1997: Don’t Sell Yourself, I Say!
Rather buy into your more authentic self.
(updated: 10 June 2024)
In the first half of 1997 I was weightlifting and eating a lot of red meat. I gained about 10% in body weight at my peak.
Because turning 18 wasn’t just about driving and drinking. It was also about weight training, clubs and effortless attraction.
My brother Luke was also going to the gym.
My gear above is 26 Red. The rugby top above is Blanc Bleu. The red/brown shorts are also 26 Red. The white shoes are Air Max 96 and black trainers are Puma. Luke’s top is Ministry-of-Sound (MOS) from London.
Anyway, as part of a uni assignment, I put up a personal page about myself (pic 3 below) and that’s not me in the hammock.
[ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ]
So in 1997, the notion of “selling myself” wasn’t really a thing. You buy into me, I decide if it’s worth it, we make it happen, and that’s it.
Anyway, nothing resulted from that page. But a couple of years earlier I put up a page on my high school site (above right) about myself and a few girls emailed me about it. I didn’t know who they were and didn’t reply. That was my first web page. For this next uni page, I think I wanted to avoid strangers contacting me because the idea of “selling myself” online wasn’t a thing. Who was the person behind the email?
So I had a taxi driver and Deakin University economics lecturer pal Jack Alan who was also weightlifting and was 10 years older. He was of Persian descent and arrived from Buffalo, New York. He had a PhD (or Masters) from New York University regarding stochastic methods in economics and he personally knew Peter from Monash, who Luke also knew, but not personally like Jack.
Initially, Jack drove my dad and I back from somewhere at night in late 1996 and we ended up inviting him into our house for further intellectual discussions. We played tennis a few times and Jack had another buddy of his come along to join us once for a game. We made a number of homemade videos of us cruising around listening to G-funk, sometimes in his red Mazda 121 and other times in my green/blue Nissan Bluebird.
pic | CC
(self-portrait (2024) insertions, car insertion)
Unfortunately the video tapes were thrown out after selling Washington Street in 2006.
[ ’06 ]
The camera I used to film was below, and like below, I did record another 21st party or two for friends at the time.
[ 1998 ]
The videos were kept in the wooden cabinet if anyone has a time machine! Perhaps some of those videos I took may be floating around somewhere. I think Jack had kept one for himself.
I worked as a busboy in that year at Carousel, (Albert Park) delivered pizzas and controlled the dancefloor lights at Silvers (now Jacksons). I also did mobile DJ’ing with a computer (see pic above) and general event promotions work like dropping flyers and passes. One was for the Whisky aGoGo Friday night at Silvers for the organiser Warren, and I brought Jack to that, and a couple of female friends I knew at the time also came to Silvers. That club was around the corner from Washington Street.
I spoke to Warren initially at Jac’s Bar (upstairs at Silvers) and he was a landscape gardener by day. The “Whisky” night had a few female dancers in hot pants dancing all night on podiums. There was also one guy dancing too.
Additionally, I was rehearing at home with guitarist and school friend Noah, and also upright bassist Lucy but we didn’t do any gigs together. I was also rehearsing at Revolver (when it was a music store) with Kon and Nik after responding to a street press advert and we did do a number of gigs together.
[ src | jamming at home 1997| eating out 2007]
[home recording ~2000]
I pushed off a lot of old school friends in order break my comfort zone at the time. Very difficult to do. I don’t know what happened to Jack, maybe he went to the Gold Coast. He was selling protein powders too at the time and was really bulking up. Fun times. We swung by a lot of clubs together. Once at Silvers, he saw some of his own students from uni and they went bananas.
One standout track we bumped was “This DJ” and we considered ourselves as Ticks [1:36: “So I hops in the van with my homie Tick”]
1997 wasn’t all peaches and cream. I failed Accounting and repeated it again in summer. Failing a subject wasn’t something familiar to me. I also cut out alcohol consumption as the hangovers were bad and could knock me about over the next day. Also, I could never fall asleep drunk.. I would just lie awake with my head spinning. I do miss the beer goggles though!
Moreover, I came to the conclusion that drinking was just a way to spend one’s “happiness credits” that would accrue naturally over the week. So being “happy drunk” meant a loss of happiness someplace else during the week during sobriety. In 1997, I explained this to someone drinking at the bar at the Arcadia Hotel and they sort of agreed with me. Lucky I didn’t get kicked out!
