As Australians, we’re no strangers to the bewildered stares from foreign friends. The obligatory post-travelling catch up with some Dutch or German or Irish mate with whom you went on a bar crawl one time 4 months ago. They’ve moved to Australia now and they love it here, obviously. Yet for yourself, there’s a restless uncertainty that’s followed you home from your travels. An unscratchable itch that’s begging to be satisfied.
The eyes from across the table crinkle with confusion as the pints between you remain the only common denominator in this moment of contrast. You, the guilty child admitting. Them, the stern parent dissuading.
The words exchanged between people from different places. Those that know the reality and those that think theirs would be different. They bring up valid points: housing crises in major cities, minimum wages well below what you’re used to, difficult webs of bureaucracy unforgiving to the monolingual, brutalising winters that would intimidate even the most acclimatised Tasmanians. All of it falls on deaf ears.
For people from the bottom of the Earth raised amongst gum trees and an overwhelming sense of insignificance, the allure of European cities bursting with history and cheap cigarettes is too strong to resist. For young creatives especially, it appears that many adopt the perspective that success in the arts is held captive within the world of 9pm dinners and elevator-less apartment buildings.
Despite growing up in what is considered a haven for many young backpackers, why is it that Aussies are so obsessed with Europe? And why do we think a future in the Aussie creative industry is largely inaccessible at best and borderline impossible at worst?
Find me a home amongst the gum trees
If a tree falls down in the forest and no one hears it, did it really happen? For many young Australians, this is what it often feels like to pursue creative passions on home soil. There is a lot of discourse online about how creativity must be repurposed for personal enjoyment rather than career progression and profit. But regardless of how many Substack articles are calling for a reclamation of imagination, our brains are still heavily influenced by our capitalist environment and it's difficult to motivate ourselves to do anything if there’s not a constructive benefit to be gained (i.e. money, praise, opportunity). Thus, in the Australian context, when the concepts of ‘success’ and ‘impact’ feel so out of reach, many young creatives will never even try.
Of course, there’s also the good old ‘tall poppy syndrome’, the social phenomena that shares first place with Scott Morrison for being Aussies’ favourite thing on which to blame a miscellany of issues. Thinking your art is worthy enough to share let alone celebrate represents an insultingly conceited decadence that deeply contradicts the very constitution of the flag-waving and Bunnings-snag-craving secateurs that seek to trim your budding flowers.
Lest we forget the dilemma of our existence. Europeans think we’re dumb Brits, Brits think we’re smarter Americans, Americans don’t think we actually exist. The Australian experience is marred by triviality, characterised by comparison, denied the opportunity to simply be.
A (lack of) cultural identity that holds about as much complexity as a Woolies-own chocolate mudcake and the intense climate of racism that seeks to stop anyone else from celebrating theirs, means that many young Aussies lack a version of ‘home’ that holds any substance. When we flick through our memories of getting drunk on yellow-grassed ovals and having first kisses in the back of Westfield cinemas, the pull of our roots simply isn’t compelling enough to keep us here.
Like a 200-year-long hangover, perhaps our fascination with the Continent is a long-term side-effect of our colonial history. Despite being home to the oldest Indigenous civilisation on Earth (that makes a mockery of all things considered ‘old’ over there) cobblestones, museums and cheaper alcohol remain compelling quantifiers of ‘culture’. So much so, that every year hundreds of young Aussies fall victim to the sense of belonging, identity and freedom that they think is hidden away in tiny cups of espresso and spätis.
Craving meaning yet missing the point
‘But if I could only just get there, then my art would mean something.’
Foreign cities are like fad diets. They might make you feel sexier for a bit but ultimately it's still going to be the same you in there, the same brain and the same heart. You won’t ‘become’ something else just because you’re in a new environment. Sure, you will evolve and discover new things about yourself in an unfamiliar setting but in terms of creativity, if you can’t bring yourself to start here and then you won’t be able to start anywhere.
For a generation that missed out on an enviable student-experience due to Covid-19 lockdowns, there’s a promise of youthful indulgence to which we were previously denied that draws us to places where we can recklessly chase our innermost hedonistic pursuits. Indiscriminately within each discipline, many young writers, designers, musicians and artists follow in the footsteps of our creative forefathers by flocking to romantic, piss-stained cities, searching for ideas in the bottom of wine glasses. However, like many more of our creative forefathers, the descent into recklessness (no matter how inexpensive) will sooner lead you to the grave over a light-bulb moment, regardless of whether or not you’re surrounded by art-nouveau.
