I’m cleaning out the bottom drawer of my brain.
It’s where bits and pieces go to be forgotten, but are never out of reach.
A dark room for the miscellaneous and mediocre.
A too-hard basket.
There’s unresolved shit in here from years ago. Alongside some delicate treasures.
It’s a precious mess. I’m going to sort through the debris.
Let’s Marie Kondo the fuck outta 2022.
1. A Deflated Inflatable Unicorn
From Woodford
I woke up on the first on January 2022 in my van, at one of my favourite places to be - Woodfordia on Jinibara country.
I’d met a blonde cutie at the bush dance. He had a giant inflatable unicorn strapped to the roof of his van. When the music stopped and the chai ran dry, I wasn’t ready for our festival fling to end, so I stayed on as a volunteer to help pack up the site… but really, so I could have more swims in the lake with him, and more late-night van visits.
He’d catch me looking at him with absolute admiration. I saw things alive in him that have died in me.
2.
Sandy Surfboard Wax
From living on the Gold Coast for most of the year
I moved to the GC at the end of 2021 for a contract at the local council planning / producing / facilitating young artist development programs.
I lived in a sharehouse with a personal stylist, and a PT / life coach. The stylist diagnosed my look as the “Dad next door / magician / creator” type, and helped me with my colour palette (no surprises: cream, charcoal, burnt orange, deep blue, dark green). The PT liked emotional deep dives for growth and transformation. They both did a lot of personal challenges. Ice baths, cacao ceremonies, ecstatic dancing, 30 days of asking strangers for help, 3am alarms. I’d say we didn’t have much in common. But, we were all trying to find our own way - beating different paths through the same bullshit.
I jumped in the ocean often. Surfed here and there. Ate acai bowls and sipped lattes from handmade ceramic cups amongst draped linen, driftwood, and cacti.
The Gold Coast is the straightest city I have ever visited.
3. A Fucktonne of Pastel Index Cards
From writing a screenplay
Anyone who knows 지하 Underground - the show I wrote with my first love, Jeremy Neideck and a bunch of our dearest friends from Australia and Korea - knows it’s all about the vibe, the space by M’ck McKeague, the music, the joy, and the themes of love, loss, and longing… the story is simple: a misfit’s lifelong search for queer love and belonging.
Turning it into a 100-page screenplay was a massive challenge. All our partners and mentors and script editors tried with all their might and passion to support us to bring drama and tension and structure to this story for SBS & Screen QLD. It was like trying to hold the ocean in our hands. It was like trying to define queer.
Let’s leave that script in the bottom drawer for now. We might come back it later. Or start again.
4. Sugar Sachets
From hosting All The Queens Men’s LGBTIQ+ Elders Dance Clubs
Twice a month, in Brisbane and on the GC, I had the privilege of honouring older queers, making space for intergenerational connections, and dancing with people who’ve seen a lot, fought for a lot, survived a lot, fucked a lot, and loved a lot.
5.
Paint Pens
From facilitating The Makers Collective
at Art From The Margins
Every Monday I facilitated a creative peer-to-peer learning workshop, an inclusive space for artists with disability to support and encourage each other, and work on art pieces and products that could be shared and sold. The artists worked in photography, textile art, painting, digital media, craft. They were passionate about brains, the environment, astrology, cats, and community.
It was one of those groups where you had to be prepared for anything. And my main role, actually, was helping with co-regulation - to prepare the conditions for creativity and connections.
6.
Little Hotel Shampoos
From all the nights in Brisvegas
I did more trips up and down the M1 than I care to count. To avoid some, I stayed in Brizzy hotels a lot. Think Grindr hookups. Think Nespresso. Think face masks. Think positioning my laptop in such a way for zoom calls so as not to reveal the naked bi Filipino New Zealander babe still asleep in the hotel bed.
7. An Hourglass
From producing Awkward Conversations for The Big Anxiety’s The Big Reach
Awkward Conversations offers one-on-one conversations in experimental formats, tackling anxieties, habits and hard-to-talk-about subjects like mental health.
I had the pleasure of supporting a fab bunch of artists as they approached difficult topics - from suicide to transphobic parents - with strangers, in a contrived setting. You can’t get much more at the intersection of social work and the arts than this.
8.
Red Flags
From being an artist in residence at Bleach Festival
In a shipping container by the sea, my dear friend Lenine Bourke and I created a new work, Everyday Underscore. It was a facilitated experience that invited audiences to connect personal relationships to our relationships with the environment… We encouraged participants to reflect on the red flags they’ve seen, and the red flags they’ve flown, in their relationships with other humans and non-humans. The work took the form of a structured walk along the beach, with time for hard questions about survival and extinction, reflective and speculative activities about break-ups and the climate crisis, and cognitive breaks gazing out to sea.
