We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Alternate Histories

from At The Royal Witherspoon by The Finks

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 AUD  or more

     

  • At The Royal Witherspoon CASSETTE
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Includes unlimited streaming of At The Royal Witherspoon via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

lyrics

That winter I got a job making choc-tops at the local art-house cinema, The Royal Witherspoon. There were always two people making choc tops, scooping and dipping, so some days you’d have to scoop for hours and others all you got to do was dip. I worked with a guy named Sherwin; he must have been at least five years younger than me. Sherwin was real determined, a born scooper. He worked six days a week and would sometimes work a double when I didn’t show up. I guess I didn’t show up a lot.

Eventually Sherwin got promoted to the candy bar and then straight to projectionist, skipping box office. Sherwin’s rise was rapid. Projectionist was pretty much the best job you could get starting out as a scooper and dipper, almost twice the pay and with credentials you could actually use.

I read something once about projectionists, that two thirds of projectionists are serial killers. Either that or two thirds of serial killers are projectionists. I can’t remember which. I guess it doesn’t matter. Sherwin was a projectionist, and I stayed making choc-tops. I wasn’t like Sherwin. Sometimes I’d see him out the back between movies, huddled round a cigarette, his face looking like a face in a lost kitten poster.

I learned to smoke by watching movies. Not old movies, where everyone smokes, but the new ones, where the only people who smoke are angry and determined. I learned to strike the match with my fist outwards, the match in between my thumb and index finger, each hand making a protective hollow against the wind. It’s like pretending to hold a tennis ball, like learning the right way to play the piano. I learnt how to smoke through my mouth and out my nose and how to light a cigarette in the rain, superfast. I smoked Benson & Hedges because that’s what my aunty used to smoke, which is dumb because my aunty died of lung cancer. Benson & Hedges are the only cigarette, she used to say. They’re what the Queen smokes. I used to ask her how she knew what the Queen smokes and she’d say they have a Royal Warrant; they’re the official supplier of tobacco to the Queen. I’d never thought much about it until I went to a friend’s house for a dinner party, years later. They had a bowl of salt on the table with a little spoon in it. The salt was all thin and flaky; apparently you were supposed to pick it up with the spoon and crush it in between your fingers. See this salt? My friend said. That’s what the Queen eats.

I’d had this idea since childhood; I guess I always knew I’d end up smoking because I’d had this idea for as long as I can remember. The idea was that I’d always smoke with matches, not a lighter, and that I’d stick the adhesive-corrosive strip of a matchbox, the bit that ignites the match, on to the sole of my shoe. That way I could light safety matches off the bottom of my shoe, European-style. I bought a box of matches and cut it into strips and stapled the sides lengthways on to the sole of my boots, one on each boot, facing outwards at the back of the heel. The matches lit okay but I could never get them to my mouth fast enough, without rushing it, just the right speed so they’d stay lit. It was always raining and every time I went outside I’d have to buy another matchbox.

Sometimes someone at the cinema would ask to borrow a cigarette – we worked in staggered shifts so you never had a break with the same person – but it always seemed to be when I didn’t have any left. Smoking became kind of a solitary thing, something I’d look forward to after having to work all day in a small room, alone except for Sherwin. I used to eat as much I could in the five minutes before break and then go outside to smoke myself dizzy, staring at the opposite wall and thinking up alternate histories for myself.

What if I never applied for the job at the Royal Witherspoon? I thought. What if I was more like Sherwin? What if I wasn’t born in Dulcott, but somewhere like Zimbabwe or Tibet or Cambridge? What if I wasn’t born at all, if my parents decided they hated each other before they thought they loved each other?

It was so cold that winter; I used to keep the oven on all night just to keep the house warm.

credits

from At The Royal Witherspoon, released November 15, 2013

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

The Finks Melbourne, Australia

The Finks play the songs of Oliver Mestitz. They are sincere but flippant, intimate but aloof, subtle but unpolished.

The Finks have released a steady stream of quietly uncompromising music via Milk! Records since 2012 – three EPs, two cassettes, four LPs and a handful of singles. Critics have described The Finks as “crushingly beautiful” and “perhaps the most underrated act in Australian music”.
... more

contact / help

Contact The Finks

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like The Finks, you may also like: