Ian Farr

This is a post I never wanted to write. Ian Farr, a very old friend, has died. He was barely 60. He's been living in Adelaide the past few years, so I haven't seen much of him in recent times, but we were very close in the 1970s, when he was a major figure in our pretty wild group. He was a lovely man. Apparently he went to the doctor about a month ago complaining of stomach ache, was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and died in his sleep a couple of nights ago. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him ready to hand.

They were really wild days, way back then, living in Hargrave Street in Paddington, off our ever loving trees, pioneers of thought disorder, tripping in Centennial Park. Wild nights, with the bushes rustling and the sky whack whacking and us awake while the rest of the suburb slept; the normal people slept. He cared, and these days, few people care.

These were the people we shared our life's story with; and Ian in particular. He always listened. He was always kind. I rang him up only a month or so ago and my opening line was: "Thought I'd give you a blast from the past". It's been sad now for days, old friends getting in touch, there just aren't many of us left any more from that merry band, so long ago. We thought we were the cutting edge, the future generation of Australia's great artists, writers, actors, musicians. It didn't work out that way. There's been some minor successes; but we didn't become the epoch changing characters we thought we were at the time.

Ian had got a mention as a promising young composer in a book about Australian music; watch this space was the gist; but that didn't happen. But Ian kept performing; even in later years, when he had been caring for his elderly mother, who died not long ago, he would play the piano in the old people's home; much appreciated. He did a lot of the music for various theatre groups; those tiny bells, the pure appreciation of beauty, that was all him. It seemed to me, in the wash of it all, that his theatre music was too ephemeral, there was no full record of it, and he and his memory and his music would be washed away. At least with words they stayed moldering on sheets of paper. But he wouldn't of cared. That wasn't what he was about.

Ian always seemed, in a sense, purer than the rest of us. His motives were cleaer, more honest, he struggled for creative achievement in the purest sense; while the rest of us, well some of us, were just grotty and wanted to get out of it, cheap thrills, cheap success, to be fabulous without effort; to ignore the consequences of our actions.

I remember most the days at Hargrave Street, where we all lived in a group household next to the pub. I kept bantams in the backyard, making the derelict backyard toilet into a chook pen. Unique, in that inner suburb, now the font of trendiness and million dollar terraces, was the crowing of the rooster each morning. I was up at six every morning, spewing out incomprehensibe, certainly unpublished, science fiction novels; of the forces that moved across chequered floors in great castles in the sky. Ian was part of all this; because to me he was the embodiment of the pure creative life. It had never occurred to him to be anything other than a musician; and he had dedicated his life to that cause. And he was always encouraging; that to be the artist was the only forward for any of us; the artist as a young man.

The pub next door loved us; and not just because of the amount of money we spent in there. While the rest of the neighbourhood complained about the noise and got together petitions, we as the people right next door, never complained. They didn't complain about our chooks, we didn't complain about their late night drunks. Apart from the fact that we were the late night drunks. On the front of our house, we had painted each of the pointed tops of the iron railing a different colour, pink, purple, silver, it was the seventies; and everyone knew that our house was different; that while everybody else got up and went to work, our mornings were spent sleeping off the night before. It would never have occurred to us to be different. Actually, at one time I did have a job for three months; as assistant director for the Pacific Island Monthly; and I would smoke a joint and have a strong coffee and self-righteously step over groaning bodies each morning on the way to work. A lot of these people sleeping on my floor were Ian's friends; from the different theatre groups he was involved in. They all loved him; they all raged into the night with bottles of tequila, and in those days, lots of hash.

No one ever doubted that Ian was a brilliant musician; and it had never occurred to him to be anything else. Struggling to write, from a background devoid of art or art appreciation, I was fascinated by someone who lived the creative life and had never, apparently, thought to do anything else.

It was Jenny Blyton's house; which she had inherited from her parents; and I was living there. And with me came all the rest. Ian was there for a long time; those were the days of mandies and we would be falling all over each other; in and out bed, every bed. And those were the days when we were young enough; it was a never a question of whether you wanted to sleep with me, or whatever; of course you did.