9.
Poppers
(Juice, not the fun kind)
From producing Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Nightwalks with Teenagers for Brisbane Festival
This show does exactly what it says on the tin: you follow teens being teens through the city at night. You climb shit, play games, play music, snack, dance. You talk about school, sexuality, movies, drugs, pizza, lonliness, eshays, gender, anxiety, and everything else.
In a cute full-circle moment, one of the teenagers from Mammalian Diving Reflex who took me on an unofficial night walk when I was in Toronto years ago, was one of the producers and facilitating artists of the project for Brisbane Festival! An absolute highlight was spending time with the Mammalian crew… we drank and danced in Brisbane’s trashiest club, fine-dined by the river to satisfy a sashimi craving, smashed midnight pancakes with cheap Aussie bubbly… and crossed our fingers that the five of us, from Australia, Canada, the UK, and Italy - might cross paths again. Lotta love there.
Recruitment of teenagers was hard. This was a case of making it work as best I could given the circumstances. I appreciate the opportunity to work on contemporary, socially-engaged art. The young people involved loved it.
10. Loose Notes & Doodles
From being on the Artistic Directorate of Next Wave.
It’s exciting to be a part of Next Wave’s experiment to have an artistic directorate, rather than one Artistic Director. There’s eight of us across the continent, and we come together online to contribute to the direction of Next Wave, while working with the Kickstart Artists in our home states who’re developing their most ambitious new works yet. We’re operating from the values of friendship, justice, and care to trial new ways of curating and supporting artists to experiment and tell critical stories that matter now.
11. A Photo of Dad, & Covid Tests,
wrapped in my Ex’s T-shirt
All from 2020. All very present.
12.
Boarding Passes
From flights to Hobart, then Cairns, via Melboure to be a mentor on Perfoming Lines’ Artist Residencies
I guess, like accepting my Daddy era, I have to accept that I have enough experience these days to be a mentor. Mentors played a huge role in my development as an artist, community worker, producer, homo, and human, and it feels very special to now mentor others. The Performing Lines residencies are exciting, intense weekends with shit-hot artists - where ideas are pulled apart, thrown at the wall, and scattered on snowy mountaintops and tropical lakes.
13.
A Seashell
From publishing a bilingual children’s picture book
The Footprint has been years in the making. It‘s a story I wrote a long time ago, and something very dear to my heart. It’s about Eugene, who blames his shoes for all of his mistakes… and Suzie, who uses the very same shoes to make an extraordinary impact.
It’s about transforming our world through care.
It’s in English and Korean, thanks to Younghee Park.
The illustrations are drop-dead gorgeous, thanks to Brian Cheung.
We self-published it, and we would love for you to share it with the children, and the young at heart, in your life.
It’s available here.
Everyone knows I am now long-distance-slow-boil-crushing on the illustrator.
14.
A tube of topical steroid cream
From living in Mongolia
I am in the coldest capital city in the world - Ulaanbaatar. I’ve been here two months, and I’ll stay until mid next year. It’s negative 20 degrees outside today - which is not bad, considering it was negative 35 degrees out there recently. Air pollution is currently “unhealthy” which is better than “hazardous”. It’s dry. My air filter and humidifier run 24/7. Protestors have been assembling in the freezing city square for weeks after it was revealed that government authorities have been stealing billions of dollars of coal profits over recent years.
The countryside is breathtaking. Snow-covered mountains, gers (yurts), horses, frozen rivers and dormant forests.
I’m working at a non-government organisation who have been advancing democracy for 25 years through community development, and youth and education programs. I love the org, I love the team, I love the work.
I’m warm and safe in my apartment. I go to a fancy gym often. I’m reconnecting with friends I made when I was here seven years ago, and making new ones. I’ll write more about all this later.
Oh yeah, the cream is for a rash on my back. I guess the conditions here are a bit harsh for this pale ginger soft kid from the warm Queensland bush?
15.
A Wisdom Oracle Card
From 2002
Reminding me to lighten up, stop taking life so seriously, and have fun. Bloody toxic new-age positivity.
WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THIS SHIT?
Look, I dunno, but I’ve taken time to sort through the leftovers of 2022, and that’s the main thing.
As a reward for my efforts, there’s a little bit more space.
Everything has its place.
I can close the drawer, and face 2023.
This year, I’ll keep an eye on work, so it doesn’t take up so much room again. And since I’m no good at arranging my life around love, I will arrange love around my life.
Happy New Year,
Nathan.