All posts by Adam Gerace

So, This Is 40? Huh…

Last year, I turned 40. I write that with some trepidation even after several months. Strangely, though I’ve never really tried to hide my age on this blog – my references to Police Academy and A Country Practice kind of give it away – I do feel a little vulnerable putting it out there. Turning 40 sounds like, and I guess it was, a big deal.

Unlike my 30th where I had a rather extravagant party, I decided to keep it low-key and host some smaller events with various friends. Bob surprised me with a weekend away in the Adelaide Hills on an organic farm in what’s called a tiny house. We arrived late when the sun had gone down, and after fumbling around for the light switches in the pitch black, the house revealed itself to be charming, not so tiny, and well-equipped. Bob heated dinner, I opened the chardonnay, and we settled in to watch the Eurovision semi-finals. We did pretty much the same thing on our first trip away over 10 years ago! The next day we had a leisurely start before meeting friends who had driven up to meet us for lunch at a winery. An evening of cheese and (more) wine on the deck followed. Best of all the paddocks surrounding the house had cows! Such fun!

Going away made my birthday feel a little gentler. It’s strange that when I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait to be older. I loved the idea of having what I saw as stylish (early-2000s) “adult” clothes, renting an apartment with beautiful floorboards and an impressive view, and hosting dinner parties where the conversations would be meaningful, stimulating and, most important, sparkling. I wanted to be old enough to say things like, “We’ve known each other for three decades!” or “I did that 20 years ago”, when referring to friends, colleagues, and experiences. I never really felt like a teenager at the time, although in some ways, compared to my friends, I had the most growing up to do. Have you watched the animated TV-series BoJack Horseman about an anthropomorphic actor horse? There’s a character, Vincent Adultman, who is catfishing (I wrote that without realising, I swear) BoJack’s Hollywood agent, Persian cat Princess Caroline. In reality, Vincent is three children hiding under a trench coat standing on each other’s shoulders. Substitute a trench with suede jacket and corduroy pants and you kind of having me in my late teens, trying to play grown up.

In the weeks leading up to my birthday, I surprised myself by how anxious I was to be turning 40.

Turning 40 really brought into sharp focus that there isn’t infinite time. I know that’s not a particularly groundbreaking reflection, but when you’re younger, it seems like you have nothing but time. Remember those summers off school when the clock moved ever so slowly? We’d lie on the couch or the cool tiled floor (this is Australia) watching the summer cricket and reruns of TV shows on hiatus. Later at university, it didn’t feel indulgent to pass weeks doing very little of anything other than partying and drinking nights away. There would be enough time to figure out what you wanted to do with your life. There was oh so much time to explore options and people, even if, for me, that meant bouncing from bad relationship to bad relationship until, not a moment too soon, I experienced some insight into my patterns. Up until I was in my 30s, it felt as if life could be a series of vignettes, rather than putting together something that in the cold light of day would look and feel rounded and whole.

The year I turned 30, I wrote an email to my mentor and friend, Professor Rosalind Cartwright, about how it seemed time was drifting. Her response was very impactful. She wrote back to me advising, “Spend your young adulthood wisely so that in the following decades you will have something valuable to do that lasts”, ending with “I saw promise in you that needs to be a focus so that time does not continue to slip away”.

Professor Cartwright’s advice spurred me to action, and I got busy. I started meeting certain goals that are deemed appropriate in the area in which I was working, such as publishing a certain number of papers and winning grants. However, I don’t know if I quite got her advice then. I felt a dissonance between what I was supposedly accomplishing and what I really felt. I saw little meaning in what I was doing, was dissatisfied, and believed that after so much supposed promise, I was treading water. At that time, I unconsciously kept doggedly pursuing my goals, but didn’t understand why I was frustrated or felt trapped.

It was several years before I truly started to understand, in part thanks to a good therapist, that fulfilment – be it in work, home life, or in relationship with oneself or others – comes from living life in line with one’s values. Goals should be underpinned by values, rather than goals being seen as a proxy for knowing one’s values; or as an end in themselves. “Something valuable”, as Professor Cartwright put it, is something that allows you to live authentically, from which you derive satisfaction, and that helps you get out of bed in the morning. Something valuable, as I’ve come to define it, is also something that is an important, but not disproportionate, part of one’s overall life satisfaction.

I do need to say that I am now somewhere where I enjoy working and find the work fulfilling. But I have to admit that I feel those late-20s, early 30s years could have been spent better. Turning 40, I couldn’t stave off the feeling that there were some wasted and lost years in the wilderness that I could never get back.

My therapist once told me that they thought I derived a lot of my identity from work, rather than it being a proportionate part of who I thought I was. Eckhart Tolle wrote in A New Earth about how rather than seeing a job or even being a parent as something we “do” or a function we fulfill, we can confuse these roles with our identity. Unease comes when the role ends, changes or, in my case, isn’t fulfilling. We can start to question, “Who am I?”, or “Who am I now?” I am consciously working on not identifying so much with my work role, and feel I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough.

If I reflect on it, my disquiet had a lot to do with realising time is finite and overidentifying with an unfulfilling work identity, but there was another role or identity that I was struggling to let go of as I turned 40.

When I started working, so much of my identity and attitude towards myself came from how I thought others saw me. This is what Charles H. Cooley referred to in 1902 as the looking-glass self. I started my PhD at 21, and I was the youngest in the department by quite a few years. Submitting my thesis five years later and then starting a job as a postdoctoral researcher, I was still by a long shot the youngest person in the room. Sometimes I resented that because even though I worked hard over those years, I didn’t feel I was listened to or that others thought I had enough gravitas. I’d be lying, though, if I said there weren’t times when I did relish it. Colleagues were surprised or impressed with what I had done or the work I had produced “at your age”. That felt good.

While I haven’t been the youngest person in the room for a while, turning 40 did represent a more objective changing of the guard.

A weekend away and a new friend.

Over the past few months, I’ve started to look at turning 40 a bit differently. I’m reluctant to present to you a ‘Things I Know Now that I’m 40’ list. It’s seems a little indulgent and presumptuously generative. When reflecting on her legacy and waxing a bit nostalgic, Bette Midler caught herself and said something along the lines of, “But I’ve thought of my legacy since I was 21”. I feel the same, but that’s Bette Midler! Nonetheless, I will share with you some thoughts I’ve had over the last few months, and years. If nothing else, it will be an improvement on my ‘Things I Know Now that I’m 20’, which, if it exists, is most probably on a 3½-inch floppy disk and due to outdated technology, mercifully lost to time.

So, what’s it all about? First, there isn’t infinite time. That’s a good thing. Perhaps that means we need to make sure that we do as much as we can today, rather than think we’ll do it tomorrow. It’s not about quantity, but about understanding and doing what is meaningful to oneself. For me, to take Dr Russ Harris’ terms, it is contribution, creativity, and connection. I truly do believe that if we’re striving to live life in line with values, that’s not lost time. I didn’t know that I was striving, but during a lot of those unfulfilling years, I knew it didn’t feel ‘right’ and did what I could to try to figure out what I wanted.

People often tell me how busy I am – how much, as one friend puts it, I never “stop home”. Maybe that’s true, but if I can be as honest with you as I can, I feel that for so many experiences I have not really been in the moment because of the anxiety and other issues that have at times been a significant part of my life. They say to “Live, Laugh, Love”. I’m more of a “Ruminate, Rinse, and Repeat” kind of lad. There’s a definite feeling of not being present, but being on the outside looking in. I was very busy in my 20s and a good part of my 30s, and from the outside that might have looked fulfilling. But, even if others weren’t, I was aware that I could have been doing more. That’s not perfectionism talking, so much as a reflection on how many days have been spent on the couch, exhausted from thoughts. So much dissatisfaction from work came from it not being a good environment; other dissatisfaction was much more complex. Regardless, I can choose to see all this as lost time. Or I can see it as being a painful but necessary part of becoming more aware of what I want and value.

I don’t think our underlying or core values necessarily change as we get older, but their relative importance and how they are expressed might. Connection with others has always been so important to me. One thing that has changed over the last few years is the realisation that, while I want to accomplish and contribute something to the wider world, for me, true cherished memories are experiences shared with friends and family. Mindfulness during those times is challenging, but worth it. What has given me that sense of meaning of late? It’s dinner parties, lazy days on the beach spent with friends, cultivating a hydrangea, or baking a cake. Watching Police Academy with Bob and insightfully telling him, “Captain Harris really isn’t a villain. He just demands excellence of his recruits”. Now, that’s an insight I couldn’t have had in 1989. But guess what – I can now say about a friend, “I’ve known them for three decades”. Fortunately, I can also say, “So good to make a new friend”.

On the topic of friends. I think respect for others requires self-respect. I’m trying to be more respectful of people, and myself. I don’t want to make excuses, but at times when my head has not been in its best place, I haven’t always been so respectful of people’s time. I would cancel close to an event. Beyond feeling depleted, this action also comes from a lack of self-esteem. The voice inside my head was, I’m not feeling well. Why would they want to hang with me anyway? My company’s not that important, so what if I cancel? For that, I’m sorry.

I still think time does drift…in a way. In my early 20s, I fell out with a couple of people who were at that time important to me, and I let time drift because it seemed there’d be time. Then you look back and realise it was 20 years ago. As I approached 40, I reached out to a couple of them to say, “I’m sorry”. It wasn’t about wanting to shirk responsibility or an exercise in reciprocity, getting them to acknowledge in turn the role they had played. I didn’t even expect a response. It was because I truly felt sorry and wanted to unequivocally tell them that. I wasn’t the best person I could have been. The Vodka Cruisers didn’t help, either.

Understanding what makes us tick. I think the best work I’ve done on myself it to try to figure out who I am. Besides being and perhaps looking young, I think that a lot of those times that I wasn’t listened to in a meeting were because I didn’t know what I stood for or what I wanted. As my friend Donna has said on our podcast, others often don’t trust us when we don’t trust ourselves. I also deferred to others because I am a people pleaser. The people pleasing ran so deep that it wasn’t just hiding what I thought. Often it was not even knowing what I thought. Maybe they would have paid attention if I had had the courage of my convictions. Of course, it’s also possible that wouldn’t have made a difference because some of them struck me as the kind of people who don’t listen to women, people from a background that isn’t theirs, or the gay kid who wasn’t trying to run everyone down to derive his own identity. If that’s the case, more’s the pity. Listening and empathy can go a long way.

Ah, empathy! Empathy is what I research, and I love it. It’s messy, sometimes biased, but fundamental to who we are. Sometimes it’s the closest we can come to really knowing someone else. There’s another concept from psychology that I’ve always liked. It’s called openness to experience.

I feel so much more open to others’ experiences. From a young age, I was so focused on getting good grades and being academic that I didn’t realise the diversity of others’ experiences and perspectives that could so enrich my own life. I’m so fascinated by people telling me about their early years, their work, hobbies, and travels. I’m endlessly in awe of the baker who knocks my socks off with a delicious cake, the gardeners who have helped replenish my backyard, friends who are creative. Learning should be an end and not a by-product of striving for a good grade. Frankly, so much of academia is about convincing everyone else how great you are. I never really bought into that, but now I just want to listen to others and soak it all in.

