Richard McCarthy’s path to adventure and independence

Having spent a couple of weeks overseas I’ve obviously fallen off the distribution list. Or maybe it’s because I’m no longer on Facebook. Whatever the reason, I’ve clearly missed the “memo” that this year declared Halloween part of the Australian cultural landscape. And yet it’s odd, since I’ve managed to keep up with almost every other overseas trend over the 45 years of my life.

Like most of my generation who’ve grown up with the television as surrogate parent, I’ve watched hundreds, thousands, maybe tens-of-thousands of hours of American television. Almost every program I watched as a child featured an episode where the children would get dressed up for Halloween and then go out trick-or-treating. But even though we all watched it, I don’t recall anyone ever wanting to do it here. The general consensus amongst my age group was that it was an interesting American tradition, but nothing we would actually consider doing here.

I wonder, then, about the views of my old school-mates and what they must be thinking now. Most of them now have children in their late teens to mid 20s, so they’ve probably missed the boat on the 8 to 10 year old fantasy aspect of Halloween. I kinda understand the fantasy aspect of it all, by the way. I totally get the excitement a lot of kids will get out of this. And I totally get the dual emotions of delight and the horror parents must feel: isn’t it great to see their kids having “harmless” (?) fun?; and isn’t it awful to have something further commercialised, and costing money, so close to Christmas? And it has been commercialised. In my local supermarket last night, for example I noticed a shelf of merchandise for Halloween right next the Christmas merchandise shelf.

What I guess I don’t really understand is why it’s happening now. Have we reached the point as nation that we are so incredibly bored, so entirely lacking in imagination, that we have to follow every lame-arse tradition that we’ve seen from watching too many Hollywood movies, and having a television schedule that increasingly appears to be taking a direct feed of CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox?

And it also seems totally at odds of where we’ve heading with our children, the trend to lock them up, drive them to school, and blow their noses for them. This trend to allow your children to go out and about knocking on strangers doors seems completely at odds with the “stranger danger” paranoia of the last twenty years. There again, it may be a reaction against this. Maybe we, as a nation, want kids to be able to go out and knock on the neighbours doors again without fear they’ll be abused in some way?

I have a thousand and one other objections, many based around issues of religion and faith.

Despite my concerns, and the concerns of a number of friends expressed on places like Twitter, I’m left with the a sense of resignation. It’s happened though, and there’s nothing I can do about it except write this rather pointless blog post. And so tonight, in the unlikely event someone would press the downstairs buzzer, I went and had a look at what treats I might have in the fridge. Oh yes, there’s some lovely fetta. Oh that pate looks gorgeous. Best treat of all, though? Kalles Kaviar. They love it in Sweden. It’s a creamed salmon roe that comes in a tube, and is as salty as vegemite. Now that’s a treat! I’ll bet the kids will love that.

Gee, that was a relief. I managed to “survive” the telecast on ABC1 of the Andrew Olle Media Lecture without one single shot of me with a glass of wine in my hand. Conscious of a previous telecast where they crossed twice to an image of me with a glass at my mouth, I’ve resolved never to drink during the actual lecture itself.

That was, without doubt, the highlight of my Sunday which was, otherwise, spent relaxing. I’m heading off to Darwin this week, and, conscious of how exhausting “work trips” can be, I resolved to do as little as possible today. The only other “energetic” things I’ve done today, have been go to the supermarket tonight and go to lunch today at the nearby Indian vegetarian.

While I sat and ate my meal, a couple came in – a couple from an Indian background, I assumed by their facial features – and asked about the cuisine. When they were told it was vegetarian, they apologised and walked out. I found this quite remarkable. I mean, I can understand a vegetarian walking out of a restaurant that only sold meat, but I can’t understand the reverse. We spend most of our lives NOT eating meat, don’t we? So why would the absence of meat exclude you from eating at a restaurant? Sometimes I like nothing more than a big plate of pork or a steak, but I always have vegetables with those dishes (well, maybe not the pork).

And the only other energetic thing I’ve done has been go for a walk along Bourke Street. Even though Bourke Street remains a bit of a mess, and even though no one seems to be using it, I think I understand the method in the madness of the cycle-way. That was a conclusion I came to this afternoon as I walked down one of my nearest neighbouring main streets.

Only ten years ago, Bourke Street was a noisy one-way thoroughfare, balanced by the noisy one-way thoroughfare of Crown Street. Now, Bourke Street is a quiet suburban two-way with a cycle-way under construction. Oddly enough, those driving through Surry Hills have yet to learn that you don’t have to use Crown Street, you can also use Reilly and Bourke Streets.

Not what you’d call the most interesting day of my life, though the week ahead sounds more interesting: I’m heading off to the World AIDS Day Sondheim Tribute tomorrow night, and for the rest of the week I’m in Darwin. I arrive back Saturday night, and then on Sunday I have a meeting of my art group, and then a movie catch-up with a friend.

A lazy Sunday seems reasonable, in that context, don’t you think?

“It’s an argument of great subtlety” (or words to that effect) was how Simon Longstaff from the St James Ethics Centre described the debate about Wikileaks, held at Angel Place and which Sue and I attended.

The debate – that “Wikileaks is a force for good” (or words to that effect) – is one fundamentally defined by degrees, since rationally, you would be struggling to argue it was either completely a force for good, or completely not a force for good. There are certainly some good aspects to the Wikileaks phenomenon and some negative aspects also.

The two sides of the debate included Gareth Evans, a conservative-leaning journalist, and a former ALP policy person who argued there were certainly some positive aspects to Wikileaks, but that in essence it also runs the risk of revealing information we don’t really need to know (Gareth Evans had a wry smile about this, with his relationship with Cheryl Kernot famously revealed in the media), and that there’s also the risk of governments becoming even more secretive.

On the other side, there was the current spokesman for Wikileaks, a woman who wrote a book with Julian Assange, and a Sydney University professor who recently awarded Assange a prize for his work. Their arguments were about everyone having the right to know what’s happened, how they have only carefully released information, and how notions of “cabinet confidentiality” are routinely broken anyway by politicians themselves, although I think it may have been an audience member who made that point. Gareth Evans noted they were unable to articulate anything negative about Wikileaks, thus weakening their position in the debate.

In the end, the great majority of the audience thought Wikileaks was a force for good, as articulated by an audience vote. Notably, there was a big turnaround from undecided “voters” to those who disagreed with the debate topic. I put this down to the superior debating skills of one side – Michael Fullilove was excellent – but also to the way in which the first poll was done by randomly asking people as they came in what they thought of the topic.

Anyway, it was a fun night, and it will be shown on ABC TV’s “Big Ideas” at some point soon, I’m sure.