things to do today, write letter to....

Berlin
Germany

Martin

Beginnings, middles and ends.

It’s a paradox to think that such things exist, certainly in my own life the idea of sequence is as illusionary as the rest of reality, yeah it just seems like yesterday we were making music together, planning a small poppy field in our courtyard, catching the last rays of that sunlight before the terrible winter set in, me, i vividly recall 'waiting for my man' the happy acustic version, remember passing out in the medical supply shop falling flat on my face, being lifted up with spliff in hand, yet it also seems like another lifetime and then again maybe it was a few years in the future, ha, the fact is it don’t matter, time and space, thoughts and meanings, let’s just say here we are.

I started writing a blog a few months ago, I felt that it would be an interesting experiment, that I had lived long enough to have something people may want to learn from or laugh at.

I can’t say that my life has been less than extraordinary, I was always one to struggle between free will and destiny, now I realise they are the same thing.

I guess in terms of what happened to me, we need some kind of perspective so excuse me if I revert to some kind of chronological order, it’s not something I do often but I think it may be acceptable in this case.

 

So I found myself living in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife in a beautiful Sydney suburb, surrounded by a domestic cacoon of love and safety, life had become strange, I was responsible, I was a father, a home owner, I scored a proper job, I went from being a sort of extreme loner, an individual to a very normal one, I even inherited a set of friends, it was quite strange as it fulfilled a need in me, a false imprint that this is what we do. I mean we marry, have children, own things, get a job and old, die….yeah, I guess it was some sort of dna thing on top of all that middle class bullshit programming.

When the union failed under bizarre circumstances, I found myself alone again, no family, no home, no job, in fact I had four dollars to my name, I decided then, at that point in time that gary was dead. Captain Mission was born.

I lived in a strange building, it was an ex salvation army counselling HQ, I was lost Martin, a tragic ending or was it a beginning, I am still uncertain. Anyway one night I was starving, I pulled the four dollars from my big black berlin trench coat, and I went across the rd in pouring rain, I was saturated, that coat was not water proof. Anyway I floated towards the neon sign which advertised a Vietnamese restaurant in cinematic glory. I pulled out my four dollars and asked if I could buy anything with it. The old guy looked at me without pity and said I could buy some rice, boiled. The kindness of strangers is a rare thing on this particular planet, every one is scared, everyone lives in fear.

Rice after about a week of no food, was something that sounded wonderful, it was hot food Martin, in a plastic tub, all that heat trapped waiting to be released, and it had peas in it, I could see the little green spheres suspended in the white texture and that seductive heat, you know I have always loved heat. We made a transaction and I ran back home, I recall I was bare feet, I recall the headlights of cars in the rain, their reflection on the wet road, I recall searching for my front door key in the darkness.

I stood in the kitchen, it was pitch black, there was no electricity, no furniture, nothing really, just the drips falling from me onto the lino, I could hear my heart beating, the rain outside and my stomachs pure lust for food, I must have looked pathetic there in the corner. An empty soul in an empty house.

I peeled of the lid from the carton and a wave of steam emerged. Martin I know what this sounds like but when you have nothing, the simple smell of cooked food, even rice, is everything. The poet, William Blake wrote about the ‘world existing in a grain of sand’ well for me Martin the world existed in that tub. I was so happy to have food, I may even have shed tears. But like all things in my life, it came in paradox for I had no spoons, no forks, no chairs to even sit down, no plates, in fact I had nothing to eat my rice with, except as I searched empty drawer after empty drawer I did find one solitary plastic tea strainer, so I ate my rice with this, pushing the flexible sieve filled with rice upwards with my fingers towards my mouth. As I ate my meal, my life split in two forks, the one where I broke down and cried or the one I fortunately chose, the one where I just laughed and laughed and laughed, I had reached the absolute depths of despair, I was the killing joke man, at the door way of the chapel perilous, I laughed and laughed like a mad man going slowly mad.