I’ve often written about the relationship between empathy for others and our own self-understanding. It’s something I’d love to research in more depth, but have had difficulty finding collaborators; and what’s stopped me is taking to heart their thinking that it’s too hard to investigate. So, I’m planning to do it on my own. Regardless, turning 40 put into focus an experience I had a few years ago.

I had written a piece about a psychological concept called the spotlight effect, where adolescents become self-conscious and believe that everyone is watching them. I wrote about my experiences with the effect when I was younger. The idea for the piece was that in the age of social media, who’s to say this next wave of teenagers are incorrect? But what the piece became was an admonishing of younger people who focus more on cultivating an image than achieving something. I was quite pleased with the piece, thought it was funny, and even included references to people from the era in which I grew up. These were people I aspired to be like in charm, looks, or popularity. People like Dieter Brummer from the Australian serial Home and Away.

Quite pleased with myself, I showed the piece to a friend who has read a lot of my work for their feedback. A bit uncharacteristically, he was less than enthused, telling me gently but directly, “I’m not quite sure what the purpose of this is”. I kept working on the piece for some time before finally abandoning it.

I believe the reason the piece didn’t work was not because I was saying anything that wasn’t untrue about social media and some young people. It didn’t work because I was a man in his late 30s with an inner child that was raging at those younger than him who seemed to have so much attention thrown at them without even having to do anything.

As an adolescent, adulation from others never felt easy. People were not always kind about my weight – in either direction of the scale – or the mannerisms that they thought represented a particular identity that scared them. Compassion from others then was much needed. Now, I wasn’t being compassionate to those grappling for identity and taking a bite of a very tempting apple in the way of socially mediated love. In wanting to be more caring towards young people, I need to be more nurturing to my young, suede jacketed, corduroyed self. And to remind myself all is not always what it seems. The people I adored like Dieter had private experiences and feelings that I never could know.

I’ve realised that life doesn’t go the way you imagined it at 21. Career goals can go unfulfilled; priorities change; supposedly random events can change life in an instant. You lose people whose loss you feel so acutely sometimes you can’t breathe. This leaves you appreciating life even with an awareness of its fragility, but you are never quite the same. Longing for what cannot be is very real and very painful. There are days when you give into that pain and there are days when it’s with you, but you’re OK.

What will all our legacies be? That’s not for us to decide. All we can do is keep striving to accomplish what we want and what’s important to us. Time will take care of the rest.

Life, indeed, is different to what we imagine, and it can be splendid. I never did get that apartment in my 20s, but I have a house with lovely floorboards and a view of a park across the road where I have made memories with my new community of neighbours who have become very good friends. I do host dinner parties and I love how things I’ve collected over the years that are old – because I adore mid-century – get to be vibrant again and to be a part of new memories. How wonderful, too, that I can buy new things for my dinner parties that will have the mark of our history on them just by us enjoying them. So, go forth and proclaim on my behalf, “Bob, Adam needs more vases!” I also have a Bob…and a Lucy. How lucky am I?

Life does and doesn’t look like how I imagined it all those years ago. And I think that’s great.

Hello Again

A quick note to say, “Hi!” and to wish you a Happy New Year. I’m excited about being more active on my blog in 2023. For the last couple of years, I’ve been focusing on my podcast, and last year I was organising a big event that I’d like to tell you about soon – both of which left little time or headspace for longer-form pieces. But I’ve missed writing for you, and I want to do more of it this year.

Bob and I just got back from Bali. Morning and afternoon swims, leisurely walks stopping for delicious nasi campur at a warung, afternoon cocktails made with tropical fruits we don’t see a lot of in Australia, watching the sunset on a beach chair surrounded by other travelers. Have you ever had a juice made from soursop? That last one left me slightly perplexed, but I very much enjoyed it. I felt very spoilt and fortunate.

The heat was a challenge at times, and so some nights after dinner we’d retreat early and watch what the hotels had to offer in the way of random television content. Perhaps not what you’d expect, but a regular go-to in Ubud was a Japanese news channel with fascinating stories, and then in Seminyak it was Netflix. We started watching Wednesday. What a delicious show headlined by the phenomenal Jenna Ortega! My suggestion for Season 2 is given Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in the ‘90s films, has a (different) part in this new incarnation, it’s time for the producers to invite Lisa Loring, the original Wednesday, from the ‘60s series for a cameo.

Speaking of children full of woe, on the plane, and then on my pool chair, I began reading The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames. It’s a tale of an unlucky (or maybe lucky given she survives her brushes with mortality) girl growing up in Calabria. My family are from Calabria, and so I’ve been taken aback when a character does something that is so very my family, but which I hadn’t realised was a Calabrian thing. I never realised fried eggplant could be so dangerous. Such a fun read.

What have you been watching? Reading? Drinking? I’d love to hear from you.

Life Beyond the Show

When actor and filmmaker Ben Steel came to Adelaide in November 2019 to present his documentary, The Show Must Go On, at the Mercury Cinema, he and I met before the screening to discuss his film. In the brightly lit cinema, we sat across from each other in comfortable red chairs, my voice recorder (and phone as a failsafe) perched on the chair between us as Ben spoke with empathy about what drove his exploration into the mental health and wellbeing challenges faced by those working in the entertainment industry.

It is certainly a topic that demands attention. For example, The Australian Actors’ Wellbeing Study in 2013 found elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and stress in the over 700 surveyed respondents. Amongst the challenges reported by respondents were incredible financial instability and difficulty in getting regular work, travel and the associated time away from home and loved ones, the emotional and physical tolls of a role, problematic uses of alcohol to cope with stress and, indeed, the attitude reflected in the title of Ben’s film that the show must go on, even if one is experiencing physical or psychological difficulties. While many of these issues are not specific to entertainers, both the research and anecdotal evidence certainly points to them being certainly heighted hazards of working in the industry.

As writer-director of the film, Ben had initially set out to understand why so many creatives struggled with their wellbeing and to look at ways to prevent or tackle these issues. With camera in hand, he began by interviewing entertainment professionals from stage, screen, television, and music, both those who work in front of an audience and those behind the scenes. While Ben didn’t envision being in the film beyond some of the interviews, as the project took shape Ben and his team realised that it was his own story that could be a focal point of this exploration and a way to bring together the diverse thoughts of participants, including Sam Neil, Michala Banas, Jocelyn Moorhouse, Dean Ray, and Glenn Scott. And so, in the film, and in subsequent screenings as part of the Wellness Roadshow, where Ben travelled around the country to screen his film and lead discussions about mental health in the industry, Ben honestly shared his story.

Central to Ben’s experiences was how he navigated life post his star-marking turn as Jude Lawson on drama series Home and Away, for which he received a 2001 Logie nomination for Most Popular New Talent on Australian Television. When that role ended, he ventured overseas working as an actor, as well as behind the scenes. Returning to Australia, he found not only the work had dried up, but that he was struggling emotionally. In moments throughout the film, Ben lets us in to the depth of that struggle. At one low point during production, he tells us that he felt his work on the film was “a mission to help other people”, but then asks, “But how can I help other people if I can’t even help myself?”. With therapy and support, Ben worked through it, learning much about himself and what keeps him well. Through his own struggles and understanding of the world he investigated, he provides a space for his interviewees to be honest and forthcoming with their own stories. In the process, he has also given us a beautiful film.

It has taken me significant time to publish this interview. If asked why, perhaps I can use the standard reply of 2020-2021, “Because COVID”. As work responsibilities intensified, our chat on my to-do list and my anxiety would rise as I remembered how much I wanted to get this out there.

If anything, however, the delay may be strangely perfect. As Ben and his team adapted to COVID-19, with webinars and online screenings during 2020 and 2021, the core issues of the film have become focused. Paradoxically we have realised the necessity of the arts in our lives as we bunker down at home in front of our TVs and devices, but the creatives themselves have had limited support from government in Australia and overseas as the industry has shut down or been severely affected. If anything, watching the film made me, and I hope you, want to support the arts more when we reflect on how much joy we get from live music, live comedy, art, theatre, TV, film…and the list goes on. Yet, most creatives are living a very hand-to-mouth existence, with the Wellness Study revealing that around 40% of respondents were earning less than $10,000 a year and around 20% can be considered below the poverty line. What comes across in Ben’s films is not only the love creatives have for their craft, but the necessity for society to have a vibrant arts culture. As actress Wendy Strehlow told me in a previous interview, “I am passionate about the vital role the arts play in society. “Holding the mirror up to nature”, so to speak. Without a healthy and thriving arts culture we are spiritually bereft”.

Why I think Ben’s film is relatable and audiences will find commonality between the film and their own experiences, even for those not in creative industries, is that it shines a light on a lot of the risks for mental unwellness for all of us. Regardless of career, upbringing, and experiences, we are often not taught about psychological care or wellbeing as we navigate our worlds and pursuits. It was Ben’s hope that the film could start a conversation about such matters, and I hope that you enjoy ours.

Adam: Tell me about the Wellness Roadshow. How long has it been going and where have you been so far?
Ben: We launched it on my birthday, on the 9th of October, straight after the ABC premiere. We’ve had screenings in Melbourne and Sydney and Newcastle, and now we are in Adelaide. Next year we’ll be heading to the other states, going to Perth and Hobart and the Gold Coast.
Adam: And you’re doing this over the next 12 months or thereabouts?
Ben: Pretty much. It’s just that rolling thing. We’re doing the capitals first and we’ve just started to get little pockets of funding that can take us to some regional centres as well. We’ll just keep rolling it out as much as we can, spreading the word and getting people talking.

Adam: The film screened on ABC back in October and you’ve been traveling around since then. What’s been the reaction to the film so far?
Ben: It’s been amazing. I always hoped that it would connect with people and that people would respond. I guess it was kind of a no brainer that creative people or people within the entertainment industry would probably connect to it. But I was always hopeful that it would reach outside of that, which it kind of has – which is amazing. Collectively, as a team, we’ve probably received now over 100 emails, texts, or whatever, from people saying it’s actually saved their lives and they’re getting help.
Adam: That’s fantastic. Were you expecting that?
Ben: I was hopeful it was going to make a difference, but to actually hear it and feel it, makes me really happy. It’s quite overwhelming that what we’ve been able to make has had that impact. There’s been hundreds and hundreds “thank you for doing it” kind of emails, but the ones that really bowl me over are the ones where people say “I’m actually going to get help now” or “It’s saved my life”. Literally those words. And you go, “Thank God, that means we’re really helping people”.
Adam: It’s the kind of film that makes sense that people would contact you. But often you put something out there and you wonder, Is anyone listening? Is anyone watching?
Ben: Yeah, definitely. I guess because it’s such a personal film and all the cast that were involved, who beautifully and generously gave their time and they were so candid, they were just so open – that’s what people are really responding to.

