The Big Issue Australia #647 – Baker Boy

NO CASH? NO WORRIES! Some Big Issue vendors now offer contactless payments.

NATIONAL OFFICE Chief Executive Officer Steven Persson Chief Financial Officer Jon Whitehead Chief Operating Officer Chris Enright Chief Communications Officer Emma O’Halloran National Operations Manager Jeremy Urquhart EDITORIAL Editor Amy Hetherington Deputy Editor Melissa Fulton Contributing Editor Michael Epis Contributing Editor Anastasia Safioleas Editorial Coordinator Lorraine Pink Art Direction & Design GOZER (gozer.com.au) CONTRIBUTORS

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Contents

EDITION

647 16 The Simple Idea to End Poverty We meet the Canadian non‑profit that’s making universal basic income a reality by giving $7500 cash to rough sleepers – and changing their lives.

30 BOOKS

Flipping the Script

12.

The Fabulous Baker Boy

Two-time Miles Franklin award-winning author Michelle de Kretser on her new book Scary Monsters, an innovative and compelling look at the migrant experience.

by Sarah Smith He’s the Fresh Prince of Arnhem Land and his debut record Gela is setting the world on fire – but for Danzal Baker, aka Baker Boy, there’s no greater success than seeing the smiles on kids’ faces in the remote communities where he grew up. cover photo by Charlie Ashfield contents artwork by Matt Adnate

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 22 The Big Picture

26 Ricky 27 Fiona 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews

39 Public Service Announcement 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click

40 TASTES LIKE HOME

Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani Fragrant, rich and deeply comforting, Adam D’Sylva shares his recipe for a Biryani with a twist.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

Many Happy Returns

I

t’s just good to get back out there,” says Marcus, over the phone from Sydney. We’re celebrating some exciting news: New South Wales vendors are back, from Newcastle to the mountains, for the first time since June.

“It will be nice to have my routine back; having a reason to get out of bed of a morning,” says Marcus, who’s an institution in Concord where he sells The Big Issue. “Obviously the money is important, but going out and working and seeing customers and seeing friends, that’s the biggest thing for a lot of vendors – I know they’ll be looking forward to seeing their regular customers again.”

As you venture back into your community, please keep your eyes peeled for those familiar Big Issue faces.

LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

All working NSW vendors and staff are fully vaccinated, as we continue to comply with government directions in every state and territory. Many more vendors now accept contactless payments. All have been provided masks, hand sanitiser and COVID-safety training to ensure their health and wellbeing – as well as yours.

So, if you can, stop by and say hello, and buy the magazine. The Big Issue Calendar will be available from 25 October, too. “I’ve already started taking orders,” says Marcus. “The customers have been asking about it for ages, even during lockdown.” With ACT and Victorian vendors on track to follow soon, why not sign up to our newsletter, below, to keep up to date on their return, so you can start planning your reunion catch-up, too.

IT’S BIG, BIG, BIG!

Sign up to our Big Issue newsletter.

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 25 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.

Your Say

I am a subscriber and have just received Ed#645, probably a bit late as I had hand surgery and only cleared the letterbox an hour ago.

Feeling fairly miserable with pain and wanting to cry, I breezed through the first couple of pages then read the Ear2Ground and laughed out loud!

Thank you. Also thank you to all the lovely ladies who keep my magazine arriving in my letterbox. God’s best blessings on you all.

CARMEL HUGHES NURIOOTPA I SA

Hi there to the vendors and a special cheerio to those still dealing with lockdowns. I’m lucky I live in Tassie and we don’t have too many COVID concerns down here. I subscribed to your mag last year when COVID hit. I enjoy it so much that I have recently renewed my subscription for another year and reckon I’ll keep on subscribing forever as a way to support others that aren’t as lucky as I am right now. I love the mag. My favourite bit is Meet Your Vendor and I look forward to hearing your stories every fortnight.

Hang in there – summer is coming and so are better days.

PHILL LUMSDEN BEACONSFIELD I TAS

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work.

• The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country.

• The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales.

• The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation.

CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Carmel wins a copy of Michelle de Kretser’s new novel Scary Monsters, which she talks to us about on p30.

We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor I was born in Liverpool, Sydney. It was great. I grew up with my family – my uncles and aunties and my cousins. My mum and I lived with my nan and my pop for a while and then we got our own place.

I started my first year of high school when we moved to Penrith.

I was half-way through when my nan and two aunties won third prize in the lotto. Nanna rang and asked if we’d like to move to the Gold Coast.

We said “yes, yes, yes!” and haven’t gone back to Sydney since. When she said she’d pay for us to move, it was life changing.

School was okay. I had my ups and downs because I had an intellectual impairment. I went to a special school in Coolangatta, which I absolutely loved. It overlooked the beach on Kirra Hill. Me and my friends used to sit out there and watch everybody surf. At school we had a restaurant that we used to run on a Wednesday. We’d prepare all the food ourselves and cook it and then get people to come in and we’d serve it to them. We had a little bar where we would serve drinks from as well.

We moved to Brisbane when I was 16, and I finished school. I went straight from there to work for Coles in the dairy. But I just wasn’t getting enough work and I ended up going to Red Cross for a year and a half. I was doing a bit of everything there – we did show bags one year, mailing, we’d pull apart old phones and clean them up, stuff like that. Then I was a butcher’s assistant. I did all the crumbing – crumbed chicken, crumbed steak, crumbed veal, crumbed lamb cutlets…

When you do your crumbing, you’ve got to do the flour first, then the egg and then the crumbs. I left that to have a baby, a little boy. Now I’ve got a 24-year-old.

I didn’t do too much after that because of his medical needs. He was born with dislocation of the hips, a heart murmur and multiple holes in his heart, and mild hearing loss. We were always at the hospital. He had to have a five-and-a-half-hour operation on his hip and was in a plaster cast for more than two-anda‑half months. It was really stressful. Since then, he’s had many operations. But you wouldn’t know it, unless he told you.

I’ve been selling The Big Issue going on four or five months now. I was dating one of the vendors, then got to know a couple of the other vendors.

They said to me, “Come and do The Big Issue with us, you’ll love it.” So I did it and yeah, I love it. I couldn’t think of doing anything else.

The money makes a difference. It helps out with my bills. I’m not really saving for anything right now, just SELLS trying to get myself above water.

THE BIG ISSUE AT I’m going to keep selling The Big Issue for as long as I can.

BROADWAY ON ADELAIDE It gets me out there and interacting with other people. Just STREET, BRISBANE being able to get outside instead of being cooped up in the house. It’s the best thing I ever did.

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

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interview by Anastasia Safioleas photo by Barry Street

15 OCT 2021

Naomi

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

Welcome Back!

SU ZI HE R GR EE NW IT H GO OD IE

S

WSE SPOTLIGHT

SUZI

A Fresh Start

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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started eating healthily and focusing on my health in the last year or so. I have diabetes and my doctors were really concerned about me and my health, so I started seeing a dietician. She put me on a strict diet, with lots of vegetables, especially green vegetables, and explained that it was important I stick to this diet otherwise I could get really unwell and maybe end up in a coma. I found it hard in the beginning but now I am used to it. It has made a big difference to my health and wellbeing.

I started cooking my own meals, so I decided to go get fresh vegies from the Queen Vic Market. I get up at 5am and head on the tram to the market and get all my fresh vegies – this is where I had been when this photo was taken. I love going to the market for my shopping, it’s a real treat. The quality of the produce is so much better at the market, and I really enjoy getting my shopping there. As well as my diet, I try to keep active and fit by walking and playing soccer. I play at the Big Issue Community Street Soccer women’s program at North Melbourne Community Centre on Thursday afternoons, and I try to go for a walk every day. Since starting to eat more healthily and exercising, I feel really good, with more energy.

SUZI WOMEN ’ S SUBSCRIPTION ENTERPRISE | MELBOURNE

Another three months of lockdown and I’m starting to get used to sleeping in. I got to the stage when I would stop looking at the updates every morning at 11am. Turned off. I’m slowly going crazy with boredom, doing a lot of online shopping. I purchased 400 DVDs to watch, but forgot that I can’t sit down for two hours to watch a movie. I’m so glad that we are back selling! I would like to thank three friends who purchased the magazine off me during lockdown: Hank from Burwood, Liz from the Blue Mountains, and Yvonne from Rhodes. These wonderful people have been helping me out – and they will have lots of reading to do when they get their back issues.

I wish everybody well, and hope to see you all back on the streets.

DAVE S PARRAMATTA, BURWOOD & RHODES | SYDNEY

Smile on Dial I was working selling The Big Issue, and along came FiveAA radio presenter, Pilko. I was happy to meet him. He asked me how long I planned to work for on that day. I told him I usually finish at midday.

Pilko said he might mention me on the radio (he was on his way to do his show). I told him I might stay on until 1 o’clock, if he was going to talk about me on the radio.

And he did! Pilko spoke about me on the radio, and I was able to hear his conversation on replay when I went back into the Vendor Support office. I would like to thank Pilko for the lovely speech he made about me. Especially mentioning my name and where I work. I was excited and privileged to be mentioned on FiveAA. I did stay on working until 1 o’clock that day and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

ELIZABETH KINTORE AVE & HUNGRY JACK’S | ADELAIDE

You Are Never Alone I want to write something about myself, but I can’t think of anything, so I write of a dream I had. There I was, all alone on my personal spacecraft, The Skyhawk. After no contact from Earth for five years during a deep space mission, I arrived in orbit of the planet to find it destroyed with no life. I put out a beacon titled “All Alone” with all info from my mission and my ship details including that I have seven days of air and food on the vessel and will stay in orbit until the end. Seven days later I start to turn off all systems on my vessel when a message shows on my screen: “You’re never alone, Captain.”

Thinking I’m dreaming, I turn off the main power just as three Earth vessels arrive to rescue me. Seeing them, a smile comes to my face.

TIM CBD | PERTH

Q and Yay! After my little part in helping dissolve the homeless myths and

stereotypes as a speaker with The Big Issue Classroom, I like to ask the students to ask questions – “fire away,” as they say – and deary me, they do ask some tough questions. One question, softly asked, hit me for a six and sent my mind flowing back in time, to all the hurt and abuse. Her little question showed she listened and cared: “How do you handle the judgements and labels as a Big Issue vendor?” she asked.

Well to sum it up, I found what I was looking for: community.

The people behind that red hat and yellow vest will never ever make a judgement about my character because they know me – not my number, my label, or my bank account. So as long as I respect my Big Issue community and do right by them, I will always be given the time and fair go to be myself, say g’day and sell a mag or two without labels and stereotypes getting in my way.

Doer I’d rather get up and do things than lay about and collect the dole or the pension So I’ve been stopped from studying But I’ll still study at home Learning a new language even though I can’t work I’m still doing things at home like doing the dishes putting light bulbs in and walking the dog I’d rather be a doer than doing nothing DANIEL K HUTT ST, WAYMOUTH ST & NORWOOD | ADELAIDE

RACHEL T PYRMONT | SYDNEY

EDDIE SHERWOOD, MILTON MARKETS & CENTRAL STATION | BRISBANE

LI FE ’S A BE AC H IN FN Q: ED SN OR KE LS , DI E DR IN KS IN TH E SE CATC HE S THA AN D E TR AI N

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

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Selling the Ningaloo edition about saving the reef inspired me to go back to Far North Queensland. While I was there, I went snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was brilliant; I loved it. I took the scenic railway to Kuranda and the Skyrail back to Cairns. And what’s a trip to Cairns without going to the Daintree?

15 OCT 2021

Nice to Sea You!

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“

“You can’t sue your way to the moon.”

Elon Musk on the billionaire space race with Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder is suing NASA over awarding a contract to Musk and not him.

THE GUARDIAN I UK

Listen, I will get up and play drums at the opening of an envelope. Show me a drum set and I will sit down to it. So yes, I would play with ABBA.

“It’s the love of music. Of course, you also have to have a certain level of fitness. But music – and by that I mean the great classical tradition – provides a lot of strength because it stimulates the intellect and the emotions equally.”