Jump four years forwards – I am now re invented, its been a dark journey, but I have to move forwards, re- establishing my self, building some artificial constructs again, things on which to hang my identity, and I find myself in another domestic situation, this time I am living with a Canadian girl and her bi girlfriend, yeah it’s a kind of weird set up but I was happy, just having a home felt good, my ego was very slowly being reconstructed, although there was a small irritation that I was not really where I was supposed to be, I mean for any other guy it was a perfect set up, two girls who seemed to dig me, and one another. I mean it’s a bohemians dream right, but all I knew was something was not right in me, I still felt an incredible loss, a loss that I could not escape no matter what I did, sex, drugs,a new ego I mean it’s all here man, Sydney is the hedonistic epicentre, the more I indulged the more I hated it and one day I walked out. Again with nothing. But this time I had some sense of destiny orbiting my mind, I was resourceful, I had survived weird shit before, I followed the eternal dao, I surrendered and I knew I was on a spiritual journey, I knew this was what was missing from my life, the space I needed to fill, would never be sated by trivial pursuits, it was a void within my very soul, it was a disconnection with my destiny. So in order to re- establish that, I ended up hitching, only to be picked up by an old aboriginal man,and friend Francis Firebrace, he drove me to the end of the road and there I gazed at the pacific, the day was beautiful, it was blue sky, blue water, and the horizon stretched out before me within reach. I felt so content, I decided to just stay and live on the beach for a few days. I had resources, money and stuff, but I liked the freedom, the space to think, I did not really want walls around me anymore or people, I didn’t want the complexity that people bring.

I did not know it but it was nearly xmas, a few days away. I swam every day, wandered the beach, it was kind of strange, alien to Europe but something in me enjoyed this simplicity, I avoided people and kept myself to myself. It was Firebrace himself who found me, living on a rock, I was living more like an aboriginal than he was, ironic?. He saw me swimming one morning and waved me to him. I think he was concerned about me, I mean genuinely worried about me. He invited me to xmas lunch at his friends place where he was staying a certain personality known as Madame Lash.

Lash lived in a huge mansion, a house usually frequented by the extreme individuals of Sydney, rock stars, high class call girls, famous artists, politicians on their days off, the odd novelist and a handful of drifting lost souls. She started life as the owner of a b and d establishment in the 60’s, one of her clients and English lord bought her the house and now she runs various ventures, even had her own political party known as the extra dimensionalist party, which although nieve had a great look. Lash was also an artist, a very talented lady, who was smart to, despite her excessive drug use. Incredibly she was ‘tripping’ through xmas dinner with her husband, and her husbands family, who were a very proper English upper class lot, I felt like I was in the middle of a Peter Greenway movie, it was kind of surreal. Lash turned out to be very impressed with me and offered to put me up for a while, I think it was my knowledge of the Sydney b and d scene, as the Canadian girl was into the whole lifestyle, any way’s I ended up staying with them for a while, it was kinda like being back in Berlin again but I had this imperative to sort my self out and after a couple of weeks moved out into a small place of my own.

The next few years I devoted exploring myself, it was something that I needed to do, I felt battered from life and weak so I decided that I needed to challenging myself and grow. I wanted to build a new identity and new parts of my personality were emerging, parts which I wanted to explore while maintaining a reasonably responsible life. I knew that to be a man meant being responsible and I wanted to meet this challenge above all others, I learnt how to be independent, physically, emotionally, spiritually and sexually, an enforced period of celibacy. The other challenges where things like conquering my fear of moths, people, big surf, social situations, heights and the obvious one death.

Simultaneously I was offered a part in a movie which lead to other parts and I began to take on acting as a side line, scored a few appearances on tv, gradually I was cast on a number of shows, usually as a undercover cop or a drug dealer, ha.    I played out my ‘bad boy’ fantasies.

I met some interesting folks, the most memorable was William Hurt.