Adam: Disclosing depression or anxiety or any mental unwellness is difficult. Was it difficult for you starting the film – although you weren’t initially going to have such a big role compared to what it ended up being – knowing that you would have to disclose something about your own story or ‘come out’, so to speak, about it?
Ben: I guess initially I didn’t think I would be [Laughs].
Adam: [Laughs].
Ben: Probably the first part of that is, at the beginning, I just didn’t have the awareness. I hadn’t started my recovery. I hadn’t received help. My awareness level of how bad I actually was, or how much I was struggling, I just didn’t have the awareness level. So, to have that – I wouldn’t have even thought.
Adam: That far ahead.
Ben: Yeah. It was probably – I mean we had a big team meeting probably about eight months in when it became apparent that my story was central to this film. Up until that point, it was me interviewing people and talking and I was going to construct something together based on all these opinions and solutions. I wasn’t in it. There were shots where I was on camera, but it wasn’t my story. So, we had a team meeting when it became apparent that “You’re the through line here, Ben. That’s what people are going to connect to, your story, and then all these other things feed into it”. Probably at that point, it was a little bit, Am I ok with that? I think since I was asking other people to put themselves out there, I’ve got to be able to do that myself. I guess being an actor and being on screen, I didn’t have that barrier to overcome in the sense that I’m fine to see myself on camera, or hear my voice, which some people behind the scenes.
Adam: Are a bit reluctant to do.
Ben: Yeah. I didn’t have any of those issues. And then it was only probably two weeks after we finished making the film – editing was done, it had been approved by ABC, and the post-production people were doing all their magic deliverables and making DCPs and all that. I was away on holiday and I kind of went, “Oh shit, my story is going to be out there in like two weeks”. And I was like “Ooh, ooh”.
Adam: [Laughs].
Ben: And it just gave me a little bit of a butterfly of nerves. I mean, I was fine. Everything in it is me and it’s what happened. It felt like I need to tell people that story.

Adam: I think you’re right that the focus is really you because you’re holding all those stories together. I could appreciate if you had reluctance because, as we said, it’s hard enough to disclose regardless, but you’ve been in the network machine of publicity and there’s a very structured way of having publicity. I think it’s great you could do it.
Ben: Thank you. I guess that was so far away from my current reality anyway.
Adam: Of course.
Ben: To be honest, I didn’t really think of the career consequences, if any. At a certain point – I mean, in the beginning, I was being driven by there being some people really struggling and I want to know what’s going on. Then it reverted to “I’m actually struggling, I need to find these answers for myself”. And that trumps any kind of I wonder what people are going to think about me [Laughs].

Adam: [Laughs]. That’s great. That leads in quite well to what I wanted to ask. When you started filming, you knew you weren’t good, but you weren’t aware of where you were. Was it in your mind to try to unravel what was going on for you?
Ben: Not in the beginning. It was only after I started becoming aware. In the beginning, so I left Home and Away – got dumped [laughs].
Adam: [Laughs].
Ben: Then went overseas doing the UK thing like so many ex-Home and Away and Neighbours people do. So, I was kind of milking that and working that for all I could, riding that particular wave, and just kind of pushing and pushing and pushing. Then at a certain point – I think it was about nine years I was away – I came back to Australia. I wasn’t expecting there to be a welcome home party or anything, but I did achieve some things overseas. I made some shows and was in some films and all that kind of stuff. And I guess I was expecting the transition back into the industry to be a little bit easier than what it was.
So, I was aware of that struggle that I felt like I was outside the circle. And at the point I put it down to, Well I’ve just been away too long, people have forgotten about me. I hadn’t maintained all those relationships and friendships and networking that you need to do. Maybe part of it was that, but I think more of it was because I just had this huge identity crisis about to blow up and happen and I was so caught up in my identity as an actor and pursuing that, that I wasn’t actually being a real person. So, I think that was probably getting in the way of my career more than anything.

Adam: Sam Neill talks in the film about this idea that it is perhaps healthier to have an approach to acting, or any performing, as, “That’s what I do, that’s not what I am”. He describes it as separating yourself from your profession. So, as opposed to saying, “I’m an actor”, to say instead, “I’m Ben and I act”. Did you find in talking to people that this is often a pitfall for actors? Because there’s such a drive to get there, you really have to work at it consistently and it’s probably impossible for it not to become pretty much your identity
Ben: I think there’s two parts to that. I think, one, is that through the training we get, whether it’s behind the scenes or in front of the camera, you’re made abundantly aware how slim the chances are you’re going to succeed. So, you have to really just put everything, your focus, on it. When you’re doing that and you’re not having a social life, and you’re missing weddings and funerals and real-life things, or you don’t have hobbies because you don’t have time, how could it not become your identity?
I think the other factor to it is because there is so much rejection, and there’s oversupply and under demand as far as work, how do you deal with that rejection? You deal with that rejection by creating this wall, or thick skin around you, and really just saying, “Well, this is who I am”. You’re kind of building these walls that “I’m an actor and this is all I am. I’m just going to keep doing this”, or whatever your job is. I think for those two reasons that’s why it’s a no-brainer that a lot people in entertainment have identity issues. But I think it’s also across the board. I think a lot of people out in the wider community also do. A perfect example is when you’re raising kids and you become a parent and that’s all you are for a substantial chunk of your time.
Adam: It’s not a role, it’s an identity.
Ben: “I’m a parent, I’m a parent, I’m a parent”. And then the kids leave home. And then you suddenly have an identity crisis.
Adam: “What the hell do I do now?”
Ben: Yeah. Or you’re a corporate CEO and you’re working towards this and you’re building a company, you’re building a company, and suddenly it goes bankrupt and nobody returns your calls and nobody cares about you anymore, and you can’t fund anything, so who are you anymore? You’ve lost your identity.

Adam: That’s perhaps why the film is reaching all sorts of people. There are some unique issues with actors and the entertainment industry that you cover, but there’s also a lot not specific to actors – the idea of identity and overinvesting in your job. When I was watching it, what came up for me is this idea of perfectionism.
Ben: Yeah.
Adam: I would imagine actors are often quite perfectionist and whether that’s a personality trait they bring to it or whether it’s something the industry breeds because you have that slim margin, you’ve really got to be on, you’ve got to be ready. But then what some of your interviewees found – and what I find with my perfectionism, which leads to nothing but anxiety most of the time [Laughs] – is I get to wherever I imagine I’m going to go. And, first, it’s “Fuck, I’m exhausted” because I’ve near killed myself doing it. And then after that it’s like, “I’m not going to be able to maintain this”.
Ben: Mmm.
Adam: “How do I keep myself on top here?” I think that came through with some of the people you speak to. Even when they had this success, it’s like, “Is it going to be taking away from me?” Or, “How do I maintain this?”. Or “I’m an imposter, they’re going to find out sooner or later”.
Ben: Definitely. And again, I think that’s quite common across the board. Maybe it’s part of us breaking down mini steps along the way to success, and certainly within the entertainment industry there’s no one clear path to anywhere. But maybe a quite common belief is “I just need to get this one big break. And then once I get there, everything is going to be fine. I’m going to have all the money I need. I’m going to be as happy as Larry. The next opportunity is going to come easier”. And da da dah-dah.  And, as you allude to [Laughs
Adam: [Laughs].
Ben: and what’s in the film, when you get there, there’s a whole other slew of things you’ve got to deal with, or other fears or concerns that, “Now I’ve got it, what happens if it gets taken away from me?” Or there’s just so much pressure at that point.
Adam: Yeah
Ben: But it kind of again makes sense that we probably, as humans, put things into little boxes. We just focus on that first bit and then I get to that bit, and then “What’s next?” And I think it’s also society kind of pushes us and feeds us that way, like “More, more, more, more”.
Adam: Absolutely.
Ben: And you hear it all the time – enjoy the journey. It’s all about the journey, not the destination. But it’s hard to live by that principle.
Adam: It is, isn’t it? You’re not taught to look at what are your values compared to what are your goals. Your goals are something you achieve, like you can get on to Home and Away, great. But what are your values about creativity or contribution or whatever else? I kind of wonder – I’ve spoken to a few actors about this, and I think a lot of jobs are like this, but particularly with creative people – when I write, often it’s an extension of me, it’s very tied into identity. So, when you get rejected, it feels like a very personal rejection. I’ve spoken to actors who tell me that it feels like a rejection of them, rather than “Hey, there were 10 actors, and it just turns out that you’re not the one that’s right in the director’s mind. It doesn’t mean you’re not good”. It feels very personal.
Ben: Yeah, definitely. I think you’ve hit it on the head there, what we do. Unlike other industries, we are bringing so much of us into it, there’s a big amount of emotional vulnerability, like Glenn Scott says in the film, there’s so much emotional vulnerability. So, if you are rejected, it is you they are rejecting, it’s your creative pursuit – like, if you’re a technician, it’s the work you have done, or not done, that they are not happy with. Because you are putting your heart and soul into it, and you so closely link what you’re doing to you, that they’re not just rejecting what you’ve done, they are rejecting you. Most other jobs, most other careers, I think there’s more separation between that. Not all the time, but I think most of the time.
Adam: Yeah.
Ben: And I think performers again take that step just even further, and potentially probably comedians have it the most in the sense because they have created the story as well as performing it. And if you’re not funny, if they are not laughing at it, it’s a real failure.
Adam: Yeah, watching Andy Saunders, who is a comedian, in the documentary. That’s interesting you say that. When you were talking to Sarah Walker, who wrote for Home and Away, it’s your character, but it’s also her character. With comedians, it’s them out front, it’s often their stories.
Ben: Mmm.
Adam: I was speaking to my friend Gavin Harrison, who was in Home and Away probably ten years before you, he played Revhead.
Ben: Yeah, yeah.
Adam: And this picks up from what we were talking about before. Among the reasons he transitioned out of acting was that, he said, “I wasn’t really comfortable not having control of where I was going in my life”. He’d gone to America and ended up in a whole lot of TV shows and films there and he was so busy auditioning – it was actually Gavin who said, “That’s the part of acting where you can have 10 good actors, but only the person who is completely right in the director’s mind is going to get booked”. He told me that Jane Nagel, who did publicity for Home and Away, gave him some useful advice that, “there’s the person, the professional, and the product, and that these three aspects of my life should be viewed as such when I was doing certain things”. That helped him, although I’m sure he would admit how hard it can be. When you spoke with Dean Ray in the documentary, for example, when people say something like, “Hey, you got fat”, it’s pretty hard not to take that personally, no matter how much you realise you’re a public person or personality.
Ben: One bit that didn’t make it in the doco – my dear friend and Home and Away actor, Ada Nicodemou, said, which is similar down that path, “It’s not about me, it’s about the character that I play and the show that I’m in. They’re famous, I’m not famous. That’s what people want, that’s what people need”. The show is so much bigger than us.
Adam: Yeah.
Ben: I think that’s quite a healthy way to look at it. Regardless of whatever art it is, ultimately “the song” is the star [Laughs],
Adam: Yeah [Laughs].
Ben: the album is the star; the front person is not. The end result of many people’s work is the star, it’s where the fame is attached. Having that healthy separation from, you know, doing this interview with you, or doing Sunrise, or whatever, it’s actually not about me at all [Laughs]. It’s really helpful to go in with that mind. And that’s what we want, that’s what we love, that’s what we’re selling, that’s what we’re pushing, that’s what we’re all working towards, that’s what all these thousands of creative people are coming together to work on – the thing that is the star, it’s the product, it’s the show.