[at the downstairs bar, 2022]
The theory explains a lot of why people crave the weekend so badly – just another theory, though.
Yet, at Club Med, Val d’Isere in 1992/93, another skier Matthieu said in a French accent regarding women that “You must attack!” He was around 15 at the time and had a girlfriend, so that was his tip on how to get one because he asked me if I had one and I said ‘no.’
But Club Med had “clubs” anyway for young people to meet one another easily no matter who they were and people met in ski lessons too. Yet what I think he meant was to be confident. Whatever the case, I still enjoyed briefly playing drums at the resort.
Incidentally, a couple of English girls came up and spoke to me after those shots, but we never ended up skiing together, so that was confident by them. I skied with a dude-ette in Zermatt about 20 years later (starting at 1:44,) who was also from England.
Initially, we chatted on the chairlift, pretty mundane stuff, but it took confidence for us to both get to that same point. We took the shots, even without MI6 or Eon Productions.
Speaking of Bond, at what point is confidence infectious enough that it leads to confiding information? On that note, modern interrogation techniques are now more about making a person feel comfortable and asking very pointed questions at different stages of elicitation rather than torture and asking “who sent you?” So offer chicken soup instead of the waterboard. Yet, it is to my understanding that one big risk of interrogations is wrong or altered transcriptions and interviewees should record interviews themselves with their own equipment as backup.
Bustamante has spoken about establishing baselines to determine when someone is out of sync and possibly lying. Happens at airports and wherever dangerous people need to be detected – but how can it detect monarch slaves with disparate personas? Also, who controls VICE? If bankrupt, why is it still running? Is it a loss-leader for controlling narrative? What gets excluded or altered?
Anyway, in Bali, 3 years after France I played with some other guys too at a hotel.
And also met a macaque driven by desire.
Yet, it’s about more than just music and confidence though, but goodwill.
So Matthieu was a great skier and good companion, and on our last day we went off-piste, I think even crossing into Italy, and then took a long bus ride home to make it piste-off.
“Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.” – Billy Crystal
Speaking of forthcoming, on 25 Jan 1997, I went to the Big Day Out music festival. I rolled up alone and without a ticket in the evening. At the gate, someone was leaving and sold me their ticket for $5. Win. After entering, I said hello to an extended family member who I saw by chance (person I was filming at top in front of fireplace) but then kept walking to the main stage alone. People were all sitting down. Then a girl – complete stranger – walked up to me, paused for about 3 seconds and said: “Do you want to have sex with me?” I became the rock star.
She was attractive too – around my age. I had long hair at the time and still had a tan from schoolies week. But I hesitated. I think I said “I don’t know” and then she said “well do you?” and then I was silent and then she walked off permanently. The whole interaction was easily less than 20 seconds. I can’t fully recall the dialogue, but I told a school mate Cam about it a couple of days later.
So later that night, by chance I saw Marc at the main stage and checked out Soundgarden and started moshing which really wasn’t that enjoyable.
In August 1997 I started listening to Be Here Now by Oasis, and in March the following year I was fortunate enough to attend the one and only Oasis concert in Melbourne. But I preferred to stay tight lipped over it, because of the bad reviews as Liam was so wasted and Noel sang for most of the show.
[ Sydney ~2000 ]
At least Liam came out at the end: “Goo goo k’choo.”
Oasis were huge in the 90’s when music and media blended so well in a seamless experience and labels had larger sets of artists that they would develop and promote.
Incidentally, I spoke to a random chap in ’97 (maybe the next) at Silvers and he said that he would wait until closing time and walk around the room and keep asking females the same question “Do you want to go home with me?” (or something similar) until he got a yes. I think he spent much the night eye-flirting and trying to look tough and cool among is wing-men. Whatever it was, it worked for him and he said that people that hang around that long are all there for the same reason and would rather have something than nothing. I don’t think he was much older than me either. Each to their own – a spoonman.
As a side note, I saw Mr Gil Dibner walk up and speak to a series of seemingly random females in quick succession at Eurekamp 2009 while in my close proximity. Was he asking the time? Lift back to TA? Investment ideas? Or was he asking them out? Or saying something about me? I hadn’t spoken to any of them.
