Martin Sharp and Richard Neville were more or less contemporaries of mine. They are both now dead. People who I consider contemporaries are now starting to die. This is something that I never thought would happen. Last week there was a documentary on TV about Martin Sharp. Richard Neville was featured in it. The documentary must have been a few years old because Richard Neville did not appear to be suffering from althziemers. I haven't yet exactly started to study the deaths column but atrial fibrillation has made me consider my mortality. After my first AF bout I thought shortly I would just suddenly drop dead. I obviously haven't but my life has changed. Before I never expected to die and I acted as if I was 24 but now I know I will die. And suddenly people are dyeing. Heroes mostly. Am I being pretentious in calling these people my contemporaries? The normal person would say yes. But I feel they are my contemporaries. After all we all lead parallel lives. We are all contemporaries. I shared some interests with these men. I believed I was their equal. Not that I ever believed that they would consider me their equal. But with the passing of time I am convinced I was their equal. I had strengths that they did not have. I have had a longer road to maturity. I always recognised Martin Sharps artistic talent. Although I always thought he did not completely exploit it. Especially in his portrait paintings. I admired Richard Neville in that he was strong enough to do what he wanted. He was strong enough to ignore those who made the rules. They were both stars. They went to London in the mid 60's and were taken up by the avant guard elites. They were able to forge themselves life styles that were envious. In the end I could not understand why they left London. Why would you voluntarily leave when you didnt have to? But they both came back to Australia. And both more or less relapsed into obscurity. Richard Neville wrote the book on Sobraj. Martin Sharp set up the yellow house redeveloped Luna Park and championed Tiny Tim. I was aware of Australian OZ Magazine in the 60's. Sometimes at work men would pull a copy out of their back pocket and say nudge nudge look at this dirty photo. I wasn't a subscriber. I may have bought it once but although I agreed with its attitude and I thought it was a good thing and I wished it well I cannot say I was a fan. Its hard to describe public attitudes of the 50's and 60's. Menzies sums up the 50's and 60's in Australia. Menzies had some good points but in other ways he was lacking. He was extremely weak when it came to accepting what was perceived to be the avant guard. He was against it. He would not admit it but he was a genuine philistine. He had no interest in art. He would not consider changing the White Australia Policy. He thought a persons class was important. Most people agreed totally with his attitudes. We know whats best for you more or less summed him up. Question it and you will get into trouble. We will tell you what to do. I'm the most qualified. Certainly my family were Menzies supporters and all had this we will tell you how to act attitude. They did not like anyone who disagreed with them. I can recall some elderly relatives turning very nasty. They took any questioning of their attitudes personally. They didnt like smart people. None had books in their homes. None were interested in art. These things were considered a waste of money. Any interest in art was considered suspicious. Amongst my acquaintances and all my relatives any Labor voter was considered unpatriotic. In the mid 60's a modern sculpture was commissioned to be installed on the outside wall of a a new building in Sydney. This was duly done and caused a bit of a stir. It was very avant guard. Unfortunately the sculpture resembled a public urinal. The editors of OZ had themselves photographed pretending to line up at the sculpture and to urinate in it. This photo was published in OZ. It received a large amount of publicity. All people my parents age thought it was shocking. Martin Sharp and Richard Neville and Richard Walsh were charged with publishing an obscene photograph and received a 3 month jail sentence. This more or less sums up public attitudes in the 60's. I was often told by people older than me that we don't like the way you think. They would look me straight in the eye and I knew they meant it. I was against the Vietnam War and was bewildered and outraged by Australia's involvement. Consequently I was in conflict with public attitudes. We forget that in the early 60's most people were enthusiastically for the Vietnam War. Because of my attitude I was often threatened with physical violence by people of my own age. I was told by friends of my father that I should be put up against a wall and shot. It was not until the 70's that people changed their views on Vietnam. I felt powerless in the face of these public attitudes. I felt very much alone. I naturally looked to publications and organisations that protested against these prevailing attitudes. I joined the Labor Party. I went to party meetings. I joined Young Labor. Whilst there were many worthy people in the Party I did not get any gratification from being a member. I found the class consciousness that permeated the wider society was if anything more acute