Dispatches #156: Lad banter, linguistic evidence and grandfathered dreams

Thursday, 6 July 2017

Welcome to Dispatches, a weekly summary of my writing, listening and reading habits. I'm Andrew McMillen, a freelance journalist and author based in Brisbane, Australia.

No new stories this week, but I was recently interviewed for the 'Queensland Writer's Life' series published by the Queensland Writers Centre, and I wanted to share that exchange with you. Excerpt:

Q: Why do you write? What drives you to do this?

A: Writing helps me better understand the world around me. It's as simple and as complicated as that. If I didn't write, I'd feel dumber and less human. As a journalist, I deal exclusively with facts, and a big part of my work is asking 'why?' so that I can help my readers to better understand the world around them, too.

Q: How did you come to writing?

A: My love for reading came first, and I think that's how it has to be. I read voraciously from a young age, thanks to my teacher-librarian father, who brought books home by the truckload. English was always my favourite subject throughout school, and afterwards, I began reviewing live music shows in Brisbane for local street press. These early experiences earned little money, but were enormous in terms of offering me experience, purpose, regular deadlines, and the experience of being accountable to other people. Everything I've written since then has been an extension of those first writing gigs back in 2007.

Q: What were your greatest obstacles starting out? How did you overcome them?

A: I've always worked as a freelance writer, and never in an office or a newsroom, so building discipline was – and remains – the biggest obstacle. How do you force yourself to sit down and write when video games, friends, and other forms of entertainment are just a few metres away? I lived in sharehouses between 2009 and 2012, when I was first starting out as a freelancer, and I did my best to hustle for new work every day. My housemates were university students or other young professionals who went to a workplace each day, and wondered how I was able to work independently. The answer is through trial and error; some days, when editors weren't replying to any of my emailed pitches, it was just too hard to resist joining in on the PlayStation FIFA session with my mates. But most days I was able to achieve what I wanted to achieve, while keeping my eyes on the horizon and imagining the career I eventually wanted to achieve as a professional writer. And as long as you're getting something done most days, you're winning.

To read the full Q+A, visit writingqueensland.com.au

Sounds:

Through American Eyes by John Eligon on Foreign Correspondent (55 minutes). I found this documentary about race – hosted by a visiting New York Times journalist – to be highly illuminating and moving, particularly toward the end. Really skillful storytelling, and so valuable for all Australians to watch. 

Race is John Eligon's beat. He roams America reporting for The New York Times on the tensions, eruptions and occasional triumphs in race relations. What might he make of relations here between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the country? Foreign Correspondent and The New York Times decided to find out by sending Eligon on a journey across Australia.

Nick Bilton on Longform (58 minutes). A great interview all round, but my favourite part was when Bilton talked about the research process for his recently published book about the Silk Road drug marketplace founder, American Kingpin, where he went through and built a timeline of the protagonist through his social media and forum posts. I've never heard of someone doing this, but it's an excellent idea, and one I'll keep in mind for future projects.

Nick Bilton is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road. "I've been covering tech for a long, long time. And the thing I've always tried to do is cover the people of the tech culture, not the tech itself. ... I've always been interested in the good and bad side of technology. A lot of times the problem in Silicon Valley is that people come up with a good idea that's supposed to do a good thing–you know, to change the world and make it a better place. And it ends up inevitably having a recourse that they don't imagine."

Lily Bailey on Conversations with Richard Fidler (56 minutes). I loved this conversation about obsessive compulsive disorder with a young British woman whose book Because We Are Bad describes what it's like to live with the condition, and how she treated it. OCD is fairly misunderstood, and it's great to hear someone as articulate as Bailey explaining what it's really like.

Lily's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder locked her into an exhausting and intricate series of secret routines, all designed to fight off her crushing sense of shame. By the age of 13 she was convinced she had killed someone with a thought, and spread untold disease. She was also constantly mortified that other people thought she was a disgusting germ-monger, and would compile lengthy lists of her imagined wrongdoings each day. Lily concealed it all from her parents, and her friends, until she couldn't.

Reads:

The Age Of Banter by Archie Bland on The Guardian (7,100 words / 35 minutes). I'll be upfront: I did not expect to drawn in by a long article about the popularity of the word "banter" in the context of British lad culture, and its wider connotations for how men speak and relate to one another, but this is a truly excellent piece of work. The long opening lede concerns an incident you might remember from headlines last year, where a few young British men thought it'd be funny to pretend they ended up in Syria after a big night, and it only gets better from there. Props to Archie Bland for writing this in such an accessible and thoughtful way. 

