Sam Cutler

December 6^th came and went with me driving through a pretty part of Australia, admiring the scenery, plodding along in the bus whilst trucks and cars zoomed past me on improbable missions at impermissible speeds. People just GOT to go fast, it’s in their DNA, but I am a ‘dawdler’ – wanna go fast get a Ferrari, wanna enjoy the scenery, drive along in a bus that’s happiest at seventy miles per hour, which down here we call a hundred kilometers an hour. I stopped and made a cuppa and spent a few minutes sitting beside the road thinking about what had happened forty two years ago.

When an event is a major success everyone (naturally) wants to have a share in the ‘glory’ – it takes a ‘disaster’ to sort out the ‘men from the boys’. Altamont was a monumental miscalculation on the part of so many people (myself included) and it has entered the mainstream meta-narrative of the sixties yet very few people have any real idea of what happened. Gimme Shelter, the documentary, gives some indication of the palpably antagonistic vibe on the day, and whilst it captures the killing of Meredith Hunter,  it fails (in my opinion) to offer a coherent account of the overall tragedy. No documentary could do such a day ‘justice’ and (perhaps) no book

could do so either. BUT, there is something inherently unsatisfactory in simply putting an event like Altamont into the ‘too hard’ basket. And sitting beside the road staring at the gentle hills of Northeast Victoria, I had this idea. Somewhere in America a post graduate student of contemporary history should do their PhD thesis on Altamont. It’s an event that is crying out for the analytical skills of the historian. It would be of great interest to me personally as I did a degree in contemporary history, and have always enjoyed that complex intersection where the historian’s skills meet popular culture. Let’s see what the historians make of Altamont. They’ve done the Pearl Harbors and the Kent State Killings and enough nonsense has been spoken about Woodstock to fill several libraries – let’s see what they make of this seminal event. For myself, as the years pass, the memories fade and everything I have had to say I have said in my book on my times with the Stones. It only remains to add that Mick (on the day) was a man of immense personal courage in the face of a very real and present danger, and for that (if nothing else) he has always had my deepest respect.

© sam cutler 2011

Parked in a field at the Strathbogie Outdoor Education Center in the middle of rural Australia attending the Entheogenesis Australis  conference along with 500 or so other people with like-minded predelictions.  We’re a herbacious lot with dreads and contentment very much in evidence. A chilly dawn greeted the sleeping campers and I listened to two birds calling to one another across the valley meadow unusually peopled by tents and cars. One bird would sing, the other would whistle a response, and slowly the tune they sang together would be mutually modified to their joint satisfaction. I made a cup of tea, and wondering where the bird song was coming from, I wandered between the tents towards the end of the camping grounds. I found one of the ‘birds’ lying in a hammock with dread-lock hair as long as my legs merrily whistling in response to his feathered friend. The bird would call out and hammock man would respond and back and forth the melody of loving coexistence between human beings and the animals would ring out across the valley. It was an enchanting scene and I wordlessly squatted beside the man and followed his song as the bird’s happy  cooperation took the melody whence it might within the confines of his range. I thought of the free form explorations of jazz musicians, of Ralph Vaughn William’s ‘Lark Ascending’, of the unique and glorious song

of each and every one of us which lays beyond words in that special place where some of what we feel can be accessed solely through silence. The sun, penetrating through the trees, cast morning shadows as a pale remaining moon sighed it’s farewells in the brightening sky. Wordless, as when I had arrived, I left my friend in the hammock singing with the birds and wandered back to the bus. People were stirring and soon it would be time for the first talk of the day, something about the difference between being ‘high’ and being ‘fucked up’. The path to supra-consciousness can be fraught with difficulty, with manic inner struggles and severe psychic ‘dislocations’, or it can be relatively ‘easy’. Each of us makes our choices and through those choices a modicum of discovery can become our lot or sometimes rabid terrors. Simplicity seems to be key to  processing both the pleasant and the uncomfortable inner  experience. The more analytical and ‘cerebral’ thoughts that one struggles to bring to bear the more unlikely is a sense of tranquility and rest. Hammock man had it all when it came to waking up to the day and being on a natural high.  Kick back in a hammock. Relax. Share a song with the birds and let the Universe simply know how glad you are that you’re still alive. After that beginning, the rest will naturally take care of itself.