Herbert Blomstedt, who at 94 is the world’s oldest conductor, on what keeps creative types working well into old age.

THE MERCURY I AU

Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, on his love of the Swedish foursome – he cried tears of joy when he heard their new songs.

08

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

BBC I UK

“Cats was off-the-scale all wrong. There wasn’t really any understanding of why the music ticked at all. I saw it and I just thought, ‘Oh, God, no’. It was the first time in my 70-odd years on this planet that I went out and bought a dog. So the one good thing to come out of it is my little Havanese puppy.”

Cats composer Andrew Lloyd Webber on being so “emotionally damaged” by the 2019 film adaptation of his musical, he had to get “a therapy dog”.

“Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net-zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.”

Activist Greta Thunberg on the blah we get from political leaders on climate action, while speaking at the Youth4Climate Summit in Milan.

VARIETY I US

“Our manager bought us this air horn to keep at the hostess stand in case somebody does get disruptive or too violent.”

Michelle Chan, maître d’ at a Manhattan cafe, on the hazards of asking customers to show their vaccination ID. Alarming!

“I think regret is a philosophical position that I disagree with. It kind of assumes you could have changed the past, so I wouldn’t even think of that.”

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld admits there are a few episodes of Seinfeld he’d like to “fix”, even though it goes against his philosophy of thinking about the past.

Serenity now!

THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

NEW YORK POST I US

THE GUARDIAN I UK

“We’ve been hearing vocalisations that were new to us and different from what we had gotten in the last six years. For lack of a better word, it sounds more energetic.”

Jacque de Vos, a whale-watching tour operator in Norway, on international research that’s captured different whale and dolphin sounds thanks to a reduction in commercial fishing and shipping during the pandemic.

SMITHSONIAN MAG I US

“The work is that I have taken their money.”

Danish artist Jens Haaning on his new series Take the Money and Run. An art gallery gave him $113,000 cash to use the notes in a work depicting people’s annual salary. He says the work would have left him out of pocket by $5000 – so he kept the money and sent blank canvases instead.

HYPERALLERGIC I US

“It has come to the point where people are reaching out day and night due to their curiosity. It drains my phone’s battery and it turns off.”

A South Korean man on being inundated with 4000 calls a day

20 Questions

by Rachael Wallace

01 How many actors have portrayed

James Bond in film? Bonus points if you can name them all!

02 Which organisation, founded in

Australia in 2007, won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2017?

03 Which author is responsible for the

fictional character Inspector Rebus?

04 What are the only two egg-laying

mammals in existence?

05 What is the name of the Australian

journalist and activist who disappeared in Sydney’s Kings Cross in July 1975?

06 How many of boxing champ George

Foreman’s 12 children are also named George?

07 In what year was the $2 coin

introduced in Australia?

08 What is the name of the European

SCIENCE DAILY I US

MONEY TODAY I KR

“We think we’re in charge of our world, but the spiders and insects keep coming… Their unfamiliarity binds with a kind of commonness so that they’re – I think the technical term is we find them creepy.”

Jeffrey Lockwood, professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming, on why someone might not be able to hurt a fly, but will casually kill a spider.

“I wrote off [to the airline] and said I needed him with me at all times because I’m emotionally damaged and I must have this therapy dog.

The airline wrote back and said, ‘Can you prove that you really need him?’ And I said ‘Yes, just see what Hollywood did to my musical Cats.’

Then the approval came back with a note saying, ‘No doctor’s report required.’”

Andrew Lloyd Webber again…still upset about what they did to his show.

BBC I UK

VARIETY I US

FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU.

principality bordered by Austria and Switzerland?

09 What item did László Bíró patent in

1938?

10 Which Adelaide-born actress stars

in the TV series Succession?

11 What did the Australian W-League

recently change its name to?

12 What animal is pictured holding a

sword on the Sri Lankan flag?

13 Which NRL player proposed to his

now-fiancée immediately after his team won this year’s grand final?

14 Where in the world is The Dog Collar

Museum?

15 What was the electorate of former

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian?

16 Which 1980s film saw Gene Kelly

dancing in rollerskates?

17 What’s the name of Natalie

Imbruglia’s new album?

18 What is the chemical symbol for

copper?

19 Apart from Ariana Grande in 2019,

who is the only other singer or group to simultaneously hold the top three spots on the US Billboard Hot 100?

20 What breed of dog is Scooby-Doo?

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43.

15 OCT 2021

“Our study shows that this migration from India to East Africa is actually possible. However, the globe skimmer dragonfly can’t manage it using only the fat it can store in its body. It also requires favourable winds and these are present during certain periods of the year.”

Johanna Hedlund, a biology researcher at Lund University. We all know that birds migrate thousands of kilometres – but dragonflies?

09

from viewers of The Squid Kid: “That man’s Game after his a hamster.” real-life number Mum: “You mean was printed on a hipster.” a business card in the TV show.

Kid: “What’s the The program difference?” has literally been Overheard in a cafe in breaking the inner‑city Melbourne. internet in South Korea, where an internet provider is suing Netflix over its bandwidth usage.

EAR2GROUND

Go Ahead...

On holidays in Santorini, Jenny Sinclair takes the plunge.

O

ne afternoon, back when we could travel, I left my family in our rented house on an island in Greece, and walked down the 238 steps to the harbour and negotiated a rocky path to where I’d been told I’d find a sandy beach to swim.

Instead, I saw a sharply jutting outcrop just offshore, and halfway up it, three young people standing on a platform. Suddenly one launched into the air and dropped into the water. Then another, then the third.

I stood, feeling the sharp scoria rocks digging into my feet, and watched a stream of young tourists climb up and make the leap.

One man, English, walked back and forth across the platform. His male friends jumped off; their girlfriends watched, filming and calling out encouragement. He ran to the edge, stopped, walked back, ran and stopped again.

As I watched, a young woman spoke to me. She asked if I was going to jump. I said I didn’t know. She said she didn’t either.

She wasn’t a tourist. I’ve forgotten her name – Eleni, perhaps. She was working there, flown in from Eastern Europe to work in the expensive hotels of Santorini.

In her early twenties, she was relaxed and friendly, and didn’t seem to notice that I was old enough to be her mother. Her afternoons were free, she told me. People had told her about this place, and she’d come to do the jump.

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “It’s pretty high.”

The English tourist was alone on the platform. We watched him standing there, unsure.

“Come on,” she said, and slipped into the water.

The water was warm, clear and soft on my skin. I’d brought my goggles and I could see down to the speckled seabed, past undersea cables and the occasional fish.

I could just float about here, I thought. No need to go jumping off cliffs. Eleni swam ahead, calling back to me.

We reached the island and hauled ourselves up an old rope ladder.

The platform was six, maybe eight metres high, and roughly paved with pebbles. At the rear was a shrine, and at the front, a sweeping view across the caldera.

The young English man was still there, and as we arrived, he started to descend the rope.

Eleni and I inched forward, peered down. The jump wasn’t as simple as it looked. There was a rocky lip

protruding about a metre out – you’d need to clear that to reach the water. And it was high – not Olympic divingboard high, but high enough to trigger a queasy feeling in my gut and a weakness in my knees. My palms began to sweat.

“Come on,” she said, and didn’t move.

“I don’t know,” I said again. I looked over the edge, then backed away.

“I will if you will,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, and didn’t move.

This went on for five minutes, maybe 10. I ran to the edge, propped, walked back. She did the same.

A couple of tourists climbed up, went over the edge with throaty battle cries, and swam away.

“Come on,” Eleni said, and suddenly she was gone.

I stood there, feeling like a fool. Every time I looked over the edge at the water, so far down, my fear grew. My body pulsed with it.

Eleni reappeared, soaking wet and flushed.

“It’s fine,” she said.

It didn’t feel fine. It felt like I might die.

I went back as far as I could, took a run up and skidded to a halt.

“Be careful,” Eleni said. “You could fall.”

I tried again, stopped even sooner. Eleni watched me.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You don’t have to.”

Yes, I thought. I don’t have to care what people think – these tourists, this girl I’ve never met before.

I stood exposed in my baggy black one-piece, and thought about the young man who’d climbed back down.

I thought about how I’d never be here again. How my family were waiting for me. I looked out at the sky, the water, the blinding sunlight, and counted down from 10.

At one, I took a breath and told myself to go.

For a moment I was suspended in the air: not on land or in the water. The blue sky was all around me. My body screamed at me: what have you done? Where is the ground?

I hit the water hard and surfaced spluttering. I saw Eleni jump again, falling, silhouetted in the sunlight.

She came up beside me and said: “Do you want to go again?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t need to.”

We swam to the shore, walked around the island’s base, and began to climb the steps.

That jump took perhaps a single second. But in the five years since, I’ve gone back to it again and again when courage is required. Because I didn’t die, no matter what my fear was saying. Because a random stranger stood beside me and gave me strength. Because I jumped.

Jenny Sinclair is a Melbourne writer. Her non-fiction books are Much Ado About Melbourne and A Walking Shadow.

15 OCT 2021

by Jenny Sinclair

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My Word

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

PHOTOS BY CHARLIE ASHFIELD

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THE FA B U L O U S

BAKER BOY

Hip-hop superstar Danzal Baker lit up the AFL grand final with his killer flow and dance moves. Now The Fresh Prince of Arnhem Land has dropped his hotly anticipated debut album, Gela.

by Sarah Smith @sarah_smithie

Sarah Smith is a writer, editor and anchor on RRR’s Breakfasters program – and a former music editor of The Big Issue.

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15 OCT 2021

I

t’s weird,” Baker Boy tells me from his new home on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, where he lives with partner Aurie and their bulldog Djapa, “I’m terrified of sharks but back home I can jump into croc‑infested waters.

“I think,” he reasons with a laugh, “because a croc attack would happen all of a sudden, it’s muddy water so you can’t see properly and if it’s going to happen you don’t know it. Whereas with a shark you can see it coming so you are terrified for quite a while.”

Back home is Arnhem Land, where Danzal Baker – aka Baker Boy – grew up between the remote Indigenous communities of Milingimbi and Maningrida.

He lived by the water for much of his early life, and so despite the freezing cold Southern Ocean swells, waking up every day to smell the salt air reminds Danzal, just a little, of life back north.

This seems a rare moment of quiet in which to find the rapper and dancer.

Since releasing singles ‘Cloud 9’ and ‘Murryuna’ in 2017, Baker Boy has been captivating fans with his explosive live performances and unique flow – rhyming in both his first language Yolŋu Matha and English. Over the last three years he has been nominated for ARIAs, won the 2020 NIMA Artist of the Year, been named 2019 Young Australian of the Year and just recently stole the show as opening act at the AFL Grand Final.

At 25, Baker Boy has achieved more than many could dream of. But this meteoric rise hasn’t come without its challenges. At times the pressure, presented by such sudden fame and long stretches away from community, has meant he felt pulled in two directions. It’s a struggle that ultimately inspired his debut album, Gela.

“Gela is really cool because it is who I am,” he explains. “Gela is my skin name.

The main skin name is Burralung, so Gela is kind of the nickname of [that]. The skin name puts us in a position in our family groups so you know what to call the person in front of you.”

The striking cover art for Gela (check it out on the contents page) is a portrait drawn by street artist Adnate – best known for his large‑scale murals depicting multicultural Australia – and captures the duality Danzal wanted to explore with the record.

“I thought about living in two worlds,” he says of the concept behind the artwork. “Me and my partner brainstormed around it and came up with the idea.

Adnate had already done my face before, so it was really natural to pick him. It went how I saw it, the two sides: The Fresh Prince of Arnhem Land living in the city, and the Yolŋu man living in Arnhem Land. In a way you can see one side is Baker Boy and one side is Danzal.”

