Where you come from.

Last weekend I got the chance to go to an exhibition. What made it truly special was that it was the exhibition of someone that, a long time ago, I couldn’t help but look up to. From when I was brought home from the hospital until I was eleven years old, he was my cool older neighbour. It’s also worth highlighting that his parents were wonderful to us. I would turn up on their doorstep demanding chocolate biscuits and the audacity of such a request from a small child meant that I got them each time. This is the true root of me now being a Sweet Treat Boy.

I remember my neighbour playing bongos in his bedroom, while, through the seemingly paper-thin walls, I tried to sleep on the other side in a bunk bed I shared with my younger brother.

One Christmas, I got a book which had a series of sound effects buttons built into the back cover. It was Disney’s Peter Pan. The intention was to hit the sound effects in time with the reading of the book to add another sense to the act of reading. This was a long time before the brain rot experience I currently exist in of having TikTok up on my phone, Netflix on the tv and a book on my lap at the same time. The neighbour sat with me and read Peter Pan from cover to cover and then started messing around with the buttons. I’d never seen anything like it but it was a rudimentary form of sampling. He would smash buttons in turn on a beat, getting John Boy or Peter to stutter the start of their sound bite before hitting the sound of a tomahawk or the drums associated with Tiger Lily and the “Indian chief” (as described by Disney at the time). He was playing and it was joyous to watch. To me, he was a fully formed human, not just a kid, and he was having fun! It was a game and we were the only two people in the world who were in on it. I remember laughing a lot. There was something conspiratorial about it.

My dad swears that our neighbour used to practice his breakdancing in our lounge, like it’s some claim to fame. Last week he told me those days are beyond him but I like the idea of him popping and locking to the general bemusement of our parents.

I am lucky to have nieces and nephews, godchildren and devil children in my life. My formatting for how I approach my relationship with them is based on what that neighbour did with me, how my older cousins would act like I was cool enough to hang with them or how my dad would introduce us to Star Wars or Deep Purple, waiting for our minds to be blown. At the time, I told him Darth Vader was boring, one of my few regrets in life.

When I went to introduce myself at the exhibition, waiting among a number of eager fans, something in his face changed. He immediately grabbed me in a hug. He asked after my family and had amazing recall of our shared history. There was so much kindness there. He spent more time chatting to me than necessary, sometimes breaking to sign merch or wave people off but he was the same cool older kid he had always been.

I guess what I’m saying is that the people you hold in the highest regard can surprise you. He was the first person I ever knew of who left our little suburb and went off to do something. He may never know, unless he reads this, that it was a BIG DEAL to me and my brothers. He showed that it was possible to take the things you enjoyed doing and turn them into a true passion. I’m on my own journey but I carry that ethos in my heart, doing the things I enjoy, seeing what works and what will stick.

The important note in all of this is not to forget where you come from.