© sam cutler 2011

There can be very few things that Winston Churchill and I would have ever agreed upon. My mother called him a ‘drunken warmonger’ to his face and I have considered him a proto fascist ever since he publicly proposed the gassing of dissident tribes in the Yemen in the 1920’s. One thing tho, surprisingly, we both came to the same conclusion about was the day being divided into 24 hours. Churchill, in his youth, and during the war years of WW2, was a proponent of the 12 hour day. He would be awake for eight hours and then sleep for four, and repeat this in his daily life ad infinitum. He insisted on getting undressed and preparing himself for bed and wore silk pyjamas to sleep. I also get undressed but prefer to sleep ‘as nature intended’.

There are advantages to sleeping every eight hours, as opposed to every sixteen. Sleep is twice as frequent and thus the mind is rested at shorter intervals and one can maintain a level of ‘alertness’ that is not available to those who live their lives in that quiet desperation that comes from feeling permanently tired. One also finds oneself in that slightly delicious position of being awake whilst most others are asleep which has the advantage of ‘resting’ oneself from the endless shennanigans of one’s fellow human beings. Conversly, of course, one is asleep whilst others continue with the motley, but as I spent the better part of my first three years on the planet fast asleep during WW2 I realized in later life that my being asleep had little or no effect on what was going on around me. Churchill learnt his unusual way of sleeping from his experiences in the Boer War at the end of the nineteenth century, and I learnt mine serving in the ‘trenches’ of rock and roll in the Twentieth. From wildly disparate backgrounds, we arrived at similar conclusions !

Agreement is possible even with those we are tempted to hate. There is always some form of common ground, even if it only be the common ground of this earth upon which we all exist. It only remains for me to observe that by agreeing with the ‘drunken warmonger’ on ONE thing I have managed my sleep needs more or less admirably and had that one thing in life a writer needs – substantial periods of peace and quiet ! It has also had some amazing effects upon my sex life but I wont go there – it would be simply too much information.

© sam cutler 2012

Born curious we are !! If everyone on the planet asked themselves “why?” about something or other a couple of times a day, which is a reasonable enough supposition, then that’s a total of 14 billion “why’s?” a day or to put it another way, 5110 Billion “why’s” a year !!! The problem is not the questions, the problems arise because of the answers we come up with. If only ten percent of the answers are wrong (and who gets 90% correct in exams?) then that’s 500 billion incorrect answers! No wonder the world’s such a mess, it’s the sheer volume of incorrect answers that are leading us astray! Which leads me to wonder whether I should stop asking questions immediately and form some kind of lobby group to persuade others to do the same. No more questions until we have answered all the ones we’ve already asked,  correctly! That should take long enough to see me long gone, safely tucked away and off the planet, and keep everybody productively occupied for decades.

That having been said, there is one question that has always intrigued me, but I’ll call it a ‘conundrum’ rather than a question so that I don’t add to the absurd total that humanity is already laboring to deal with. Why (there’s that bloody word again) do people always want to live in the same place? You know in a house or a flat in some neighborhood, or a place in the country where they settle down, raise kids, tend gardens and all that stuff. It beats me (that conundrum) it really does. With the price of a house the equivalent of a King’s ransom who but a fool would spend their whole life paying for such a place? Why (I cant get away from it!) would you want to spend your life looking at the same scene? Seeing the same neighbors? Living a regular ‘ordered’ existence? I live in a bus and I just don’t understand ‘normal’ life. Why ?

I’ve been a wanderer all my life. Since I was a little boy of six and camping in the woods in post-war Britain (No not the Boer War! World War Two!) I’ve hated being in a house. Perhaps I hate buildings because I saw so many of them bombed flat in the war. Who knows? I don’t sleep well indoors – I sleep better when I know the skies are there for me to open my eyes and see. When I am surrounded by fresh air, fields and open countryside. I’m a natural nomad – I wander following no dictate of the seasons or my fellow human beings, I just go where I wish. This is (as my mother frequently remarked when she was alive) totally irresponsible and childish but I’ve been this way all of my life. A misfit. I’ve never had a ‘proper’ job and managed for years as a rock and roll tour manager, and now I’m a writer. They seem (to me) tasks fit for a peripatetic life-style of little money and plenty of freedom. I’ve never owned a house and never will.