Adam: What do you think are some unique challenges for performers’ mental health?
Ben: If we are to compare entertainment to wider society, the biggest thing is – like what we’ve spoken about already – just the emotional vulnerability that we have to go to for our work. The sensitivity that’s actually involved in doing what we’re doing. Even if you are a technical person on the crew and you’re looking at lighting or something like that, it’s such a beautiful, delicate – you’re putting your heart and soul into it. It can be quite a technical thing, but there’s imagination and creativity and you kind of then are invested in the thing that you’re doing or building.
Adam: And you’ve worked in lighting as well.
Ben: Yeah, I did lighting.
Adam: The film was beautifully done.
Ben: Oh, thank you! Or you’re constructing a set, like you’re the chippy, you’re the carpenter on the set, you could make far more money out building houses or buildings, rather than working in our industry. They’re drawn to it because there’s something else, something magical, they’re expressing their creativity in a different way, or they are getting to work on different things
Adam: Yes.
Ben: Everybody in the industry has that – that emotional vulnerability and sensitivity and connection to what we’re doing. I think that’s a big one. The other big one that I found is that a lot of the pressures that we face – there are some little weird, little quirky ones that no other industry has, like talking in public, although some other industries have that – there’s quirky things like auditioning, auditioning, auditioning. Other industries, you could be getting job interview after job interview. A lot of what we go through can apply to other industries, but a big thing is the accumulation of many pressures happening at the one time. I think that is quite unique to our industry. Not only are you putting your heart on the line, you might be working at night, and you’re working interstate,
Adam: Away.
Ben: Away, and you’re not getting paid that well. So, you’ve got multiple pressures that most people, if they had one pressure, they’d freak out. But our industry, we’re facing multiple pressures all at the same time. I think that is unique to our industry and that’s why our stats are larger than the general population.

Adam: An example of what we’re talking about is when Jocelyn Moorhouse discusses in the documentary the pressures of her film not getting made, but then two of her children are diagnosed with autism. It’s on top of, on top of, and on top.
Ben: Yep. Ultimately, at the end of the day, all of this, all of what we’re talking about, mental health and wellbeing, mental ill health, it’s a human issue. We, in the industry, are human [Laughs]. There’s just some stressors or pressures that may be a little bit more weird or different or hard for the rest of society to understand.
Adam: And there does seem to be that gap a little bit
Ben: Yep.
Adam: Some people have this idea that actors are sitting in the mansion. For the vast majority of actors, that’s not the case. For the vast majority, it’s a job, and there is instability and all those sorts of things. I love when some American actors post their residual checks on Facebook and they are getting a cent.
Ben: [Laughs].
Adam: A cent residual for a movie. Perhaps there is a little bit of a gap and maybe the film can help people to understand a little bit better that perspective.
Ben: Yeah, and I think that was part of the reason as well – and that’s why having my parents in there is such a good thing because I think many people outside the industry could maybe think down the lines of my parents. Or they are parents themselves to creative kids. So that’s why having them in there was so important to me, to give a bit of a voice and a personality to those opinions against some of the creative things. But then also some of the things they’re bringing up like, “Get a different job, just leave, do something else”. It’s hard to do. And funny enough so many people who have tried counselling or therapy and hadn’t found the right one – and I’d suggest people keep trying until they find the right one because they will be there –
Adam: For sure.
Ben: I had to go through several to find the right one. The counsellors don’t know how to – they seem the problem being the industry, so just get out the industry [Laughs],
Adam: [Laughs].
Ben: which is kind of short-sighted because if everybody just got out of the industry there would be no entertainment, so you know.
Adam: And that doesn’t take into consideration the things that the person does get from the industry, in terms of their values and what they want to achieve. But also, perhaps, practically – and again speaking to actors and performers I’ve spoken with before – you’re so driven, even though you’re expected to work multiple jobs while you’re acting, you’re so driven or you really have to focus, that it’s not that easy – for many people, they might think, I haven’t necessarily built some other things to be able to do, so even if I wanted to exit, how can I exit? This is all I’ve ever done.
Ben: I interviewed Susan Eldridge who’s an amazing woman at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. She didn’t make it into the film, but we’ll be releasing some additional content with her, as we will with some other people that aren’t in the film because there were so many amazing people, I just couldn’t fit everything in. She’s devised a couple of – well, she’s devised an amazing program out there – but among some key things that I learnt from her was focus on living a creative life, rather than having a creative career. That doesn’t mean that we can’t make this our profession, or we can’t make money from it. But when we’re valuing it like other industries and other professions, we’re kind of setting ourselves up to fail. Because there’s only a very small amount of people who can sustain a career out of this, so therefore when we aren’t sustaining a career, where does all the negative energy go? It goes to us because we feel that like we’ve failed, or we’re not good enough, or we’ve missed the boat, or we’re getting too old now, we can’t do this anymore, or whatever. But what we can actually do is live a creative life every day. So, focus on living a creative life rather than ‘pursing a creative career’ is one thing that she taught me. The other thing is rather than having a day job or a Plan B or a backup plan, or any of that kind of stuff, she says, “Have two Plan A’s”.
Adam: That’s great.
Ben: Focus on your creative life, and then focus on something that can bring you a certain amount of stability – and it can actually be another creative job, it can actually be creative industries – and that allows you to be able to pay your bills and do everything else or achieve your other goals, whilst you are still pursuing living a creative life.
Adam: Absolutely.
Ben: One thing about performers, I think most of us have multiple jobs. We’re not just pursing one thing. So, I write, I direct, I produce, I shoot, I make stuff across the whole spectrum of entertainment, not just in one little niche. I coach actors, I work with actors, I shoot their self-tapes, I do many different jobs within the industry. And all that cobbled together in the gig economy is enough to support me to keep pursing a creative career, whether I’m auditioning or whether I’m writing something or whether I’m making a documentary. I’m not saying I’m the success story, but I’m using that as an example.
Adam: Yes.
Ben: Because again, at the beginning, I didn’t have that awareness that I actually was going OK. Once I had that awareness and gratitude – Oh fuck, I’m actually going OK. Look at all this awesome stuff around me – I started to feel better.

Adam: I was going to ask you about that because you’ve done a whole range of other things when you were overseas and even before that. Even before you started on Home and Away.
Ben: Yeah.
Adam: Was that something that kind of just happened or was that sort of a guided move?
Ben: Funnily enough, I wanted to leave school after year 10 because I was already acting when I was a kid at school. I was already working; I was already in the industry. I already knew more than my media teachers at school because I was doing it – arrogant little fucker [Laughs].
Adam: [Laughs].
Ben: My parents said, “No, stick at it”. They were the kind of ones that planted the seed of having other stuff that I was interested in. They weren’t in the industry, they didn’t know anything about the industry, so it was really a fortunate bit of advice. So, I started getting interested in behind the scenes and shooting stuff, and bought a camera and started making little films, started doing subjects at school that were that way. And then all my work experience and everything like that was about that. So, when I left school, that’s what I did. I just started working in the industry in other areas. That was cool and exciting, and I was learning stuff.
That was my path. There’s no right or one way to do it. But I think – so, with the multiple things I was doing when I was at my darkest, I just didn’t have the appreciation because again my identify was so linked with – my definition of success and identity were linked into I have to be an actor in a studio film or a network show. If I’m not in that, then I’m a failure. The fact that I was working with actors, Nup, well that’s not good enough. Why am I not being able to do that? I was so negative about the amazing thing that I was maintaining and being able to live a creative life. So that’s a big thing, I think, is kind of getting your expectations in check and actually redefining your definition of success. Because if you can support yourself, you can still keep doing the thing you love every day and be plugging away. That’s a success. Winning an Oscar, winning a Tony, winning an Emmy, winning Logie, that’s not success. Being able to still do what you love and find a way to support yourself and have a whole full life, that’s success.

Adam: I write but I’m not in that industry. But what my therapist, for example, said to me was that you can’t expect to get all your creativity or all the want to contribute something out of one thing.
Ben: Mmm.
Adam: And maybe the whole difficulty I was having in a former job was that I expected to get all that from one thing. A: Who does? And B: Is that going to be healthy or sustainable?
Ben: Definitely. The other thing I want to say about the Plan A-Plan A, your other Plan A can actually be out of the industry because some of the skills that we have as creative people, other industries want. So, what is wrong with having a job in another industry using aspects of your creativity? Again, it’s about thee awareness. The fact that we can think outside the box.
Adam: Yeah.
Ben: Many people in brainstorming kind of situations want that skill in their team. Obviously, performers can be very confident, they can work with scrips and do telemarketing and do things like this. Again, if we’re looking at that rather than “Ugh, I’m just a telemarketer; I’m not being an actor today”. Well, you are using some of those skills that you need and you’re honing those skills. We’re so good at focusing at minute little details, but also looking at the big picture as creative people. That’s part of our process. We’re doing that all the time. Again, it’s another skill that other industries would die to have in their workforce. We can actually make good money on the side in other industries. The other great thing is because most of us are freelancers, and what’s happening out there in the big wide world? It’s becoming a gig economy. The world is turning in a gig economy. We’re already 10 steps ahead [Laughs].
Adam: What you might have seen as a deficit, is not a deficit at all.
Ben: Yeah, this constant chasing work and being on the go. As exhausting as that is, we’re – like, that’s part of our DNA now. So, as we’re transitioning into a gig economy as a society, we’re kind of a step ahead as creative people. Looking at the positive and really kind of being grateful for that opportunity, rather than going “Ugh, what am I doing next and dah, dah, dah. Thinking, Actually, I’m ahead of a lot of the population.
Adam: We see that with a whole lot of creative people. I mean, you even seen some creative people become counsellors or therapists.
Ben: I think it’s about that awareness. For me, a lot of I think my struggles were just based on beliefs that weren’t the whole truth or weren’t any truth at all. I just held on to them for whatever reason. It’s quite a hopeful thing now that you can actually – once you kind of have a look at the real issue and what’s going on for you and what’s underneath that and what’s underpinning these beliefs, you kind of unpack that and go, Actually, that’s not true – this is more the truth. So, getting that awareness. And if I can do it, anyone can with help.
 