Lads: this is the age of banter. It's long been somewhat about the banter, but over the last few years, it has come to seem that it's all about the banter – an unabashedly bumptious attitude that took up a position on the outskirts of the culture in the early 90s and has been larging its way towards the centre ever since. There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, from Banter Britain ("no memes insinuating child abuse/dead babies!!!") to Wanker Banter 18+ ("Have a laugh and keep it sick") to the Premier League Banter Page ("The only rule: keep it banter"). You can buy an "I (heart) banter" mug on Amazon for £9, or an Archbishop of Banterbury T-shirt for £9.99. There are now four branches of a restaurant called Scoff & Banter. When things were going badly at Chelsea FC under Jose Mourinho, it was reported the team had "banned all banter" in an attempt to focus their minds, and that terminology appeared in the newspapers, as if you would know exactly what it meant. 

What's Eating Rabbits? by Trent Dalton in The Weekend Australian Magazine (4,000 words / 20 minutes). A wonderfully insightful profile of Ray Warren, the 74 year-old voice of Australian rugby league. He's been calling footy games for more than 50 years, but he's still highly critical of his performance behind the microphone.

His voice has torque. His voice is an engine made from Junee railway tracks ground down into a tiny red iron box echoing with vocal cords made from the rusted bristles of the steel brush his mum washed her stew pots with in 1943. The voice has low gears and high gears. First gear when he's talking softly about his dad on his death bed, up into second when he talks of the cancer removed from his prostate. All fourth and fifth when Thurston throws a dummy, when Hayne splits a gap, when a white leather rugby league football passes through 11 sets of Queensland hands in the 79th minute of State of Origin Game One, 1994. "Coyne! ... Coyne! ... goes for the cornerrrrrr ... THAT'S NOT A TRY, THAT'S A MIRACLE!" The greatest try in State of Origin history. Mark Coyne's miracle try. He called it that. It's what Ray Warren does. He calls. He slips the hire car into drive and pulls out of Brisbane's Stamford Plaza hotel, turns into Alice Street, with his friend and Channel Nine commentary team co-pilot Phil "Gus" Gould sitting ominously – the only way Gus Gould sits – in the back seat of the seven-seater. "I'll tell you if he's bullshitting about any of this," Gould winks.

Words On Trial by Jack Hitt in The New Yorker (5,400 words / 27 minutes). A fascinating story that focuses on the question of whether linguists can solve crimes that stump the police. "On some level, extracting meaning from linguistic evidence is what we all do intuitively every day," notes Jack Hitt. "Forensic professionals go about the same work, with better tools and a heightened sense of how easily meaning can be misconstrued."

In the early weeks of 2009, Chris Cole man began telling friends and associates in Columbia, Illinois, that he was worried about the safety of his family. He had been receiving death threats from an online stalker, and the e-mails had begun to mention his wife, Sheri, and his sons, Garret and Gavin, who were nine and eleven. Coleman asked his neighbor across the street, a police officer, to train a security camera on the front of his house. Coleman understood surveillance better than most. He worked as the security chief for Joyce Meyer, whose cable television program, "Enjoying Everyday Life," is at the center of an evangelical empire estimated to be worth more than a hundred million dollars a year; it includes a radio program, self-help and children's books, CDs, podcasts, overseas missions, and motivational conventions. Initially, the threats focussed on Meyer, warning that if she didn't quit preaching she'd pay the price, but the stalker soon turned his wrath on Coleman and his family. One note to Sheri read "Fuck you! Deny your God publicly or else!" Another read "Time is running out for you and your family." On May 5th, Coleman left his home early to work out at the gym. Afterward, when he called his wife and got no answer, he asked his neighbor the policeman to check on her. The officer found a horrifying scene. Red graffiti–"Fuck you" and "U have paid!"–was scrawled on the walls and on the sheets of the beds in which Sheri, Gavin, and Garret lay strangled to death. A back window was open, suggesting that someone had entered the house out of view of the camera.

The Political Life Is No Life At All by Katharine Murphy in Meanjin (5,800 words / 29 minutes). I absolutely loved this essay about the toxic, stressful environment that envelops those who work at Parliament House, Canberra. We hold our politicians to high standards because they're supposed to be acting in our interests, but what effect does this have on those who devote themselves to this career? No current ministers would talk to Guardian Australia's political editor Katharine Murphy on the record for this one, so she interviewed those who had recently left politics. She writes: "If good people can't sustain themselves in public life because it is just too punishing and zero sum–if the opportunity cost of the life of public service is just too high, if a life in politics just doesn't feel worth the personal sacrifices that are made–then we have a serious problem." (Note: This article is paywalled but trust me, it's worth the price of admission. If you subscribe to Meanjin you'll also enjoy reading the final Commonplace column by John Clarke, which I linked here last week.)