My bus is an alternative ‘land yacht’. I sail down the high-ways and bi-ways with the independence of a solo sailor. I visit friends, park outside, we have a meal or a party and then I walk (or sometimes crawl) to the bus and crash, by which I mean sleep. Seems perfect to me. I want to be in Sydney off I go like a mechanical turtle carrying my house with me. In Melbourne I parked amongst the busses outside the Crown Casino and no-one bothered me or even knew I was there. I was ‘discovered’ by a security guard having a morning cup of tea, offered him a cuppa, and we had a civilized chat and became friends. He told me he was happy for me to stay where I was. The whole of Australia is my playground. I am registered disabled (a broken back from a motor-cycle accident) and live on a small pension. When I get short of money I simply stay where I am.

So here’s my advice to the ‘youth’ of today. Don’t bother with buying a house – it’s a rip-off. Ask yourself “why bother?”. Scrape the funds together and get a small bus. Mine costs $30 a week for registration and comprehensive insurance – that’s my rent (in effect) $30 a week! Find yourself wonderful places to park all over this incredible country. Have a network of friends that stretch from Cairns to Adelaide and beyond. Develop a skill that can travel with you, like being a busker, a circus artist, a pavement artist, a writer a painter a jeweler. Wake up when you will where you will. Be as free as the black fellas that owned this land before it was invaded. Notice how they are constantly pushed to settle down and live in houses ? Keep an eye on the weather and the bush-fires, watch out for the wet season, and all will be well. And every time you pass some poor people who are doing it hard trying to pay the rent or to raise their kids and pay a mortgage, ask yourself the dread question – why ?

© sam cutler 2012

Up before dawn and I fancy I can hear the shivering birds rustling their feathers as they wait to wake up. I sit in a friend’s garden listening to the sounds of empty trains speeding to the suburbs so that they might bring the wage slaves into the city on their return. In the distance a siren wails in answer to some poor soul’s troubles. A cat sighs it’s lonely-infant drone in the alley at the back of the garden. The stars blink knowingly and send little stabs of light to comfort those who seek their comforts beneath the blankets of the night. It has been over a week since I have written anything. It has been impossible to focus on the work. My mind has been on other things. This morning, watching a sleeping world, I have been remembering a love from long ago that turned from all that was perfect and possessed of a startling divinity to an incoherent desperate mud in my heart. The pain has long since been parked in an area of my memory where it cannot actively harm me and yet once in a while it will re-surface to re-amaze me with its sad intensity. For over thirty years I have carried this feeling deep within the city of my heart. It has re-emerged, brought forth from the mud of my memory by the experiences of a friend told to me through her bitter helpless tears. How desperately sad it is to love someone and to finally realize that one’s love will never be returned. That the loved-one’s life will glide forward on its effortless path being content in its self-sufficient superiority whilst blissfully ignoring all the unreciprocated feelings bottled up inside one’s soul. How maddening this can be! How devastatingly cruel it feels. How as worthless we weigh the value of ourselves and in despair wish that we could obliterate the memories that only recently we held to be so dear. That I too have suffered is little comfort to one who is beyond comforting. The struggle to synthesize feelings of utter despair and make of them something else is the loneliest of tasks which can only be approached from within. Slowly and inevitably we arrive at a way of dealing with the deepest pain whilst our friends sadly acknowledge that they are powerless to offer anything tangible as support other than their unconditional affection. And then one day many years later I will find myself before dawn in a garden beneath the stars. I will remember a love of my own from over three decades ago as if it were yesterday. The pain will still remain in all its pitiless gaudy glory and will not be denied, yet I have somehow managed to survive. My suffering friend will awaken from her restless sleep and comes to see what I am doing in the garden. I will look at her with the saddest eyes and we will cry silently together and share all that is beyond words. Then we will go on. The dawn will break and the birds will sing. Life will continue though now informed by a deeper apprehension of its infinite dimensionality. As our suffering recedes and our spirits rise we will remember together what we have lost and accept that we will never be able to forget it. And though we still might shed some tears, in some strange and unfathomable way we will embrace our pain and make of it a friend so that we might continue to love and to hold dear those whom we adore. That’s what friends are for. © sam cutler 2012

An idyllic week has slipped through my unemployed fingers – I have written nothing. I’ve been helping to care for a sixteen week-old baby and I’ve been dreaming sailing dreams on Scotland Island.