Nevertheless, the bizarre thing about Marc was that we first met by chance at a beach hotel in Goa, India in the late 80s [below right, at left].
Note – this is not skateboard Mark.
I even went out on a rented yacht with his father after failing at windsurfing.
(1 2 3 4) 5
Around 5 years after India he ended up at Wesley College, lived close to my house and we became good friends. He was from New Zealand.
[ Marc at left from 2016 ]
So one day while at home, it all clicked that we had met before and I showed him my diary from India and it even had his name written down. Wild moment but I haven’t seen him in decades as of April, 2024 – like many of my other friends from growing up and these memoirs are a way of retuning myself with the past and upcycling consciousness for the future, whilst corporations monetise them on the sly.
Speaking of which, our school motto was “Dare to be wise” (Sapere aude) but how about “Dare to be different” in a world where fashion can easily become tyranny and what most people are trying to imitate is authenticity.
But this is what’s really in fashion right now: growing old… so can I upcycle out of it using marvellous profundity? Will that activate the etheric 12-strand DNA? How do I bring nourishment into the thousand-petaled lotus and stop the fountain-of-youth from crumbling away?
But that’s only for the yogis and believers in pseudoscience. I’ll take real science any day where if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist.
Does growing old have to be about getting old or getting on? Can’t it be about having an indefinite shelf-life like honey and rather growing wise and kind? I’m already part of an unbroken chain back to the patriarchs/matriarchs, so perhaps I am part way there anyway.
Heroes are made, not born, one should hope! Is life about “God versus the devil” or “God includes the devil?” Is enlightenment about having all questions being answered in a single moment?
Anyway, so a few days after BDO, I saw Silverchair at Festival Hall with Michael and found myself amongst masses of screaming girls. I think that gig was an overflow gig for the Palace show as a result of high demand and is unlisted. Otherwise I went to the one in December.
Daniel might know.
Anyway, it is worth noting in Victoria that: “It is an offence for a licensee or permittee to supply liquor to a person in a state of intoxication. It is also an offence to permit drunken or disorderly persons to be on the licensed premises, or on any other premises where we have authorised licensees to serve liquor.” source
And in that respect, in 1997 during uni Orientation Week, one night after leaving Prince Alfred Carlton adjacent to Melbourne Uni, I was told something like “come back to see us during the day” as I stepped through the door on the way out. I asked why and the bouncer just said to come back. And the exact same thing happened again in March 2019 for reasons unknown to me – I wasn’t even drinking alcohol then, but I didn’t ask the bouncer why.
In ’97, I wore a pair of blue, velvety Diesel pants (drum pic below) and red, suede Vans skate shoes a lot back then – so was it for a photo shoot? The demand really irked me after a good night out and I never went to the venue properly ever again, until 2019 for moment of déjà vu. I was phasing out drinking as well in early 1997, another reason I never returned except for a gig in October.
[pic 3 – Sydney, late 2000]
1 …
The band was named after the book The Celestine Prophecy from 1993 but I never got far into it. Some great quotes can be found here. We even had a song called Celestine.
Interestingly, there were a bunch of Sting CDs in the pile above and we covered one of his tracks in the gig.
I also saw Sting play in November, 2000 with Manu Katche on drums.
I did read Siddhartha and saw the film at the Trak (underneath Silvers.) I also read CwG Book 1 and ended up reading most, if not all in the series. I also liked the Osho website and could download his talks.
[src | src 2 ]
I also read a Sivananda book brought back from India for me that covered Kundalini much to my interest.
“If Kundalini is awakened before he attains purity by Asanas, Bandhas, Mudras and Pranayama, he will come across the temptations of the other planes, he will have no strength of will to resist these temptations and will have a hopeless downfall. It will be very difficult for him to climb up again to the original height which he climbed in the ladder of Yoga. Therefore the aspirant should try to purify himself first. If perfect purity is attained through Japa, Kirtan and constant selfless service, Kundalini will awaken by itself and move towards the Sahasrara at the crown of the head to meet Her Lord Siva, the trident-bearer of Mount Kailas, the store-house of wisdom, bliss and peace.” – src
[ 1 | 2 ]
Notice he implied people should strive for purity rather than to awaken Kundalini. Interestingly, I ended up handing many of my books to Toby, including that one, and we recorded music as well in 2003. Toby put me onto the incredible The Wisdom of Ramala which mentions purity 26 times.
