Techno & Me

While my record was dying a speedy and unceremonious death, I did what any self respecting artist does and booked a holiday. (When I am older, 40 perhaps, this will be a secret nip and tuck in Surrey, or Martinique if I marry well.) Even though I had by now relieved not one, but two corporations of nearly three quarters of a million pounds, the poor sods were legally obliged to hemorrhage yet more money on the titanic that was my career. Ungrateful little fuck that I was,  I secretly griped that I could not fly first class to Australia,  but thought it gracious to play the martyr and booked a cattle class seat. At the sight of the queuing masses at check in, I could bear the indignity no longer and promptly squandered a small fortune on a last minute business ticket. (I refer to this particular ticket time and time again: when my washing machine broke down last week, when I re-mortgaged, when I sold my favourite Ampeg bass amp; indeed, while I write and wonder if my central heating is going to make it to Christmas, that episode at 7am on a cold Heathrow morning returns to haunt me. It’s not as if it was worth it – I passed out the moment we took off and woke up to find myself £3000 worse off, with only a Space NK wash bag I could have bought for twenty quid to show for it.) I have wasted plenty of mine, and other people’s money in my time, but nothing is quite as abhorrent as expensive air travel. What was I thinking? That I would be recognized in economy? That I needed my beauty sleep to face the marauding gaggle of ardent fans and paparazzi waiting to greet me at the other end? Like, Hello! Lady! you’re only a mega star in your own delusional psyche.

Somehow it seemed that so long as I was armed with a laptop, it made me a business woman. And thus necessitated my behaving as such. I arrived in Australia to a rapturous audience made up of my mum. My mum, and my Dad. But never mind, I was here to escape, right ? Escape to....samsara. (Yeah, that one has always confused me. Any doyennes of the London clubbing scene might recall, if their drug consumption quota was limited enough to allow them a memory, ‘Escape to Samsara’ at a certain south London nightclub. Now, I don’t mean to come over all self righteous here, but you know, as befits my occupation, I have had a religious conversion all of my own, and I would just like to enlighten you of the true meaning of the word samsara. It’s not some exotic and luxurious Pacific island frequented by Jade Jagger and Kate Moss, no siree, it is the world of suffering, the never ending cycle of birth and death any serious Buddhist is so determined to escape. Why the fuck would you wanna buy a perfume that evokes the misery and utter futility of human existence? Talk about lost in translation. But then, never was a drug like Ecstasy less aptly named. All I remember is snogging blokes, and, once or twice, women, (but don’t tell my mum) that ordinarily I would cross the road to avoid in broad daylight. Every now and then I find telephone numbers with names attached of which I have no memory whatsoever. It is quite possible that these people once had a huge significance in my life on any given Saturday night in the mid 1990s. Lordy. What did I promise them? That I would name my first born after them? That I would have my first born with them? Can I preface the entire period of 1994 – 1997 with the disclaimer “It isn’t me, it’s the E!”?)

Anyway, back to my parents. (I don’t know why the great digression to my miss-spent teenage years, perhaps it’s that inherent guilt one feels moments before seeing your parents after a long while apart.) Back to Christmas during one of the hottest summers on record in Brisbane. Back to the stress that comes with attempting to relax with your family....especially while they think everything is going great, it’s all falling apart at the seams.

Against a background of intense poverty, there is a large faction of my kin who hold up accountancy as the holy grail of professions, and medicine as an occupation annointed by Jesus himself and second only to the clergy, or in a distant cousin’s case, nunhood. That I should choose to so wilfully sacrifice a boarding school and university education at the altar of rock and roll (or let’s face it, in my position, pebble and roll), well, frankly, that’s just bewildering. They may all be avid watchers of the latest reality idol show, they may write off for Cliff Richard’s autograph or know the names of every Big Brother contestant: and of course, lest we forget that we are not that distantly related to true Hollywoord Royalty (even I went to see her star on Hollywood Boulevard a few months ago) – but actually thinking that there might be a living to be made in entertainment is simply preposterous. It’s something to do for fun, when you’re young, while your tits and arse still defy gravity and you’re waiting for a husband – but God forbid it becomes a reason for getting up in the morning. Now that it has for me, looks of confusion and worry immediately descend upon the joint parental countenance when the conversation turns to what it is I do to pay, or not pay, the bills.

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