Adam: I think the film and a lot of what you’re talking about is really speaking to what so many people experience, regardless of whether someone is in the entertainment industry or not. You’ve spoken just now about the idea of really understanding your thinking, and that’s something we don’t teach people. We teach physical health, but we don’t teach people to go, “I’ve got a million thoughts in my head. Perhaps I don’t need to buy into every one of them”.
Ben: Yes.
Adam: “Which one’s are useful? Which ones are not useful?”. All that kind of stuff. From what you’ve learnt for yourself, and from what you’ve learnt with talking with people – bearing in mind everyone’s journey is different, what do you think we’re missing out in terms of what we’re teaching people?
Ben: I think for creatives or just for the wider community at large, it’s kind of putting your personal emotional development at the forefront of your learning and your education from, you know, your parents. So, parents getting better skilled at this kind of language and how to do that because then their children will be a little bit more prepared.
Adam: Yeah, they’re providing that framework.
Ben: Yep. The communities that we’re then involved in and the wider support networks around that child. Then they go into the education system. Again, the teachers and the school and the infrastructure around that child as it grows and develops Then the tertiary institutions or the workplaces. So, the more and more emotion and emotional intelligence and psychology.
Adam: Self-reflection.
Ben: Yeah. When that is more in the forefront and valued as a big part of who we are.
Adam: As important as all sorts of other things.
Ben: Right. Because if you kind of separate – what is it when it’s separate? It’s that your body and your physical health is more important. Ah, no [Laughs]. Or that finances and accumulating more wealth is the most important, which is how capitalist society works, right? But no, you can have all the money in the world but you’re eddying of cancer and you’ve got a psychological problem.
Adam: And nothing’s ever good enough and we keep on the treadmill.
Ben: And I’m not saying the emotional and psychological health should be superior to the physical or to other exterior forces, but at the moment it’s barely a blip on the radar. So, I think more people talking about that and actually going, no, self-development and looking after yourself and checking in with yourself and your psychology and getting to know yourself and getting to know other people and all that – that’s a really big thing.
People on their deathbed aren’t kind of worried about how much money they’ve got in the bank that they can’t spend anymore. They’re worried about the relationships they’ve created and the impact they had in the world, and the friendships and the love and the stories that they’ve shared. And that’s all human emotional and psychological, right?
Adam: Yeah. I think that the absolute core of what you’re saying, you know this whole idea of self-reflection, in the service of knowing you are, not only makes you – a more rounded person, a happier person, whatever you want to call it, better relationships, whatever. I guess it does also feed into those relationships because the more you understand yourself, the more you are going to understand other people.
Ben: To have compassion for other people.
Adam: Yeah, compassion for someone else’s plight. Actors use that every day – they use compassion, they use empathy to get themselves into someone else’s head. Perhaps sometimes what the problem could be is that you’re being asked to tap into a whole range of emotions and life experiences that you may have not processed yourself and then all of a sudden you have to use this and put this out every day. I think unless perhaps there’s been that understanding or development of some sort of insight or where this fits into my bigger story, it may do a little bit of harm.
Ben: Yeah, definitely, I think that’s another big issue for actors and maybe other performers. There’s a lot of training and attention given to getting into character in whichever technique you believe the best for you to get into character, but nobody teaches you how to do get out of character or to de-role or to debrief or kind of leave that behind. If you are dealing with pretty intense, vulnerable, psychologically challenging worlds and material and situations and emotions that you have to put yourself into, it kind of makes sense that you have to be a pretty strong person at the beginning to kind of cope with that. And even still, you still might have challenges.
Adam: Yeah.
Ben: But if you are going through something at that point and you’re thrust into an environment like that where that’s your job, that’s what you have to do, chances are you might not come out the other end so healthy.
Adam: I speak to people outside of this industry, nurses, for example, and they talk about the idea that they’re constantly with other people’s emotions. They talk to me about how when you get yourself into the other person’s head, it’s absolutely fine to feel something for someone – so you feel scared for someone, frustrated for someone, or concerned for someone. But when that kind of self-other separation breaks down and they become personally distressed, they know they’re not going to be able to do their job so well. Also, there is that sort of hangover – they can’t just go home and say, “OK, that’s it now”.
Ben: Mmm.
Adam: And I imagine that might be similar for actors. How do I debrief out of that? Whether it’s talking to other people, or whatever. How do you deal with that real intense emotion and getting into someone else’s head?
Ben: Yeah, definitely. It translates to a real psychological thing, which is called vicarious trauma. So, you’re vicariously being traumatised. It’s not your trauma, but it’s some other trauma. Journalists in war zones go through this, so they’re standing back but they’re watching some horrific shit happen in front of them, and they have to report on that. Or, in my case, it could be argued that in making this documentary, I was getting traumatised vicariously. Because I was hearing people’s stories over and over again and I was watching stuff.
Adam: How did you deal with that?
Ben: Yeah, it was difficult. Um, I think fortunately for me, as I kept  going further and further along through the filmmaking process, I was getting more and more support, and whilst there were times that I was really bad and really dark, I was starting to develop the skills that I needed to kind of help me get through that and knew the support was around me.
Adam: And were you going through counselling or therapy at the time?
Ben: Yeah, Yeah.
Adam: And we see some of that through the film.
Ben: Exactly. I dealt with it the best way that I could. But it can’t be underestimated, vicarious trauma.

Adam: When you speak in the film to Home and Away writer Sarah Walker, you bring up this idea that in a way you hadn’t let go of your character Jude. I’ve asked other actors this – is he an easy character to live with and do you think you have?
Ben: I think with Jude and the thing that – I mean, maybe it was quite close to me. He was really caring and really sensitive. He was looking after his little brother – different to me, but he had family issues, so he really kind of had to grow up pretty quickly and then he took in a foster kid, as well. So, he was really kind of caring and nurturing. And I guess that’s part of me and my personality as well.
Adam: Yeah, I can tell by the way.
Ben: [Laughs]. Thank you. I think it was hard to let go for me because my identity was so closely linked to what I was doing and suddenly I’m not doing that anymore. I think it was hard to let go of Jude because I hadn’t had conversations with other actors about letting go of characters before. I hadn’t thought about the bigger kind of things that you go through when you go through such an amazing experience like Home and Away. When it comes to an end, it’s quite common for whatever role you are in in the industry that when the show comes to an end, there’s a thing called post-show blues. You get a little bit sad and flat.
Adam: Even a grief some actors talk to me about.
Ben: Yeah, a grief, yeah, exactly. And those kind of things people don’t really talk about. We don’t really talk about that stuff. I certainly hadn’t had conversations. I think they were the main reasons why it was hard for me to let go of Jude, until ultimately going on this journey making the film and kind of unpacking the bigger and wider issues of the industry. But then, more intimately, unpacking my own issues and resolving that, so I could finally let go of that now and look back with fond memories of that whole time in my life
Adam: And being proud of it as well.
Ben: Yeah, being proud of it and, yeah – and I think, like I said in the film, if I didn’t have the Home and Away experience, if I didn’t have the getting dropped from the show and the subsequent battles and struggles that came from that, and my identity, and my struggles with all that, I wouldn’t have been at that precipice of struggling so much that drove me to make this film. I wouldn’t be there.
Adam: And not that we wish, you never want to wish these things happening to you.
Ben: [Laughs] No but, it’s, yeah.
Adam: But it’s which way you’ve taken it as well. Do you learn something from it? That’s very flippant to say it that way, but it’s really true. It’s what do you do with this?
Ben: Yeah, definitely, and I think I’m just fortunate through the people I have around me and the situation that I was in, everything kind of lined up and the skills that I guess developed behind the scenes that I could actually  go off and make this film. It was the perfect outlet for me to do that because that’s what I do. I make stuff, you know, I do things. So, I just started doing it. I didn’t think about making a doco, I just started doing it. I thought, Oh yeah, I think I need to speak to people and I’m going to start filming it. And it just started to grow. It’s part of me and part of my process. Other people aren’t that way, and their journey is different.

Adam: That leads into my last couple of questions. Where do you see your identity today?
Ben: Mmm.
Adam: That sounded so Barbara Walters!
Ben: [Laughs]. No! Yeah, I mean – I’m so many more things than just an actor is, I guess, the core revelation.
Adam: Mmm.
Ben: And I’m just more appreciative and grateful for everything that I have and am.
Adam: Yeah.
Ben: So, I’m a pretty shit surfer, but I love it [Laughs].
Adam: [Laughs].
Ben: I’m a brother, I’m an uncle, I’m a son. I’m so many different roles, you know. I’m a friend. So I think it’s because when your identity is so closely linked into the thing that you do, the availability and just the emotional vulnerability that you have for all the other things on the outside, like friends, family, activities, hobbies, experiences, life, joy, parties – like everything is just so limited because you’re focused on that. I’m just experiencing life much more, so much more. I guess my identity is much more whole or much more full now than what it was. It was very shallow and narrow before.
Adam: That’s fantastic. I guess the final thing is what’s next?
Ben: [Laughs]. So, yeah, just continuing on with the beautiful roadshow and getting out and just trying to have as many conversations as we can about this. At the same time, surfing as much as I can because it just brings me so much happiness and joy and I love it! And I’ve started developing the next doco.
Adam: Awesome. That’s fantastic.
Ben: Awesome, brother – thank you.

The Wellness Roadshow continues through 2021. Full details are available at The Show Must Go On website. Please also visit the documentary’s Facebook and Instagram pages, and stop by Ben’s Instagram page for pictures of Ben, his dog, and beaches.

Images used in article courtesy of Ben Steel.

Long Day’s Journal Into Night

A couple of months ago, the editor of a journal that has published my psychology work multiple times let me know that the journal would cease publication at the end of 2020. This sent me into a passive sadness and fitful sleep for a couple of days, both of which many of us probably experienced at various times this past year.

Part of my response was practical; I was concerned that my hard work would disappear. The journal publisher assured me that the existing volumes would continue to be available in perpetuity. I guess I kind of knew that, as I have never really seen a periodical completely disappear, especially one from a major publisher. It would continue to exist online, in databases, and elsewhere – there just would not be anything new. So, what made me feel withdrawn and down, not really wanting to talk (or rage) about it but needing to spend some time letting my feelings just be?

First of all, I am particularly proud of what I wrote for the journal, and feel that those articles perhaps provided a contribution, however small, to my research area. I have not always felt that way about my work. I have believed in a lot of my work and hoped that one study or paper would be a ‘hit’, and yet I have been disappointed more than once when the citations have been respectable, but not the astronomical numbers that colleagues have achieved. So, the thought (even if imagined) of my work becoming harder to find because it was a part of a discontinued journal scared me.

More than this, I think that much of my response was to do with an underlying anxiety and frustration about my work. I have often felt at sea in my profession, where after my PhD I traversed into another discipline for my postdoctoral work, feeling cut-off from what I had studied, but never quite more than an ‘honorary’ (that term was used, although benignly, again and again, often in meetings) member of the other discipline. Since returning to my original field of research, it has been hard to renter that world. I have been at the table on more than one occasion with people who have the resources, the grant money, the teams (all necessities in the academic world), who have seemed very interested in my ideas, but have not then invited me to collaborate with them. All I can say is that I have certainly seen how useful my ideas have been to their subsequent work.

This journal ‘disappearing’ felt like another example of my work, my attempts to contribute something, to have some identity as a researcher, being erased or downplayed. Almost as if even if I could get my work out there, it would get swept under the carpet.

Perhaps this is how so many of us feel in and out of academia. My mentor and friend, Dr Rosalind Dymond Cartwright, has been called the Queen of Dreams for her pioneering clinical and research work on the function of sleep and dreaming over more than 50 years. Dr. Cartwright has formulated a theory based on her decades of research regarding how sleep and dreaming can help us to regulate negative emotions and experiences of the day, as well as having an important role in modifying our self-concept. I would also call her the Queen of Empathy given her pioneering and first work in that area in the 1940s and 1950s. On more than one occasion, she has read my work, provided much welcomed and useful feedback, and given good sage advice. She has championed my right to work in the empathy area, referring students and noted researchers to me. And yet, even someone as accomplished as Dr. Cartwright can feel like an outsider, as she demonstrates with an interpretation of one of her own dreams in her book, The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives (2010).

In the dream, Roz – I still want to call her Dr. Cartwright, but she signs off her emails to me with ‘Roz’, so I will try – watches colleagues receive awards in succession at a conference, as they are lauded for their work and treated with much respect on stage. When it is her turn, a harlequin assistant figure takes the mickey out of her, pretends not to see her, and does not give her to the same reception. In that moment, “I was on the outside, literally standing on the fringe, while the others were insiders, on stage or seated with their backs to me” (p. 170).

As Roz explained in her wonderful book, her dream was likely triggered by the rejection of a symposium proposal she had formulated for the conference, which had tapped into feelings of invisibility and a conflict she had felt between being an independent researcher versus playing the game to be a part of the ‘club’. As she put it, the rejection “threatened a core characteristic of my self-concept—‘I am a good sleep researcher who goes her own way’” (p. 171).

Interestingly, Roz had come across that harlequin character during sleep back when she was a child, and he has been a returning day (or night) player every so often in her dreams. However, compared to his appearances as much more menacing robber in earlier dreams, his appearance this time was different (p. 171):

The harlequin is not as feared in this dream as when he had the role of a robber. He was still engaged in robbing me, now of professional recognition, and in both dreams he was thinly disguised, a bad man pretending to be good … This time, the bad man did not frighten me; the feeling was of puzzled disappointment. I see him as only a ‘clown.’ Even more positively, I knew in the later dream that I had produced a body of work that I deemed was worthy of being noticed. The emotional message of that dream was: ‘You know what you have done; you don’t need the clowns to applaud you.’

I spoke to Dr Cartwright a couple of weeks ago to wish her a belated happy 98th birthday.

May we all spot the champions, and harlequins, in our 24-hour lives.

Shining Star

Remembering Galyn Görg (15 July, 1964-14 July, 2020).

Almost six months on, it is still so sad to think that Galyn Görg is no longer here. Galyn passed away from cancer at the too young age of 55 on 14 July, 2020 in Hawaii. I interviewed Galyn for this blog in 2017, and we had so much to speak about regarding her career that it ended up being a two-part piece. She was kind, beautiful, oh so talented and just pure light. Compassionate. Brilliant really.

Galyn had been a dancer and actress for over 30 years. In that time, she had experienced mega success in Italy with TV series Fantastico before embarking on a career in America in film (Point Break, RoboCop 2) and TV (Twin Peaks, her starring role on M.A.N.T.I.S.). Despite it all, Galyn was humble and gracious…and just genuine.

Galyn had great relationships with the people with whom she worked, having kept in touch with many of them. Sue Giosa, Galyn’s co-star in one of her first films in the ‘80s, the post-apocalyptic America 3000, told me, “She was an incredible person – equally talented as an actress and dancer. Beautiful inside and out”. Sue shared with me this picture of them during a break in filming in Israel all those years ago.

Sue and Galyn in Israel (Photo: Sue Giosa private collection).

Michael Kerr, who played Galyn’s love interest in Living the Blues (1986), a film conceived by Galyn’s filmmaker father Alan and involving much of the Görg family, told me how sad he was to hear Galyn was gone and what a wonderful family the Görgs are.

Galyn and Michael in Living the Blues.

While an absolute professional, Galyn also brought a sense of fun to her work. She told me with glee about how much she loved the costumes she got to wear on so many sci-fi shows like Stargate SG-1 and Xena: Warrior Princess. Galyn had some time away from film and TV in recent years but was excited to be back. Always looking to refine her craft, she was still attending improv classes. She also immersed herself in arts education for young people. Galyn led a creative life whether she was working or not. Loved creating. Loved her family.

Galyn was a spiritual person. I dare say much of that came from her upbringing in and connection to Hawaii. I know she and her family always believed in a higher purpose. I am just sad that someone who loved life so much here had hers cut short so young and with so much she wanted to do. When I’ve much watching Netflix recently, I will come across a cool role and, with no disrespect to the actor playing it, think to myself, Galyn would nail that!

To keep in touch with Galyn after our time together for the blog was a blessing. She often ended her messages with an emoji of a star. She was one here and I just know that she is one somewhere out there. We’ll miss our friend.

Part 1 and Part 2 of our interview.

The Best Thing Since…

During the pandemic, we have not baked bread. Well, we did bake some banana bread one weekend, on account of a miscommunication where both Bob and I came home on different days from the supermarket with a bunch of overripe bananas. But we have not engaged in the more traditional loaf baking that everyone seems to have been doing. We also did very little yoga (Bob was more diligent with it than I was), and the only thing I planted in the garden was a hydrangea while friends tended to start veggie or herb patches. Gee, do we even pandemic?! Guess we are doing it wrong.

Indeed, it seems that Bob and I are in the minority, with bread makers a popular purchase in Australia during 2020. Picturing all the loaves cooling on kitchen tables around my country got me wondering as to whether the true bread makers, the French, were similarly busy at home. It turns out in France there has been a surge in sales of bread. After all, why would the French make their own when they are so renowned for delicious baguettes, pain de campagne, ficelle, and other variants baked by true artisans? Accurate or not, don’t we all imagine the Frenchman on his bike leaving a boulangerie with a baguette sticking out of his satchel? As an aside, my grandfather has had a bread maker for many years and will still often make bread. I am usually the one who mangles his beautiful work when attempting to use the manual slicer.

At first thought, the community’s rise in bread making seems largely practical. That is, so long as one can get one’s hands on the requisite ingredients (challenging during various times over the past few months), it is a source of sustenance that does not depend on the vagaries of the supply chain we depend so much on; and the ability of one’s ravioli vendor to keep up with (mostly my) demand. Same with the veggie garden. But it seems there is something very ingrained in all of us that has seen bread making become much more important during the pandemic. As Emily VanDerWerf wrote in a fascinating Vox article a few months back, bread is “one of the very foundations of human civilization”, although it is also intimately linked with factors such as romanticism, nostalgia, and gender roles.

In the article, Emily highlights the physical action of making the bread and watching it rise as a fundamental aspect to what we get from the process, with its rolling, kneading and, I might add, hiding it under the bed – at least, that is what my mother always did when making pizza dough and she needed a dark place for the yeast to do its work. The yeast itself is fascinating, a “sort of sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic”. As Emily suggests, baking can “reorient you in time and connect you to the past, even if it’s just your own past”. From my work in psychology, the importance of the physical action and being in the moment makes a lot of sense.

Over the past few months, within the confines of our homes (we have been very fortunate in Adelaide, I should add), I think we have all needed to get out of our heads a bit and do something with our hands, our feet, and our hearts. Hence, perhaps, the yoga craze or the surge in gardening, the latter which cannot be accounted for solely as a fear of running low on coriander…and who really has that fear? Do you even pandemic, coriander lovers?

Perhaps the need to be out in the world, when paradoxically the world seems so closed off, is also why I did not write anything on this blog in 2020.

Maybe homemade bread is a manifestation of many of us wanting to be creative when so many have been locked in their houses, faced with uncertainty, or just plain bored. I am aware what a luxury it is to be bored, rather than having very acute fears for the health of loved ones or loss of jobs in countries where the pandemic seems out of control. But creativity and providing a contribution, particularly through my psychology work, are important to me, and so I wondered about what I could do in even a small way to help others.

I research empathy and, as part of that, compassion is an important aspect to consider in my work. I have become particularly interested in self-compassion in the last couple of years. Self-compassion is receiving increasing attention in psychology. According to Dr Kirstin Neff, who is at the forefront of the area, self-compassion involves three components:

  • being kind to ourselves
  • recognising our common humanity – that is, seeing that we all suffer, we all fall short sometimes, and that we are not alone
  • being aware of our thoughts and feelings in the present moment without becoming overidentified with them.

COVID-19 is a shared world experience, and so I began to wonder whether seeing our experiences as being shared (that common humanity) would make us less hard on ourselves and kinder to ourselves and others. To me, COVID-19 has shown us so many rich examples of people extending empathy and compassion towards their fellow citizens. However, in talking with friends and colleagues, many of us have not extended that same compassion towards ourselves.

As humans, whether by nature or nurture, we can be very unkind and critical of ourselves when we do not meet self-imposed standards, all the while being so nurturing to those around us in similar predicaments. Have you found this tendency to be exacerbated during the pandemic? Perhaps you have experienced self-recrimination because you feel you are not getting as much work done since transitioning to working for home, or perhaps you feel you are not giving the children (also home from school) the attention which we would like to give them.

We can feel like we are the only ones struggling or failing. This may especially be the case when we see others supposedly doing so well making tasty bread or mastering intricate yoga poses. They say a lotus grows in the mud…well, at least something is; it’s not my coriander! At the same time, our thoughts and threat system are likely running rampant as we deal with a situation we cannot really control, trying to put on a brave face or denying what we are feeling because we believe we have got it pretty lucky.

Drawing on my work in empathy and compassion and the work of others, I thought I could provide some tips for how during all this uncertainty, we can build the soothing emotion of self-compassion. I contacted some ABC radio stations around the country and was pleased to be able to speak about self-compassion on some programs. I also did some presentations and write-ups on the concept for my workplace.

What else has fuelled my want for creative pursuits during this time? Well, my friend Donna Loren and I started a podcast. Donna is a singer and actress who, as a teenager and young adult, appeared in the Beach Party films, starred on pioneering rock ‘n’ roll TV series Shindig!, and guest starred on the original Batman TV show and The Monkees. Donna lives in Palm Springs, California, and so we are physically at a distance. So how did this Swinging ’60s Beach Chick come together with this South Australian, once-brooding ’80s kid who doesn’t like to get his hair wet. As the title of Donna’s old column in Movie Life Magazine advised: Let’s talk it over.

Back in the early 2000s, I was a contributor to TV Tome, an online database that was almost a television-only version of the Internet Movie Database. It was more much focused than IMDB was at that time on features such as building full episode guides. You could also nominate to shepherd particular TV series or performers. I cannot remember all the pages I was responsible for, but I know they included the Australian TV series A Country Practice. I started an episode guide for that show, but with 1057 episodes and the series only available when it was rerun on TV, which required me to tape as many episodes as possible, I bowed out early in the piece. Interestingly, as more of us have stayed at home in 2020 and ACP’s original network, Seven, has put all 13 seasons onto their streaming service, there has been much renewed interest in the show (and I am sure others to write the episode guide).

On the creative side, I took care of more than a dozen of the pages of some of my favourites including Jonathan Daly, whom I interviewed on this blog in 2015, Lorrae Desmond from ACP, Kasey Rogers from Bewitched, Evelyn Scott from Peyton Place, Gregory Calpakis from the Canadian TV show Cold Squad, and Donna.

By this point, Donna and her husband Jered were running their fashion design and retail business, ADASA Hawaii. Donna had not performed in many years, but Jered had taken a keen interest in locating as much as Donna’s 1960s work as he could. He emailed me to ask if I had a copy of Donna’s guest appearance on Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C., where she played Anna Kovach, one-half of a pair of star-crossed lovers from feuding Hungarian families (the episode was called “Love and Goulash”) requiring Gomer’s gentle counsel to bring them together. I did not have  a copy of this or another appearance (I cannot remember which) Jered asked for. But I had been a fan of Donna since I had seen her Beach Blanket Bingo performing “It Only Hurts When I Cry“. I was also studying TV and film at university, and so I decided to ask if I could interview Donna.

I had never interviewed anyone before, nor did I have a place to publish the interview. But lo and behold, Donna agreed to it, and we emailed back and forth on a series of questions. I found a free web hosting service, the now defunct GeoCities, and called my resulting article Somewhere Down the Road, the name of one of her songs from the ’80s.