Kundalini in 2024 has 40K subscribers (June, 2024) on Reddit and it doesn’t interest me at all, but there’s interesting stuff on Marginalia.
[ 12 Jan 2024]
I suspect Kundalini-Shakti is as important today as it has ever been because it is more intelligent that any AI because it knows the future due to its incredible presence. In 2001, there was an issue of What is Enlightenment? called Can Enlightenment Save the World?
[ src | 2| 3 | Jan 2024 ]
All great content, including White’s description of Homo Noeticus – the next stage in human evolution. Says White above: “Enlightenment is the only thing which can save the world. The only thing.” And that “Homo noeticus is the term I use to designate what I see as a higher form of humanity emerging on the planet now, characterized not by genetic changes but by noetic changes.” So researching these topics kicked into high gear for me in 2001, my last year at university that began in 1997. It was my unofficial degree I suppose, and how can you sell someone the future – it’s already been bought!?
Another channelled take on Kundalini alongside Datre (book) was St Germain from 1999 and I remember printing the whole amazing interview out and reading it in a park.
“The thing is that everybody is different, in terms of the clarity of that moving through the body. Some people do kundalini in a clear way, some people don’t, then it comes right up, causing the mind to shift – burns out the mind, in some people’s cases – but when it is balanced, it just is an addendum to your life, it just adds in. It doesn’t really awaken, it opens your capacity to function with your spirit through your body rather than through your mind and through your imagination. If you’ll notice, people who really stand in their knowing and have a truth mechanism in there, it’s because they experience it in some fashion in their body, not in their mind. So energy when it moves in the body is identified as Shakti, as kundalini, everyplace has a different name.” – src
I also found a Gene Kieffer interview in the same journal.
[src | 2]
Also, Maitreya (another channel) covers the topic here in the following snippet as related to sexual energy, and it actually dates back to 2003:
[ 1 | 2 ]
Incidentally, at the time I remember the artist formerly known as Terence Trent D’Arby becoming Sananda Maitreya – I wondered if he was channelling himself.
(goto 1:35) And he says “a new spirit has become a part of my experience.”
So Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras date back almost two thousand years ago and address the same topic of preparing for, and enabling the dissolution of the microcosm. And today there is a lot of Kundalini information and people on Quora, although I prefer to avoid using that Sanskrit word for something that is so universal and undefinable – it also opens someone up to being labelled, condemned or even idolized . . . Shakti is at least more specific.
[ 8 Dec 2023 ]
For the doubters, just because someone doesn’t understand something or can’t access it (often due to fear or pain,) doesn’t mean it’s not true. Although one could say: “you don’t awaken your Kundalini, it awakens you, and until then, forget about it.” And interestingly, in 2022, an English translation of Abraham Abulafia’s Light of the Intellect from 1285 appeared on Patreon.
[8 Dec 2023 – links above]
For one person’s Samadhi may be another person’s Active Intellect, and the translator above is a Jewish Indian.
Anyway, from 1997 onward I walked passed PAs everyday for years, being at the end of Bouverie Street and on the way to the main Parkville campus. I saw groups of people – uni students – ejected from that premises at certain times to fill up the footpath outside. Perhaps selections are made via CCTV from a back office – that bizarre scenario is not to be ruled out. Like many others, I think I was ejected back in 1997 but can’t fully recall what happened. Maybe I wasn’t. Why do they even stay open during O-Week? You keep drinking, and when you’re spotted (apparently) inebriated, you’re thrown out, just as the the law states. But why are you asked to return the following day? Nice interior, though.
Continuing, as with PAs, I used to spend much time looking at the Arcadia hotel in my prior school years waiting for the tram ride home and readying myself for a tertiary education somewhere and a trip into the “real world.”
[Oct 2002 | Dec 2018]
But the past got pissed!
K-Ci & JoJo – You Bring Me Up (Remix) ft. Snoop Dogg (1997)
– includes mashup
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