They’re the odd couple in our local strip of shops. Side by side they sit, representing two very different worlds. The first is a Catholic bookstore. It’s closed on Sundays, naturally, and does a quiet but steady trade. The shop next door does tattoos. When I was growing up, these were referred to as ‘tattoo parlours’, but now they tend to prefer ‘studio’. That’s because the term ‘parlour’ was only ever used to describe businesses that operated under the shadow of infamy. Tattoos and pinball – both had the ‘parlour’ tag. Not now, though. Things have changed.
They’re the odd couple in our local strip of shops. Side by side they sit, representing two very different worlds. The first is a Catholic bookstore. It’s closed on Sundays, naturally, and does a quiet but steady trade. The shop next door does tattoos. When I was growing up, these were referred to as ‘tattoo parlours’, but now they tend to prefer ‘studio’. That’s because the term ‘parlour’ was only ever used to describe businesses that operated under the shadow of infamy. Tattoos and pinball – both had the ‘parlour’ tag. Not now, though. Things have changed.
The tattoo studio (not parlour) opens whenever the mood strikes. The front window displays a crystal trophy that, at a glance, looks like something they dish out when the word ‘Nobel’ is involved rather than one to which the term ‘Best and Fairest’ is attached. The trophy was for coming first in a tattooing competition in the highly competitive category of ‘Best Leg – Female’. It pays to specialise.
When you’re a kid, you think you can do everything. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t win an Oscar, a Grammy, a Logie and the Nobel Peace Prize all in the course of a weekend. Then reality sets in. Not all at once, more as a matter of attrition. Sometime during the process of elimination that is growing up you realise that the chances of an award beyond a swimming certificate are unlikely. Maybe you’ll achieve one of those things, but not all of them. There simply isn’t enough time to be good at everything. Unless you’re Hugh Jackman, of course.
In early high school, I dreamed big. There’s nothing wrong with that, but such was my self-belief that I thought these things would happen without me trying especially hard. As a result, my parents expended money for lessons that I attended but for which I never practised. This chronic lack of application meant that my progress in these various disciplines could best be described as ‘limited’.
I took percussion lessons. For the life of me, I can’t say why. Secretly, I probably wanted to play the drums because, as everybody knows, drums are the best instrument in the world if you’re the one playing them, and the worst if you’re simply within earshot. However, percussion lessons weren’t about sitting behind a Ludwig kit and pounding out the beats. They were about the marimba, the vibraphone and the enduring mysteries of the triangle. To this day, my triangle technique is flawless. For months, I attended lessons. Having not practised at all, my determination to show up seemed to slowly suck the life out of my teacher. It was like watching a tyre gradually deflate. Then, one week, he surprised me, by announcing that he’d arranged for me to join the school orchestra.
When he told me, I thought this was simply a case of him acknowledging my musical genius. The school orchestra was a big deal, and not only because it was one of the few school-sanctioned activities in which both genders were allowed to participate. Being an orchestral hotshot was the kind of thing that earned you all manner of honours including special acknowledgement on your school blazer pocket. Granted, having a few words sewn onto your uniform is not exactly an Oscar, but it was a start. However, my teacher had other things in mind. It was, I now believe, a last desperate attempt to encourage me to practise.
I turned up at the first rehearsal without having so much as opened any of the sheet music, deciding I could wing it. No one was going to notice much if the triangle came in at the right spot. When I got there, the room was packed. As the percussionist, I was tucked down the back, although unlike everyone else, had to stand. The sheet music looked like a bunch of black ants walking across the page. Although I was never much for sight reading sheet music, I was an expert at improvisation. This, I was confident, would be enough to carry me through.
When the conductor referred to ‘Often Bach’, I was pleased. Even I knew that Bach was a famous composer and performing his work seemed like a good idea. I now know that he was, in fact, referring to ‘Offenbach’, who is a different person entirely. We would, it seems, be performing Offenbach’s ‘Can Can’.
Offenbach’s ‘Can Can’ has no triangle in it. What it does have, however, is buckets of snare drum. It’s difficult to fly under the radar if you’re playing the snare drum. However, as the conductor tapped the baton on the music stand, I knew that my free-form improvisational jazz skills would save me. Or so I believed until, thirty seconds later, the conductor threw his baton down in disgust and, in front of everyone, questioned not only my sense of rhythm but my sanity also. He then decided that I should perform my snare part as a solo whilst every body watched.
It was at that moment that I realised I was wearing both my school uniform and the Emperor’s new clothes at once. I stared back at the conductor as all the musicians stared at me. The ‘Can Can’ became more of a ‘Can’t Can’t’. I lasted about two more weeks, before retiring. The official reason was that I had decided to concentrate on the triangle. After all, it pays to specialise.