Oculesics – Watching Machine (2015)

Once on a sizzling summer day I walked into a Melbourne bar, drunk seven pints of beer and tried to eat a coaster.

Stay with me. I had just been made redundant from my job, along with a whole mob of other employees, the unfortunates of a big corporate restructure. We had piled into the city to celebrate our lack of use. It must have been around lunch time because the bar doors had only just opened. At one point in the afternoon I was so convinced I couldn’t play pool in front of strangers that I got up and played pool in front of strangers. And, as I expected, I was drunk.

I hadn’t eaten all afternoon so, as purveyed, I ate a coaster. Admittedly, I did this in part because I was told to by a fellow ex-colleague. It made my mouth dry and longing, so I marched outside to find actual food to devour. Across the road I saw a bakery and so I walked across the road dodging traffic that wasn’t there. I purchased a triple chocolate muffin and tried to generally look awesome in front of the 18 year old girl behind the counter. Perhaps not paying complete attention to the situation, I poured tomato sauce all over my muffin. The girl laughed at me and was clearly not siding with my swag so, and this only seemed right at the time, I told her that I meant to do it and took a bite.

The explosion of senses I felt, chaotically at odds with each other yet to so strangely symbiotic, thrown about in a maelstrom due my inebriation; these are the sensations are at once recollected when I listen to to Watching Machine by Oculesics.