Auggie, the baby, lives with his mother and father on the island. Mum’s an old friend and one of Australia’s most gifted songwriters. Dads away in Queensland getting something or other together and will be back in a week. It seemed a good idea to visit and help-out. Being a mum on an island has some challenges attached and an extra pair of hands can come in useful at times. Even if they belong to an old rock and roller, who ostensible knows little about babies! Except that this rock and roller knows as much about babies as he does about rock stars – which is plenty!

I have two sons and looked after each of them when they were babies as my wife at the time was completing a PhD at Oxford University. Like John Lennon I wanted to have the experience of caring for my baby children and that’s what I did. So when it came to looking after Auggie, all those wonderful warm and loving memories of babies (they smell good enough to eat!) came flooding back to me. It was effortless, and it surprised me how easy it was to slip back into the role. How I naturally knew when to pick him up after a feed and walk around with him draped across my shoulder whilst I gently patted his back in a regular beat and he gurgled contentedly and gave me a fart or a belch in appreciation. How babies love moustaches! They like to lay back and have their feet tickled with the moustache, and if they can touch it with their fingers they love to see if it’s real or false and tug at it with a ferocious strength.

To stare into the eyes of a tiny baby. To receive the illumination and bottom less trust of its smile. To see this little man unconcerned about the adult cares of the world. To care for this eating and drinking leviathan devoted to consumption laying back so full of milk he can take no more as it dribbles happily over his grinning chin. This peeing and pooing machine with no concern but the consumption of food and getting ride of its waste products. This little Buddha.

What a blessing it has been to care for him and such friends we have become with long and involved conversations-of-the-eyes, where words are superfluous and inadequate to the task of expression. To gain the love of a baby, it’s tender trust, to bond and protect such a tiny vulnerable little person; is a fine and noble experience and I have grown this week in my heart, immeasurably. The miracle of humanness has reminded me of how vulnerable we all are on this planet – how we need one another to survive. Babies bring this truth home with startling clarity. Without the love and nurture of adults they wouldn’t last a week.

And then there are those lovely souls from which the babies arrived! Their mothers. To see the connection between a mother and baby child is such a wonderful tableau of devotion that even the most hardened old rocker would melt into sentimentality. I salute the mothers of the world (I always have!) for their love and devotion. Seeing Auggie and his mother reminded me of my own mother who died a few years ago. What a noble woman! Her husband had an incurable bone disease passed through the male line and so she decided not to have children but to adopt a child. She got me and I was loved as well as she was able for which I am eternally grateful. Looking at little Auggie reminded me of that woman’s selfless devotion and by extension the selfless devotion of mothers all over the planet. Yay mothers! Yay women! We’d be lost without you! Which leads me by extension to the whole business of ‘navigation’, the art of not being lost.

Each morning before dawn I have sat on the deck of the house in which I am a guest and watched the sun slowly illuminate the passage between the island and the mainland. About a hundred meters away from me sits the prettiest yacht at its moorings, a trim and organized fifty-foot boat that looks just the perfect vessel for a single-handed sailor. The pleasure of looking at the boat has triggered many memories and some wistful dreams. And it has reminded me of an achievement by a slip of a girl, who not so long ago was just a baby. An achievement of stunning audacity, courage, endurance and skill. The sixteen-year-old girl to whom I am referring has just completed a solo-unassisted circumnavigation of the world in a sailing yacht. The girl in question is Dutch, and in order to even leave Holland she had to fight a battle with the childcare authorities who thought the whole enterprise was reckless and not in the child’s best interests. Various professional sailors, and the girl’s parents, supported her right to undertake the mammoth journey, and many experts gave testimony as to the girl’s nautical skills. The court eventually gave its consent and the journey began.

