It was on the table..

Hi, Guy here with a with a little tale about an afternoon many moons ago.

It was on the table..

It was 1.45 on a sunny Saturday Autumn afternoon and I was minding my own business. I had just smoked a joint and left a second on my kitchen table for when I finished doing some housework. Alas, I never got to smoke that joint.

Four eager young Detectives came bounding up my stairs waving a warrant,
and whilst in the consequent trash & search
they were unable to come up with my stash,
they DID manage to find that careless joint,
left lying on the kitchen table in plain view.

Well shit you got me. I’m a criminal.

*

*

The interview didn’t last very long. After quickly disposing of a series of ridiculous questions, we quickly got into a loop. Whenever they asked a pertinent question I merely answered by stating the obvious, that is I just repeated the mantra

It was was on the kitchen table”

in answer to most of their questions. Inevitably they got tired and grumpy. You can sense their growing frustration on the tape. I like the way how, by quibbling over minor details, I was able to force them onto the defensive. “All I said to you,”she stuttered at one stage, in self-justificatory frustration. Hoho.

And so it soon ended. When asked if I had any further, final comment, I lent forward and mumbled, “Yes. Can I just say this has been a complete waste of everyone’s time.”

*

So there it was, about 3.30pm and they turned me back out onto the streets with a bail form and a cassette tape of the interview. The whole thing was no more than a nuisance, a small fine at worst, but still I was vaguely depressed. It really WAS all such a waste of time. Mine especially.

Then I had a Eureka moment. For I saw how I could turn the afternoons series of unfortunate events into an Anarchist Art Project worthy of Marcel Duchamp. I started to laugh wildly, startling passers by..

Racing home I had a quick joint from my stash and popped the interview tape into my Tascam 4-track cassette porta-studio. Working quickly I added a drum track, guitar, harmonica and effects to the vocals. By 5.30pm the musical assemblage was complete. It was time for stage two of my plan.

Strolling down to nearby Fortitude Valley, I made my way to local ratbag radio station 4-ZZZ just in time for Saturday nights regular “Request Show”, where subscribers to the station could ring up and request a song to be played. Walking unannounced into the studio, I told the announcer my story and persuaded him to play my “request”. He saw the humour and so it was that the first song played on the Request Show that night was “It was on the Table” while the announcer and I shared a smoke out the back.

The whole process of getting raided, arrested, interviewed, bailed, turning it into an art piece and getting played on the radio was a little over four hours. A good days work, I thought.

**

PS. Eventually I went to court and got something like 40hrs community service which I idled away making cups of tea in a community “neighbourhood centre”. And so, having paid my debt to society, I returned to plan even more daring crimes, and even more audacious Art. A big thank you to the QLD Police for their co-operation in this project.

**

https://rapidshare.com/files/2182980201/It_was_on_the_table.rar

2 Comments

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2 Responses to It was on the table..

  1. pedro

    this is an astounding piece of art and worthy of inclusion in a compilation of like minded work. perhaps you could find a more appropriate outlet.

    • Thanks. And of course the work is still evolving, uploading the song and documentation onto the web is merely the latest phase of its development. Hopefully one day the Police will release the video and I can put it up on U-tube

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