Three years in the making, Gela tells Danzal Baker’s story. Opening with traditional songline sung by his Uncle Glen Gurruwiwi, the record is, in his own words, a “party rollercoaster”. It shifts gears fluidly: flawlessly slicing up jams about love, work and friendship with songs about First Nations’ survival and the environment. It’s ambitious and electrifying, much like Baker Boy himself.

Danzal grew up watching the influence his dad and uncle – members of the dance troupe The Baker Boys, from which he took his stage name – had on young people in remote communities. Taking hip-hop culture to Arnhem Land, they inspired his own journey.

“Dancing is part of my culture, so I was always dancing. I think I always just knew that I wanted to be a performer,” he says. Performing from an early age he went on to study dance at Centre for Performing Arts in Brisbane, before moving to Melbourne where he worked running programs with the Indigenous Hip Hop Projects.

Baker Boy is keenly aware of the influence his work as a musician is having on a whole new generation of kids, especially the pride that hearing Language in song can instil in young people. Back home, his songs blast out over the school loudspeaker every day.

“My family says that a lot of kids are going around and rapping in Languages [now],” he says of the impact his visibility is having. “Everyone when they go to school, they hear my song going into classes – which is super cool and super nice. And they see my dad going to work and they call out: ‘Baker Boy, Baker Boy,’” he laughs. “And every time they would see him, the kids would rap a verse.”

You can hear a sense of pride in his voice when Danzal is on this topic. While music and performance are his passion, what drives him to succeed is so much bigger than fame.

“Doing what I’m doing is really cool, but maybe down the line hopefully I can start doing school excursions for kids back in community,” he says, riffing ideas about the future. “Maybe take them on a Baker Boy tour – maybe kids that are top of the class. Inspire them to see what I do…”

Most recently he became an ambassador for The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, a

project especially close to his heart. “I really believe in everything they stand for, they’re about closing the literacy and numeracy gap and that’s part of my story too,” he says. “That’s why I share my language. Since writing music I have learned how important it is to people to hear my language, and even right at the start with ‘Cloud 9’, I was writing a song for my community that they could connect with.”

Gela is Baker Boy’s story, but it’s also a shared story – of family and community. Fittingly it’s a record heavy with collaborations, with G Flip, Thando, JessB, Uncle Jack Charles and his cousin Yirrmal all making appearances. Its sound is expansive, traversing G-funk and more modern pop influences. ‘Somewhere Deep’ (featuring Yirrmal) is a simmering reggae standout that explores the relationship between people and the land. It was also the second song he ever wrote.

“It’s about the fracking that is happening in the Top End,” he explains. “It’s about looking after the land and the land looking after you. For example, if I don’t look after the ocean and I throw plastic in it and I catch a fish, I’m not going to eat it because it may have that plastic in it. In my culture we’ve been doing it for centuries; when we go hunting and fishing we always give back to the land as well. It’s also really important that we look after Mother Earth.”

On ‘Survive’, which started as a small riff about dinosaurs but evolved over time into a conversation about First Nations history, he could think of only one person whose voice would be the perfect accompaniment. “Uncle Jack is such a legend, Uncle is amazing,” he says of the iconic actor’s guest spot. “His whole personality is really beautiful – it’s so bright.

“And it’s amazing to have him come into the studio, it was such a privilege. We said, ‘[Jack] we just need you to talk about surviving the system’…and then he started talking – for three hours,” Baker Boy laughs remembering the sessions. “We only needed like 10 seconds, which we recorded 10 mins into the whole conversation. I learned so much from him, it was beautiful.”

Baker Boy admits he only ever felt pressure from himself: to both finish the record, and make it perfect.

While the pandemic put a stop to touring and performing, it did give him time to sort through the songs he wanted to finish, and to formulate the story Gela would tell. While he is grateful for the space this moment of peace provided, the novelty of down time is wearing off.

“I’m finding it annoying and really boring,” he admits.

“I think I’m starting to get addicted to performing in front of a lot of people and dancing,” he grins. “Especially when the crowd is going nuts for you. I did one gig [during the pandemic] where everyone was not allowed to dance and everyone had to sit down – which was so, so weird.”

This gig drought seems especially unfair for someone whose music is so entwined with performance.

Choreographed dances, playing yidaki and his irrepressible style (credited to his stylist partner, Aurie) make for an intimidatingly impressive show. While he

GELA IS OUT NOW.

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admits to getting nerves before gigs, you would never have guessed it watching him spring on stage before Big Boi at Golden Plains Festival in 2018. Reflecting on that moment, he laughs when thinking about how shaky he was – not playing the set prior to the legendary Outkast rapper, but getting to meet him afterwards. “I was freaking out, like: ‘I’ve seen you as a kid on YouTube listening to ‘Roses’.’ All I pictured when I walked in, was that I’d see him with that same jacket, that same outfit [that he wore in the clip].”

During his acceptance speech for Young Australian of the Year – delivered in both Yolŋu Matha and English – Baker spoke to young people directly: “It’s important that no matter the struggles and the pressure society puts on you,” he said, “stay strong, stay healthy, stay positive, you will get through.” It’s a potent message, and one that he still draws on. Being Baker Boy isn’t always easy, and he navigates the ups and downs with help from home.

“My family always just tell me to stay strong and to focus on why I’m doing what I’m doing,” he says. “Even now, I still need that advice and reassurance from them, sometimes especially being away from home for so long like the last couple of years, I just need to hear that from them. And sometimes not talking about it at all, just ringing them and getting to speak Language always makes me feel better.”

Despite all the recognition, when talking to Baker Boy there is no sense of ego. He laughs easily and looks positively to the future. It’s a rare trait in someone who has achieved so much, so young. It comes as no surprise then that – as his debut album is released – when asked what success means to him, he has one short answer: “My success is seeing smiles on those little kids in the remote communities and the inspirations that I put out.”

15 OCT 2021

My success is seeing smiles on those little kids in the remote communities and the inspirations that I put out.

THE SIMPLE IDEA TO END POVERTY It’s called a universal basic income – give it to people, and watch them grow. It’s been tested, and it works.

by Liam Geraghty The Big Issue UK

“I thought, Why don’t we try something like that here in Canada? We keep trying the same old things and maintaining the status quo without fixing the problem as quickly as I think we could if we empowered people to move forward on their own terms.”

A universal basic income (UBI) for all, not just for rough sleepers, has been an idea much touted by Bregman. It played a huge role in his debut book Utopia for Realists and has been tested in Finland, where a two-year trial found a basic income boosts financial wellbeing, mental health and optimism about the future – without providing a disincentive for people to work.

UBI has also taken on new significance in the COVID-19 world. In May 2020, the Spanish government approved a national minimum wage income between €462 ($735) for singles and €1015 ($1610) for families, per month, to assist 2.5 million people struggling to get by. It sees the government top up the wages for those earning less.

The New Leaf Project settled on a one-off cash transfer of C$7500 for the 50 participants, the equivalent of one year’s welfare payments in British Columbia, essentially doubling their annual income. The local provincial government was brought on board to ensure there wouldn’t be any financial penalty for those in the program.

For Kathy, who was introduced to the project while staying in emergency housing, it offered her a new way forward. “Before it was that I felt like I was hopeless, that I was stuck and I couldn’t go further,” she says. “But they weren’t about giving me a whole bunch of boundaries, they wanted me to have choices and opportunities.

I wound up spending it on clothing and food, I wound up seeing a chiropractor, and I had to bring my cat to the vet.”

In workshops on personal development and finance, participants like Kathy were asked to consider how they could best use the money to improve their own lives. Some used it to set up a new home, the lump sum paying for a bond, first month’s rent and utilities.

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illustration by Bea Vaquero

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n a COVID-battered world, it is hard to imagine walking into a room and walking out with more than $7500 in your pocket – but that is the experience that 50 people in Canada experienced thanks to a new trial that’s aiming to end poverty.

Foundations for Social Change, a Vancouver-based non-profit, worked with four homeless shelters to give people who were sleeping rough a one-off cash transfer of C$7500 – working out at almost A$8200 – as well as setting them up with a free bank account and a mobile phone.

The catch? There is none. “No strings attached, absolutely unconditional,” Claire Williams, the mastermind behind the project and the co-founder of the charity and their New Leaf Project, tells The Big Issue.

“Our whole premise is our tagline for New Leaf: ‘Believe in Someone’. I truly believe that, for the most part, if you just trust people and allow them to move forward in their life on their own terms, they will make the right decisions.

“And they know so much better what they need in their life than government agencies do. The current system is one-size-fits-all and often prolongs the duration of homelessness. There’s very little dignity and very little agency.”

An urban planner by trade, Williams started Foundations for Social Change in a bid to solve homelessness back in November 2015. She has two influences: her work at a charitable organisation in India that underlined her enormous faith in people, and Dutch historian Rutger Bregman.

Williams watched Bregman’s 2014 TED Talk titled “Why we should give everyone a basic income”, in which he refers to a project in London where rough sleepers were given £3000 ($5600), with a trustee to help them manage it.

“I was inspired by their work because for so little money they saw some amazing outcomes,” she says.

15 OCT 2021

@lgeraghty23

RAY’S STORY

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here one day everything was great, the next week everything was gone. Like my job, my house…everything, my money. It was it was gone.

I was homeless three times in my lifetime, and I was considered to be one of the participants for a cash transfer. It took me a week for it to sink in that this money was mine. Once I realised that this was for me, it actually kinda gave me my self-esteem back.

The balance that New Leaf has given me basically gave me that stepping stone, right, because I mean I was homeless.

I had no real income – and when I did make the income, it was to survive.

My goals can be met and I’m not stressing out on how I’m going to live the next day. The program gave me hope, balance and my self-esteem back. Now I can open up doors, now I can have my son come home on a permanent basis.

My goals are to better myself into [being] more front-line with the addiction and the alcoholism and the abuse. I want to give back to where I’ve come from.

I just got computer training; I start Monday. So I’m advancing myself, you know? I might one day be that important person that has a powerful voice. I’m just, right now, I’m a seed that can grow into an oak tree, right? And hopefully one day I can be there.

In that context, Williams argues, giving people the financial means to choose how they get out of poverty is the way forward. Although the project faces inevitable criticism from some quarters who may question how the money will be spent, she says the results represent significant savings for things like shelters, police, the judicial system and healthcare.

“We have a very puritanical view of the ‘deserving poor’ in the West and the ‘Heck no, you can’t give out free money, people have to pull up their bootstraps and work hard to get that money,’” Williams says.

“In some cases people haven’t started in the same position, they don’t have the same family networks, they don’t have the same financial resources and it is that financial barrier that they can’t seem to transcend.

So why don’t we give them that catalyst to move their lives forward?”

Williams is confident that her idea has that potential, as well as reframing how we treat people who are living below the poverty line on a human level. Achieving either would truly see a radical pay-off.

“For me, the number one thing is to see the human being behind the circumstance,” she says. “Rutger says that ‘poverty is not a lack of character, it’s a lack of cash’. For us, homelessness is not a character defect, it’s a circumstance, and I hope that through the pandemic it engenders more compassion to see how easily a confluence of circumstances can result in you facing homelessness.”

Additional reporting by Amy Hetherington.

15 OCT 2021

Others bought plane tickets to relocate closer to their families and support networks. A few invested in their education, or bought new clothes to go to work.

The results have been significant. Participants moved into housing faster, with half finding stable accommodation within a month of receiving the money.

Their food security improved immediately. At the end of the year, they had an average of $1100 left in savings. For all, it has disrupted the cycle of homelessness.

As Kathy says, “I think getting the transfer of the New Leaf cash is helpful because it really gave me the opportunity to grow and to dream. After it just felt like I had opportunities to move on with my life.”

Now an expansion project is underway to see how the idea scales to 200 people, with the cash transfer increased to C$8500 ($9260), in line with a rise in government payments.

Of course, the landscape of homelessness has been transformed by COVID-19 in Canada, just as it has been here in Australia. More than 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness every year, with that number on the rise. Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness last year found that 1.6 million people, or five per cent of the population, have experienced homelessness at some time, warning that the pandemic could see more people lose their homes.