The next time you try to find an address in the city, look for a friend’s house in the country, even try to remember where you put your favorite earrings; think of a slip of a girl who sailed alone around the world. The achievement almost beggars belief. How long did it take you to learn to drive a car? To learn to read, to study for exams? By the time this girl was sixteen she had all the necessary skills (and there are hundreds of them) to circumnavigate the globe in a tiny boat. This amazing girl is going to be one heck of a mother! And I think of her mother. How amazing is she! To give her daughter the necessary skills and then to support her in the endeavor. What must the mother have been feeling as she stood on the dock and watched her daughter sail away, heading for the distant horizon?

My week on the island has taught me so much. It has re-kindled my belief in hope and trust. How puny and pathetic we are if we cannot live with these essential ingredients as part of our lives. Years ago (in the crazy sixties) we used to say, “there’s no hope without dope” and believe it to be true. Now I know that it aint necessarily so. That all one has to do is stare into the eyes of a little baby, to look at a beautiful yacht and dream. We are surrounded by a million and one encouragements to hope. All we gotta do is trust in ourselves, trust in our own indomitable spirit, trust in the amazing capacity we have to overcome the most extraordinary challenges, and then all will be well. Life is like what someone said about art. It’s 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. Scotland Island has made me feel ready to get back into the work, thanks to the example of an amazing lady, a slip of a girl, and a beautiful baby. And not forgetting a pretty little boat that has inspired me to dream each morning at dawn of all the journeys I have yet to make - those epic journeys, which still call to me within the city of the heart.

© Sam Cutler 2012

            I am sitting at my desk in a sweet little cabin on the hill above my friend’s house on Scotland Island, on the Pittwater about an hour north of Sydney Australia. Out the window the ferry plies its trade taking people across to the mainland, yachts slap about at their moorings and a grey day welcomes the night’s departure. It’s raining gently; a pair of madly colored Lorikeets are sweet-talking one another and rubbing their heads together on the deck railing less than a meter from my nose. In the distance clouds roll over the hills and the trees are dripping with perspiration, which steams above the forest heading skywards. It’s a good place in which to find myself and my mind is at ease.

              I awoke before dawn and had intended to make my way to the house below for a cup of tea but a large spider had fenced me in with his spider’s web across the exit from the deck. There it sat, in the middle of its web, with malevolent arrogance a lord of its domain and ready to pounce on some unsuspecting prey. With a piece of twig I chopped at the web and removed it as the spider scuttled to safety. I made my cup of tea, returned to my deck had the morning cigarette, and watched as the spider began to repair the damage. I remembered something that happened years ago.

           I was about to immigrate to Australia with my wife and two

sons, and some fool had told my eldest son that Australia had the ten most poisonous spiders in the world and the ten most poisonous snakes. He was six years old and very worried and constantly asked me “daddy why are we going to Australia?” and I did my best to re-assure him. His grave little face told me he remained unconvinced and I agonized over my poor son thinking his father was taking him to the most dangerous place on the planet.

           Several months later we arrived “down under” and found a house and soon we settled in. We’d been in the house for about three weeks when we decided to play a game of cricket in the back yard with the boys. All four of us with bare feet played on the lawn in the back yard with my wife the enthusiastic bowler. We were having fun. Something, I thought it was an ant, bit me on the foot and it stung a bit but we carried on and had a quality hour mucking about as families do.

            That night in bed my foot itched a little but I thought nothing of it and managed a good night’s sleep. When I awoke I was aware of my foot – it felt like a mosquito bite and I wanted to scratch it. I looked at the foot but there was nothing to be seen. As the day progressed I became aware of a throbbing in my foot – I could feel my blood pulsing around my ankle. Slowly a pain started to develop and with it my foot-consciousness increased – it was as if my mind was being dragged down through my leg and into my right foot where I had been bitten. By the Tuesday afternoon (I had been bitten on a Sunday) I was in pain and starting to worry. My wife, the daughter of an eminent surgeon, suggested I call my father-in-law.

