NTWF: Mixtape Memoir

An ode to live music, friendship and my fourteen year old self

Written and performed in ‘Mixtape Memoirs’ as part of the NT Writers’ Festival, 2020.
Writers were asked to select a song and read a 10-minute memoir.
This piece is dedicated to Suzannah.

It was hot. That kind of horrible stinging heat, like a thousand tiny pin pricks over every available part of your flesh. Wind, lifting the sand and multiplying the pin pricks from my skin to my eyes. I run and run and run towards the water and try to hold my own, diving with the waves. Less graceful, I take a tumble downwards into the sand beneath the water and somehow, in water that barely reaches past my knees I’d lose sense of which way was up for a brief moment.

Trying to prevent a scene as I wheeze, splutter and realise I’ve lost a contact lens. I tell Suzannah we’ve got to head back. We emerge from the water, me more clumsily, and we venture hand-in-hand to get our things and trudge onwards through the heat, stinging even more so as the salt water on our bodies turns to steam. Up the hill, through the (car)park, across the train tracks to her parents’ shack where we were often left to our own devices. After rummaging through my bag, grateful I thought to pack just the one spare contact lens and promising myself to stop freaking opening my eyes under water, I discover the pile of Kumon exercise books I’d emptied from my bag in haste. You know Kumon, right? It’s basically babysitting but with fractions, almost exclusively populated by Asians, which was no mean feat in Adelaide’s Eastern suburbs back then. Embarrassed, I toss them back in my bag hoping Suzannah hasn’t seen. I’m pretty sure she has, but she does me the courtesy of pretending – she’s an actor now.

A city girl through and through, not yet an Australian citizen – or just a citizen, I don’t really remember, but the chaos of Kuala Lumpur was nothing compared to the supposed ease of an Australian summer when you are anything but at ease. Suzannah puts me at ease, our relationship is effortless and matches this Australian slowness I was/am still trying so hard to understand. We spend hours and hours lazing as she places burnt CD after CD into the player and runs me through everything from Jeff Buckley to Why?, to, of course, The White Stripes.

So, when I had to choose a song for tonight, my mind went blank. Music has always been a massive part of my life, but how could I possibly tell just one story about something that has existed as part of me for so long?

So I picked this song, We are gonna be friends by The White Stripes, because it is a song that can take me from that shack in Port Elliot, to my first ever music festival, to creating mixtapes by recording them off my CD player and onto a tape for nobody else to enjoy - all in a dry South Australian summer where the air could slice you in two, but you pick yourself up anyway because that makes for a better story.

This is the song in the opening credits to Napoleon Dynamite, remember that movie? You can either quote it or not.

This song was also the 17th song on The White Stripes’ set list at Big Day Out in Adelaide on February 3, 2006 at the Adelaide Showgrounds. How do I know that? I was there. It was followed by The Denial Twist, the one with the video clip that had Conan O’Brien, and they were going in and out of the TV and going really tall to really small and thin like in Alice in Wonderland… and I remember finding him really, really hot by association.

How do I really know that stuff about the set list? Because there are wonderful tragics like me who upload this information to the internet in great detail. Astonishing detail. I also found out via my friend the internet that We Are Going to be Friends is one of O’Brien’s favourite White Stripes songs. I’d like to think maybe I would have been that person if I were slightly older, uploading all of those things.

February 3, 2006 was my third day of being fourteen years old, an age that meant we had to coerce Suzannah’s dad, Jon, into accompanying us as a legal guardian. It wasn’t that hard, Iggy Pop was also on the bill. What was hard was the months and months of campaigning I had to put in to convincing my parents to let me go. They were cautious, traditional and completely and utterly unaware of what music festivals really were. All they had was the trust in my friend’s father and the reassurance that I was still going to be ID’d well into my twenties.

So, finally, we got our tickets and began the preparation. My dedication to weekly issues of NME magazine increased tenfold as I read everything about all of the artists on the touring circuit we were about to see. Together, we downloaded timetables, planned routes from stage to stage, revisiting every single one of our favourite albums we were about to see performed live for the very first time by names that only existed in our conversations, and most importantly, creating custom band t-shirts. T-shirts with lyrics stencilled on with spray paint in my backyard that dried in seconds in the sun. With our converses, denim shorts and custom tees, we were ready.

When I ran this story past Suzannah, who is stuck in Melbourne right now, she couldn’t help but reminisce with me. She said “we were so stoked about everything. Dad was such a hero that day.” And we were, and he was, and there we all were! The dryness in the Adelaide air worked in our favour as our tiny bodies leaped through the Showground gates, grabbed a program, and put our weeks of planning into action. Putting our size and energy to good use, we wriggled our way to the front with Suzannah happily charging at dudes who wouldn’t let us through. Her confidence was contagious as we both learned how to navigate a mosh for the first time and our excitement vibrating off every part of us; from our skin, to our words, to our hair. We finally get to see every act we fantasised about since we were put in the same classroom two years earlier.

Now, our tastes didn’t always match up then, as just they don’t now, but we were determined to enjoy every second. Suzannah introduced me to Sleater-Kinney, while Jon snuck away to see Iggy Pop who was playing at the same time. In both our memories, now at double the age, we can’t work out if it was the freedom or the music in front of us that was so thrilling in that moment. We saw eighteen other acts that day, so I won’t bore you by listing them all, but I will tell you about this. Suzannah dragged me to see this act she was so certain I’d love, they were from the UK and had great style. Not convinced, but in the spirit of seeing as much live music as possible, I followed, and there she was – M.I.A. The sole person on the touring circuit who looked anything like me that I’d witness until the next time I saw her live again six years later at the same festival. It was a gamechanger, but a slow one, like someone had sowed a seed somewhere around the soles of my feet that took time to grow stronger and taller, until it reached the back of my mind. Not realising at the time that this planting had taken place, I took the experience at face value and on we went to round off the night with The White Stripes, whose albums had soundtracked our brief friendship so far.

We both attended Big Day Out for the next eight years of its life, sometimes together, sometimes with other friends, or from behind a bar (for me) when I realised I could sling drinks and still be around live music. I’d reluctantly miss the odd year being back in Malaysia, and Suzannah was a bit more selective, choosing to only splurge for the ticket if the line-up caught her eye. Sixteen years into our relationship, our bond has remained the same despite not spending days and weeks together like we did then, and not having been in the same city or state for about half a decade. I followed Suzannah’s suit in being more selective. We message about snacks, about our partners, about our careers and sit comfortably in the silence that is the months in between. Silence broken by events like the Christchurch shootings, where we reflected on how our families welcomed each other at a time where I needed community and extended family the most. I thought about how I have never had to explain any of my experiences to her, because somehow, she just understood, and we would just be able to enjoy being together.

And now, while she in in Melbourne, unable to visit her newborn niece in Adelaide, I am relieved that I am able to break the silence for her and bring her back to that moment, when we were half our age, having just seen one of the biggest bands of our lifetime. Ears ringing as we left the showgrounds, Jon watching casually over us as we walked out the gates, through the (car)park, across the street and made the way home.