'Self Portrait' by Barry Dickins

It is Sunday and that is all it is. I have just read the Australian. It is not Australian. It is The Cringe. I have struggled to like Phillip Adams for years; I liked him when he was Phillip Adams – I guess he did too. He worships Mammon when he once seemed to worship cries in the street and whispers from above. No God in him. I am writing nine newspaper columns per week myself; maybe Phillip Adams and I should have a mag someday. It is as likely as knocking up a batch of Anzacs with David Williamson; although perhaps that is more possible. When I went to Judah Waten’s funeral service at our Fart Gallery, I thought the guest speakers never conjured for a second this lovely and laughing man. He was fun; I don’t think anyone got onto that. And he was mates with Lenny Lower, who had God in him. When I presumptuously say ‘had God in him’ I mean the street. Because it’s real hard to give and take at the same time; because, moreover, art can make a cunt out of you – because it’s a mad life and everyone’s stupid, the simple truth is that we are all lost sods, we in the game, because Australia has had the spiritual dick. Judah Waten loved people and we need a few hundred gross of him at the moment. Take a wet mop to the gold-encrusted snobs who guzzle their own bathwater and attend to the innate beauty and mystery of Lenny’s and Henry’s faces in the street. Get some God in us, immediately – before it’s too late! And who is God? He is in milk bars and parks, mostly. In hospitals and drying-out centres and trams and little libraries with no books in them, but a thousand hot and eager minds from West Footscray, Sunshine and dead Perth and mindless Adelaide. My writing day commences with drunk toast and a hearty go of Vicks VapoRub. Like my father, whom I adore, I ‘like to get a few runs on the board, early’. If this means hammering the Age Contributor’s Paymaster to nail a cheque, screaming at the snobs at Bulletin to see why they lose stories, perusing hate mail from Sun readers. (Recently, I was idiotic enough to use the good work ‘epileptic’ in a story. Well, an epileptic lady roared the shit out of me for taking their names in vain. Too bad she chucked a spazzo on the blower whilst in the middle of her complaint). I write what I like. Newspaper columns, plays and novels, bad songs, forgettable poems and I like life a lot more than I can say in anything I do. I despair when I read so-called literary ‘backslapping’ magazines like say, fuckin’ Overland. It is not for Joe Tramdriver or Harry Breweryworker or Dot the Barmaid. It is published for sixteen professors of nothing who puff a pipe and sneer at The Sun. (The real sun too). The poetry is not poetry at all. It is introspective arrogance and pretentious shit not worth a dob of Collies ink. Meanjin is the same. These bludgers ought to be carrying the hod. But they’d drop it, just like they’ve dropped workers who love a beaut read of a Sunday, when the aching hands likes a soothing stout and the baked brain likes a laugh or three. Bruce Pascoe is the only one who gives a hoot for workers; he is a worker and he gets other workers to write and draw for him. Why is Communism so unpopular these days? Frank Hardy writes each week for that tit and bum magazine People with a circulation of 300,000. (And not one Professor of English on the mailing list.) People is the street. Cries and whispers from souls who love a decent set of tits and a crossword-puzzle (‘With no hard-ones in it’; words, that is). I have picked up the hod of Lenny Lower, who wrote badly and brilliantly about his crazy and passionate fellow Australians. The snootery and deranged kinds of reviews published today have been written by snobs. What else could you call them? They’ve all got the Sandy Blight in their eyes; not that they’ve got any eyes. Or any heart. Or soul. They are bloody-minded betrayers who know everything and everyone and would not know a sheet-metal worker if they fell over his oxy-acetylene torch. In fact, they despise workers. It’s because they’ve never worked. The greatest contributor to this magazine has been undoubtedly one Greg Carroll. Not only is he a brilliant graphic artist and tireless text-straightener-outer, he is a happy man with God in him. He helps. Not interested much in Mammon. More interested in directing new plays, acting and one with the lot. But the backslapping and bum-licking goes on and on. It’s time this magazine had articles written by nurses and spud-diggers. Passion is better than pipes and leather elbow-patches any day. If I seethe I do not know I seethe; I love the people so. I die and do not know I die, so lovely are the bus drivers. Blow up Penguin Books and let’s get ‘Fair Go Press’ going. I am making $1,000 a week to entertain fellow shitkickers. Who needs French Champagne when you can get stuck into stout? Invalid Stout, of course. We need all we can get our hands on; because we are very, very sick today. On a lighter note, the Richmond City Council just mowed my front lawn for free. There is love in this world.

Barry Dickins

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