the caravan park as a temporary home and the setting overall is very nice and relaxing and has a convenient old milkbar.

For me as an avid walker this felt a bit limiting till I discovered that there was a kind of bush track parallel with the railway line and that I could wander some distance into the mangroves. There I discovered a spot to stand around Dawn that was so very tranquil and centring for me. Tiny waves coursing with sunlight would gently lap in over my feet and I looked and listened and smelt beyond my own person. Lovely. More lovely still however was our slowly growing tent village back at camp.

The Pasttimes

Friends and friends of friends gathering and having a lazy old time in tents and camping furniture - this was the default activity of the week. Chatting. Eating. Drinking. Reading. Sketching. For a few days the group did nothing much more than this. Eventually however we started to take drives to assorted activities in groups of a few to several.

Wandering in supermarkets in Hastings seemed to be a key activity and it is a strangely fun thing to do with friends. Possibly friends make anything worthwhile. More vital however was submersion in water which I did in three distinct ways. One was the Peninsula Hot Springs which are cleverly constructed in such a way that every element - wood... stone... water... is calculated to make one feel mellow. There are pools of varying temperature and even a grotto in which we enjoy finding the resonant frequency and humming. Another site of watery joy was an ocean beach past Flinders in which I went looking at underwater habitats (eschewing the snorkling attire I had been offered for my trusty goggles). And the best of all was Somers Beach.

Somers was a location I went to many times as a child during extended family gatherings in hired holiday houses. It is a lovely beach that is neither too wild nor too tame and perfect for group play. It also pinged a memory for me with startling precision. The path from the carpark to the beach was once a winding bit of sand and now it is nicely constructed steps. Nonetheless at a particular bend in the path I suddenly remembered that that was the spot on which I had once been bitten by a bull ant. Wow. Luckily that experience never quashed my fondness for ants.

Eternal Summer

Why do modern-day lovers of convenience and security deliberately give some of that away (temporarily) on a regular basis? I was pondering this in some moments in Stony Point and have a few notions. There is always the old "getting back to nature" explanation and that is part of it. I also feel however there is a more specific aspect of nature at work. As our group got bigger the vibe changed from small intimate gathering that could sit in one big tent to a larger but still familiar "community" that would play catch with the resident toddler of the group.

The desire I think we are satisfying in such voluntary shanty towns across the Mornington Peninsula is a primal preference for community. There was a camaraderie and a sense of interdependence. The norm was to serve others as much as oneself - to help and be helped. This was well illustrated by collaborative tent constructions that felt like barn-raisings.

A group is always composed of distinct persons however and so I will end with a few personal thanks for enhancing my experience at Stony Point: To Varia for some sketching tips... Nyssa & Gavin for keeping me in sweet sweet cider... Eleanor & Daniel for offering me gourmet home-cooked fare... Helen and Kat for shopping and philosophy... Belinda and Katrina for snorkling and a Southern Fiddler Ray... Stretch & Gaby for transport and Tintin... and Evil Sarah for facilitating the fun that we all then made for ourselves.

Cross-posted here.

My favourite band is Queen. These days that favour is a somewhat dormant one. I listen to a lot of different stuff and find most other things (whatever the age) fresher than Queen. This is hardly surprising given that I devoured the fifteen Queen studio albums in my young adulthood (including the posthumously produced Made In Heaven in 1995). Still my interest is regularly revived and recently a documentary on the ABC (These Are The Days Of Our Lives) has provoked a re-visiting of my collection.

I was always a dag and never had a favourite band like all the cool kids. Imagine then my excitement at discovering one round the age of 18. So exciting! I knew a number of Queen songs but had never known they were all by the same musicians – they were all so different. It is amusing to think that because now I can instantly detect the unique characteristics of Queen songs whatever genre they may be messing with in a particular song. The vocal of Freddie Mercury is (like all vocals) unique while the guitar resonance and playing of Brian May is incredibly distinctive. And they compliment one another – warm and round and ringing.

It was a blow to me back in 1991 to have discovered this band (at the time of its last album) to then have the vocalist die as a result of HIV. It was all over except I had two decades of back-catalogue to explore. And explore I did – all those layered guitar arrangements and vocal harmony. Also the wandering bass of John Deacon and the alternately skittering or smashing drums of Roger Taylor. Also the lush piano. Also the stamping and clapping. And then there were the themes of love and life and randomly getting employed to make scores for science fiction and fantasy films.

Naturally as a self-described “fan” I had to also consume band biographies. The story of some British youths who formed a band and went from on-campus gigs to stadium concerts was fun to follow. The process by which albums and songs are written was likewise interesting. The personal stuff however was the most fascinating and naturally if focuses most of Farrokh Bulsara (Freddie Mercury).

Somehow I had overlooked the ethnic Indian origin of Freddie. And apparently many others round the world overlooked his bisexuality despite his overtly camp stage persona. It is amazing how we can compartmentalize our perceptions of the world. I have even had conversations with Queen fans of the more bogan sort wanting to say nothing of the sexuality of its vocalist. And in some ways I do think it is fine to separate the art from the artist but I also think this was homophobia. Did they think they would get queer germs via the stereo?

Still in many other cases familiarity breeds respect and I think the fact this band of mixed sexuality got on with the job of producing music that inspired millions has done something to relax prejudices. It may be a pity that such inadvertent advocacy is needed. On the other hand everything that promotes a more accepting world is worthwhile.

I have moved on somewhat from my fanaticism partly because there is only so much life force one can suck from a finite back-catalogue. Queen is frequently bombastic while I have been drawn to gentler and more introspective stuff. Also Queen is polished while I have gotten into more gritty rootsy music. I suppose as life is lived one wishes music to reflect its many facets more accurately and one band can only ever do so much. Still Queen keeps the accolade of my favourite band and I have the t-shirt to prove it.