35. Lady-Hear Me Tonight - Modjo
I had quite a fortunate time at high school – and I’m terribly grateful for that.
I didn’t love every minute or element, but I had a great group of friends, the work wasn’t too taxing and I had enough going on outside of school that it felt like a pretty full life.
One part of school I was particularly lucky to experience was the school camps I was able to go on*.
Two were particularly memorable:
1) A Business camp, run by Deakin University in the corporate rooms at their Geelong campus^;
2) A ‘youth leadership camp’ run by my school at the Somers Camp, down the peninsula in year ten, I think. Or maybe eleven.
This post is all about the second camp – and why a fairly disposable dance song from the late 90s will always, always remind me of it.
The song – Lady (Hear Me Tonight) by Modjo – isn’t a bad track.
It’s summery, light and soaked in that French sound so popular back then.
The beat pivots in and out of the song, with that guitar line looping its way through. The lyrics are slight and basic, but it’s a fun song.
Lady,
Hear me tonight,
Cos my feeling
Is just so right
As we dance
By the moonlight
Can’t you see
You’re my delight
It was mildly popular at the time, so it’s not entirely surprising that it reminds me of this camp.
But there’s a bit more to it.
This camp had been set up by some of the senior teachers for students they thought showed strong leadership qualities and potential.
The idea, I think, was to gather us all at the camp and spend the days working on these qualities to further develop them.
Looking back, it was quite the generous initiative for a public school best known for its diverse student base and reputation for perennial financial difficulties.
Anyway, we trundled into the bus and made our way down to Somers**.
I can’t visualise that trip this far removed.
There were no iPods, no phones, no Discmans; just a couple of dozen kids and teachers in a bus. I imagine we all talked or indulged in some other such modern-day heresy.
We arrived at the camp, unpacked and made our way to our bunks.
Then it was lunch at the mess hall.
Excited chatter about the new digs, speculation about what lay ahead and high hopes for being able to get on to some of the more adventurous equipment we’d all seen.
Then we rolled into the first afternoon’s activities.
I don’t remember them very much either.
I think there were ropes courses, archery, that kind of thing. But also discussion groups and esteem builders and exploratory discussions.
It was about developing this cohort of kids so they could move into the next phase of life with greater confidence and capability and I think it achieved that.
Sessions done, we returned to our rooms before trooping back to the mess hall. Then it was free time until lights out.
We’d split into our different groups to catch up and chat about the day’s events.
We’d then reconvene into one bunk house, where we had the thrill of discovering that the combination of boys and girls in the same building without supervision was (surprisingly) allowed.
There was some trepidation that first night – we all knew each other, but not well enough to actually be ourselves in confined quarters.
Though, as you might expect of a group of 16-and-17 year olds, some new pairings overcame that trepidation relatively quickly.
Thankfully they had the grace to move those explorations to another room, but for the rest of us, it was a matter of hanging out and talking with people about all sorts of stuff.
Plans after school.
University or TAFE.
Interests outside of school.
Difficulties. Challenges. Loves. Hates.
Gossip about kids, about teachers and about anything else.
Stuff in our histories.
(Learning of the extreme challenges the undoubted ‘MVP’ of the camp experienced before they left Africa was particularly engrossing).
Just hours and hours of conversation, all crammed into a room with four sets of bunks.
It wasn’t until the second day that we hit one rather serious issue.
There was a stereo to which we had full access.
Except.
None of us had brought any CDs. It was comical, all of us each realising our assumption that ‘someone else’ would have a CD was nothing but a long chain of errors.
And there was no radio reception.
There it was, a teenager’s holy grail (well, one of them anyway) – an unsupervised stereo – and all of us were standing there, desperately searching for something to play.
Until somebody stepped forward, reaching into their bag.
Shyly, they pulled their hand out of the bag and handed over the CD they had in there for some reason – Lady (Hear Me Tonight).
On it went!
And it was great!
It was a new song back then, so we were all pumped to hear some of ‘our’ music playing through this stereo.
The stereo came back to the bunk house after dinner too, so we could listen to it as we hung out that night.
Like I said, we were all pumped to hear it.
The first few times.
And the few times after that.
Numbers 16,17 and 18, less so.
But it was all we had, so we kept it playing.
Over and over again.
That guitar riff.
Those beats.
Those lyrics.
Over and over and over again.
By the third day we were well and truly sick of it. But we couldn’t turn it off.
It became the anthem of the camp.
Because in the meantime we’d begun making real progress in the development and leadership exercises.
Exercises which required a level of commitment and openness that’s difficult to extract from teenagers.
But everybody was committed; everybody was in it.
Maybe it was the late-night conversations, the time spent together, or the sharing of stories and secrets in our activity groups.
Either way, there was a shared spirit in the camp – teenagers that kind of knew each other back at school now knew a lot more about each other.
Which encouraged more sharing and more commitment, which led to more knowledge and comfort, encouraging more sharing and more commitment.
It was – in as much as a group of self-conscious teenagers can allow – an unexpected level of bonding.
And the whole time:
Lady, I just feel like,
I won’t get you,
Out of my mind.
I feel love,
For the first time,
And I know that it’s true,
I can tell by the look in your eyes.
You’d hear it in the rooms, you’d hear it in the mess hall, you’d hear it playing from the other side of the oval.
You’d hear it playing over breakfast, between the breaks in the activities and even during some of the activities.
It’d float through the trees as you walked past, and drift into the windows as you turned in.
It was a constant presence throughout the entire camp.
I can’t remember now what difference that camp made in my life.
It was 20-some years ago and it’s impossible to untangle my personality now to know which strand comes from which source.
In fact, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario in my mind.
I know I’m still friends with a few of the kids that were there – but most of us were friends beforehand.
I’ve found I’m relatively comfortable with leadership roles – but we were selected because we were already showing those tendencies.
Most of my friends are female – but that was the case before we spent nights hanging out in that bunk room.
I think it started me realising other people’s stories were important and interesting, but that realisation would take years to properly develop.
So it was a really important few days for my life, but I can’t exactly say why.
I do think, though, that it created – through some weird group alchemy – a minor bond between all of us that were there.
It’s not a strong connection like you hear other people (footballers, say) talk about, but more like a soft shadow burnt into part of our histories.
A shadow that’s fading over time as our lives move on and change and become more complex and compressed.
But a shadow that, in the right light and at the right angle, captures that feeling of a group of young kids crammed into a small bunk room.
Of them building the confidence to honestly talk about themselves, their futures and their histories without the interference of parents, teachers or any other pesky adults.
A shadow with a soundtrack.
A shadow with a song.
*To this day I still have no idea how on earth my mum – a single mother working for casual rates in difficult jobs – ever managed to afford these luxuries.
^I know how it sounds, and it’s exactly as geeky as you think it is! It was a great camp though, in top-flight facilities.
One lasting memory was participating in a moot court, and even though our team lost, I was able to walk away with the individual prize for best performance. This was back when I still wanted to become a lawyer, so it was a nice feather in the cap.
**It’s worth highlighting that Somers is the name of the area/town the camp is located in. It’s not, as I’ve often confused people, the type of camp. It was not a ‘summer camp’ a la our American friends. I think it’s a Scout camp.