Without realising it, I put a decidedly rosy spin on her 1960s career and life, which was somewhat at odds with the more nuanced story. But sometimes you make a heart connection with people that traverses distance and this was the case for Donna and me. We kept in touch in the ensuing years on email and I even sent Donna and Jered a copy of my PhD thesis when I completed it in 2009. Mercifully, I sent it to them on CD rather than in printed and bound format. At over 300 pages, another friend, Mark, has had to lug that thing around during multiple house moves over the past decade. Around this time, Donna and Jered were winding up their business and Donna had decided to renter the the public eye with new music. Donna had also started to put her life story to paper. I guess Jered and Donna thought enough of my writing to ask if I would collaborate with Donna.

What ensured over around two years was a true collaboration. I would arise early in the morning, which was afternoon in the U.S., and we would Skype and work on Donna’s life story. Donna had her old appointment books from the 1960s and so we used them to start a timeline and to formulate the chapters. I would ask questions and Donna would tell me stories that I would transcribe, or she would do some writing between our ‘sessions’ and so we would review that. I would have questions, and this would help us to refine her narrative. In the meantime, I would research appearances or pieces of work that I thought important for us to cover.

Donna took a leap of faith to trust me with her story, which her public had never really heard. At the heart of it was a family secret and Donna’s attempts to make sense of that when it hadn’t made sense at the height of her success after she was signed as the Dr Pepper Girl in 1963.

When some friends and I decided to take a trip to the U.S. in 2011, I added an extra week at the end of our group trip to my itinerary. The plan was to stay with Donna and Jered at their home, and so when my friends returned to Australia, I met up with my hosts. In the months preceding the trip, Donna and I had developed at least ten or so chapters. We decided to read them out loud over a series of days and nights to our audience of Jered, which would be the first time someone had read/heard them and would also allow us to edit the manuscript in real time.

Our work was interspersed with tourist trips for me, such as to The Getty Villa or the Farmers Market, or a dinner out with Donna’s children Katie and Joey, the latter whom I have been able to take out to lunch when he visited Adelaide as part of the Rogers Waters Us + Them Tour in 2017. In fact, that, I met up with my future hosts one night in Hollywood at the start of my group trip. Jered and Donna had bought tickets for us to attend a 50th anniversary celebration of The Dick Van Dyke Show being held at the Egyptian Theatre. Dick and Carl Reiner were interviewed on stage by Garry Marshall and there was a screening of some classic episodes. I sat with Jered’s best friend Phil Sloan – that’s P.F. Sloan of “Eve of Destruction” fame. All very cool.

Towards the end of my stay, the airline contacted me to let me know that my flights would delayed for a day or two, and so Donna, Jered, and I decided to take a trip down the Pacific Coast Highway on one of the extra days and stop at some of the beautiful beaches. Incidentally, these included the locations of Donna’s Beach Party movies, including the iconic Leo Carrillo State Beach with those distinctive rocks that formed such an important aesthetic for Beach Blanket Bingo. Donna and I took in some shopping (I bought a pair of James Perse pants that I just loved), and the three of us also took in lunch at Nate ’n Al’s historic deli.

Donna and I in 2011 at Leo Carrillo State Beach, Malibu.

When I finally could get a flight home, we bid a fond farewell. We continued to work online on the manuscript over the next year. We finished it and began to look at publishing options, but something did not quite feel right. Some time passed and Donna suggested that we may want to revisit our structure and to delve more deeply in parts. And so, we took another several few months to rearrange and reconsider our approach. I think we have a high-quality manuscript, but for whatever reasons, it has not seen the light of day. Until now.

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, Donna wondered if we might do something creative. Something for us, but for others as well. At the forefront of Donna’s approach has been a want to help people. While she is happy to share all the stories of her music and television/movie work, her story is one about seeking to find and live in truth and to really understand herself and those around her. So, we hatched the idea of reading excerpts from the manuscript, and then discussing them with my expertise from psychology and Donna’s learnt lessons given it is her story. We have kept the structure loose, and so sometimes there will be chat about appearances, sometimes included is a song, perhaps an interview with a collaborator. But all the time we use Donna’s stories to delve into issues that many of us may have faced. Compassion and connection in action, I hope.

It has been a creative, enjoyable ride that we will continue in 2021. I even got to have some fun being interviewed on Plastic EP Live TV, an internet series out of Melbourne, Australia.

So, no bread for us. As I said, I am terrible at slicing it anyway. This is something, perhaps, the French do not need to worry about when they buy a whole loaf or baguette. My friend Mark tells a story about when he was out with his French friend Maxime, and someone uttered the well-worn, “Best thing since sliced bread”.  Maxime thought carefully for a moment about it and then replied, “I remember when my town got sliced bread”. I’m taking a little liberty with his response for comic effect. But I think this demonstrates that while our experiences of the slices of life my differ, what we value and need is pretty similar. Comfort food and comfort with others. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Love’s A Secret Podcast
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These Walls

What’s left of the once mammoth Le Cornu Furniture building, Keswick, Adelaide, October 2019.

There’s been a lot of demolition since we moved into our neighbourhood two and a half years ago. Mid-century houses are being levelled and replaced with two, sometimes three, townhouses at breakneck speed. Some, but not all, were quite worse for wear. I know it probably makes sense in those cases for their demolition. But as Bob and I often discuss when we go for a walk with Lucy: will these mid-century houses come to be seen as something to preserve in the same way that we covet houses from the early part of last century?

We were probably part of the problem, having been 1920s wannabe home owners from the time we rented an early ’20s bungalow a few years ago. Alas, a long-lost great uncle with a hefty inheritance didn’t materialise, and we went mid-century. I’m glad we did – a ’50s house for my ’50s-’60s vases.

The houses being demolished are mid-century Australian, rather than the ones you’d see in, say, Palm Springs or immortalised in mid-century American movies like the time capsule Bachelor in Paradise starring Bob Hope and Lana Turner.  I’m glad that many of the neighbourhood’s houses that would have been built by immigrants – largely Italian and Greek – in the ‘60s have so far remained. These houses are very distinctive and look like what my grandparents and relatives live or lived in. They are the houses of my childhood.

I’ve never had precise spatial awareness. However, it is really put to the test once the roof comes off one of these houses, gardens are cleared, and fences torn down. I cannot reconcile how what looks like such a small space sheltered, fed, and slept families within four often-painted and papered walls that kept their secrets and made memories. How quickly a well-used backyard or long-established garden can be turned into a dirt patch. Indeed, how quickly a whole block can be reclaimed (briefly) by vegetation! Then again, I guess these blocks aren’t that small, as they’re making their way to shelter, feed, and sleep two or three families. Still, it feels strangely disrespectful, even when I have no link to these houses nor am I clamouring to buy one. Perhaps it’s just garden envy. There was one house I used to walk past with a wonderful front garden made up largely of succulents. I wish I’d gotten my act together and taken some cuttings of their purple aeoniums before they were cleared with the rest of the garden.

Notwithstanding my spatial ability, one building and block of land that was definitely not small was Le Cornu Furniture, which traded from 1974 until 2016 on a huge lot in the Adelaide suburb of Keswick. My family bought a lot of furniture from there. Whose didn’t? For the past several weeks, demolition of the site has been in earnest after the building sat vacant for the past three years. I couldn’t believe how quickly it was being torn down, and so last week when I was driving past, I decided to drive around the block to where some building remained and to take a handful of photos. All that really remained was a small slither of the building (photo at the top of the page), the front of which is on the Maple Avenue side of the site. I then drove to the parallel street and took a picture through the fencing so that the inside of the building could be seen.

Didn’t there used to be more furniture in there?

I’m not sure why this part of the building was still standing, but without most of the cream Le Cornu (now Le C) cladding that modernised the building, I imagine that we are getting a glimpse for the first time in years of the original Chrysler manufacturing plant that pre-dated Le Cornu. As an aside, I’ve read that an old Chrysler sign that was above part of the building further down Maple Avenue has been saved, so I presume it was moved off-site before that part came down. A free-standing Le Cornu sign, akin to those old mid-century motel signs (without the neon) is supposedly being kept safely in storage, too.

I must be thinking a lot about buildings of late. Early last year, my friend Mark and I were heading back to my car after dinner out in the city one evening. I’d heard just a couple of weeks earlier that The Planet nightclub building, which was on the same street in which we’d parked, might be demolished after being left empty for the better part of a decade and a half. Since we were there by happenstance, I decided to walk a little way down the street and take some photos of this building where I’d spent a good part of my teens (shh!) and early twenties.

The Planet nightclub building in March 2018.

Across the street I stood, looking at the old girl, snapping some shots on my phone. We then ventured across the street and tried to peer through the windows. A security guard was just about to set an alarm for the evening. I guess whomever owns the building still wants it intact, even if disused. I told him why I was there – that I had been for so many years and wanted to take one more look. He nodded and told me it was fine to keep taking my photos. Then, as he looked at us curiously, recognition dawned on his face. “Oh yeah, The Planet. That place used to go off”, he said as he sauntered away.

Only the lights remain of The Planet nightclub sign. I hope it’s gone to a good home.

By the way, the building is still there almost two years after I took these shots. From what  I’ve read, it will be levelled at some point in the next couple of years along with the building on its right – once a seafood restaurant called Pescatore – and left – a building that housed, amongst other things, a baguette bar I’d stumble toward after a night at The Planet. But, after many rumours of its imminent demise over the years, for now at least, it’s nothing if not a survivor.

House, businesses, buildings. Perhaps furnished by a store that, itself, is being torn down. If those walls could talk, indeed. Regardless, the memories remain. Even if, after a baguette, they got a little fuzzy.

Our Vines Have (Two) Tender Fruits

At last – the signs of spring. Our ornamental pear trees, which are planted along a side fence at the front of the house, have started to leaf out. They lost their foliage a lot later this year, and so I figured there would be delay in their blooming. For some reason, I got more anxious as the days went by with not a sign of a bud or leaf. In the backyard, Japanese Box planted late last year as a border hedge in the raised garden seems to be growing by the day – well, except for the individual plants that yellowed and died early, but which I didn’t pull out as a rallying cry for the other plants to avoid the same fate.

Best of all, the passion fruit vines that my grandfather planted last year have snaked around the trellis he put up and are flowering…and fruiting. Well, so far, we have one nicely shaped passion fruit and one that is the size and colour of a green olive.

I’m glad the cold weather is receding, and it’s cool enough to start to sit outside in the evenings. It really has been the winter of my (and many others’) discontent. It seemed like it would go on forever. It wasn’t so much the wet, winds inverting your umbrella, rain soaking your socks, kind of winter. It just felt very cold. I had a brief reprieve during a trip to sunny Cairns in August, but other than that, two blankets were kept on the bed at night, one of which would make its way to the couch in the morning while I’d have my morning coffee and toast.

I’ve also been unwell over the last month or so, probably because I haven’t been looking after myself. Not so much neglecting eating my greens, but I haven’t been engaging in much self-care, such as getting good sleep, exercising, and taking time to be do enjoyable things that take me out of my head and put me in the moment. When the idea of filling up the bath seems too much, you probably need to fill that bath. Yes, I’m aware of how privileged that sounds. I’m sorry. I am grateful for my bath. My tiredness and feeling sorry for myself has been exacerbated with a lot of work travel this year. It can – and did – wear me down.