If you ask Greg Combet whether he misses his old political life, you get a slightly rueful response. 'At times I miss it,' he says. 'But if I get carried away, I just remember what it was like. I just force myself to think that right about now, on a Sunday afternoon, I'd be driving in a Comcar to Sydney from Newcastle, then I'd be on a flight to Canberra, then another car to the supermarket, get to my flat in the dark, then get through the folders of cabinet documents.' Combet was no small loss for Labor politics. Anointed by Bob Hawke as the party's next-generation leadership prospect, Combet shocked a good many people by calling time on his political career as the ALP tore itself apart in the Rudd–Gillard civil war. The then climate change minister, who had endured the arduous task of implementing a carbon price in the first minority federal parliament since the Second World War, was battling health problems. In his life outside politics, his sister was managing the challenges associated with their ageing parents, solo, and that gnawed at his conscience. He was emotionally and physically exhausted. Health problems were manifesting. He needed proper sleep, a healthy diet, time to exercise and time to seek proper medical attention when he needed it. 'I found it virtually impossible to do that as a cabinet minister,' Combet says.

Grandfathering The Australian Dream by Richard Denniss in The Monthly (4,400 words / 22 minutes). Richard Denniss has an incredible ability to see things clearly, and write in a straightforward, cutting manner. Check out these two sentences: "The easy way to introduce new policies is to phase them in slowly and to 'grandfather' any changes so that they don't affect anyone who is presently in a position of power. Put another way, the easy way to introduce new policy is to load up the future costs on people who can't vote yet or who aren't looking out for their political interests." It's a rather eerie and admirable skill. His most recent essay for The Monthly – about house prices, insecure work, growing debts and who can afford a stake in today's Australian society – might be his best work yet. Simply essential reading. 

While older Australians worry about the decline in Australian values, young people worry about the decline in housing affordability, the decline in education funding, the decline in penalty rates and the decline in the number of full-time jobs for them when they finish school or their increasingly expensive university degree. Australians in their 20s didn't grow up in the laid-back land of the sickie, the smoko or the long weekend. They grew up with their parents coping with split shifts, unpredictable hours and weekend work. It's hard to volunteer at the surf lifesaving club or coach the kids' footy team when your work hours are "flexible". Australia has one of the highest rates of private-school attendance in the developed world. And most children grew up in a household with private health insurance. The idea that if we all pay our fair share of taxes we can all benefit from high-quality services seems utopian to a generation that grew up with the idea that public investment in education was "unsustainable" and that spending money on the public health system was a "burden". University administrators even talk about their "student load", as if, without all those young minds to fill, the task of running a university would be much easier.

Kate, Elvis, PJ and Me by Bernard Zuel in The Sydney Morning Herald (1,400 words / 7 minutes). After 25 years as a music writer for one of the nation's most popular newspapers, Bernard Zuel's elegant final column for the SMH looks back at everything he's seen and heard. The loss is ours, I'm afraid, for there are now just a handful of full-time music journalists working at major publications around Australia, and it's a damn shame.

First or last? Biggest or most moving? Greatest of all time? I'm counting them in as they are counting me out and I'm happy to declare there's no answer. If 25 years at the Sydney Morning Herald – and 32 all up in journalism, so far – has taught me anything it is this: anyone who tells you they've already seen the best gig, heard the best album, found the best talent they ever will, run from them if you can; aggressively ignore them if you can't. Nothing is fixed: not the sound or style of music, nor the quality of it; not the way we receive it or play it or buy it or own it, nor the pleasure we get from it. Discovery is always possible, renewal of faith is always available. If I hadn't had it already instilled in me from my teen years devouring Stuart Coupe, Jenny Hunter Brown and Frank Brunetti, what I learnt from reading Bruce Elder, Wanda Jamrozik and John Clare/Gail Brennan before coming to the Herald, and after that from Jon Casimir, Harriet Cunningham and John Shand was that wonder never ceases. And I can testify to the fact that it doesn't. I may have thought at one stage that the best gig I had ever seen was possibly a toss up between Radiohead at the Entertainment Centre in 1997 (in which I confessed in my review to being near tears – though it wasn't "near", it was actual), Gillian Welch at the Roxy in 2004 (when the downstairs disco kicked in during the second set and still it couldn't break the spell of the acoustic duo) and Talking Heads at Narara in 1984 (when the band arrived near midnight and those of us who were exhausted from 12 hours at the stage front were transported out of fatigued bodies).

Thanks for reading. If you have feedback on Dispatches, I'd love to hear from you: just reply to this email. Please feel free to share this far and wide with fellow journalism, music, podcast and book lovers.

Andrew

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