within the Party. Any person who was actually working class was looked on with a kind of vague embarrassment and were not ever going to be taken seriously. You had to have a University Degree to get onto any policy making body. And because this was Victoria anybody who supported Gough Whitlam or spoke in his defense was virtually kept in isolation. And treated with supreme suspicion. A lot of people were in the party for social reasons. As I was just a Clerk and had no Univerity Degree I felt left out. And I certainly did not enjoy handing out how to vote cards. I didnt understand how they made any difference and I said so at Party meetings. My view was people should have made up their mind before they came to the Polling Station. And there were always a certain percentage of people lining up who were aggressively antagonistic to Labor. I found it depressing. In parallel with Richard Neville and Martin Sharp I went to London. Unlike them I was not taken up by the artistic elite but like them I was welcomed by my equals. I'm being a little unfair here because I made no attempt to make contact with the Artistic elite. And I felt I was inferior. I was not artistic. But because I was after all Australian I took an interest in OZ Magazine and was proud of their achievements. I purchased it a few times out of interest - and to prove my patriotism. At the time there were several London alternative publications. Amongst others there was the Red Dwarf and The Trotskyist Newspaper whose name I cannot recall. I believe there was a Communist Party Magazine but I was not aware of it. There was the early Time Out. I myself read The Times every day and loved it. On Sundays I bought both The Sunday Times and The Observer. I more or less read both papers from cover to cover. I felt I was on the same intellectual level as they were and that they were talking directly to me. There was nothing alien about them. Every week I bought Private Eye. I had more interest in Private Eye than OZ Magazine. I understood the jokes better. And I felt that Private Eyes Politics represented more or less my Politics. I felt I understood Private Eyes politics. It didnt judge me where Oz Magazine seemed in a way to judge me. Oz magazines politics were more anarchic and destructive. And I didnt find it all that funny. But for some reason I bought The Schoolkids Edition. This was before they were charged with publishing an obscene publication. I should have kept it for it would have a certain interest today. I could show it to prove my hippy credentials. Not that I ever felt an accepted hippy. I felt that if I had ever approached Richard Neville I would not have had the same voting rights as he did. He was a real hippy. I was not. I did not find The Schoolkids edition to be all that shocking. A bit off putting maybe because it was slightly vulgar. I did not believe for a moment it would corrupt the morals of the young. It was more educational than anything else. One thing I did find a little shocking but also educational was a drawing of a virgina with a string coming out of it. Before this I had no idea that tampons had strings attached in order to remove them from a woman's virgina. If I recall correctly maybe also there was a diagram of an applicator. I suppose this kind of thing could have been shocking to the ordinary person. I had certainly never seen it before. I did not know applicators existed. The Judge who presided over the trial certainly took it personally and said some extremely stupid things. Thank goodness because this made any appeal certain to win. The Judge obviously believed the magazine was attacking him personally and that they all should be punished. And he said so. I was disappointed that English Judges could be so silly and bigoted. Australian Judges maybe but I couldn't understand how this could happen in England. Why would the Police prosecute a magazine for publishing a drawing they claimed was obscene? Could it be that the establishment in England was as morally corrupt as the establishment in Australia? Well yes. Unfortunately. Establishments everywhere hate anything that they feel threatens them. I did have artistic desires. On the wall in my room in Earls Court Square I had a collage on one wall. I was proud of this collage that I made out of Photo's and articles I cut out of Time Magazine. I carefully collected only things that interested me. I thought it was quite good although I cannot remember many people showing an interest in it. The problem with collages is that when you move you cannot take it with you. My collage could not have been all that bad because the girls did not ask me to take it down when I left. Would Martin Sharp and Richard Neville have been interested? Would they have thought it embarrassing? Maybe..... But I hope not. What is true is that I had moved to London the same as they had and I had forged a life for myself that was envious. I felt privileged. Lucky. I did not want to change places with anyone. I envied no one. I believed I was the equal to anyone. I considered both men to be giants in their own way. I can say I was in awe of their achievements. But I also had achieved something. I felt equal to them and in time came to consider them my contemporaries.
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