Creatures
from the Black Lagoon
Richard Neville's speech at the opening of
Larrikins in London,
Ivan
Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, 4 Sept 03.
Forty
years ago today,
the
boys & girls came out to play
and to have their say.
To expose hypocrisy
deflate pomposity
and challenge the authority
of our would-be wreckers of democracy;
the bigot, the bore,
the masters of war.
It started as sparklers in the dark
and spread like wildfire,
drawing in the students, the folkies.
the rockers, the loafers,
the surfies, the dopers.
All those fed up with
the grey psychic d?cor,
everyone sick of the mutilations of freedom.
Maybe your first sparkler was a protest song,
or an outlawed cartoon,
the anti segregation bus bound for Moree,
the starship
Edna, blasting off from Moonie Ponds, the fuzzy photos of
US marines
caught torturing the Vietnamese.
The lies, the endless lies,
the censorship,
the whittling away of civil liberties,
the diminishing of all it means to be human,
to be alive,
and to be young.
Okay, so that was then and this is now,
Well?
What's the difference?
The then is the now.
The Creatures of the Black Lagoon are back!
Back with their cruelties, their greed,
their born again bible bashing superstitions,
their power-lust,
their manic market fundamentalism,
their wistful invocation of capital punishment,
their dark imposition of a capitalism that punishes -
that devours everything in its path:
schools,
hospitals, universities,
the arts, the ABC, the eco system, our souls, your future.
Slammed shut! are the doors of perception,
Bang Bang! go the wars of deception.
Over 20,000 dead in Afghanistan,
and rising.
Over 9,000 civilians blown away in Iraq,
and rising
And still we are supposed to feel proud
to be part of a
Coalition of the Willing
We are supposed to feel proud
to be part of a
Coalition of the Killing.
Forty years ago today -
We did not foresee
This long day's journey
This long day's circular journey
back to the scary midnight
of a late fifties wet Sydney Sunday,
that weird moment of having finished high school
and finding that we had nothing in common with the people who were running this country
into the ground.
So - where are the larrikins of today?
You're either here tonight,
or gone to Hollywood,
Or gone to seed.
Or still desperately seeking the perfect hairdresser,
Which I've always found elusive,
or fine dining,
free downloads,
non stop sport,
or hallucinating real estate in the land of the
over geared mortgage,
from which no traveller returns with their
inner fire still
burning.
Hey, don't give up!
There's stirrings on the fringes,
smoulderings in the schoolyard.
It ain't over yet
and it never will be,
until the last larrikin gives up the ghost.
Could this be the time to re-sharpen our tongues,
To outwit,
To outsmart,
To out think
To innovate, agitate, collaborate
To chuck a few truth bombs
To terrify all those who would be the incubators of
terror,
For ever and ever
It is not about resurrecting history
Or cloaking our failures in nostalgia
Or casting ourselves as the romantic lead in a bodice
ripping memoir from the Summers of Love,
Which I've already done,
Or flaying our kids with tall stories of tough times at the all night group sex legalise pot wet dream film festivals
No, it's not about restoring the past,
It's about rescuing the future.
Not my own, there's so little left.
It's about sending the Creatures of the Black Lagoon back to where they belong.
To the fossil record.
Let's forget the phoney patriotism of flags on lapels
and cultivate a patriotism for all human kind.
Let's top our glasses with the nectar of global justice,
laced with a righteous impudence,
roll back the carpet, rekindle the quest for a fairness revolution, and drink a
toast to the
born again larrikins of the 21st Century.
May victory be sweet and prolonged
And the language of truth forever prevail.
To Your Health!
