The Human Equivalent of Penicillin - Rob Clarkson

Rob Clarkson is a songwriter based in Melbourne, hailing from Hobart, the city of love. His wry, observational funny, and romantic songs grabbed me from the moment I saw him supporting Weddings Parties Anything at the QUT Refectory in 1991 or so.  At the time he was gaining popularity.  Triple J and Rage were playing Beautiful Boys and Beautiful Girls.  The six-track EP seemed like a harbinger of a brilliant career.  I listened to it endlessly.

In 1993, the follow-up full-length album (Off Your Faith) arrived.  It was long-awaited for me, but it seemed the radio weren't interested.   In that time, I had graduated, moved out of home, lived in a couple of rented places, first with my mate Tim and later my girlfriend, Kim.  It had all been idyllic.  Then Kim went back to university.  Financially, she was forced to move back home.  I went back to the suburbs and my childhood bedroom.  The retrograde move back home.  Years later George Costanza would do the same thing, to the mirth of us all.  I understood how he felt.

I didn’t like it much. I’d been out on my own too long. I chafed under the constant notice of my family.  So I really have no idea as to why I decided to buy a house with my brother and move in with him and his girlfriend.

I was a messy bastard to share a house with. The regular challenges and frictions of share-house living are amplified when it's your family. Alongside that, I was a first-time homeowner and shouldered a mortgage I couldn’t really afford. Every month, I used a credit card to fund the gap brought on by my lifestyle (i.e. drinking and eating out).  Beyond the budget, I loathed the very idea of being trapped in a mortgage.  People see their first house as an investment in getting on the property ladder.  I saw it as the sign that I’d given up on whatever youthful dreams floated about in my subconscious. 

No longer was I able to just give it all up and go on the road with Neal Cassady.  I was stuck.

The character in the Human Equivalent of Penicillin is also a miserable git, also adept at externalising all his failings.  He went further, contemplating suicide.

                I jump into a bath filled with the hairdryer, of your love

                And I find myself floating face down

                I scream at you to turn the power on

But all I hear are bubbles and now you’re gone

I wonder if you left a clean towel

All my plans were daydreams, unserious notions.  Same as this guy.  Luckily for him, he finds redemption in a relationship

I’m the toe, you’re the nail

Protect me, should I fail

I’m the eye, you’re the lid

So say it, very clear

You’re the human equivalent of penicillin

 

At the end of the song, the character admits that on his shoulders sits a totally vacuous head.  Self-knowledge. With that comes the ability to just get on with life.  That’s where the inspiration to carry on and to change my circumstances came from.

Redemption, growth, happiness, all that had to come from within.  Rob Clarkson told me that to get through that crushing pressure of relentless mortgage payments, unhappy home life, and a job I hated, I had to find an inner strength of my own.  Like Bob Dylan kept saying in another song on high rotation at the time, it was up to me.

I still recall the music I felt solace in back then. Desolation Row, all of  Blood on the Tracks, Dave Steel’s Bay of Swans EP, and the Monday’s Experts EP all made a difference.  But Rob Clarkson, with his joyous and unpredictable mirth, was the king of them all. 

Within a year, I’d pulled out of the mortgage, moved out, and changed career to recruitment.

Maybe I should track Rob down and let him know in that time he was my human equivalent.  

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