S
My accidental childhood philosophy encapsulates St Kilda Parliament’s ethos
St Kilda Parliament promotes a unique outlook captured in this photograph taken after a weekend soccer game when I was six. I appreciate it is complex. Maybe I was lucky because it seemed to fit, and time made it stick – as I realised when everyone else gasped I laughed, while others sat I was made to stand, circles weren’t inviting, sneezes fell on silence, affections weren’t returned and massages weren’t reciprocated.
Since then I have dedicated an itinerant life to travel, writing, film, live music, as well as eating and drinking the cheapest and finest produce known to humanity (which when combined are made infinitely better). And although I appreciate every fucker out there has to work, I’m a writer – so I struggle to understand why it’s so hard to see the world while doing what I want to do, so it doesn’t feel like work – that’s not asking too much is it?
Between long overland journeys I have carefully amassed a vast array of skills to keep me employed forever on minimum wage: cash handling and till operation; concocting the perfect Margarita, Whiskey sour, dry Manhattan and vegan White Russian; frothing milk, brewing brews, chopping wood, digging straight trenches and stacking bricks; frying falafel and vegetarian burgers, shelling shellfish and shucking oysters; stocking supermarket shelves, packing boxes, slicing and boxing pizzas; baking cakes, boiling and scrambling eggs, cooking pasta, making sour dough; and surviving on the dole with take-out long necks and a fishing rod. And along the way I somehow managed to release a novel, just released called Loves, Kerbsides and Goodbyes.
I draw upon these experiences, while seeking retrospective sense and wisdom from a peculiar childhood growing up in the middle of a large Catholic family in the world’s most isolated capital city. St Kilda Parliament aims to promote a survivalist utopia for those who feel outcast yet never wanted to belong; have tried fitting but found it brings to much effort and pain; and those who only wanted anonymity from the social gravity which everyone else orbits around.
With an irreverent respect to both hyperbole and the naked truth here you’ll find my most revealing and autobiographical posts treated with healthy amounts of humour and the quirky side of life. So become a Kildarian and join me now at St Kilda Parliament!.