Anyway’s once I felt I could act, I took on new skills, a friend of mine taught me how to fire twirl, another took me up a huge cliff and we jumped over the edge into the ocean, then I became a cocktail waiter in a gay bar and emersed myself in gay culture, was even made an honorary lesbian. Then I then worked with homeless kids, drug addicts, gradually I took on more challenges and the people around me became slightly awed by my persona, I knew that adoration was not something I sought and perhaps it was time to disappear, so one new years I retreated. At midnight I privately invoked in ritual the sum total of all the fear I need to face in my lifetime, I wanted top meet that fear and face it in one fowl swoop.    

Martin, you have always known my interest in magick and mysticism, it is very much part of me, i dabbled with it when i was younger as a teenagers inquiring mind would and yet in my life the patterns and meanings have all been directed towards realising my responsibility to this path and the threads of a power that has grown and grown, not through group work or any form of subversive tradition, no this is the will I spoke of, the union of will and destiny, it is inescapable Martin. I have to wield this well, I have to respect the universes wishes, it’s intelligent and beautiful and it operates through me as much as I through it.

Well after invoking the sum of my fear I drifted back to my unassuming lifestyle, however things happened very fast. Within a week I had broken my arms, elbows, knees, legs, I had cracked my skull in a bike accident. Apparently I walked back from the accident to the dinner party I had left and knocked upon the door, my words to the surprised hosts where, ‘I am terribly sorry to disturb you but I think….’ At which point I passed out.

I awoke in hospital. People came every day, they smuggled me out so that I could go to the beach, they brought me hash cakes and wheeled me around nurses quarters, after 4 weeks I was released but I had no where to go, friends took me in and I had to undergo the humiliation of having my every need attended to, this can be useful because humility is a lesson that we all need to learn, it’s the first lesson after thinking you are independent.

After a week I grabbed my x rays and took them down to the beach each sunrise, I meditated and visualized the bones joining together and healing. The Drs couldn’t believe it, in three weeks they were cutting of the plaster and I was climbing trees.

I laughed, thinking that was my lesson but the lesson of humility is  the hardest lesson of all.

Let’s jump forwards a few months again, I am living with two girls again, something I always seem to do, (even now I live above two girls) it’s a very loving relationship, the girls are actresses and artists, we live in an big old house on a cliff-face, the wind howls through the house in evenings, the girls bake coconut macaroons and paint my nails and everything is perfect. Then I fall in love.

(A romantic tangent to the main narrative)

Yeah right outta the blue with a freaking amazing girl, she’s one of the smartest girls I ever met, a journalist, a mix off Hong Kong, New Zealand, English, American, anyway as usual there’s complications, she is about to assist her boyfriend get permanent residency by marring him, so it’s kind of a doomed relationship, however we did spend an amazing few weeks together till she had to leave. Marnee was gorgeous and I guess when your in love, letting go just becomes easy but it was kinda heartbreaking. Years later she arrived on my door step with a black eye, she stayed for a week and just as we were going to make our long term plans, the ex turns up and she goes with him. I let her go twice in one lifetime, twice is very difficult Martin, it’s like you are always waiting for the third return.

(Anyway back to the main narrative now)

The girls, (actresses were not impressed and I had to move out, crazy hey?)

While I was looking for a place to live, I realised that I needed a job so imagine when a crisis service I knew that looked after homeless adolescents asked if I was interested in doing part time work with them. I jumped outta my hammock and started to think what a new beginning would be like. I had now had several new beginnings in one life time.

 

I got the job, no need to be interviewed, I had built up a good reputation as a social worker in the city, people knew me and they knew my work was good.

My first day I was asked to go along to a big meeting, where a certain catholic priest was consulting with other agencies in the area, he had been given a large house and wanted to know what type of service was needed. Rumour had it that he was secretly setting up a sexual offenders treatment centre and I was instructed to tell him that this was not acceptable, as there was a young women’s refuge next door to his place where girls were recovering form sexual assault.

