[Applause]
let's not forget last night yeah how he
drove in 1993 I thought I could fly what
was the reason for this self belief this
confidence it was because I was living
the dream and not just any dream either
I was living my very specific dream of
being a singer songwriter a creative
artist and that was all I'd ever wanted
to do since I was a kid jumping around
our living room with a fake cardboard
electric guitar miming my band things of
stone and wood had a hit song the song
that is currently going through the
speaker there we had a hit song on the
radio and we're launching our debut
album the yearning Atmel burns corner
hotel one of the biggest venues in
Melbourne and it was filled with people
eagerly awaiting this the most important
show of our career to date and I felt
awesome I'd taken this leap of faith
onto a stepping stone in the middle of
the river and it was working as I went
to walk on stage I had an idea an idea I
now recognize as having questionable
worth of going wouldn't it be really
really cool if I jumped into the sky
like a total rock star and landed on the
first beat of the show as I walked
onstage I still thought this was a great
idea in fact as I flew into the air I
felt so great I felt that I could have
flown out into the stratosphere I
reached the zenith of my leap and again
come back down and the lights exploded
into life and I was about to hit the
stage and smash out the show only when I
hit the stage
I didn't stop at the stage I fell
straight through the stage and I was
left at this stage up to my armpits and
I was looking out at the audience and
they were looking at me shocked and
confused and I was looking at them
shocked and confused and they were right
here the band who was hoping to launch
into a fiery folk rock song had to play
a little bit of cocktail jazz in the
background while the roadies came and
pulled me and my tragically out of tune
guitar from the wreckage so a lot of my
the band's good fortune at this point
could have been put down to our hit
single Happy Birthday Helen I just have
to say on a side note helen has just
proven herself to be a very worthy
subject of hypnosis I just have to say
but anyway we'd released this song in
1992 and watch that become a radio hit
and then a genuine bona fide chart
top-ten hit and it was life-changing for
the band and for me as the band's
songwriter I'd written the song from my
wife's 22nd birthday we'd just come back
from a trip to India which it was very
confronting and reflective and was
struggling to readjust to life in the
comfortable Melbourne suburbs
I wrote a lyric silver there filled with
memories of our first three years
together and I put them to an upbeat
folk-rock song it was written entirely
for an audience of one and I'm happy to
say that Helen enjoyed her birthday
present so that was that I thought but a
couple of months later I played the song
- Mike Yellin the bass player in things
of stone and wood and he went huh that's
a good song we should do that song in
the band and I thanked him not for the
first time over the last 29 years
because it seemed that observation was
right
but I've always been best surprised by
the reaction to the song why it hits
such a nerve because it's so insular it
wasn't is a two-person memory catalog I
know what the lyrics mean Helen knows
what the lyrics mean but nobody else
does but I think it hit a nerve for two
reasons I think people heard the truth
of the love in the song the authenticity
of the love it has aesthetic purity of
heart it was not written to please any
specific demographic it wasn't written
to please any radio programmer
it certainly wasn't written to cynically
cell records and I think the second
reason that people responded so well to
this song was that they translated it
into their own experience I mean they
didn't know what it was like to drive
along Mel burns muddy river the Yarra
they didn't know what it was like to
kiss on that bridge that fell down I
mean what bridge are you talking about
mate but I think they translated those
lyrics into their own lives
I believe the audience and the song had
a conversation they shared arguably they
collaborated in the composition of
meaning now sadly they can't all be
happy birthday Helens other band enjoyed
further successes we toured around the
UK Europe Canada and every gig and
festival big and small in Australia but
we never enjoyed the same level of
success again and I'm sure I'm not the
only musician who has to reconcile
themselves to the fact that at 26 my
career in that area had peaked after the
band stopped touring I continued on in
my creative life as a as a
singer-songwriter a musician a record
producer small steps to small stones
sometimes forward
sometimes backwards but I was happy even
if I was less likely to be asked for an
autograph
but by the time I was 40 something
changed
I just written an album called lost
Murray and it was entirely filled with
story songs fiction I'd removed myself
entirely from the album and that was
telling me something that was telling me
that I was sick of myself I was at the
end of the road not all roads but that
specific road I just didn't want to do
it anymore I didn't want to be away from
my family every weekend I didn't want
the financial insecurity of it all I
still had lots of nice gigs but when I
had a bad one I didn't feel like a folk
rock warrior fighting the good fight the
bad beats would hurt me deeply now so I
I stopped touring and I thought gee what
do I do now what do I know how to do
what did I know how to do before music
so took over my life and then I
remembered well I know how to be a
university student I've taken about six
