This week’s spotlight, like its feature writer Mike Ladd, subverts its usual form to highlight the essay, ‘It will be freezing and wet but the Iliad will be open’ from the recently released Dream Tetras.
Post written by Polly Grant Butler
Though Dream Tetras is not poetry in the strictest sense, poeticism still winds its way through this collection of twenty-four essays by Mike Ladd, each with a focus on a different dream, and accompanied by the artwork of Mike’s life and creative partner, Cathy Brooks. At the recent launch of the book, Mike explained that the process of writing this collection took years, as he wanted each dream to be authentic, and worthy of investigation. What emerged is part dream analysis, part memoir, part cultural criticism; a blend of images and ideas that motivate you to look towards your own dreams with the same level of scrutiny and thoughtfulness.
Each essay is structured around a particular ‘dream phrase’, words that have been plucked out of the subconscious to become Mike’s guide throughout the waking day. Patterns are formed between dreams, internet searches and the day’s encounters, with each of these patterns allowing for delightful moments of surprise and intrigue.
In one dream (‘You have to get the frame-rate right to control the past’), Mike and Lenin grapple with a past-that-never-was as it’s projected out of a video recorder. In another (‘Tiene Orangina?’), Mike and a chain-smoking Albert Camus stroll down the Mediterranean coast, in pursuit of a ‘lightly carbonated citrus drink’. In ‘Oh my lollapalooza’, Mike delves into an analysis of the patriarchal dynamics in the 1950 classic film, All About Eve.
The essay I’ve chosen to highlight – ‘It will be freezing and wet but the Iliad will be open’ –shows the way dreams are like a visual manifestation of memory, a reproduction of the past within the present. In chatty prose with flowing rhythm, Mike remembers employment as a teen, the gruelling exploitation, how there was ‘no time for composing poetry’. Perhaps because I suffer from an intense and visceral nostalgia almost constantly, I found this essay very moving. The absence of the younger self, of places and people no longer here. At least we have our dreams – a site to witness our strange little minds trying to make sense of a life, as the memories pile up.
Read the essay below.
The setting of the dream is a train. Not an ordinary train, but one capable of going back into the past. It’s dark, winter. I’m hungry, hoping to find a meal at our destination, the city on the plain. The train rushes downhill vertiginously, almost falling through gorges. I’m alone in a darkened carriage. The words are said to me over my shoulder by a passing conductor who hurries into the shadows. I know it’s the past I’m headed to because the Iliad restaurant has been closed for thirty years. I worked there as a dishwasher in the mid-1970s. When I get down onto the plain it is indeed cold and wet, everything is shut, but there is one light on, coming from a building draped in vines in a distant square.
The next day, in mid-summer Adelaide, bright and holiday breezy, I’m rounding Whitmore Square in the car. The Iliad is not The Iliad anymore, and whatever it is now, is closed. The grapevines of the outdoor dining area still flourish at the front of the building, covering the footpath in deep shade. Across the road in the square, homeless people are waking up under a Moreton Bay Fig.
If you look deep enough into the internet, The Iliad is still open. In the back pages its lights are ablaze, live bouzouki echoing in the front room, the white Corinthian columns shining and new. There’s a big crowd in – they’re roaring and plates are being smashed on the bricks. Don Dunstan holds court at an outside table, having just passed the new sidewalk dining laws. The grapevine rustles above him in a balmy night breeze. I’m out back, loading the dishwasher as fast as I can go. ‘More glasses! More glasses!’ I’m sixteen. This is only my second job.
My very first job was building a horse track in the Blackwood hills. The land-owner put an ad in the local paper and twenty kids turned up. He didn’t know what to do. How to choose between those assorted teenagers and one old man sitting on a rock. These were tough times. Unemployment was high.
I knew one of the other applicants. He had a crow bar and I had brought my father’s mattock. We quickly formed a partnership and offered ourselves. ‘It’s still fifty dollars for the job,’ the owner said. We agreed. The money seemed good, even split two ways, but then we discovered the horse track was to run up a steep, dry hill to a stable 100 metres away.
It was the end of summer; we hammered into rocky soil, sweating in the sun, levering out ironstone and quartz, hacking at obstinate roots. Our hands blistered, we stood there at the end of the day as the owner looked dissatisfied with our progress. We had to come back and work all the next day and then the next weekend too. Counted into our hands, every dollar hurt. This was our first taste of exploitation – the way he’d harnessed our young, sunburnt muscles, our eagerness.
The job in the humid, dishwashing room of the Iliad restaurant was better, though I was still sweating, and I was very aware of the gulf between me and the revellers out front. There was no time for composing poetry, but as I opened the dishwasher’s shiny door, the lines came to me in a puff of steam: ‘you measure your success by your distance from the machine.’
With no dinner breaks, I learnt to have a sandwich before starting and I learnt about waste too, scraping into the bin half-finished plates of seafood, and whole skewers of chicken and lamb. At two am I was still there, digging the fat out of the trays and wiping clean the cookers and lugging the bins into the rancid back alley. The head barman (we were the last two left in the place) would bring us a beer each and a camembert on a plate with a spray of Jatz biscuits. ‘Don’t tell the boss.’ We ate in silent solidarity.
When you Google the dream phrase, the combination of ‘freezing’ and ‘Iliad’ means the first three results lead directly to Book 22 of The Iliad, the justly famous passage about the death of Hector. Hector stands alone outside the gates of Troy. Achilles is bearing down on him. Inside, Hector’s parents beg him to join them and escape his doomed fight against a stronger man. He debates whether to offer peace terms to Achilles, give him back Helen and all the treasures of Troy. Then he panics and runs away. Achilles chases him like a falcon after a pigeon. Neither of them know it yet, but those secret dirty bastards of Gods are going to guarantee Achilles victory. In the pursuit, the warriors pass two well-springs, which feed the river Skamandros, one with hot steamy water, the other freezing cold. And by the springs ‘stood wide tubs for washing’. And there I am, dish pig at the Iliad, scrubbing away as the heroes flash past.
The exhibition for Dream Tetras is on until January 14 at Newmarch Gallery, and features digital prints, texts and 3D works.
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