Anyways at the meeting, everyone behaved very polite, drinking tea and biscuits, the other local organisations all very restrained, the priest whom I knew off from his reputation was just the red faced priest archetype, surrounded by old ladies and cupcakes.

Anyways, just when the meeting was coming to a close, I interjected, ‘Look I don’t mean to be rude but I do want to be honest and I have to ask, is there going to be a Sex Offenders Unit opening because it would be a totally inappropriate location?’

The priest denied any such thing, then the meeting adjourned.

In the kitchen when I was alone with the priest I told him how I respected all the work he did, he did take the hardest kids, kids that no other service would deal with, so I was kind of always in awe of him and although there where a lot of rumours about him that were questionable, I never really paid them any mind.

I explained that I was speaking under my brief and the idea of a sex offenders unit was something I felt had a place within society blah blah blah. He asked me a few questions and I explained how I had a history of working with extreme client groups, under various organizations usually one of experimental projects. He took my name and said goodbye.

About a week later I was offered a job with him in the sex offenders centre, he was NOT opening. To cut a long story short and believe me it’s a long story, Martin, the whole thing went bad, he was a paedophile, he had a huge gang of ex cons that were ready to take a bullet for him, and he murdered a friend of mine who uncovered what he was doing. I and two of my colleagues escaped after several attempts upon our life.’ I ended up having to keep myself safe by sinking into the territory of paranoia, it was bizarre, tapped phones, being followed, my home being broken into, and the threats, then the death of my friend, the police dept. warned me away, he was a large fish, high up the food chain and I was dealing with powers I shouldn’t. This was my fear Martin. Remember old Burroughs saying, ‘Paranoids just know the facts.’ That was close to the bone, the world is corrupt, human nature is defiled by those that who should protect it, children the most vulnerable victims are preyed upon by a system so archaic and insidious it lays hidden beneath the surface.  

To cut a long story short, I had to retreat while I fought my battle with him in court. To survive I needed to get a new job, this time removalist labourer, and my first job, I recall clear as day, a cold winters morning, was moving a church from one end off Bondi High Street top the other, and following directions the first object I carried was the huge wooden cross that hung high up on the alter through the High St. On my back. The symbolism was so obvious. Gods humour perhaps.

Well again we jump ahead to the court case and lets just say I won, but he was not convicted or charged, let’s just say I won my battle but not the war. I received a death threat and it was directed at Jake.

Again I disappeared, this time for good.

This is all true, the truth of my life is much stranger than any fiction, it is a rich tapestry of experience which has revealed itself over the years, I moved through life from that moment onwards unafraid, I met my fear and had developed the power to manifest what ever I wanted, however this is far from a blessing, for all magickal acts are paradoxical unless the heart is pure and I have a long way to go on that one.

Since then I have travelled a fair amount, all through Europe, two months in Paris I have always loved that city. London I am an alien to, I visit only to see family, whom send their love by the way, I spent some time as guide in Africa, specifically Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar, where I lived for a long time with two French girls in a beach hut. Then I spent a year working in Canada, hanging out at the airport strip club near the airport in Toronto, and finally in 2001 I returned to Sydney, this time establishing a  sense of permanency, I work, I create art, I write and I make music. I still only know four chords but I manage to write good songs and sing em much better than when I was playing with you guys, it was all about belief, I never believed I could do it, now I know I can.

There’s so much top say, it’s been 19 years but I always thought about you, every time I pick up my guitar or hear Bowie.

I lost a lot of respect for him when he made those dumb ‘eighties’ albums, Let’s Dance, Moonlight, Never let me Down, I guess I knew he was capable of making something more meaningful, but then I heard ‘Outside’ and that is brilliant, I have a version he gave to the record label and they refused to release it, it was so threatening, it’s brilliant. ‘Heathen’ has its moments to but if you recall, I was gradually becoming interested in a band called, ‘The Church.’