            I described what had happened and the subsequent symptoms and he listened sympathetically on the telephone. When had I been bitten, he wanted to know. I told him three days ago and he scoffed “she’ll be right” meaning (I think) that if I weren’t dead by now all would be well. His re-assurance had a hollow ring to it and we left it that I would call again should the pain get worse. By Thursday I was really hurting and knew something was seriously wrong. My wife muttered Aussie sentiments about ‘whinging poms’

under her breath meaning I was basically making a fuss about nothing. No sympathy there. By Saturday I was in agony.

          On Sunday, a week after I had been bitten, I could stand the pain no longer and a friendly neighbor drove me to the Royal Brisbane Hospital – the largest hospital in the Southern Hemisphere. I hobbled into the emergency area and a doctor asked me what was the problem. I explained I had been bitten on my foot and he came around the desk to have a look. Within five minutes I was lying on a gurney with a saline drip in one arm, a morphine injection gratefully received in my other arm, and a room being prepared for my admission. The doctor told me, you’re in serious trouble, but not to worry, you’re in good hands. All I could think of was that foolish obituary which said “I told you I didn’t feel well” and I swooned into the morphine as I was placed in a crisp hospital bed on the ninth floor.

             That evening a Professor Gough, a world authority on bites of unknown origin, came to see me about eight o’clock. I was as smashed as could be on the Morphine and pain was no longer a consideration. He examined my leg carefully and pronounced that I had been bitten by a white tail spider. In an absent-minded professorial way he mumbled, we’ve has some amputations this year. My blood curdled. Amputations ! You mean they chop you’re leg off ? He re-assured me unconvincingly and then went on to tell me of a girl who’d been bitten in Papua New Guinea, on the face. She had walked for six days to the nearest hospital and they were unable to help. She had then been evacuated by plane to Brisbane where they were now re-building her face. The thought made me weak with fear. The good professor continued to look closely at my leg and pointed to what appeared to be a spot on the front of my thigh – it looked like a black-head. What’s that ? Noticed that before ? I hadn’t. He mumbled something and shuffled off and I was left alone having been told that I was to be operated on in the morning. More morphine calmed my severely rattled brain. I was very scared.

            The good professor arrived at about six in the morning to check up on me, and drew back the covers of the bed. There was a hole in my thigh (where the black head had been) into which I could have easily placed my thumb and I thought I could see my leg-bone. The bed was soaked in puss. He was not amused and nurses scurried about cleaning me up and doing his bidding. Morphine calmed the pain and the panic and a pre-med sent me off to la la land

and an operation.

              White tail spiders cause necrosis of the flesh. Without treatment the bite produces a gangrenous reaction and affected limbs have to be removed. The poison had entered my system just above the right ankle and then traveled up my leg to exit (mercifully) on the front of my thigh. Had it continued on its destructive way and gone into my torso above the femoral artery in my groin it would have been likely that my leg would have had to been amputated. I lay in a post-operative morphine-induced bliss unable not to cry because I still had two legs.

            What has taken you minutes to read flashed through my mind in a second as I watched the spider re-build his web. I had no idea what kind of spider he was though I sensed that he was not to be messed with. For three mornings he’s built a web across my path from the deck and for three mornings I had chopped it down. Patiently he had re-built the web. I considered my feelings about the spider. Should I just kill it ? I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it even though I cannot claim to be a friend of spiders. No, the spiders was simply doing what spiders do.

              Even in Paradise there’s problems. I considered the spider and realized that the spider was not considering me. He’d anchored one of his ‘ropes’ on the deck and was busy  anchoring another. I chopped down the ropes with a twig, and so that the spider would get the message, poured the remains of my tea on him. It was the most aggressive thing I could think to do. He shook himself and crawled away. I’m sure he was righteously pissed off. 

         Living with spiders presents us with all kinds of conundrums not least of which is whether to kill the ones that are poisonous.  I remembered feeling spectacularly stupid when my son came to visit me in the hospital – he stood there with the same expression on his face he had conjured up when he was six years old. He’d reached that point in his life where he was simply never going to believe anything I said about spiders ever again.  What to do ? As Ned Kelly (Australia’s favorite outlaw) said in the seconds just before they hung him, “such is life”.     