Williams explains that the annual cost per person of homelessness in Canada can be upwards of $58,000, and costs the economy $7.6 billion per year. By providing people the means to move into housing, the cash transfers could save society more than $12 million per month, if offered to all those experiencing homelessness.

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PHOTO SUPPLIED BY FOUNDATIONS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Ray Bonnetrouge was a participant in the New Leaf Project. He used the cash transfer to invest in his education, and things that gave him stability. He found housing, and he received his Community Support Worker Certificate. He’s now co-chair of Foundations of Social Changes Lived Experience Advisory Panel.

In your book you propose we give everyone in society $16,500 just for being alive. How do we know it won’t just be wasted on booze?

There is an entrenched idea on the right and left that poverty is just a personality defect. As Margaret Thatcher once put it – a lack of character. And what I am trying to prove is that it’s actually just about a lack of money.

There is now some really exciting new evidence that shows poverty is really just about the context. Yes, it’s true that if you’re poor you are more likely to make poor decisions – you smoke more, drink more, take out more loans you can’t afford. But the evidence shows that we would all make the same decisions if we

15 OCT 2021

PHOTO BY GETTY. TEXT COURTESY OF INSP.NGO/THE BIG ISSUE UK BIGISSUE.COM @BIGISSUE

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e gotta be talking about taxes.

Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.”

It was with this outburst, delivered at the annual billionaires’ get-together in Davos back in January 2019, that Rutger Bregman went from moderately wellknown Dutch historian to an overnight viral sensation. Utopia for Realists – his book outlining proposals for a universal basic income, unlimited immigration and a shorter working week, mostly funded by tax hikes for the super-rich – is now an international bestseller, and Bregman’s ideas, dismissed as “communist fantasy” just a few years ago, are being embraced more broadly.

were living without money. If you lift people out of poverty, then they start making much smarter decisions.

Isn’t that why the welfare state is there?

So often the welfare state can be incredibly bureaucratic and paternalistic. And there’s the issue of the poverty trap, where people lose their benefits and are worse off because they start working. In many cases around the world the welfare state as we have it can trap people at the bottom rather than act as a trampoline for them to bounce up. And that’s why I love this idea of a guaranteed basic income. It’s unconditional. It’s a floor you can always stand up on. You can earn money to supplement it of course – but you can always fall back on it if you need.

How would that impact upon people’s drive to succeed?

It simply gives people the freedom to choose what they want to do. Look at the British bands from the 60s like the Beatles and the Stones. Not many people talk about the fact that they were on the dole, which is how they could afford the time to come up with ideas and create this wonderful music. UB40 even named themselves after the unemployment benefit form.

This is how universal basic income should function as well. Give people the freedom to decide for themselves what they want to make of their life – go to a different job, move to a different city, start their own company, make music, make art, whatever.

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A FLOOR TO STAND ON

by Sam Delaney The Big Issue UK

Rutger Bregman explains the ideas behind a universal basic income – and debunks some common misconceptions.

This is exactly the sort of stuff that would make people hostile to the idea. How can you convince them that we need more bands?

Because it’s not just the right thing to do but also the financially smart thing to do. If you don’t have a heart, you still have a wallet. It actually saves you money. There was a small experiment in London with 13 men who were experiencing homelessness and they received £3000 each as personal budget to spend how they wanted to. A lot of people were very skeptical of that experiment. But a year later nine of the 13 had a roof above their head, two more had applied for housing and it actually saved everyone a lot of money.

You’ve been accused of being a communist. How would you describe your politics?

I am a traditional social democrat.

I believe in managing capitalism because it has a tendency to get out of balance.

Basic income guarantee has a strong tradition among social democrats. At the end of the 60s in the US almost everyone expected that some form of universal basic income was going to be implemented. It was actually [Republican president] Richard Nixon who almost implemented it at the beginning of the 70s and the Democrats voted against it because they thought it should have been higher. It would have been such a revolutionary change in the whole welfare state.

Some people think you misjudge human nature – don’t we all like to see people earn what they deserve?

Most people do believe in meritocracy but that’s exactly what I am arguing for here. Bin collectors should get paid more than bankers because they contribute more. If bin collectors go on strike, then we all have big problems. If bankers strike, nothing much happens.

But don’t we all want to get ahead?

I think that is tied to the one big fallacy in [Western] thinking: that human beings are by nature competitive. All the evidence has converged in the past 15 years to suggest that humans are more naturally geared towards empathy and co-operation. It is more natural for humans to be nice to each other. We actually have a very deep need to connect with other people.

series by Sally Davies

We’ve all seen the inside of Seinfeld’s apartment – now Sally Davies takes us inside real-life New York digs.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

Fiona is a columnist for The Big Issue, author of This Chicken Life and a cabaret director, DJ, performer and teacher.

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

The Big Picture

Apartments of New York

“New York is magic to me. Gentrification is inevitable. You can choose to resist it or live your privileged life and be grateful for what you have,” says Gerald DeCock.

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FOR MORE, GO TO SALLYDAVIESPHOTO.COM.

15 OCT 2021

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oo, de doo, de doo, doo doo doo doo, de doo, de doo…Lou Reed recorded ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ in 1972, a tribute to New York City: America’s gritty countercultural destination for artists, queers, queens, musicians, students, writers, designers, thinkers, beat poets, punks and dreamers. Big characters, non-conformists and transgressives all, they came and shaped New York’s reputation and identity. On the website Please Kill Me, portrait photographer Sally Davies is interviewed by fellow long-term NYC resident, writer James Marshall. “That was always the way to tell if you were at the right party that night,” Marshall reminisces, “if Andy [Warhol] was there.”

Fifty years later, and cheap rent, raw lofts and a crackling subculture of experimentation, drugs and art are a distant memory. Only the rich can afford NYC now, and the eccentric, bohemian heart of one of the world’s great cities is hollowing out through gentrification. “We live in a capitalist society. Like it or not, rents and real estate prices define our culture,” says Davies. Her book of portraits, New Yorkers, captures those who remain – classic New York characters from the margins, in their cramped, idiosyncratic apartments, crammed with a lifetime’s curation of personality, art and artefacts. Fascinating, charismatic, creative and defiant.

“New Yorkers are scrappy. You have to be to make it here.

It’s a glimpse into the lives of the ones still here,” says Davies, who has spent 38 years photographing the streets of the Lower East Side. “My original idea was to include all ages, gender and races, but the book wrote its own story. The old guard are living in rent-controlled apartments they’ve had since 1980. Young people, like Meta [Hillman, pictured]…I don’t know how long she’ll be able to stay.”

Besides photographs, New Yorkers catches each subject in a few words of reflection. Liz Duffy Adams misses the early days of “danger and heartbreak”. Her apartment has never been upgraded, so it still has a bath in the kitchen, which used to be common in the early 1900s, after the city mandated tubs in every tenement to help improve the poor living conditions endured by immigrants. Sur Rodney was a major player in the East Village art scene, and loathes the new “suburban mentality”. Gerald DeCock lives in the historic Chelsea Hotel, as it is upgraded around him, noting that very few original residents remain. Then there’s Flloyd NYC, who “was one of the original drag queens from the old days at the Pyramid Club”, according to Davies. “People like Madonna could be spotted down there hustling her latest tapes. It closed for good during COVID, so that marks the end of an era.”

New Yorkers was finished a squeak before the pandemic hit, when it was still possible to enter other people’s homes.

The book functions, then, as a double souvenir of lost times.

Davies remains buoyant. “It’s the misfits who change the world, and they will always find a place to live and create.

“Manhattan’s no longer that, but squashing people’s individuality is impossible, and the flowers will always grow between the sidewalk cement blocks.”

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

After a two-year court battle, Flloyd NYC now enjoys “insanely low” rent. “This has given me the ability to live the life of a starving artist.”

“I am intrigued to see how the place will look in another 10 years, if hopefully the rent prices don’t run me out by then!” says Meta Hillman.

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“New York City was a cosmopolitan city, where differences were expected and tolerated,” says Sur Rodney. “Now it’s been taken over by a suburban mentality, where difference has become a threat.”

15 OCT 2021

Liz Duffy Adams: “I’m grateful I came to the city when it still had a wild heart, when a broke young person could get a cheap apartment in Manhattan.”

Ricky

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Parents on Facebook is of course the reason no-one under the age of 40 goes near that cursed site.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

Star Tech

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still remember the first computer we got. I was a teenager, Nirvana was the biggest band in the world, and our IBM PC compatible was the biggest thing in my bedroom. It displayed green text on a black background. There was something called “MSDOS”. It must have had Microsoft Paint because I distinctly remember designing terrible album covers for my punk band, ready to print in the unlikely event that we ever bought a printer, or my band ever recorded an album.

It would be years before we got the internet, years before I actually used a computer for any kind of study. But it was nice to have it plonked so assertively on my desk; a satisfying feeling to slip in those floppy disks and pretend I was a savvy tech-whiz from the future.

Fast forward a few decades and not a lot has changed. There’s still a computer on my desk that I barely know how to use. Luckily my needs are not too complicated. I use it to write stuff, process a few photographs and watch live streams of press conferences and protests for hour upon wasted hour.

If I need technical help I call out to my long-suffering tech-support partner in the next room. “Honey, how do I get that toolbar thing to come back at the top of the page?” or “Honey, can you explain what the Cloud is again?” These (quite reasonable) questions are usually answered with another question, usually along the lines of, “How would you like me to come in there and smash that laptop over your stupid head?”

The thing about technology, and idiots like me who don’t understand it, is that we keep making the mistake of thinking we need more of it. I subscribed to some fancy accounting software, guaranteed to make my life simpler and freeing up time from the tedium of paperwork so I could spend more time watching tedious press conferences.

Sometimes for a laugh I ring an actual tech support line and get answers along the lines

of “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

What they should really say to me is, “Have you tried turning it off and never turning it on again?” Now that would really solve my problems.

The comic-tragic part of this whole sorry situation is that I’m often called upon by my mother for tech support. Do I hear groans of empathy from a few of you? Apparently this is a common duty among children these days – I guess maybe it’s payback for all those years of having to answer those unanswerable questions we had as kids, like “Why is the sky blue?” and “Why doesn’t uncle Bruce wear any clothes when he sunbathes?”

The other comic-tragic thing is we think we’re helping by answering our mothers’ tech support questions, when we’re actually often creating more problems. The other week I taught my mum how to copy and paste hyperlinks. Big mistake. She is now fully empowered in this regard and is dropping links everywhere she goes online, everywhere being Facebook. Parents on Facebook is of course the reason no-one under the age of 40 goes near that cursed site. I actually loved it last year when Facebook briefly stopped news articles from being shared. I would prefer it if they stopped everything being shared, then stopped mothers from having the ability to comment, then shut down the whole website. Hey, that actually happened! If only it were permanent.

If I seem grumpy it’s probably because once again I’ve forgotten how to drop a signature into a PDF. “They should invent a screen where you can write on it, with, like, an electronic pen,” I call out to tech support in the other room.

“They have,” she calls back, with a longsuffering sigh. “And you’re not getting one.”

Such a shame, I could have finally drawn my band’s album cover.

Ricky is a writer and musician, but no IT guru.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

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t’ll come back,” Ollie says confidently, as we stand shoulderto-socially-distanced-shoulder surveying the lawn, sorry, “lawn”. “It’s Sir Walter, right? It always comes back.” It’s in his interest to say that, of course, as he has just laid fancy brick paving in a grass-adjacent section of our backyard, and as part of his creative process liberally sprayed it with gravel and cement slurry. Fair play, Ollie is an artiste and the paving is sensational, but the grass does not look like it will “come back”. It didn’t look like it would “come back” before it was smothered in a paste of brick dust and rock chips. It was already doing a credible impersonation of advanced male pattern baldness, the kind that makes certain men susceptible to Ashley & Martin advertising.

What, I wonder, is the grass’ problem? It has one job. According to the brochure we received with our rolls of turf, it’s supposed to be a thatched sea of green, ideal for families with pets (ie chooks) and children (ie chooks).

