Shucking and psychos

I was blown away by seeing the Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense on the big screen on Saturday night.

A newly restored 40th anniversary version of the film is currently playing in theatres around the world.

DD and I sat in a packed cinema where everyone erupted into raucous applause after every song, as if they were watching a real-life concert.

I wanted to dance and dance and dance. But it wasn’t that kind of screening. I am itching to go somewhere where it is that kind of screening.

David Byrne was mesmerising. And strange. And wonderful. And I suddenly clocked that that he was on the spectrum.

In her 1984 review of the film, Pauline Kael described Byrne as having “a withdrawn, disembodied sci-fi quality …there’s something unknowable and almost autistic about him.”

In recent years, Byrne has described himself as being on the autism spectrum, but has never sought an official diagnosis.

“Probably because I thought, this is just me,” he explained. “I’m not unhappy. I might be a little bit different than some other people, but I’m not unhappy. This is the way I experience the world, but I’m doing fine. I really enjoy writing the songs and performing and the other things that we do. So why act like I have something wrong that needs to be treated?”

I recognize people on the spectrum now. I’m like a dog who can smell hypos. Within a few minutes of talking to someone I can sense it.

I could see it so clearly in Byrne’s eyes and his movements.

On the other hand, I don’t think the bloke who ruined my pre-movie glass of pink wine was autistic. He was just scary.

DD and I went to a Korean place near the theatre for dinner, where I had this colourful teriyaki chicken box:

We still had a little while to go after dinner before the movie started, so we went to a nearby bar. But, while DD was getting me a drink, a tall, slightly menacing and very drunk Irish bloke in his mid-40s started talking to me. The bar was very loud so I was having trouble hearing him and he started getting agitated about it. But he wouldn’t leave me alone, even when DD got back.

He was not, ironically, making much sense and started doing weird things like showing me his hip replacement scar.

I made DD skull his wine so we could escape his scariness. As we scurried along the street DD noted that the bloke had a touch of the serial killer about him.

And then Stop Making Sense opened with “Psycho Killer” …

DD was not as enamoured with Stop Making Sense as me. He thought Elton John did a better show. He didn’t like how David Byrne was so disconnected from the audience.

But I didn’t mind that because his voice was so powerful and the songs were so divinely eclectic and eccentric, with their mix of punk and afro-beat influences. They’re the opposite of linear ‘80s pop songs, deeply layered and totally glorious.

I would go and see Stop Making Sense again tomorrow. In a heartbeat.

I had eight favourite songs …

“Psycho Killer”
“Heaven”
“Slippery People”
“Burning Down the House”
“This Must Be the Place”
“Once in a Lifetime”
“Girlfriend Is Better”
“Take Me to the River”

Do yourself a favour and look them all up on YouTube.

But that’s only half the story of my weekend. I also did a fabulous thing with my Saturday morning walking buddies. Instead of tramping the local streets we booked a Sydney Oyster Farm Tour.

It was very David Byrne-like in its delightful weirdness. We did the “Immerse Yourself” tour, with a boat trip out to the oyster farm leases on the Hawkesbury River. We slid into chest-high waders – well, I had to shoehorn myself into mine, I’m not sure how anyone with bigger hips than me would fit into them – and stood at an in-water table shucking oysters.

I was very, very bad at shucking oysters. Other people had to do most of them for me. I don’t know whether it was just my general ineptness or terror that I would cut my fingers off with the shucking knife … or both.

But we had a great time together. And while it looks like we were boozing up a storm, we only got one glass of bubbles with our oysters.

However, we’d brought along a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling from a brand called Vinada and we guzzled the whole bottle.

I am usually very skeptical about non-alcoholic wine, but it was yummy and made the whole experience feel very festive while still allowing me to drive my friends home afterwards.

I wonder who first thought up the idea of putting white tableclothed tables in the middle of the river and charging people a king’s random to wear waders and shuck their own oysters?

Such a weird, genius idea.

We also learned lots of fascinating, and sometimes saddening, things about oysters.

Did you know it takes four years to grow a Sydney Rock Oyster, but less than four seconds to eat one?

When European colonisers first arrived in Australia, they found vast reefs of oysters and mussels all along the coast. And the Hawkesbury River was crystal clear. However, the colonisers knew oyster shells were a valuable source of lime, a key ingredient in mortar used for construction. So they smashed all the oyster reefs and heavily dredged the river system to get their hands on the shells, often resulting in the striping of entire reefs back to bare sediment.

By the end of the 19th century so few oysters were left that wild harvesting had largely stopped. People instead turned to aquaculture. Despite the lime mining being banned, the reefs haven’t recovered since they first started disappearing 100 years ago.

Very sad.

But enough with the history lessons .. it’s time for me to return to the 9 to 5.

Songs of the day: Talking Heads “Burning down the house”

Talking Heads: “Psycho Killer” (the first song Byrne ever wrote for Talking Heads)