When I was younger I had no guidance or direction, I was just lost in a maze of capitalist fervour. When I was young I thought materialism was the answer to my problems. When I was a teenager I sought escapism through graffiti. When I was seventeen I realised materialism was the problem I really had. I woke up a little bit. It would have been a little bit of Eastern philosophy had got into my head, not much though.

Things were generally easy for me as rent was cheap and I could live on a casual job back then. When I was between eight to twelve I found a lot of the adults in my life were pretty heavy drinkers, I found it stressful to see grown adults acting like children. I don’t know why I felt that way. Maybe because I thought I was different, maybe a bit out of place. I didn’t feel connected to the reality around me.

When I was twelve I started drinking with friends on the weekends and I tried to fit in but I had bursts of anger and frustration. Life seemed pretty meaningless. I had just landed here like a space alien in a place full of ugly buildings, ugly streets and people who were at best nasty or untrustworthy. I didn’t know any differently, I had no plan, no goals at least until I turned sixteen and realised you could be an artist.

Then all I wanted to do was get into art school, get my graffiti up, paint and draw. I came in the top ten percent of the state and got into art school and inevitably got into debt. I read a lot of books, I read a lot of biographies of artists and set about learning. I kept doing graffiti but was selective about who I was hanging out with. Eventually I finished art school and instead of having a studio practice I just did walls. What I was doing wasn’t understood in Sydney but I mixed things up.

Eventually people realised what I was doing as the world changed, then the problem I had was that I stopped changing. I was just another person in a game that was pretty much worldwide. I turned back into the teenager I once was walking the streets of Randwick and hanging on benches. The difference was I wasn’t drinking with any mates who couldn’t be trusted. The Eastern philosophy had sunk in after years of training both physical and mental thanks to a Chinese Master who is tough but tells it like it is.

From my late twenties I learnt to see things through a Taoist lens, the corruption of society is constant and material society will entrap you with every trick and poison. I have still been fooled but always had good advice. I brought up my youngest daughter and had to work hard with lots of overtime and few holidays before things finally settled and I could go back to my internal martial arts training. I tried my best to learn theory and apply myself physically to a disciplined routine. Now I understand the real problems, it isn’t you or me, it is the mechanics of a society that will supply any demand even if it makes you sick or leads to death.

The system itself is neutral, uncaring, unconcerned. You can either afford the remedy or you can’t. Yet you will always be able to afford the poison.