It is tough and resistant to weeds. This is the genetically engineered king of grasses, tailored for Australian Conditions. We’ve got the official DNA certification. Clearly we’ve messed up at our end.

We’ve tried, lord knows, with our handful of metres squared. There’s been watering (too much? Too little?). There’s been fertilising (too much? Too little?). There’s been bedding down (is the soil compacted? Is the turf lifting?).

Greg’s bought shoes with spikes on the soles and tromped up and down to aerate it (too… spiky?). We’ve kept the chickens locked up so they don’t munch it to death (the girls are over it). I’ve picked up leaves as they fall on the grass, concerned they’re blocking the sun and robbing each precious blade of nutrients. I’ve been vigilant in searching out slimy pockets of dreaded anaerobic leaf peat. And after Ollie, I turned my attention to gravel, picking it out piece by piece and half filling a bucket.

I have, gentle reader, lavished less attention on family members. And yet, here we are. Mid-spring, and there’s one corner giving it a red-hot crack, but mostly, apart from a few pops of green, it could win a raffia mat lookalike competition. Is this what “coming back” looks like? I have no idea.

I should phone John Farnham ahaha. I gauge the lawn’s progress daily, checking after rain or a burst of full sun. Is that bit…growing?

I think that’s an incremental gain! I will it on from the sidelines – I mean I certainly can’t walk on it. Come on grass! You can do it!

I was cheering on another underdog recently, the Western Bulldogs in the AFL grand final. Played in Perth, of all the places.

The Doggies were smashed (OMG so smashed)

by Melbourne, but for two glorious weeks the western suburbs of Melbourne rooted them on from afar. We were buoyant! There were balloons! Fences were painted red, white and blue – pops of team colours sprang up everywhere – businesses commissioned wall murals, kids and families wore their guernseys out on their lockdown walks. Eh, we didn’t win, but our spirits soared.

And guess what? A bookshop just opened round the corner from me. A BRAND-NEW INDIE BOOKSHOP. It’s like a spaceship smelling of joy landed from the lost planet Hopes and Dreams. It’s only doing click, collect and coffee right now, but our suburb has lost its collective mind with excitement.

From the sidelines, the world’s most locked down city – you can’t say Melbourne’s not competitive – may look unpromising. Shuttered shops, closed businesses and people are, like my chooks, over being cooped up for the greater good. But if you’re rooting from the sidelines, leaning in close, there are defiant pops of colour. We’re coming back, baby. It’s our DNA.

Fiona is writer, comedian and one turf cookie.

15 OCT 2021

Lawn and Order

It’s like a spaceship smelling of joy landed from the lost planet Hopes and Dreams.

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Fiona

Blood, zombies, giant spiders – Greg Nicotero’s resurrected Creepshow is absolutely killing it.

by Jamie Tram @sameytram

Jamie Tram is a writer and Halloween enthusiast from Melbourne.

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ew people in horror have spilled as much blood as Greg Nicotero.

When we meet over Zoom, there’s even a blotch of it on his shirt.

His intricate, hyperreal make-up effects have astounded audiences across four decades, on a series of groundbreaking collaborations with George A Romero, Wes Craven and countless other horror legends. As a make-up artist, executive producer and director on The Walking Dead (2010-2022), he helped redefine the zombie for a modern, less censorious era of television, and inspired a new generation of horror fans in the process.

In 2019, Nicotero resurrected the cult horror anthology Creepshow for AMC’s boutique streaming service, Shudder.

Based on Romero’s 1982 feature, the series is, in many ways, the perfect Halloween treat – reminiscent of reaching into a candy-laden pumpkin on a stranger’s front porch and not knowing quite what you’ll pull out. It’s certainly the only show airing where haunted dollhouses, Lovecraftian abysses and a support group for the lycanthropic can co-exist. Reflecting on the third season’s unpredictable line-up, showrunner and director Nicotero says he chose “stories that were a little more outrageous... [they] were really personal to me”.

The high-concept grotesquerie of Creepshow happens to be a poignant homecoming for Nicotero. Growing up, his home town of Pittsburgh was

the centre of Romero’s foundational zombie films, which began with Night of the Living Dead (1968). After a chance meeting with Romero at 16, Nicotero found himself on the set of the original Creepshow film, where he was introduced to legendary make-up and special effects artist Tom Savini.

Nicotero fondly remembers: “I said to him, ‘I want to do what you do!’”

After 35 years in the industry, Nicotero experiences the same enthusiasm from emerging, like-minded artists. “It makes me proud that I’m able to perpetuate my craft by inspiring young people.”

The original Creepshow is something of a touchstone for horror cinephiles, marked by the eccentric chemistry between Romero’s direction and the screenwriting debut of Stephen King. As a tribute to the EC Comics of yesteryear, it faithfully recreated the graphic novel format: brash colours and the pulpy sensibility of series such as Tales from the Crypt, promising to be “the most fun you’ll ever have being scared!” Nicotero’s take on the material is similarly a labour of love, marrying limited resources with an infinite well of ideas.

“Every week we get to create new creatures and the sky is the limit because it’s my show,” he says. Not only does it further the legacy of the source material, the Creepshow series is an overview of his own career and his influences as a horror fan. Genre devotees will appreciate the homages to Sam Raimi (Evil Dead), John Carpenter (Halloween) and other key collaborators from Nicotero’s filmography, along with the slew of horror icons behind and in front of the camera (including Tom Savini, fittingly).

“The horror genre has the most loyal, devoted followers,” he says.

PHOTO BY GENE PAGE/AMC

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Small Screams

Creepshow

Shock, Horrors!

CREEPSHOW IS STREAMING ON SHUDDER.

15 OCT 2021

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The horror genre has the most loyal, devoted followers. It’s a monster that needs to be fed.

“It’s a monster that needs to be fed.”

Facing down the gaping maw is a team effort. “We all thrived on each other’s commitment and passion, and I was really proud to be in the trenches with this group of people because they saw how much I loved it – and I do believe that it shows on screen.” He likens the process of making a TV show to conducting an orchestra. “You have to be in tune with every musician, and I’m grateful for the experience.”

Having begun his career during a golden era of practical effects, Nicotero has navigated the seismic shift from analogue to digital filmmaking. While genre fans often object to the use of CGI effects, he views it as another instrument to be deployed in his craft. “We’re asked to paint a beautiful portrait. One person has the brushes, another person has the paint…it’s when all those things work in harmony that it succeeds,” he says.

“In my career, I’ve always collaborated with filmmakers that understand that harmony.” In expectedly macabre fashion, Nicotero jokes that the scars of horror fans mark the place where they were once conjoined. “I was separated at birth from somebody like [The Walking Dead creator] Frank Darabont. He got nudged into the writing world and I got nudged into the make-up effects world.”

On screen or off, very little gets under Nicotero’s skin – though he does harbour a phobia of spiders. (In Creepshow season two, an exterminator is haunted by a giant arachnid, a puppet rendered in alarmingly vivid detail.) “It’s really hard to lean into what actually scares me. I know what I think is scary to other people,” he says. “My thrill is being able to scare [them].” Though nothing has matched the visceral terror of seeing films like Dawn of the Dead (1978) and The Thing (1982) in cinemas as a young adult, he sings the praises of Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018), along with recent zombie TV series Kingdom. Despite having been neck-deep making The Walking Dead for 11 years, he binged the South Korean show, now streaming on Netflix, in two days. “They have a different take on it that is really fun.”

In horror, nothing ever stays dead.

Michelle de Kretser

Books Lauded author Michelle de Kretser’s new novel Scary Monsters is a flip book with a difference – capturing the disorientation of the migrant experience.

by Elizabeth Flux @elizabethflux

Elizabeth Flux is a writer of both fiction and non‑fiction, and is the editor-at-large for the Melbourne City of Literature Office.

I

’d always seen myself as the person reading the book, or editing the book, rather than the person writing the book,” says author Michelle de Kretser.

Her debut novel, The Rose Grower, originally began as a writing exercise – a way of passing the time during a year of unpaid leave from her work as an editor at Lonely Planet. “I did not think of it as writing a novel. It seems incredible now, but the subconscious is a wonderful thing,” she reflects.

“I think that if I had said, ‘I’m going to sit in front

PHOTO BY JOY LAI

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Flipping the Script

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The Permanent Resident by Roanna Gonsalves, a collection of short stories looking at migrant lives.

H ow to Be Both by Ali Smith, a novel told in the alternating perspectives of a modern-day teenager and a Renaissance artist. Published in two different versions, readers didn’t know whose story would start the book.

The Living by Anjali Joseph, a story split between two narrators, one in England, another in India.

of my desk and be in front of my computer and write a novel’, I would have felt too daunted.”

The acclaimed author is now on the cusp of releasing her eighth book, Scary Monsters. “It’s a novel in two parts,” explains de Kretser. “Each part is narrated by a migrant of colour to Australia. Lili is a young woman who is working in the south of France in the early 1980s, and Lyle is a middle-aged man working in Melbourne in the near-future.”

Through Lyle and Lili’s stories, Scary Monsters tackles, among other things, ageism, consumerism, the climate emergency, racism, and the migrant experience, while also being an absorbing, vibrant book that is a joy to read. It’s serious without being solemn – and it uses more than words to provoke feelings in readers.

“The thing about the novel is that it comes in a flip format,” de Kretser reflects. “When you come to the end of one [story], if you want to go on and read the other, you have to turn the novel upside down and start again from the beginning.”

It’s an experiment in form as well as a physical extension of the ideas in the book, putting readers into the shoes of her characters, of migrants, even if just for a moment. “The easiest way to explain it is that migration upends lives,” she explains. “And so the reader will experience at a very micro level, fleetingly, that sense of bewilderment and disorientation that migration brings.”

When she first proposed the idea, she was nervous.

“I worried that it would merely be seen as gimmicky.”

However, in a moment of serendipity, she read Theory of the Gimmick by American cultural theorist Sianne Ngai. Her suggestion that we call an object a gimmick when we’re not sure of its worth spoke to her. “Does this thing enhance our lives? Or was it a waste of money?”

SCARY MONSTERS IS OUT 19 OCTOBER.

15 OCT 2021

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“As I read, I realised that this is exactly how migrants are viewed – migrants of colour specifically. Because if you think about it, our worth is constantly being put into doubt,” she explains. “Think of the narratives that circulate around migrants – on the one hand, we’re said to diversify Australian society and culture, to enrich it. On the other hand, we are said to dilute traditional Australian values.

“I realised that migrants really function as gimmicky citizens – we are never seen exactly as real Australians.”

It was this that gave her the confidence to push ahead with her idea of the split narrative. “This was absolutely a format which was suited to this novel, because it embodied the meaning of the novel on so many different layers.”

Scary Monsters presents the migrant experience in very different ways, but the core truths run through both narratives. Lili is never viewed as a “real” Australian because of the colour of her skin, while Lyle and his wife Chanel go to desperate and ugly lengths in order to fit in, shedding more of themselves and their history. Over his section of the book the sacrifices he makes cause Lyle to grow colder, more detached.

“He is deplorable in so many ways,” de Kretser says. “But he’s also representing a truth about Australia because he does see through the facade to what Australia really wants of Australians, which is acquiescence in all sorts of things.”

The future presented in Lyle’s section is frightening – the climate emergency has intensified, the elderly are treated with condescending indifference, practising Islam has been classified as a terrorist offence, and speaking out against the government is met with swift and detached punishment. De Kretser is quick to highlight, however, that though this world is plausible, it is still fiction – and that there is room for optimism.

“I am kind of anti messages in novels, but I would say I have left space for readers to think about the possibility that this doesn’t have to be our future.”

Her books have been extremely well received, with a loyal following of readers and numerous awards and shortlistings – including having won the prestigious Miles Franklin Award twice. If there is a “secret” to her success, perhaps it is that she only writes about topics she cares deeply about.

