The Song of Concrete - Claire G. Coleman
Guest story by Claire G. Coleman, Noongar writer (poet, essayist, novelist). Claire’s experience is featured in Under Cover documentary.
Night has unrolled over Melbourne like an old grey army blanket, threadbare and scratchy.
It’s cold, the fog so thick that a white glow precedes the trams as they sneak down Brunswick street, stalked by glowing red. My bodyguard – her fur sleek and black, shaped a bit like a dingo but just a touch chunkier – is finishing off a half-pizza somebody has given her. That’s one of the best things about this place: kebabs, pizza, burgers, I never have to find food for my kelpie. Her puppy-dog eyes are junk-food magnets.
“Would your dog like half my pizza?” It’s the most common question I hear on these streets.
The tequila in my gut is bringing fire to my eyes. The felafel roll I have just eaten is heavy in my gut and contains the promise of not-hunger; a promise on which it will not immediately deliver. My mandolin is tuned, a few bucks nestled inside its pear-shaped dwelling to convince people to add more. My voice and my head are both lubricated.
I start to sing.
I have never been much of a singer, not a much better musician, but out here, cross-legged on the street, being barely dodged by drunk people looking for another place to drink, it doesn’t really matter. One night a couple of drunken idiots, brawling unsteadily, fell on me. Luckily my mandolin was unharmed, but I carried the bruises for some time.
I strum, throw out a shit-poor rendition of The Ship Song, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The chords are simple. The song is not meant to be well-sung, otherwise Nick Cave, the musician I am closest to being a fan of, would not be singing it.
Some coins clink, a note flutters downwards.
Naked legs, jeans, pantyhose, boots, runners, thongs, sandals pass by. Overcoats dangle. I am jealous of warm coats tonight.
Someone stops to listen. Clink.
Across the street and down a bit, a bassist whose name I can never remember is drawing a crowd, because unlike me he can really play. I’m glad he’s there. From time to time we have passed the tequila back and forth, and he has protected me in the past when someone tried to kick me off my corner with threats of violence. When the bassist backed me up the aggro person fled, their voice, their sworn abuse trailing them down the street; yet me and the bassist only know each other enough to say “Hello”. I guess that’s just the sort of guy he is.
I’ve managed to keep my corner – the best corner in the street, near the light and crowds of a late-night souvlaki shop and a bar. It never hurts to play the songs the bouncer requests.
It’s cold tonight. I dread the street on such nights – not the physical street, but the abstract idea of the street. Even with a fleece blanket and a kelpie, I am not sure I will be safe and warm enough. Bus shelters, even Flinders Street Station, where I know people will be sleeping, are seldom warm, and never safe enough. I’ll make enough cash tonight to go to a boarding house or a hostel if I wanted to, but I have never been inside one of those places; never felt a strong urge to do it.
I have other uses for my money, other reasons to be out on the street busking.
Dumb Things, by Paul Kelly: the chords are simple, but the changes are fast. I’ve never been great at this song, but the words speak to me. I have done dumb things too. Some of the reasons I am out on the street come down to that – to mistakes I’ve made. The rest of it was just dumb luck.
It can happen to pretty much anyone; enough bad luck, enough things going wrong, and you’re sleeping on friend’s couches. Enough time on couches and eventually you can end up in a squat, if you’re lucky. Sleeping in my car kept me off the street for a while. But shit happens, dumb things happen. Bad luck happens.
Eventually the street happens. There are many paths from losing your home to sleeping rough, but few ways back to housing once you land on the street.
It’s so cold. Words come to me and I strum a simple chord pattern, one I don’t think I will ever remember, one I’m not sure is even any good, but I can sing to it. I find myself improvising without really planning to. The first line – “It’s really bloody cold…” – startles a chortle from a passer-by. I keep playing, knowing what I am playing for, knowing that any emotion from these strangers can translate into cash.
“It’s really bloody cold…” The words puff whitely from my mouth. “My fingers feel like ice…”
Truth is beauty: it is so cold my fingers are aching, and I miss a chord change and then another one, but nobody notices. It’s not like what I’m playing is even really a song.
The street is so cold that the black steel tramlines are glistening with condensation. The concrete footpaths have turned dark.
But this is my street. For now I live out here, three thousand kilometres from Country.
And I know it’s not the quality of my music that matters. There’s a magic to this corner where I sit cross-legged, bound to the concrete by my desperation to earn a little cash. There’s even more magic at two in the morning. That magic throws words into my mouth, throws cash into my stash: “My lips feel like ice…” And they do. I can barely sing at the best of times, but out here on this freezing night is far from being the best of times.
“My tongue feels like ice…” Anyone sensible would be finding somewhere warm. The people on the street tonight drinking are not sensible, they are desensitised to the temperature, to my predicament, by booze. Sensible people don’t give twenty-dollar notes to buskers.
“It’s really fucking cold.” My arse has frozen to the concrete.
Someone walks past, drops me a fifty; they say “Jesus saves,” but I am an atheist. Jesus didn’t save me from the streets. I bite back a retort, grab the fifty and pocket it before some bastard skims it.
Someone requests a song they’ve heard me butcher before: Britney Spears, Hit Me Baby One More Time. I only play it as a joke, but it always gets me money. I know it’ll be good for a note at least. A passing local musician drops a fiver and a guitar pick in my case. I get a lot of picks that way.
Eventually the crowds peter out, the money stops falling. I have been out here in the cold for six hours. I go to the souvlaki shop, where they know me, and I know I will be safe. I come here every night at about this time and count my money. It’s okay, over a hundred and fifty, so I buy a late-night dinner and relax. The longer I stay here, the longer I’ll be warm, but I shan’t outstay my welcome.
This is the most dangerous time of night: walking into the city, towards the lights and the coppers and the all-night, drunk-too-much dickheads. There are patches of darkness on the streets that cannot be avoided. I have never been attacked – not walking into the city, at least – but I know people who have. I cannot afford to feel fear. And besides, there is no better bodyguard than a pure-bred kelpie.
I make it to the lit streets of the inner city at about five in the morning, in time for a couple of hours’ sleep before the Saturday morning crowds pour into the train station, making it hard to sleep safely. My mandolin case goes under my head: it’s too hard for a pillow, but if someone steals it I am screwed. My money goes in my bag, which I hug under my polar-fleece blanket, my kelpie on the other side.
In the morning I buy a train ticket, take myself, my stuff, my dog, and board a train to Lilydale. I am not trying to actually get to Lilydale, but it’s a long train trip, the trains are heated and I need the sleep. I sleep safe under the eye of cameras.
When I wake I mentally add my night’s earnings to what I have already stashed. My van is my home, but it’s still hundreds of kilometres away, and the hole in the radiator is not going to fix itself. I don’t even leave the train when it stops. I have to eat what I can, get some more rest. Another hour of sleep in the train back from Lilydale; if I did this at night, I would be moved on.
When night rolls around, I will be back on Brunswick Street again.
Last night. Tonight. A few more nights.
Just a few more.
[First published in “We Are Here: stories of home place and belonging”. Published by Affirm press 2019, Edited by Meg Mundell.] You can purchase the book here.
Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. She writes fiction, essays, poetry and art writing while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road
Born in Perth, away from her ancestral country she has lived most of her life in Victoria and most of that in and around Melbourne.
During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, influenced by certain experiences gained on the road. She has since won a Black&Write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship for that novel ,"Terra Nullius". Terra Nullius was published in Australia by Hachette Australia and in North America by Small Beer Press.
Since mid 2020 Claire has been a member of the cultural advisory committee for Agency, a Not-for-profit Indigenous arts Consultancy.
