Mark reflects on Flinders Street Train Station, hats and the return of Hunters and Collectors.

Author:  Mark Seymour.

Date: 20 February 2022.

Original URL: N/A.

Article Text

‘Clock People’

Flinders street station is a strange land. A meeting place that was never officially sanctioned. They spill out of the entrance and linger under the clocks. The lost, the hardened, homeless kids and old men who have only themselves to count on..

Eyes wide, hopeful and deeply sad, as if waiting for someone who will never arrive. Under all conditions, heat wave to blizzard, they sit, stand, stare at the passing traffic.

There’s a softness to them too. A deep vulnerability.. They come here and bring their loneliness with them, to be at the centre of things..

‘I’m here. It’s allowed. I’m harming no one. I can sit and watch. My life is full.’

And who knows? Maybe they’re right.

Or maybe it’s the ancient clocks themselves.. hanging there on the corner, that seem to radiate the loss of centuries. War, depression, pandemics.

Melbourne’s ground zero.

I bought a hat downstairs in city hatters, just round the corner.

A balmoral 59.

White hemp with a leather band. I had one already, but I lost it walking back to the hotel last Saturday.. somewhere between Balaclava and East Melbourne, bouncing off Caulfield hedges. Gone out looking for release from the full emersion of Hunters and Collectors power.

Must’ve over cooked it. Forgive me. It happens. Five days in a Richmond Barn.. searching for the sweet spot of power and grace while lots of men stumbled ‘round each other, avoiding the gear, which was in abundance, counting bars, chasing precision at high volume.

It wasn’t easy but we endured, started hard and kept going to the end. A life in twelve songs. The last great roar of self-belief. Don’t go looking for the odd loose moment. Surrender is the only option. Climb on and ride.

The songs are there of course.. chords, melody.. words, but it’s the machine that guides you. The engine rumbles, then lurches into life.. and charges forward, relentlessly. Like a V twelve ABRAMS..

This way sir. Leaving now.. Don’t argue.

and mind the gap.

But the hat must be replaced, so I can find that other little guy again who lives outside the storm under a Balmoral 59, past the clock people, sitting, standing, glancing at each other across the broad canvas of hot tar.

There’s a busker sitting on a milk crate next to the traffic light. He’s caning a Maton and crooning like a pro.. foot stomping. He’s good. He’s got tone. It’s hard to know where it comes from though. That’s the thing about tone.. it’s intuitive. There’s the timing of several things.. the cuffed heel of his hand, the foot hitting the tarmac, his voice reverberating up into the cavern of the station entrance. He’s chosen his ground well. Flinders Street Station is his.

And it dawns on me. These clock people, loosely hanging off walls, the steps, one old guy literally lying on the melting tar, fly undone, calling for ‘American Pie’..

And the busker has them all in his hands, mesmerised.. He’s giving out for nothing. Apart from the few coins in his open guitar case.

Paul Kelly’s Gravy, Bruce’s Fire..

I have to stop and become one myself. A clock person, knowing quietly as I lean against the station wall, his chops are infinitely superior to mine..

I could never do this.

So what is firepower I wonder? Even better, what is power itself? How do you find your soul in a song, with only your hands and a voice to play with?

I slip him a tenner.

And walk..

H&C is coming

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