“I get very anxious. I think Oh I will never write again, and perhaps I won’t – but I think I want to accept that rather than being that person whose later books turn into pale copies of their earlier books. You know, I always think of it like a photocopier that’s running out of toner. Better not to be that photocopier.”

When asked about how she decides to commit to a project, however, her answer is simple: “When I feel I have something to say – something compelling to say... and that was what happened with this book.”

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Scary Monsters is the kind of book that immediately makes you want to read more. So, where to turn next? Michelle de Kretser suggests these three books:

Good Morning

EF! U P, ST

Music

WA K E

by Doug Wallen

Melbourne duo Good Morning swing open the Barnyard doors to talk recording, touring, and their harmonious friendship.

@wallendoug

Doug Wallen is a freelance writer and editor based in Victoria, and a former music editor of The Big Issue.

PHOTO BY NICK MCKK

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Rise and Shine

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ou know those close friends who finish each other’s sentences? That’s Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons, whose intuitive relationship informs the music they make as Good Morning. Swapping lead vocal duties and guitar lines with a breeziness born out of closeness, the Melbourne duo have been collaborating for a full decade now, including a couple of years spent together in a previous band.

“There’s a baseline level of trust,” Blair says via Zoom.

“I love Liam’s songwriting.”

“Likewise,” Parsons chimes in.

“So I’m always excited to hear new ideas from him,” adds Blair.

Beyond that cosy quality of two friends exchanging their own music, Good Morning’s rumpled DIY sound can be traced directly back to their origins as a home-recording project. And while the pair recorded their new album at the Loft – the Chicago studio founded by rock icons Wilco – it sounds every bit as intimate and free-flowing as their previous work. In fact, Barnyard feels at times like we’re eavesdropping on Blair and Parsons, as the pair crack each other up with references to TV’s Young Sheldon and Australian actor Matthew Newton.

There are moments of seriousness, however, especially

a faraway past. “To me it feels very distant,” says Blair of the pre-COVID world in which they made the album.

“It feels like this lost era,” adds Parsons.

Touring the US was a longtime dream for Good Morning, whose gradual word-of-mouth success befits their often mellow – yet incredibly propulsive and adroit – songs. The melancholic track ‘Warned You’ from their Shawcross EP (2014) boasts more than 50 million streams on Spotify alone, while rapper A$AP Rocky prominently sampled the same EP’s ‘Don’t Come Home Today’ for his 2018 single ‘Kids Turned Out Fine’.

When they toured the States, the duo made a point of making more low-key stops between bigger American cities, finding fans in unexpected places, including a record store in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

When recording at the Loft, the pair prioritised retaining the scrappy, spontaneous elements of their work. “It’s very much set up like a home studio.

It’s lived-in, not sterile,” says Parsons, while Blair credits engineer Tom Schick with being “obliging of any and all ideas” they brought to the sessions.

As for the layered guitars heard on ‘Country’, they represent one of Good Morning’s most affable features.

Parsons and Blair’s richly tangled guitar exchanges

There’s a baseline level of trust. I love Liam’s songwriting, so I’m always excited to hear new ideas from him.

can also be heard all over the 2021 album Gems by their friend Dannika Horvat, and it’s a continual delight across Barnyard.

“I feel like I’m the least interested in guitar music that I’ve been for a long time,” says Blair. “But with that said, I’ve probably [been] playing more guitar than I ever have in my life, just because there’s nothing else to do at home.” He’ll often mess around with different guitar tunings to make the instrument feel new to him all over again.

Grounded for more than a year by COVID, the pair have been able to write and record when allowed in their studio space in Melbourne’s Preston. Describing their work routine as “very harmonious,” the two old friends have maintained a strong creative output during a period of uncertainty for the music industry. Besides their current set-up feeling a lot like their early days of recording at home, it has enabled them to write enough material for at least a double album to follow up Barnyard – depending on how severe they decide to get with the eventual editing.

“It’s gotten out of hand,” says Parsons with a laugh.

BARNYARD IS OUT 22 OCTOBER.

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with soul-searching lead single and album closer ‘Country’.

On the track, Parsons sings about his partner and mental health: “I got a boyfriend and I got a psych/I know that one of them cares about me/And at least that the other one tries.” Atop a percolating drum machine and a lively swarm of stacked guitar parts, Parsons goes on to sing about particularly dark thoughts he still nurses, as well as fearing that he’s incapable of change. The song may be four years old now, but it captures a poignant moment in Parsons’ self‑development.

The prospect of sharing such a moment didn’t faze him, however. “I’m not sweatin’ it,” he says. “It’s written in a more direct way, but I know personally that I’ve said heavier stuff on records that was maybe less coherent [and] more shrouded.”

Equally pointed is ‘Burning’, a jaded reflection on the Australian government’s lacklustre response to the climate crisis. Written a few months before the cataclysmic bushfires in the summer of 2019-20, it’s a song about finding your own peace during increasingly dire circumstances. Though it’s another snapshot of a specific point in time, Parsons laments, “Unfortunately it’s probably going to be a fairly evergreen topic.”

Recorded in late 2019 during an extensive American tour, Barnyard, to the band, feels like a transmission from

15 OCT 2021

STEFAN BLAIR ON BANDMATE LIAM PARSONS

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

B

efore ascending to the heights of golden age Hollywood, Sophia Loren experienced severe poverty as a child in Naples, not to mention the horrors of WWII. Speaking to The Big Issue last year, the now‑87-year-old screen icon said she believed the hardships of her childhood helped more than hindered. “It made me who I am,” she said. “It was extremely tough and painful but I wouldn’t trade it for anything because it made me appreciate life so much more and it gave me this drive that helped me throughout my life.”

The drive is there, radiant, in all her best roles, along with her mischievous smile and her statuesque beauty. While it was Two Women (1960), an earnest war‑time tale of a mother and daughter on the run, that earned Loren an Oscar – the first ever given for a performance in a foreign-language film – it’s director Vittorio De Sica’s later film, Marriage Italian Style (1964), that particularly sparkles with her ebullient presence.

This brash, retro comedy of manners – in which Loren plays the weary mistress with a heart of gold against heartthrob Marcello Mastroianni’s moneyed, egotistical cad – screens nationally from 20 October in the Italian Goddesses program, as part of the St Ali Italian Film Festival. Stubbornly coming back from the dead to demand something like justice, Loren displays that winning determination streak in a performance that spins on a dime from high-spirited hijinks to poignant despair. ABB

GOLDEN AGE: SOPHIA LOREN

LAMB 

Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Icelandic folk horror is a masterwork in sheep acting. Sheep are notoriously tough to wrangle (Ang Lee swore he’d never work with one again after Brokeback Mountain), but Jóhannsson draws out their magnetism through unnerving edits and close-ups.

A mother ewe bleats anxiously at a window; grizzled flocks emerge from mist. They bow their heads together, twitching in communion. Nature feels autonomous and alive, enhanced by DP Eli Arenson’s sweeping shots of the mountain valley where grieving couple (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Gudnason) have their farm. One night, the titular lamb is born: a sheep-human hybrid who is adopted and beloved by the protagonists. The lamb-girl is an uncanny marriage of practical effects and CGI, a perfect balance of creepy and cute. Sadly, Jóhannsson seems more invested in inert marital tensions than the ancient and strange mythology at the film’s heart. The straight‑faced mood flails against the wacky premise, until it feels more baffling than haunting. CLAIRE CAO MALIGNANT

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After a few years making blockbusters like Furious 7 (2015) and Aquaman (2018), Australia’s own James Wan re-embraces his gory roots in this knowingly ridiculous mashup of horror movie tropes. Following an asylum-set prologue, Malignant kicks off when Madison (Annabelle Wallis) loses both her husband and unborn child to a ghostly killer named Gabriel. The already suspicious police turn hostile when Madison claims to be witnessing Gabriel’s murders in her dreams, so it’s up to her and her loyal sister to figure out who/what Gabriel is and what he wants with Madison. Anyone familiar with the genre’s history will quickly figure out the mystery, but Wan executes his set pieces and reveals with cackling audacity, leaning into the absurdity by flinging his camera around the dollhouse sets and cranking up the violence to action-movie extremes. It is refreshing to see a horror film that is concerned less with serious psychological investigation and more with strange and bloody imagery. KAI PERRIGNON

THE LAST DUEL 

Matt Damon’s mullet brings some much-needed levity to this two-and-a-half-hour slog. The setting is France in the late 1300s and two knights, Jean de Carrouges (Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), harbour various grudges against one another. Tensions come to a head when Carrouges’ wife Marguerite (Jodie Corner) accuses Le Gris of rape. We’re told the same story three times, first from the perspective of the husband, then the aggressor, and finally the aggressed. It’s not quite Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), but Marguerite’s account – which an intertitle labels as “the truth” – turns the film into an uninspired MeToo allegory, complete with a trial and characters making statements that are blatantly anachronistic but spell things out for the viewer. Whether the French 14th century is really that helpful a means of illuminating our patriarchal present is dubious.

There is, however, a 20-minute duel at the end to make up for all the boredom that came before.

GIOVANNI MARCHINI CAMIA

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

THE DONUT KING  | DOCPLAY

SENIOR MOMENT

 | PC, XBOX

 | DVD + VOD FROM 20 OCT

Opening as a fairly standard tale of living in the shadow of greatness, The Artful Escape follows Francis Vendetti, a mild-mannered, mop-haired boy who hides his psychedelic shredding dreams behind a veneer of folk balladry. It’s what’s expected of him, after all, as the nephew of Johnson Vendetti, a Dylan-esque, once-in-a-generation songwriter. To free himself from the binds of artistic oppression, Francis embarks on a whacked‑out cosmic adventure across space, time and identity, but only ever on a horizontal axis. Laying eyes on the game’s gorgeous galactic vistas is the highlight of the three‑odd hours it takes to complete The Artful Escape. However, the narrative of a repressed, budding artist embarking on a creative journey across space and time rubs strangely against gameplay that amounts to running left and right, and engaging in dull games of Simon Says with the denizens of the cosmos, hampering the game’s promise of endless universe-trekking possibilities.

A star-studded rom-com whose studded stars may not be at their brightest, Senior Moment will still put a twinkle in your eye.

Victor (William Shatner), with his vintage car, honeybun addiction, best friend Sal (Christopher Lloyd) and commitment issues, is 73 going on 22. But when his youthful impulses almost kill 12 people, his licence and car are confiscated. Life seems all the worse until a sweaty bus ride and busted grocery bag cross his path with Caroline’s (Jean Smart). Director Giorgio Serafini isn’t reinventing the meet-cute, but when have the likes of Lloyd or Smart – hot off her Emmy win for Hacks (Stan) – ever been anything short of a delight? The vivacious vintage talent deliver a familiar series of sitcom‑esque hijinks to an inevitably charming conclusion. It’s easy enough to dismiss, especially given the script’s outdated Snapchat quips, but the appeal isn’t in the trodden trail of tropes. It’s that seniors desire to tread them in their seventies and eighties as much as they did in their youth. MERRYANA SALEM

NICHOLAS KENNEDY

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fter reading Jamie Tram’s killer interview with Creepshow maestro Greg Nicotero, I’ve been thinking about my favourite horror films from this continent. I’m not keen on the torturous orchestrations of Wolf Creek (2005), and I’ve lost all patience for Ozploitation’s (poorly aged) staples. Yet I find myself forever returning to beDevil (1993), a bold triptych of ghost stories told to writer-director Tracey Moffatt in childhood, and exorcised on screen like a fluoro fever dream.

