That thing you are putting off, DO IT NOW!
Let me tell you why...
Dear Friends,
Sometimes it takes a wake up call to remind you…
So a couple of weeks back on an ordinary Saturday afternoon, I drove with my new Vietnamese flatmate, Chai, to a friend’s gig.
Except, I don’t remember a thing about it!
All the details that follow come from heresay, not from my memory, which was wiped for a period of eight to nine hours.
The Sydney band, the legendary Hoo Haa’s were playing one of their rare shows at the Gasoline Pony in Marrickville. They were in great form as usual. Lead guitarist/ singer/songwriter Philip Ricketson played around with the audience as he is known to do and put on a terrific show, walking out into the audience, improvising his scally wag acts, before handing the microphone to me.
Apparently, allegedly, according to eye witness accounts.
Philip and I have been close friends for 8 years or more since I first saw him perform in one of his other bands, Hucknee Pucknee. You could call our relationship a platonic love affair. (He is the inspiration for a character in my flash fiction novella here on Substack, see Ep 3, The Trouble with Frank. He calls us Spiritual Friends. I call us the Conversationalists. Someone else might call us the Tea Drinkers for that’s what we do — sit beside my tea wall and talk — about everything.
At the gig when he handed me the mike, I took up the challenge (as I’ve done before) and began improvising a song about about Philip and the tea wall.
Apparently, allegedly, according to eye witness accounts.
When I finished singing (I was going at it pretty hard as you can see from the vid below) I became confused and kept asking my flat mate and friends the same questions over and over. ‘How did we get here, where’s my car, did I just sing?’ Trumpet player, Penny McBride, a physiotherapist by day, assessed me and suggested we go to the Emergency Dept at the local hospital. Penny and friend Bill ubered me there and Philip and his GF, Kirsten followed. In ED, in between the raft of tests: angiogram, MRI, bloods, etc, etc, I kept the mindless Qs going and besides driving them mad, they were all quite worried that I’d had a stroke, a brain bleed or simply lost my mind! But the test results were all fine and by this time my dear friend Neil Simpson (who was beside me throughout all my recent Breast Cancer drama, which I also couldn’t remember), arrived to take over. Although no doc in ED to this point had flagged it, he was the one who googled and put two and two together. This type of memory loss and repetitive questioning is a classic symptom of TGA, Transient Global Amnesia.
Turns out it’s quite common and I am in good company. My friend, journalist Dasha Ross made a program about it for ABC radio after she had one a few years back. I remember listening to it with interest at the time. She interviewed medical experts, other TGA veterans including Helen Garner and Michael Mosley, and unashamedly revealed the cause of her TGA episode to be sex!
TGA can be caused by a shock, stress, jumping into cold or hot water, orgasm, head trauma, hard physical activity, certain medical procedures, overwork. Due to a sudden rush of blood to the hypocampus, memory can’t be laid down. The patient will have loss of memory from before the TGA event that can last around 8 hours or more. I sang at around 5.30 or 6pm and my memory was wiped from a few hours before, until just after midnight.
In my case, who knows what the cause might be, but perhaps it was hitting too many Minnie Riperton high notes. What do you think?
Although ED were happy to send me home at midnight, Neil suggested I stay in for observation and I’m glad he did. In the safety of the hospital and with the help of photos and vids on my phone I could start piecing the day together. Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep and when Neil came back to pick me up in the morning it felt like I’d had some kind of awakening/enlightenment experience. Re-ntering the world, colours and textures were more vibrant, everything had a pristine sparkling quality. Later when I walked to the shops, I was very chatty to strangers (I still am). I wanted to stroke a woman’s suede jacket, tell a cute couple how sweet they looked and talk innanely to an unfriendly shop assistant.
I’m sure having the video evidence of my singing (thanks to flat mate Chai) has made all the difference. I still have no actual memory of being there and doing what I did and no memory of being in ED, but it feels somehow transformative, as if I’d gone into trance or taken ayahuasca. The closest I’ve ever come to this before was in Morocco, singing a wild call and response song in praise of Allah with a group of Sufi women. For a good few hours afterwards everything appeared crystal clear and bright and I felt completely connected to everyone and everything.
I’m not scared by what happened, more intrigued and fascinated. I don’t particularly want it to happen again but on the TGA Facebook group I joined, many people seem to go on to have more. The stats however say that for 80% of people it never happens again.
The irony is, in putting my memory to sleep, my TGA seems to have woken me up. Not because I feel closer to death (although you could say it was like a little death), or because it reminds me that shit can happen anytime and life is short (which it does and is) but because it’s removed some sense of separation between me and everything/everyone around me. As if I’m more in the middle of things instead of hanging around the edges. Like some filter has been removed, making me want to say and do all the things I’ve been holding back on.