© sam cutler 2012  

 A busy week will encompass such an enormity of sensations that one’s fair challenged to experience the simple truth of the finger nails growing. The brazen rush of events, the tumult of sensory disinformation – the very business of living can overwhelm the gladdest tyranny-of-self and leave the sensibilities diluted of feeling. And then, like an unexpected glade in an otherwise delusional forest, the antidote appears accompanied by the soft slap of tiredness against the wall of the day. One hour’s driving from the central business district of Sydney the allopathic dilemmas of daily life recede and we are graced upon Scotland Island with recovery. It’s a short ferry ride to sanity. Benevolently the world allows us to breathe again, to sigh inwardly; and as the soul shivers in its recoveries we are glad of each and every single pulmonary reinforcing infusion of air. Before us, as we cross the water, with very little apparent effort the poisons of our preoccupations now recede and we re-enter that state of grace where with each inward breathe we become, once more, whole. The view from the island at night jewels the surrounding world and places us at the center of a crystal where we stare bemused into the kaleidoscope of our surroundings. The velvet resonance of the surface of the water vibrates like the deep cloth of the night shivering between the stars. Solitude, fecund in its majesty, enwraps us in her trillion faceted silence and the beat of the heart of existence tames, once more, our restless souls. Here, the gracious nurturing world is feeding me. The gentle Gnostic feast of the waves, limping to the shore on the most benevolent of tides, smiles for me the similar song of blood calmly infibulating my heart. I feel joined to the rhythm of the sea, with the strings of the ocean orchestra enamoring in the shell of my ear those sensibilities redolent of ancient archetypal music. No silence was ever more profound than this. No sound more pure. No moment more perfect. And a million perfect moments come to this when the gift of gratitude once more informs my life. I have paused and in so doing made myself available. All that was hitherto observed now becomes singular and participatory. I am at one, indivisible and whole; re-integrated with the mystical agenda. Here I can relax and feel content, and I am ready to embrace the sacred salient charms of these my days. © sam cutler 2012

In the last hour before departure I’m a happy man. The bag’s packed; all I have to do is prepare my head for the next steps on the journey. I am leaving Korea after a spectacularly non-eventful forty-eight hours. Korea was closed. Literally. It was the Korean New Year national holiday, nothing was open. It was a miracle the hotel was open and with only a skeleton staff on duty. I couldn’t get a bottle of water or a coffee whilst I was here. The bar was closed. There was no room service. Even, the lady behind the front desk helpfully explained, all the brothels were closed, as the national holiday was a ‘family day’. Very considerate, I thought, but all I wanted was a coffee not an orgasm.

Korea is suitable inscrutable. It was minus five degrees outside, bitterly cold, and 28 degrees in my centrally heated room. The temperature in the room could not be lowered any further. The desk clerk came to adjust the room temperature. He opened the windows! A freezing gale blew into the room, the temperature plummeted and after a few hours I managed to have the window open at just the right aperture so that the temperature was bearable.

I woke up this morning with a throat so dry that a sour orange at breakfast wouldn’t restore it to its normal state.

Everything, the desk clerk had assured me, was closed. She was right! I spent $140 on a long taxi trip to the temple – the temple was closed! The two monks who lived there, and the family who looked after them, were nowhere in sight. The only thing to be seen and heard was two large black mastiffs on chains that barked deliriously if we attempted to go anywhere near to the entrance.

It was all a wonderful lesson. The Jimmjillbangs were all closed. These are the traditional spas with communal baths so beloved of Koreans. Maybe they were open (somewhere) but I couldn’t find one. Even the ubiquitous 24-hour 7-11’s were closed which to me was unprecedented. There was nothing for it but to spend the 48 hours in Korea in my hotel room, and to get on with it. It was not a problem. I finished HYPERSPACE by Michio Kaku which confirmed me in my opinion that art has done more for the imagination of physicists than mathematics; and I returned to Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse. No television, just reading and fasting.

Other than two inadequate breakfasts, I have eaten nothing since I have been in Korea.