The first tale, ‘Mr Chuck’, centres on an ominous bog haunted by the spirit of an American GI. It flits from an overtly stylised set – where lime-green skies wash an obvious soundstage – to sweeping holiday vistas shot on location at Bribie Island (its stoked beachgoers evoke 1988’s ‘Celebration of a Nation’ ad with a raised brow). The second vignette, ‘Choo Choo Choo Choo’, sends a ghost train through an outback landscape, again rendered with expressionistic flair by Moffatt, primarily a photographer, who also appears in this section’s cast. The final fable, ‘Lovin’ the Spin I’m In’, recounts a doomed love story, complete with dream ballet, a Frida Kahlo homage, and a teen who sleeps in his rollerskates. beDevil was this country’s first feature film directed by an Indigenous woman. Though it screened at Cannes and was praised by critics, its campfire delights never ignited mainstream crowds. But there’s still time to embrace this surreal thrill! Sate your cravings this Halloween, or any time before 13 June 2024, via SBS on Demand. AK

15 OCT 2021

THE ARTFUL ESCAPE

BEWITCHED

BY BEDEVIL

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When Ted Ngoy tasted a donut for the first time after migrating to the US from Cambodia in 1975, he fell in love and also found a business idea. It led him to owning some 60-plus donut stores, giving new life to other CambodianAmerican families in the process. With an immigrant mindset he took advantage of capitalism in the Carter/Reagan era, finding any opportunity to save money – whether that was having his kids help out, or using the cheaper pink box packaging that became iconic. For Ngoy, nicknamed “The Donut King”, the American Dream was not a white picket fence in the suburbs, but the colourful palette of myriad donut flavours. His hunger for more led to his rise and eventual downfall, as charted in Alice Gu’s sustained sugar rush of a documentary.

The fast-paced editing matches the hectic working hours in these donut shops. At times, it feels like a commercial itself and only starts to breathe when it looks at other families that thrived.

While the majority of the runtime thoroughly covers Ngoy’s roller-coaster history, it’s the steady rise of a hard work ethic in Cambodian families that shines through. ALLISON CHHORN

Music Reviews

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Isabella Trimboli Music Editor

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hile lockdown drags on, there continues to be a wealth of great Australian music being released by local, independent labels across the country.

It’s never been a more important time to support artists by purchasing music or merch.

Here are a few of my favourite recent releases.

Annabel Blackman of indie-rock foursome Body Type strikes out on her own with her debut EP The Sentimentalist (under the alias Solo Career, which she has used for her home recording project since 2018), released by Dinosaur City Records. Here, she carries on the tradition of bands like Broadcast and Stereolab, combining cinematic but subdued experimental pop with a voice that floats above the mix, enchanting with its cool, blunt detachment. The lofty elements of relationships (both familial and romantic) are the EP’s main concern, best felt on EP closer ‘Sublover’, a track about feeling inadequate in front of a romantic partner and wanting to subcontract out friends to fulfil roles you can’t carry out on your own.

Melbourne’s The Finks return with the “non-album” The Moment the World Rushed In, out via Milk! Records. The release is a muted affair, with Oliver Mestitz playing with synths, cassettes, cellos, drum machines and organs to create an expansive, blissfully ambient album, which recalls the pastoral experimentations of artists like Virginia Astley (especially her 1983 album from Gardens Where We Feel Secure). It’s the perfect balm for this turbulent and gruelling spring. IT

ANNABEL BLACKMAN: FIELD OF DREAMS

@itrimboli

I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: A TRIBUTE TO THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO VARIOUS ARTISTS 

The debut album by New York City art rockers The Velvet Underground, made in collaboration with icy Teutonic It girl Nico, may not have topped the pops upon its release in 1967, but – as Brian Eno famously quipped – just about everyone who did buy a copy would go on to start a band of their own. On this timely tribute album (Todd Haynes’ immersive documentary The Velvet Underground is also out now, on Apple TV+), a number of the Velvets’ acolytes offer their gratitude in the form of a track-for-track reimagining of the seminal, banana-branded original. Contributions by heavyhitters like Iggy Pop and Thurston Moore are welcome but a little predictable, sandwiched between those from a surprising, and maybe not totally apt, array of indie artists including St Vincent (who gives ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ a Laurie Anderson twist with some minimalist piano and vocoder vocals), Andrew Bird and Australia’s own Courtney Barnett. If it’s an uneven compilation, it also proves that, decades on, Eno’s still right. KEVA YORK

MONTERO LIL NAS X

SOMETHING LIKE THIS BUT NOT THIS MOANING LISA

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Having finally shed the label of a one-hit wonder thanks to a string of successful singles in early 2021, Lil Nas X’s Montero is a turning point for the 22-year-old singer and rapper. This is the work of a bona-fide pop star, filled with hooks that are endless and immediate. And while the production is so clean it’s almost clinical, it is hard to deny that it makes for easy listening.

But as the glossy, saccharine surfaces of Montero pile up, it soon becomes difficult to stomach. There are simply no rough edges here, and even tracks that gesture towards something grittier (like ‘Life After Salem’ with its grungy chorus) are hemmed in by the mechanical, belaboured pop sensibility that guides much of the record. There are certainly moments of joy – ‘MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)’ and ‘Void’ being clear stand-outs – but even these highs feel smothered by the production. Catchy to be sure, but suffocatingly inoffensive.

Moaning Lisa’s 2018 single ‘Carrie (I Want a Girl)’ struck a chord for its unabashed queer joy, name-dropping female artists from the titular Carrie Brownstein to Kim Deal to Courtney Barnett. That energy – and the influence of Brownstein’s band Sleater-Kinney – is ever-present on the debut album of the Melbourne-via-Canberra band. The blistering, polished 12 tracks showcase the four piece’s ear for melody and riffs, alongside witty and sardonic lyrics that reveal the anxieties and contradictions of modern living. The furious ‘Bike Riding’ is a highlight. Over crunchy, distorted guitars, Charlie Versegi snarls, “You should stop being sad all the time”, sending up the unhelpful advice so familiar to many.

Elsewhere the music is more subdued, but the imagery stays distinctive. Angular and full-bodied, these are well-crafted songs that capture the band’s vivid imagination and camaraderie, with layered instrumentals and harmonies rounding out the sound.

LUKE MCCARTHY

GISELLE AU-NHIEN NGUYEN

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

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NINA SIMONE’S GUM WARREN ELLIS

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Part of a global series exploring the linked history and geography of food, True to the Land examines more than 65,000 years of evolving consumption in our country, spanning Indigenous practices, colonisation, the gold rush, world wars and the internet age. There’s a real textbook quality to the tone and presentation, but author Paul Van Reyk is undeniably thorough in his writing and research. Broken down by eras, the book is easy to dip in and out of. While chronicling our developing culinary preferences, Van Reyk makes room for lighter breakout sections on iconic brands like Keen’s curry powder and the Chiko Roll. There’s also a wide range of illustrations and photos – complete with some hilariously retro cookbook covers – and recipes for dishes as diverse as lamingtons, smoked eel patties and Sri Lankan fish cutlet. Native ingredients come into play too, as does the growing influence of international cuisine and celebrity chefs in Aussie kitchens. Most surprising is just how far the ripple effects of certain innovations extend, even today. DOUG WALLEN

Warren Ellis – one third of Dirty Three and long-time Bad Seeds member – has written a book. Or maybe assembled is the right word, as the photos that fill it are as integral as the text that accompanies them. And assemblage seems the most fitting term here, with all the shagginess that it implies. The titular piece of gum, which Ellis snatched at the end of Simone’s final London performance in 99, is the central object around which the book orbits. Through exploring the gum’s importance to both him and those it comes into contact with, Ellis explores the power that objects can take. At times his exalted tone can grate and cross into self-indulgence, but that’s not to deny the poignant and beautiful moments throughout that begin to coalesce by this strange book’s end. It’s not quite an act of devotion to an artistic hero, although there are elements of that, and it’s not quite a memoir, although there are plenty of stories from Ellis’ career.

It’s a work that’s almost as inscrutable as its central object. JACK ROWLAND

THE LUMINOUS SOLUTION CHARLOTTE WOOD 

Charlotte Wood won the Stella Prize and disrupted the Australian literary landscape with her novel The Natural Way of Things (2016). Her latest work, The Luminous Solution, examines the driving forces of curiosity and creativity for all, regardless of medium. A rich inner life, Wood proposes, is “not just the preserve of those in the arts”. The Luminous Solution is a revelatory call-to-arms for imagination and purpose, a just-at-the-right-time book for anyone whose inspirational capacity has been thwarted in lockdown. Delving into the impact of living in a retracted COVID-19 world, Wood acknowledges the challenge, frustration and terror of the creative process. An amalgam of literary essay and personal contemplation, the book also cites landmark academic studies into creativity and flow. Wood intersperses those with her own reflections, anecdotes and discussions with other writers and artists. It’s a conversation, a flowing contemplation on themes including ageing, rage and nature, and how we go about creating art in this world. DASHA MAIOROVA

15 OCT 2021

TRUE TO THE LAND PAUL VAN REYK

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ES G G IV IN G S W R IT IN NW O T S A MAX E

he Garret: Writers on Writing is a podcast for anyone who loves good writing. Hosted by Melbourne writer, educator and critic – and avid reader! – Astrid Edwards, it takes you beyond the written word, where writers and book folk grapple with the how and why of what they do. Follow her Instagram for her mind-bogglingly teetering monthly book stacks.

Recently, Edwards chatted with Melbourne bookseller Louise Ryan. The talk turned to pandemic publishing. Imagine having your first book come out at this time! Lockdowns, protests, an earthquake – it’s a lot to contend with, particularly when you’re competing with so many established authors releasing books alongside your own. “Basically, the books that have sold these last two years…are books by repeat authors,” says Ryan. “I think people go online to order, and they buy what they know. It’s been very hard to break anything out, so those who have written their first, second or third novel…it’s just been so tough.”

In a COVID world, when there’s so little room for adventure, something we can all do is take a chance on a new writer. Right now, I’m loving The Magpie Wing, the debut novel of Sydney writer, punk muso and NRL fanatic Max Easton. It’s a coming-of-age story with muscular prose and a strong sense of place, spanning the 90s to now, about how different subcultures shape who we are. MF

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

Thank you notes are sometimes boring to write. You’re saying “thank you” for something, the benefit of which you have already enjoyed. You’re busy. The person doesn’t need a thank you note. They’re not going to die without a thank you note. That’s not why they did the thing you’re thanking them for. But imagine being them. You’re going about your business, ages after you did something for someone, and you get a surprise note, addressed to you, grateful for you. It’s never too late, either. You can write to a teacher who made a difference. Thank an old schoolfriend you’re mates with on Facebook for that time they stood up for you by the oval when they definitely didn’t have to. Think of someone you’re thankful for. Thank them. You don’t have to think they’re Mother Teresa. They just did a nice thing one time. Remind them of the best version of themselves.

Another thing it’s good to learn when you’re a kid is to get dirty. To run in bare feet and fall in a river and make mistakes. To try and to then try again immediately afterwards. Even if what you’re trying to do is hopelessly hard or utterly lacking in purpose.

I watched some kids recently, attempting to have a sword fight with some very floppy bark. They figured out, after a lot of collaboration and a fair bit of belting each other, that the best thing to do was to fold these huge bits of bark in two and turn them into laser beams. Now, there aren’t a lot of schools that would teach bark-play as a subject. Workplaces aren’t lining up to enrol the best bark enthusiasts to workshop their

ideas about bark-based laser-fighting strategies. Tell me those aren’t useful skills though. Tell me you don’t think “working collaboratively in a team environment to find a best‑practice model for innovation” isn’t exactly what those two kids were doing.

Another thing it’s good to know when you’re an adult is that everything doesn’t have to be brilliant. You don’t have to be perfect, or whatever you might be imagining successful to be. You don’t even need to be happy all the time. If you expect to always be happy or always successful or always perfect, you will be very surprised indeed when you are not. If there’s one thing you don’t want when you’re feeling unhappy or imperfect or unsuccessful, it’s fear. Fear won’t help you out of there.

What you need is a map. When I was a kid, someone came to our school to tell us about feeling safe. They taught us that we should try and think of 10 people – one for each finger – who helped us feel safe. One hand could be family, the other couldn’t be. We were taught: there’s nothing so bad you can’t tell someone. We had our 10 people drawn on photocopies of our fingers. Now, the teaching of this has probably changed, but I have never forgotten the phrase: nothing is so bad you can’t tell someone. They were giving us a map out of there.