So the Question I want to ask is
What is the thing are you putting off right now? The thing you have always wanted to do but for some reason keep putting on the back burner.
The thing that you would most regret never doing…
Is it writing a book, going on a trip to your dream destination, telling truths to a relative or friend — I’d love to know…
There’s more than a few things on my COME ON JUST DO IT list! Like finish that novella I started writing in 2007(!!), write a new one woman show, sing my climate change versions of jazz standards with a cool jazz band, spend a weekend in Prague at the annual tea festival —just to name a few. Starting in August I’m planning to try out a few of these ideas with your support behind the pay wall here on Substack. If you are already a paid member you are sitting pretty! At the moment it’s only $70AUD for a year’s membership. On my Bday Aug 17, I’m going to bump it up to $99AUD so now is the time to get in on the cheap. Of course if you want to become a founding member, a dedicated patron, even better! Everyone who joins the club gets a free copy of my book Archipelagogo, Love Songs to Indonesia, (poems,songs, stories wriiten in Indo by me with paintings by the artist Jumaadi) posted to anywhere in the world. (Once you have joined you just have to DM me the request. Existing paid members get in touch so I can send your copy).
If you have just found me recently, a warm welcome to new subscribers and followers! I generally post writing/creativity tips and motivational articles, mixed in with eps from two of my current writing projects: a cancer journal, Letters to Leftie Bestie (My Left Breast) and a satirical flash fiction novella: The Everyday Musings of Louisa Greene. You can also find all eps of my travel memoir, Looking for Duras, a Mekong Journey, (where I go searching for traces of the French writer, Marguerite Duras in Vietnam and Cambodia) here.
Last post I asked Is Substack keeping you awake at night? because there are so many fabulous people on here doing such interesting things. Some of my recent fave discoveries are:
Cambodia stories. travel stories to nourish the soul. The 7am Novelist, wake up and write! B’Old Aging.WRITERS JOURNEY NEWS
Draft Busters Online is currently in session. Monthly modules. Monday mornings, 10 am AEST and Friday afternoons 3.30pm AEST. Next module starts Sept 2. Find out more here! or DM me.
Creative Immersion in Ischia, Italy May 3-10, 2025 for writers and artists. 7 nights, 8 days.
We begin the journey in the Port of Naples before catching a ferry across to the volcanic island of Ischia. Daily creativity workshops at our seaside hotel offer inspiration and guidance for your creative work. As we immerse ourselves in the island’s healing thermal waters we do a deep dive into our work, employing creative journaling, paper art and collage to further our creative goals. An ideal environment to bring the senses into your writing and art making and really progress your work. In collaboration with the Create Escape. Booking and info here. Getting a lot of interest so don’t miss out!
Haiku Walking in Japan 2025. Still working out the details, hope to post them here soon! See pics of our Basho tour here.
Celebrating 20 years of Writers Journey international journeys and retreats. See where we went, what we did here. Follow us on Instagram @_writersjourney
CONGRATULATIONS TO
Dasha Ross who launched her memoir Big Trouble Coming last week. ‘When serendipity brings John Pinder and Dasha Ross the chance to relaunch a rundown beach hotel in Sri Lanka, they are thrilled. Here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to escape to paradise, add spark to their 25-year marriage, and have one last grand adventure.’ As you can imagine everything that should possibly go right, goes wrong, it’s a humourous, nail biting and moving read.
Tamara Jacka who launches her new book Gingo Village, Trauma and Transformation in Rural China, ( ANU Press) in Canberra this Thurs Aug 1. ‘An original and powerfully intimate bottom-up perspective on China’s recent tumultuous history. Drawing on ethnographic and life-history research, the book takes readers deep into a village in a mountainous region of central-eastern China known as Eyuwan. At the heart of this book are eight tales that recreate Ginkgo Village life and the interactions between villagers and the researchers who visit them.’ Read online or buy your copy here.
Courtney Collins as she launches her new novel Bird (Hachette) at Glebe Books also this Thurs, Aug 1. Waking in a hospital bed, Bird tries to remember what brought her here. A man whose gaze she knew to fear, a stolen car, a plastic gun, and a real bullet in her shoulder. Kindness is being offered here, so why is her instinct always to run? Strand by strand, she begins to remember . . .‘A masterful and profoundly moving novel about a girl determined to live on her own terms, no matter the cost. Bird is an unforgettable story of hope, resilience, the power of connection and the most elemental bonds.’
See you in August. Happy Writing and Art Making!!
Jan
This sounds both frightening and fascinating. I love this - “shit can happen anytime and life is short.” Important to remember!!
Wow. What an experience, you write about what you can’t remember so vividly! Fascinating and good to hear you are going so well after