I got to know them over the years, they are about the only band I listen to really the rest is just ‘electronic’ music which jake plays a lot of, but the church have the richness and depth and beauty that I strive for. Nice people to, they lived in Sweden for a while, now I see them almost once a month,they live in Bondi, I’ll send ya some tunes.

One day Martin you and I will get another chance, this time, I wanna sieze the moment and unleash some love. I came a long way and now I am full circle. What do ya think?

 

 

Other news and bits of information, I have a dog called Pan. Jakob is a lovely guy, 18 years old, really into his music, talented and filled with potential, we may have to get him on a bass or something. I am a now a bit of a recluse, I have a friend ed, who I call Leary after Tim, he lives in Thailand. I have a few people that know me, a girl called ‘agent stone’ whom is like my sister, friend and I just met my future wife although she don’t know it yet. Emilie. She’s an angel I conjured up about 35 years ago, she’s a French girl, but she’s kinda worldly to, super intelligent and i adore her, so who know’s, I been alone now for years and years, just me and my dog and you know what I am surprisingly content, but this would be the perfect freaky conclusion.

So there ya go a short trip through Capt. Missions last 20 years, I never really liked Australia (I’ll explain why later) until last week, I was in the surf and I was watching the clouds and the waves and I thought, ‘Ahh, this is it.’

It’s interesting how life works, I embrace the paradox, I love my life, I love my people and I love you, the fact you found something about yourself that gives you meaning, the fact that we were always connected by something, the fact that after 20 years I can phone a random studio in Berlin and talk to a sound engineer who just happens to be standing next to you. It’s magick man, it’s everywhere, the unifying field, the holy grail of science, information. Every time I catch a wave in the surf, I am a particle and a wave, the true nature of reality, filled with gratitude and love.

 
Martin

 The Universe Blessed me and I know it’s Blessed you.

 Captain Mission

 

PS MY BLOG ADDRESS IS

CAPTAINMISSION.BLOGSPOT.COM

other things to do, call the french girl
emilie got badly hurt at work yesterday, one of the autistic people attacked her, i felt quite awful, really terrible, partly responsible as i never told her about the other side of autistic behaviours, yeah it ain't all staring vacantly into space playing with a piece of string. anyways i hope that i'll catch up with her later today. she called me beautiful over the phone and my heart beat like a tom tom drum. sigh...

and final thing to do is make a comp. cd
which i did, however it was at the expense of being about an hour late to meet emilie, i did actually pick up some chyranthiums for her but i forgot to give her the cd.
After telling me she had fucked her friend in a drunken evening, she wanted to go kiting at manly as the wind was perfect, i watched from the shore, she looked like a giant insect, zipping her way across the water surface, weaving through the surfers, i watched slightly awe struck while my guts and my heart churned around.
Later we had a coffee and she expressed how empty she felt, we skirted around topics, the way men never acknowledge women after sex, the way women like to test mens boundries, she asked me when i had sex last and was surprised to hear that i had actually had sex on my birthday.
'Oh I never really think of you as a sexual person.'
'Yes well, sorry to disappoint you.'
'Your birthday was a few weeks ago, right?'
'Yeah.'
'And was it good sex?'
'It was messy.'
'Messy?'
'Yeah messy.'
'How come?'
'Birthday cake.'
'Oh.'
'Yeah I didn't eat any though, i am not a big lover of cake.'
'Oh. We should get trashed one night.'
'Sure but we ain't going to fuck.'

I head off back to Mission Control, i stick on the cd i made her, it's a good comp. i stop by at Agent Stones, she makes me a lovely salad, a tea and i feel like i am travelling back in time to the days we used to stay up all night, me smoking joints rambling stories to her, she listening and laughing like a beautiful elf queen, ahh, yeah agent stone's cool, she's the ony person i ever took to see the church with me, it's a scared thing. Later we looked at some pics on her computer, gregorian chants in the background, i was feeling safe, i always feel safe with agent stone, she's an agent extrodinare.