And this is not to say that all creatives are alcoholics and chronic party-goers (though, it must be said, a correlation could surely be established). Rather, the relationship between access to the most epicurean parts of yourself is for many people, linked to the relationship with your creative drive. Greater access to one, could surely be argued to lead to greater access to the other as a rising tide of liberation lifts all metaphorical psychological boats.
However, creative purpose and inspiration is not something that magically appears one day. It is not a match you can simply strike - it is a fire you must tend to and feed and nurture. In the age of social media it's all-too easy to attribute other people’s success to natural born talent. But what is hidden behind every post and accomplishment is hours and days and weeks of practice.
For a generation so accustomed to instant gratification and dopamine release, we have come to view drastic life changes and self-reinvention as the necessary catalysts to success. While this may fan the flame to an extent, once the initial kindling’s burned off, it won’t be a new wardrobe and a new address that keeps you going, it’ll be good old fashioned discipline and hard work.
A certain je-ne-sais-quoi
Yes, a lot of people move to Europe for cheaper booze, better nightlife and aspirations that consider greater access to these things as the key to creative freedom. But what about the well-adjusted adventurers who just want a new challenge and a chance to be something? What is it about the European music and arts scene that draws in so many of our young hopefuls?
Firstly, there’s the impact of choice and diversity. Besides the broad margins of basic and alternative that seem to classify all of which makes up Australian arts and pop culture, other countries seem to be bursting with subcultures and thriving underground scenes that dwarf even the most well established creative ecosystems back home.
Fashion, music, film, art, literature, yes we have all of that here, but there just seems to be so much more of it elsewhere. Perhaps it's not just that we can be more successful in other places, more that we can actually have the chance to give it a go - have the space and the freedom to find our feet, find our people, find our niche. Something that the robust and worthy yet painfully insular creative communities Down Under often inhibit.
Then there’s the barrier of basic geography. Australia has fewer metropolitan centres and far fewer people to uphold as many thriving ‘scenes’. We’re the last to hop onto any trends and the things that we do have to celebrate creative minds (the ARIA awards, Melbourne/Sydney fashion week) are often quickly reduced to mockery or better yet, completely forgotten.
Main character syndrome
Perhaps painstakingly obviously, there’s also the question of anonymity. Releasing your art in Australia is bloody tough (tall poppy syndrome, welcome back to the show). No one can deny that moving somewhere else and starting from scratch is enticing. It's seductive! It’s sexy! It scratches the itch in our brain that begs to be released from the haunts of the past that inhabit every corner of the place in which you grew up. Perhaps we struggle to think that our art can mean anything in Australia because we struggle to see ourselves as holding any meaning in Australia.
For many of us, we don’t see home as the paradise that so many others see, all we see are daily reminders of our shortcomings and irrelevancy. We see an amalgamation of embarrassments and fuck ups and times where you said the wrong thing and places where you did the wrong thing. We see great things happening ‘over there’, we see the same thing happening over here - over and over again. We open our phones and we fawn over the glamour of European cities like 1950s housewives perusing a magazine. The promise of the life that we can’t bring ourselves to live out here. The promise of the person we can’t bring ourselves to be out here.
I myself will certainly fall victim to this curse and you probably will too. It’s not that I’m begging everyone to stay in one place their whole lives, but to have the courage to start the dream life as soon as possible, regardless of location. To start writing, singing, playing, making. To start dancing, feeling, pushing, kicking. To start anything, literally anything!
The most idealised version of yourself, the creative powerhouse, the force to be reckoned with - it’s not hidden amongst old churches and metro stations, it’s where it’s always been, somewhere inside that itch. That itch to start, that itch to keep going, that itch to practice and practice. That itch to create something that you’re proud of, the one that you chip away at until it forms beauty around your deepest turmoils and joys and aspirations, the one that could lead you places if you only just let it.
I still call Australia home
But here’s the thing, despite the many drawbacks that arise through this troublesome social phenomena, there is one simple truth that provides a glimmer of hope for Australian creative industries. While it is true that so many young Aussies feel they can’t grow and evolve here, for the ones who run away to London or Paris or Berlin or Copenhagen, most of them come back.
So maybe that’s our little superpower - that we can collect snippets of inspiration from around the world and bring them home. Our creative scenes, however isolated they may be, have built a sense of identity in spite of the challenges we face as a community. Our music, fashion, poetry, performance and film represent a mosaic of our struggle for identity and the long journeys we had to take to realise that maybe we do have it pretty bloody good here.
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