years to complete a four year English
literature degree I thought that had
plenty of practice I felt I was pretty
good at it so I thought I'll go back to
university and so I enrolled in a
Masters of Arts administration with the
express purpose of leaving the creative
life behind I wanted a life more regular
but it was only a matter of time before
all arrows began pointing back to that
very life I was trying to leave behind
after I left University with my degree
in hand I started teaching music
business songwriting record production
popular culture and I had a full-time
job in the Academy something I never
expected I'd have
and then I took a very significant leap
onto a very important stepping stone one
from which I hoped I would understand
creativity beyond the mere practice of
it as part of the process I was working
on a new album with my band the swamp
dandies and I hope to research the
hypothesis that I was totally amazing I
was hoping to be able to prove in a
bullet-proof way that I was a stunning
example of the g-word that word that
gets bandied around so much in creative
circles a genius for all my life I
believe these very romantic ideas that
artistry was somehow some special gift
bestowed upon the special few at birth
so I didn't want to look too closely at
my creativity lest it would disappear
like some sort of character from a fairy
tale now I'm sure you've all noticed at
this point this took me a while to get
there that such thinking is utter
nonsense it has no place in serious
postgraduate critically self-reflective
study it just took me a long time to get
there but I noticed when I started
studying that all the writers and
academics were drilling down on these
ideas these romantic ideas of creativity
and they were finding them
unsatisfactory and I didn't like what I
was finding I didn't like anything that
made me seem less brilliant to myself
but the more I looked at it the more I
found things like the system's model of
creativity a model where there's a
relationship between the writer or the
person and the field is represented by
expert gatekeepers and by the broader
domain and in this systems model of
creativity the person invents something
novel that is discovered nurtured and
developed by an expert gatekeeper and
then launch that into the broader domain
well I did not like that at all there is
nothing romantic about a system and
novelty inventing something novel in
this context novelty was like a swear
word to me I was a serious artist I
wrote serious songs but I couldn't help
but notice as much as I might have liked
it that the system's model could be
applied to me say for example the song
we talked about it Happy Birthday Helen
Oh authentic love is many things in a
popular song but it most certainly is
not novel but a wailing harmonica is in
my band things of stone and wood were a
high-energy melodic on harmonically
appealing band but were also
broadcasting a novel suite of acoustic
instruments that novelty was embraced by
the expert gatekeeper our producer and
manager James black already an
established musician in Australia and in
turn we were signed by that mega
gatekeeper Sony records and we're
released out into the broader domain
with vast commercial support we will
welcomed with open arms now I might not
have liked it much that the system's
model could be applied to me and our
experiences but I felt better when I
realized what if it could be applied to
me it could be applied to anybody for
example my favorite ever creative
artists the Beatles they'd invented a
novel new approach to popular music
where they wrote their own songs which
was unusual for punk performers at the
time they had stellar three-part
harmonies but no established lead singer
and with a seemingly boundless Schwar
devii
they reenergized the fundamental
youthful spirit of rock and roll they
were discovered by the expert gatekeeper
producer George Martin he nurtured and
developed that work and then they'll
broadcast out into the broader domain by
EMI and they were loved and understood
in a manner that no one has enjoyed
before or since once I finished my PhD
studies I didn't stop writing songs I
didn't lose any magical mojo
because magical mojo is not a real thing
to lose I still loved popular songs I
loved as much as I ever had or maybe
even more I love the simple blend of
lyric and melody and harmony and rhythm
that can be so moving but put simply my
love for pop music had grown up it's
attributed to Thomas Edison that genius
is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration I'm
much more likely to appreciate the 99%
of hard work or perspiration now that
I'm no longer enamored with the
vainglorious delusions of the moment of
inspiration but I can see how this must
look to you it must look like I've given
up in some way that I've settled for
some diminished notion of creativity but
that's not true at all I've discovered
something that I find to be even more
beautiful and more egalitarian than any
of the room magic nonsense I had come to
the project with every one of you every
one of us is absolutely unique nobody
will ever share the identical
perspective on life and the human
condition as you do I've discovered that
if you can find a way to broadcast that
unique perspective in a manner that is
discovered and embraced and nurtured by
an expert gatekeeper you too might enjoy
the immense satisfaction of having your
deepest emotions understood and enjoyed
by a broader audience my PhD taught me
to question the very existence of genius
but if such a thing does exist then you
are all we are all creative geniuses
waiting to happen thank you
[Applause]