In thirty minutes I leave for the airport, and I return to my beloved Australia. I’m even looking forward to dinner on the plane, and to finishing Hesse’s wonderful book. What a writer ! How painstakingly precise he is in the way that he describes his character’s feelings – building each aspect of his character’s personalities with delicate charm and gothic architectural dimensionality. How real his characters seem to me, a born skeptic when it comes to the inhabitants of the novel. Yet still I am not ‘invested’ in their destinies. I await the moment in the book where I shall irrevocably care about what happens to the protagonists, and I can feel this change in me slowly dawning. Within a couple of chapters I shall have them in my soul for ever, these Hesse-created people. They’ll be  flying with me somewhere over the Northern Territory on the way to that place I call my home.

© sam cutler 2012

A beautiful girl once asked me, “Sam, what was it like in rock and roll, before mobile phones and the internet, and all that shit?” and here’s what I replied.

Before the advent of mobile phones the biggest single problem in rock n roll was finding people. The Tour Manager’s constant nightmare, was “where’s the drummer” or “has the van (with the equipment) broken down?”  I’d get up in the morning, reasonably assume that the whole band would be fast asleep, and have some breakfast and then start waking people up. The drummer (for example) would not be in his room. A number of possibilities, were (as they say) possible. What to do? Check with the front desk. Had they seen him. No ! Check with the doorman (if there was one) drummer last seen heading down street in a  southerly direction muttering coffee under his breath. What to do ? Search the whole of Southend-on-Sea for a missing musician ? Believe me when I tell you that this has happened – I have driven around lonely seaside town in Britain looking for cafes that might be open and sheltering wandering musicians. There are many reasons why firearms are illegal in Britain, one of them must surely be that irate and exasperated Tour Managers might well end up shooting their errant employers after spending hours looking for the irresponsible twats.

Second to the problem of finding people, physically locating them, was the problem of locating equipment. For many years band and equipment traveled in the same vehicle, this was always explained to the band as necessary for budget reasons. Couldn’t afford two vehicle etc. Nonsense ! It was mainly because the Tour Manager was terrified of being separated from either the musicians or the equipment – without one or the other there was no show. When the band was successful enough the first thing they demanded was to get away from the hated equipment (strange how bands only love their gear when its on stage) and to travel independently of the roadie who frequently need to wash more frequently. The Tour Manager was then faced with a difficult choice – go with the equipment and trust the band to arrive in the right place and on time? Highly improbable scenario ! Or go with the band and trust that the equipment would arrive in the right place and on time ? Slightly less improbable but uncertain at the best of times. The question, what’s more valuable, the “star” or the gear usually decided things for the Tour Manager could always buy another amplifier, difficult to replace a genuine Rock and Roll star.

When you talk to young people about a post office nowadays very few of them know what you’re talking about. A letter ? What’s that ?  Try to describe to kids what happened with contracts before the advent of the fax machine and

the internet. Yes, contracts went in something called “the mail” and strangers handled them and shipped them up and down the country and delivered them to peculiar addresses where promoters may (or may not) have received them, signed them and returned them.  A deal was made on the old land-line telephone and a contract was issued. That in many cases was the last anyone saw of the item until long after the gig had been completed and a fight had ensued over how much the band was supposed to be paid. Hence the music business practice of the band being paid before it went on stage.

The mobile phone changed the entertainment business forever. Before mobile phones how on earth could groupies get in touch ? How could you order Indian take-away food ? How could a Tour Manager do anything ? How could rock stars scream and yell and be generally obnoxious without even having to get out of bed ? How could rock star’s wives check up on them ? The advent of the mobile phone made necessary a whole new school of infidelity excuses – how many mobiles had ‘flat batteries’ or were ‘switched off by mistake’ ? And where before the mobile phone a Tour Manager could get at least two hours sleep a night (if he was lucky) with the advent of the mobile phone the Tour Manager effectively became available 24 hours a day. A nightmare !

Soon we’ll have ‘locator beacons’ attached to our musicians and satellite tracking devices on the equipment. We’ll know where everybody and everything is all the time. No-one will get lost, no-one will be late, no-one will have punch-ups over the money, everything will be organized with military efficiency. AND rock and roll will become as boring as it currently is – utterly and totally predictable which is EXACTLY what rock and roll was NEVER meant to be. No wonder the entertainment business is dying on its feet. It’s become just like any other business, and I blame technology for that.

© Sam Cutler 2012