AustLit

'Dear Rude Awakening, hello. 
'I realise now you came to me three times. Pint, you were a Musician. People would get under each other's skin to your music. Love songs. Set in half-forgotten cities that lay, like camels, in sand and dust. With retired coronets left behind by history. A god-shaped hole or a hole-shaped god. Love songs, but not how-deep-is-your-love love songs. One day, not in Australia mercifully, you became a star. Now hundreds of thousands of people were falling for each other, fucking, feeling their hearts beat and bind to your songs. And somehow in this ascent of yours, which felt, yes, almost inevitable, your very modest capacity for love and friendship, the unfeelingness of your heart, the scale of your self-involvement, never entered the frame. ' (Introduction)