Category: General

Keeping it real

Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.

Turning the clock back and then turning it some more, like flicking through the yellowing pages of an old book, I remember someone who had a big influence on me. What I’m about to recall is still vividly etched in my mind as if it happened yesterday.

I can picture it now. I must be fourteen or fifteen and it’s just another day at school, just another class but this time they tell us to assemble in the school lecture theatre. So we all go over there and yes, we see it’s an opportunity to relax and ‘slack off’ shall we say. School is something that doesn’t figure much in my life. Apart from a couple of friends I find it a drag.

One of them, who happens to be seated next to me explains that we have to choose an extra curricular activity. I’m so zoned out I haven’t even registered. He’s decided piping – (that’s highland piping for God’s sake). Next he tells me I should sign up so I reluctantly put my name down. I find myself in this weird roundhouse at the side of the classrooms feeling shunted out and slightly neglected.

The teacher is this older guy who I vaguely see around the school but again, I haven’t registered. He is quietly spoken and modest. He gives me a single wooden pipe – known as a practice chanter so I can learn ‘the tunes’. I take the thing home and forget about it until the next lesson. I’m supposed to practice but arrive for the session unprepared and discover my friend has done the homework. Oh, I have to learn some notes on this instrument and locate them on the score in front of me. What a drag. Er, G, um C or is it? No, it’s A. Right (I’m not interested). And the teacher, Ernie Dowler probably notices, but nonetheless shows patience and enthusiasm.

Now, I’m supposed to be a music kid coming from a music family. But somehow this guy – this teacher is different. So I put in some practice for the next lesson and think nothing more of it. Ernie Dowler has a concrete mixer and tools in the roundhouse. There are boxes of stuff – what look like kilts and equipment all around. The place is relaxed – so not a classroom. He tells us (only two of us have turned up) that he’s going to demo out ‘the tune’ and so he pulls out his set of pipes. What follows is so profoundly effecting and impactual it marks a seismic shift that forever changes my life. It isn’t so much the volume levels (you can imagine within a confined concrete space) but the way he plays. A faultless rendition that is seamless and appears effortless with a level of expression that is transformative. I am transfixed. From a somnolent state to fully galvanised attention all in the space of two minutes flat. In that moment I understand what it means, what he means, to be real. Not merely to get away with stuff – there’s plenty of that going on next door in the classrooms. They teach what you need to know to pass exams and how to ‘get on’ in life. Here it’s how to be real and how to be hands on.

In the months and years that follow I hang out in the roundhouse. It becomes a home from home. School becomes interesting and enjoyable. I discover Ernie Dowler’s backstory, from his time in the navy and as a champion pibroch player. He teaches me to pipe solo at school assemblies, weddings, and public events and I will go on to study at the Conservatorium. I doubt this would have happened without his influence.

Be yourself

How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you?

In my youth I saw myself as kind of average – well yes, my physicality and stature but I would like to see myself as someone healthy in regard to my fitness and slimness. But that isn’t anything necessarily vain because a positive focus on oneself is considered normal.

But wait, a stranger cannot immediately ‘see’ you in the sense that they cannot fully appreciate you at first glance unless, of course, they have special powers. So I might be described as having authentic attributes averaging out my personality profile by way of weighing up the good and bad. The intention here is to appear as normal as possible and not to exhibit too many eccentricities. Of course, as one ages, abnormalities and physical anomalies become accentuated. This may be a reason older individuals seem to convey regular, moderated communication so as to 1/ convey a general neutrality 2/ offset misunderstanding or 3/ underplay perceived threats due to increasingly strange and individualised appearance. Or maybe they just get older and wiser. After all, why provoke somebody brandishing a weapon simply because you look increasingly strange? (Wha?!)

In an effort to appear too normal you could inadvertently describe yourself as a mannequin in a shop window or as dull as a plank of wood all the while thinking this as actually interesting.

Perhaps best be yourself or you may not appear so.

Dangerous curves

Who is your favorite historical figure?

Spending most of my life in the arts because of personal bias and without reasonable perspective, I might choose someone like Van Gogh, Rimbaud or Hildegard of Bingen.

But I am old enough to appreciate my limited view. Taking nothing from the aforementioned, I have wound up knowing more about less (or is it less about more, more or less? Dah).

A grander view would include Newton, Epicurus or Joan of Arc but I know little about them. These days I like the left field characters, the misfits that take the untrodden path. Moondog, Thelonious Monk, Erik Satie.

Oh but I forgot to mention the irresistible. A most uncompromising historical figure. Someone who has survived boundless human endeavour and vicissitudes. A force of matchless beauty and remains undiminished from centuries past. Oh, Venus de Milo you have dangerous curves! I have a crush on you (a stone crush).

Gone camping

Have you ever been camping?

It used to be a regular thing. As a family we used to go way north of Adelaide to camp in the Flinders Rangers. It got into my veins pretty early with all the experiences that go with it including the boring, the messy, swimming au natural.

I remember volunteering for the school holiday hiking trips. One year we did the Cradle Mountain/ Lake St Clair trek in Tasmania. Another year a small group of us did the Mount Kosciusko high country. Then nothing. Nothing for years. Why? I thought I’d changed, that I didn’t need it. That I didn’t need to ‘go bush’ anymore. But maybe underneath I’m hankering for untamed nature after all. Maybe the easy domesticated world I inhabit isn’t enough. Trees, rocks, ice, mountains, rivers, ropes, carabiners, blinding sunshine, freezing wind, rain, blisters, tired legs, hunger. Remember? Naah. Time to raid the fridge instead.