Right now, I’m looking at the passion fruit vines. For people who are not natural green thumbs, Bob and I are really pleased with their progress. I kind of want to grab the (non-olive) one and exclaim like Ingrid Bergman in my favourite film, Cactus Flower, when her titular desk plant finally started to flower, “My passion fruit [obviously, she said “cactus”] – she is blooming!” The symbolism of the cactus or my pear trees is not lost on me. As Sarah Vaughan sings on the opening track to the film, “The Time for Love is Anytime”, which was produced by none other than Quincy Jones, “some flowers blossom late, but they’re the kind that last the longest”.

Like my trees, I think a lot of us are waiting for the renewal that comes with spring. We’ve got to play the long game and realise it’ll come…

Happiness is a Hydrangea

New interviews are coming…I swear. It was gratifying to receive a note from a reader telling me that they enjoyed my interviews and wanted to see more on the site. I’ve been working on a long-term project not related to this blog, and so most of my time for interviews has been devoted to speaking to people for that project. However, new conversations will be posted here, if not by the end of this year, then in a flurry for you to enjoy over the holidays. Make sure you hold me accountable to this promise!

Speaking of holidays, I wanted to share with you a photo (you can click on it to see the larger image) I took back in January when we were on holiday in Tasmania. The beautiful flower caught my eye while Bob and I meandered around the suburb of Battery Point one Saturday morning. Hydrangeas may be my favourite flowering plant. I’ve been trying to grow them in our garden with varying success, but am heartened by my friend Alida who tells me that she grows potted hydrangea plants in her terrace in Manhattan. As she says, “Happiness is a hydrangea!” And I agree!

Tonight, I’m sitting outside with my dog Lucy and I can spy one of my heartier hydrangeas from my chair. I’m reading Rebekah Robertson’s book, About a Girl. I started reading it last month in Brisbane. I was there to speak at a conference on compassion. You might say my research area, empathy, is compassion’s groovy cousin. Anyway, I was taking in some of the city streets before heading to the airport. I happened upon Rebekah’s book in the memoir section of a bookstore.  I’d recently seen her daughter, Georgie Stone, make her acting debut on the Australian TV series Neighbours, and so I was interested in reading more about her and her mother’s story.

Georgie and Rebekah advocated for removing the requirement in Australia that the Family Court hear applications by transgender children and their families for the child to be able to access puberty-blocking medication and, subsequently, hormone treatments. This came about through the family’s struggles to get Georgie timely access to treatment when she was 10 years old, and their subsequent challenge to the Full Court that such decisions should rest with parents rather be heard in the court system. Usually I’m more of a deliberate than voracious reader (a library copy of Catch-22 followed me through a house move), but I’m making quick progress with this book because I want to know more about their story.  I’m learning a lot about gender identity and the legal processes to which Georgie and children and families like her and hers, respectively, were subjected. I hope to write more about this book once I finish reading. Hold me to this promise, too!

Now, what’s your happiness flower?

Plutarch and Chill

At seventeen before school formal.

Back in April, I went to my 20-year high school reunion. It was a combined event of the last four decades of the graduating classes of years ending in 9. Since my cohort falls at the relatively more recent end, we were younger than two of the other groups, but staggeringly (for me) no longer the youngest at such an event. I’ve noticed this has been happening increasingly more of late. I still get a little winded when I cross over into a new age range on a survey. It seems like yesterday that I was in the final year of high school, rushing home to eat dinner before settling in to do my homework all evening while burning some lavender oil using a burner my friend Carlo had bought me. I did push myself hard in Year 12. Turns out he thought I needed to chill the fuck out…imagine that.

It was a fairly small turnout from all the graduating classes at the reunion. I imagine the school had twenty-plus year-old outdated addresses for many of my classmates. For others, they may have felt little nostalgia for revisiting high school. I’m still best friends with six of my classmates and we decided to go and make an afternoon and then, once the school portion wrapped up, evening of it at my friend Darren’s pub. We were probably the largest “group” there. The nerds shall finally inherit the earth! Or, at the very least, based on where the school sits, the valley. I don’t think we were actually the nerds in our year level, but I’m not sure where we fit. In the final year of high school, each clique had a table in the common area. We sat smack bang in the middle between the sportos (jocks in North American slang) and the boarders (the country kids who lived on site) and mingled with them and everyone else on either side of us. Then again, perhaps we might not have thought we fit a “type”, but it’s usually others who decide what type we are in high school, isn’t it?

We were taken on a tour of some of the school and I was surprised by how little it had changed. Even the small physical education changing rooms (the place where high school homoerotic dreams were made) in the auditorium looked – and, shudder, smelled – the same. I was taken aback that the library had moved to an undisclosed location somewhere else on the grounds. During Year 12, I’d start my day by reading the newspaper there and then booking in a lunch session to use one of the few computers in the school with Internet access (remember, I said we weren’t the youngest cohort at the reunion). I’d send emails from my Hotmail address (who the hell was I sending them to?) or play Hollywood Stock Exchange with Carlo. I just looked this up, and it still exists. I wonder if I still have my stocks in Mackenzie Astin.

After our night on the town, I hadn’t given the reunion much thought. But this past weekend, I was moving around some boxes and found a copy of a collection of student writing put out annually by the school. The volume was from my final year of high school. It wasn’t the first time I’d come across this small volume in recent years (see here). I was runner-up in the year-level writing competition. The winner was at the reunion – a delightful poet named Thom Sullivan. It’s probably better that I didn’t remember this humiliating (not really) defeat until after the reunion. My base instincts and a couple of beers may have led me to break his quill-holding hand and right a wrong I hadn’t ruminated on in two decades.

Over a cup of coffee, I reread my piece. Looking back from the vantage point of time, I can tell that I was very consciously trying to use every word in the dictionary. Why else would I use “gossamer” or “nadir”? My story was about a woman named Genevieve, who was named for actress Geneviève Bujold, whom I think I’d just seen in a movie. The fictional Genevieve had a life, friends, a job, and an apartment I called a “tenement”. I so obviously didn’t know what that word meant as I also gave her dwelling a mahogany door. However, for all that Genevieve had done, she had never really made her mark. The story was called “Deliquesce”, which essentially means to dissolve away. There was also something in the story about water and a seashell with the voices of the past and present, and I threw in the word “soubrette” to get my Shakespeare on. I left it open as to whether Genevieve died in the end. I can’t remember if I wanted to kill her off, but as Bette Midler said in opening her Divine Madness concert, “After many a summer dies the swan. But not when she’s stuck in a turkey the size of this one!”

When I reread the story, I smiled – if the execution was inelegant, it still isn’t half-bad. Plus, 17-year old Adam was hard enough on himself, and so he doesn’t need my help with that. My ideas were influenced in no small way by some of the giants we were reading at the time in English class – mainly, Death of a Salemsan by Arthur Miller and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Miller and Fitzgerald’s works dealt with the feats of two men who bought into a dream that did them no good. I had also fallen in love with the historians of Ancient Greece and Rome – Herodotus, Suetonius, Thucydides and, particularly, Plutarch. These historians of antiquity tended to focus on noble and ignoble men, alike – but men (unfortunately, so many of the women’s stories are lost to time) who had gone down in history.

Just as there’s no coincidence that these books are chosen for final year high school – a time when you’re figuring out who you are and who you want to be out in the world – my homing in on these themes wasn’t just because I had no other inspiration. Essentially, I remember how much I grappled with the question of “what is a life well lived?”. I imagine this to still be a pertinent question for a kid going out into the world today, although I probably wouldn’t have phrased it like that back then. For my 17-year old self, I thought a life well lived meant a life where I achieved something and was known. Wanting to “be known” was not restricted to the wider world, but I was very conscious of building a circle of friends and acquaintances, perhaps at a bar where everybody knew my name. Indeed, one day after school I went to a lunch bar/café in the city, ordered a cappuccino and Berliner bun with pink icing, and people watched. Though I spoke to not a one, I left that café determined to get to know these people, whom I imagined were regulars, in the coming months.

What struck me about this story, though, is how little my values have changed in 20 years as reflected in the story and what I remember from Year 12. Much more recently, I’ve been delving into the principles of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), particularly what the approach has to say about values. As my teacher in the techniques of ACT has shown me, the commitment comes from wanting to commit to actions that move us towards living life in line with our values, even when negative experiences, emotions and thoughts abound (that’s the acceptance part). As ACT expert Russ Harris succinctly puts it, “The goal of ACT is to create a rich and meaningful life, while accepting the pain that inevitably goes with it”. I didn’t realise how much ACT is reflected in many spiritual traditions until I read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose on the recommendation of my friend Donna Loren. She often seems to know exactly what I need, even before I do. Donna’s worked to understand her experiences, and, in the process, her insight has helped me and others to look more deeply.

Utilising the work of Dr. Harris (p. 23), it turns out three Cs are most important to me:

  • Contributionto contribute, help, assist, or make a positive difference to myself or others.
  • Creativityto be creative or innovative.
  • Connectionto engage fully in whatever I am doing, and be fully present with others.

It seems that while my more nebulous “being known” goal at 17 has evolved, it still has at its core a want to be known for doing and contributing something of importance. I think the need to be creative is a part of that overarching contribution value. The importance placed on connection has moved beyond wanting to know the patrons of a café to paying mind to the relationships I do have and being in the moment when I’m with those people. When anxiety takes over my brain and turns it into scrambled eggs, as it is apt to do, I find being present and in the moment with people terribly difficult.

Where does one get the most chance to contribute or be creative? Lots of places, but it’s often at work. And here’s the kicker. If I’m totally honest with myself, I spent a good part of the last decade in a job where, by and large, I don’t feel like I made that positive difference. While there were certainly exceptions of which I am proud, I stayed too long, even when I knew early on that this wasn’t the right fit for me. Yes, I had to pay the bills, I had just met my partner, moving away from family and friends for work wasn’t something I wanted to do, and so on. But I felt controlled and, in response to that, chose the path of least resistance and went with it. The genesis of this blog was my chance to be creative at a time when I didn’t feel I could find creativity anywhere else. As a result, I now feel at a stage where people who started their careers at the same time as me are really hitting their strides in an area in which they chose to research. More than that, they look like they are really enjoying the chance to be innovative and creative.

I’m now somewhere where I do think I can make that contribution and do more engaging work. At first, I was very anxious that I must hurry to catch up to everyone. Now with help from ACT principles, I’m realising it’s more about being conscious of the goals I want to achieve and to what end am I striving towards these things (that is, what are my values?). So long as I’m working towards them, that’s a good start. Again, I need to chill. Maybe I should get out that oil burner.

Being fully present with others is still sometimes hard. I’ve had to find mindfulness activities that work for me in all sort of circumstances as I wrote about a little while ago. I tried the raisin meditation once, where you essentially focus on the sensations associated with putting a raisin in your mouth and – here’s the important part – eventually swallow it. I put it in my mouth and down it went. Worrying that the person leading me through this would think less of me, or at least not have another raisin to give me, I pretended it was still in my mouth for a few minutes and swished around this imaginary withered old grape. Best imaginary raisin I’ve ever tasted!

Oh, you might be wondering what ever happened to that café. It barely lasted the year and folded before the close of the millennium. But I do now have another place to get a drink where a few people know my name. It’s all good.