Rituals of parenthood & failure of conversation

We went to our friends daughter’s christening. We were late of course, theme for the day. My son behaved well, sleepily, I listened to the minister describe why relationships fail, love or friendships. 

 

After a fifth birthday party and treasure hunt, we walked over the creek and returned to our friends house.  My son was sugared up and not that well behaved so I had to ring up later, to talk music. 

He tried to describe Tortoise, “post rock, whatever that means”, how he’d got into them was a bit vague, something to do with a 90 minute something... I made him jealous when I told him I’d seen Ed Keupper and Died Pretty, like me, had first listened to Adelaide City Library copy of “King of Kindness” and worked his way backwards, has both Electric Storm and Honey’s Steel Gold. I think King of Kindness was the library item that got me suspended and thus forced me to join up to a different council library before onecard network rendered impossible that approach to dodging library suspensions. Of David Bowie, he cited Scary Monsters as some of his best work, agreed Let’s Dance is totally great. 

We branched into a discussion of David Bowie as actor, he mentioned an odd film with Rosanna Arquette, we agreed Christiane F is not suitable for parental viewing...I had him desperately wanting to see “The Man who fell from earth” for the question of what to tell children. 

My classmate Richie posted a link to a piece by Julian Burnside about alienation-anonymous internet flamers often deeply alienated people, shouting as no-one will listen to them. Julian acknowledged progressive people feel alienated when it appears acceptable to demonise refugees. And he (Julian not Richie) described what happened when he took the time to respond to hate mail-writing in a civil manner often returned civility; facts converted up to 50%, 25% continued to disagree but respected values he was expressing.  “And the other 25% stayed fixed. It was somewhat heartening and a reminder why being smug and lecturing people for being wrong, is not the way to go-it’s a failure of conversation".