36. They Thought I Was Asleep - Paul Kelly

Here’s one for you – there’s a non-zero possibility that Paul Kelly will, someday, be knighted.

Sir Paul Maurice Kelly.

Sounds about right for the bloke that’s soundtracked so many of our memories.

Many, many of them have meaning for me.

This is about one of them.

We didn’t take many holidays when I was a kid.

Between financial limitations, time constraints and the ever-present burden of working on that damned house, there was very little space for trips.

We went to New Zealand once, but beyond that any trips involved a long drive.

A long drive in an old Landcruiser. Long drives that I can’t really remember now.

It’s a pattern my wife and I have continued.

We’ve driven through the deep south of the US, we’ve driven through New Zealand and we’ve driven all over Victoria.

I’m not sure what it is that I love about a driving holiday.

I imagine it’s the freedom and flexibility – so long as there’s a road, there’s a course you can plot.         

It might also be a personality thing. I always want to know what’s over the next hill, around the next bend, past the next corner.

It’s a restlessness, I suppose, a curiosity that’s never going to be sated. I’ve noticed it when I’m walking too – there’s always just one-more-thing-to-see.

Driving accommodates that nicely.

Especially in this monstrously large country. My wife’s family from Ireland are always a little surprised to learn you can drive four hours in Victoria and still be in the same state, let alone country.

Perhaps that’s it, maybe it’s a national-identity thing.

Everyone I know is familiar with the long journeys past dry paddocks and over melting asphalt during summer.

Through the scrubby tangles of volatile eucalyptus stands, throwing off waves of flammability like an open petrol tank.

The arch droning of the varying road surfaces as you try to get as far as you can, by the time you need to get there.

Not all of these memories come from childhood; of course, many of the people I know are relatively new converts to the long drive.

So while they know the feeling of a long journey, they don’t necessarily have the memories of the string of vinyl left to heat up in the unforgiving sun, waiting to scorch it’s impression into unsuspecting thighs.

Or the reality of traveling through an Australian summer without air-conditioning, the impossible compromise answering the question – how far should I wind the window down?

Or how parents would work to pack five humans and the luggage of marauding army into the one vehicle, and their combined frustration when – an hour in – you realise that you really, really need that thing at the bottom of your bag.

And, of course, they won’t have the memory of that unique fragrance fabric from the 80s emits in times of high heat.

I imagine materials science has helped us boom past such outdated technologies, but whatever went into 20th century upholstery had an odd habit of retaining odours until moments of unbearable heat.  

Another person who won’t have these memories is my son.

We’ve so far avoided the temptation of a screen behind our headrests, but he’ll still be traveling in a comfort unknown to his parents at the same age.

There’s air conditioning, forgiving fabrics and an absence of vinyl looking to brand you for being so bold as to wear shorts in summer.

There’ll be plenty of leg room, a stereo with options beyond FM and AM, cruise control and the dozens of safety features reducing the odds of an accident.

Funnily enough, though, all these years later and the best window shade is still a beach towel caught in the window.

Still, he won’t have those memories in the future.

(This isn’t a bad thing – for a matter of years, the drivers door on one of our cars wouldn’t open when I was a kid. So he also won’t have the memory of his parents shimmying over the centre console to actually get out of the car.)

As I said earlier, I don’t remember these trips from my childhood very much.

The recollections are pretty much just a hazy mash of smells, sun and sleeping against the car door.

Yet Paul Kelly’s gentle lament “They Thought I Was Asleep” tickles that memory part of my brain.  

Not because it’s a factual retelling of any moment in my actual memory – I don’t actually remember driving with both of my parents at all – but because it captures, perfectly, a moment in a trip.

And this is the magic of Kelly’s stuff, isn’t it?

Our lives – all of us – track along, filled with times and events and things and stuff and interactions and conversations and arguments and sights, sounds and smells.

Most of us, the overwhelming majority, don’t notice these points along our personal timelines. They’re not notable, they just are.

Paul Kelly notices them, though.

He sees them, like all good artists, and then he sets himself the momentous task of capturing them in his chosen medium.

Art, I was told once, isn’t about being right, it’s about being true. I think of that when I listen to Paul Kelly’s music.

He is, as I’m sure we all know, a master of the form.

It’s in the details:

One hand on the wheel an' one hand stroking her hair
The headlights shining from the other way
Showed tears on the cheeks of daddy's face

It’s in the characters:

My kid brother grizzled for a little minute
Til my big sister told him he'd better quit it or die

And it’s in the unimportant tragedy breaking the hearts of people we’ll never know.

Have they argued?

Or did they learn something while the kids were:

Playing with the cousins on my mother's side

And that’s just the surface interpretation, playing to the ‘facts’ of the story.

There are, as with the best art, layers. Layers that I didn’t always appreciate.

I can’t listen to this song too many times in a row, and I normally go some time between listens as well.

Not because of its sadness, but because of its masterful evocation of a time and a place that I know, but don’t know.

Because our narrating kid could have been any of us, really. We’ve all woken up, at some stage, and ‘played dog’ to make sure the people around us didn’t know.

And then we could have been the ones intruding on a private moment between parents, seeing them as humans trying to get by in the face of the ugly parts of life, rather than just the caregivers we were never really grateful enough for.

Or any of us parents might be ones unaware we were under surveillance, inadvertently breaking the façade of our competence to show vulnerability and emotion.

Or any of us could be the poor person dealing with horrible news and crying, in the front seat, ‘driving back from the country one night’.  

I’ll always love long car trips, especially when they’re with loved ones. A long drive with good people, great conversation and good music is as close to perfect as I think you can get.

With any sort of reliability, anyway.

And I’ll always listen to this song, occasionally at the same time as the long drive.

Because it’s a beautiful, wonderful piece of art, created by the great artist - Sir Paul Maurice Kelly.