Fun is another one. Kids need to know that life is funny and joy is contagious and imaginative worlds are theirs for the taking. Books and video games and films and colouring in. None of that is a waste of anything and anybody who tells you otherwise is…probably a bit miserable to be honest.

Those of you who were good at reading comprehension in your own classes will of course be able to glean that the lessons herein apply to adults just as much as to children. Public Service Announcement: innovate collaboratively to find a best-practice model for joy. Play something. Colour something in. Go have a bark fight. Take your shoes off.

Send someone a thank you note, right out of the blue.

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The new second series of season of her radio her andradio podcast series, series, TheThe Fitzroy Fitzroy Diaries, Diaries, is on isABC on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

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was thinking the other day about skills they used to teach you when you were a kid, which you never use as an adult. When I was a kid I thought it was hugely important to learn different ways of tying knots. It did not turn out to be important.

Possibly you are in a knot-related industry and I have just offended you. I apologise. Point is: one thing I was always taught when I was a kid, which I think should be taught to every child on planet Earth, is the following: always write a thank you note.

Public Service Announcement: get a few simple life lessons right and you’ll go a long way.

15 OCT 2021

Stop, Collaborate and Listen

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

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PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY SBS

Tastes Like Home Adam D’Sylva

Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani Ingredients Serves 4-6 80g ginger-garlic paste 1 green chilli, chopped 300g yoghurt 50ml lemon juice 2 onions sliced (fried golden brown) 100ml of leftover oil from fried onion Whole blitzed spices and powdered spices

Powdered spices

Frying rice

½ teaspoon nutmeg powder ½ teaspoon turmeric powder 50g Kashmiri chilli powder 5g chilli powder

300g of basmati rice 25g butter 50ml milk 0.5g saffron 200g butter 5 tablespoons olive oil 2 bay leaves 2 star anise Generous pinch salt

Chicken marinade 2kg chicken thigh, bone in, skin off 1 bunch of mint 1 bunch of coriander

Method

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Dry roast all the whole spices in a pan over a low heat until fragrant.

Blitz and then add powdered spices.

In a large bowl, coat the chicken in the marinade ingredients, stir to ensure all pieces of chicken are coated. Cover and place in the fridge to marinate overnight.

Wash the rice three times and let soak for 10-15 minutes. Strain rice.

Heat 25g of butter, the milk and saffron over a low heat and infuse.

Keep aside.

In a pan, heat 200g of butter with the oil. Add bay leaves and star anise and fry for a few minutes or until fragrant.

Fry off the strained rice for 1-2 minutes and then add 5 litres of water with a generous pinch of salt. Bring to the boil, season to taste. Cook until the rice is 50-60 per cent cooked and strain.

Layer biryani in a large pot, with the chicken on the bottom, and rice on top. Pour over saffron-infused milk and butter mixture. Cover with baking paper and lid and cook over a low heat for approximately 2-2½ hours, without removing the cover.

Pour out onto a large serving plate. Top with fresh mint and serve with lemon wedges.

PLAN TO RECREATE THIS DISH AT HOME? TAG US WITH YOUR BIRYANI! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME

Adam says… grew up in a truly multicultural family. With an Italian mum and an Indian dad, I had the best of both worlds. As a child, I remember watching my mum cook different types of pasta as it was our family’s favourite dish. Weekdays were busy days of the week, so pasta and other Italian dishes were staples. Mum would make batches of passata ready to use, and I remember the entire house smelling of tomatoes and basil.

Weekends were more relaxed. It was time for special meals and like most Indian households, biryani always made its way to the weekend menu. In India, there are more than 25 types of biryanis. Each region and state have made the humble biryani their own by including flavours and spices native to that region. My favourite is the Hyderabadi chicken biryani.

Cooking biryani is a long process as it involves layering all the flavours and cooking them in different stages, but I have a simpler version. This recipe is richer than the biryani I grew up with and has complex layers of spice and flavour. I also use olive oil in my recipe as it provides depth along with the spices. I love this particular recipe because the spiciness comes from the gentle heat of the garam masala, and not the chilli. Serve it with some raita and it’s a perfect Sunday lunch. The best part about this dish is that you can make your own version of biryani just the way you like it. I have always wanted to create food with a focus on the cuisine of my maternal and paternal heritage and what I have done is given it my own twist.

I

INDIA UNPLATED IS SCREENING ON SBS FOOD AND SBS ON DEMAND.

15 OCT 2021

3 star anise 3 cloves 7 green cardamom pods 6 dried Kashmiri chillies 30g coriander seeds 30g cumin seeds 20g black pepper 1 cinnamon stick 5 bay leaves

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Whole spices

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 45.

By Lingo!

by Lee Murray leemurray.id.au HOBBY

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

CLUES 5 letters Ballroom dance Down the side of Hold tightly Shimmer Worry, dread 6 letters Catchphrase Deed Failing to win Gambling place Indicate 7 letters Continuing Moulding Veneer Winding up 8 letters Irreligious

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 45 ACROSS 1 Custody 5 Handgun 9 Millinery

10 Taser 11 Languid 12 Isolate 13 Tutu 14 Adrenaline 16 Specialist 19 Onus 21 Matilda 22 Oneself 24 Trend 25 Justified 26 Hot seat 27 Residue

DOWN 1 Camel 2 Silent treatment 3 Odious 4 Yielded 5 Haywire 6 Notional 7 Gestation period 8 Nerveless 13 Test match 15 Dislodge 17 Learjet 18 Sponsor 20 Genius 23 Fudge

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Seven (Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig) 2 International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) 3 Ian Rankin 4 Platypus and echidna (or spiny anteater) 5 Juanita Nielsen 6 Five (all of his sons, plus he has a daughter called Georgetta) 7 1988 8 Liechtenstein 9 The biro pen 10 Sarah Snook 11 A-League Women 12 Lion 13 Brian To’o 14 Leeds Castle, England 15 Willoughby 16 Xanadu 17 Firebird 18 Cu 19 The Beatles (in 1964) 20 Great Dane

15 OCT 2021

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues?

Every answer must include the central letter.

Plus, which word uses all 9 letters?

by puzzler.com

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Word Builder

Many of us jumped onto the sourdough bandwagon last year, while others took up hobbies such as painting or video gaming. The word hobby, though, was brought to us by horses.

In the 16th century, small horses were often called Hob or Hobby, a pet name for “Robin” or “Robert”.

A hobby‑horse, then, was a toy horse small enough to be “ridden” by children or stage actors. By the 1800s, though, hobby no longer referred to the size of the toy horse, but to the fact that riding one will not actually get you anywhere. It’s this metaphorical use that survives today: a hobby is something you do just for fun, and not to actually achieve anything.

It’s a bit harsh on the sourdough, though.

Crossword

by Steve Knight

Quick Clues

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.

ACROSS

3

4

5

6

9

7

8

10

11

performance (10)

12

13

16 E xpert (10) 19 B urden (4) 21 B ushman’s swag (7) 22 A person’s central identity (7) 24 Fashion (5) 25 W arranted (9) 26 D ifficult position (3,4) 27 R emainder (7)

14 15

16

17

18

19

DOWN

20 21

24

22

23

25

26

27

Cryptic Clues

Solutions

ACROSS

DOWN

1 Description of Portuguese tarts in captivity? (7) 5 Hung about and concealed weapon (7) 9 Unwell in emergency, wearing my headgear (9) 10 N eglecting one right, arrest criminal

1 Desert transport hub in Delhi after mace

using this? (5) 11 S ome Catalan guides are slow-moving (7) 12 C ut off energy after a lot is wasted (7) 13 S hort skirt so-so in recital (4) 14 5 00 in stadium queue to get a booster? (10) 16 A uthority to start selling property essential before agents list (10) 19 E xtra reward for execution of duty (4) 21 A swag of money to start working at ALDI (7) 22 N ame a 2003 Will Ferrell movie, or central character? (7) 24 Fashion tailor gutted by deadline (5) 25 R easonable, only if I’d swallowed drug (9) 26 A gitated at those in a difficult position (3,4) 27 R egret over side orders and scraps (7)

1 Desert animal (5) 2 Refusal to communicate verbally (6,9) 3 Repugnant (6) 4 Generated a return (7) 5 Out of control (7) 6 Hypothetical (8) 7 Term of pregnancy (9,6) 8 Cool and confident (9) 13 C ricket encounter (4,5) 15 F orce out (8) 17 Type of aircraft (7) 18 P atron (7) 20 B rilliant mind (6) 23 C hewy sweet (5)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

attack (5)

2 Doctors enlist medical care, keeping mum

in fight? (6,9)

3 Gross debt blocks leaders in Oman delivering

stimulus (6) Bore caved in (7) Hey, why are reports so distorted? (7) No hammer to nail in abstract (8) Expecting time in prison, get idea to run (9,6) Gee, from ‘Greensleeves ’ a different arrangement is composed (9) 13 Try a lighter form of cricket (4,5) 15 S hift from Kensington Palace once? (8) 17 S pooner’s mock permit for aircraft (7) 18 P rovide a stake or two poles to divide animal trail (7) 20 E gghead using smarts! (6) 23 Avoid iron surrounding dugout (5) 4 5 6 7 8

WORD BUILDER PAGE 43 5 Tango Along Cling Glint Angst 6 Slogan Action Losing Casino Signal 7 Lasting Casting Coating Closing 8 Agnostic 9 Nostalgic

15 OCT 2021

2

45

1

1 Detention (7) 5 Firearm (7) 9 Hats (9) 10 W eapon used by police (5) 11 U nhurried (7) 12 S et apart (7) 13 B allet skirt (4) 14 H ormone that boosts physical

Click

1962

Anthony Perkins and Audrey Hepburn

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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s it the mere presence of Audrey Hepburn – decked out in a swish little dress and upturned hat – that makes this photo impossibly glamorous? Or is it the concentrated attention lavished upon her by fellow actor Anthony Perkins? The framing helps – that overhead strip lighting, and a keen glance from the air hostess, who was yet to be dubbed a flight attendant. Or is it simply that right now we would all love to get on a plane and fly somewhere (and that the plane would be this empty).

Hepburn and Perkins made one film together, the musical Green Mansions, in 1959, in which he, fearing for his life and vowing to avenge the murder of his father, flees to the Venezuelan jungle, where he stumbles upon her, is instructed by locals to kill her, but instead woos her, singing outside her hut. Perkins could sing (check the clip on YouTube); indeed, he was a pop singer in the 50s, under the name Tony Perkins. (He also happened to be a descendent of one of the original white settlers of the US, John Howland, an indentured servant who was one of the signatories of the Mayflower Compact.)

Green Mansions was a flop, the only one of Hepburn’s career, perhaps because she was directed by her then husband, Mel Ferrer. Hopkins had chosen it over Marilyn Monroe’s Some Like It Hot, and always insisted he did not regret doing so.

Two years later Hepburn played her best-known role, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s as Holly Golightly, a role coincidentally created with Monroe in mind, when Truman Capote wrote the novella on which the film is based. Perkins, meanwhile, made his defining film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, in 1960, and then Goodbye Again, an American-French romantic drama, in which he falls for Ingrid Bergman.

And that is how this photo came to be – the two are flying to Taormina, where the Italian version of the Oscars, the Donatellos, then held their ceremony.

Hepburn won best foreign actress, Perkins best foreign actor. Somewhat ungentlemanly, Perkins said that Bergman was a little over-enthusiastic in rehearsing Goodbye Again’s kissing scenes; she said it was because she was shy. Perkins himself was dreadfully shy with women, and did not have a heterosexual relationship until he was 39. He married at 41, and stayed so until his death from an AIDS-related illness on 12 September 1992. His widow Berry Berenson died one day less than nine years later, when she boarded American Airlines Flight 11 in New York, which promptly crashed into the north tower of New York’s World Trade Centre.

Flying, huh? Would you still think it was glamorous if you were seated next to Audrey Hepburn all the way to Rome – and she was smoking?