I arrive there tonight at 8.48pm waiting for a bus home. Just before that, Dharani and I are stood laughing at a tram stop in Brunswick. I call Jac and ask if he’s at home, we’re just across the road. He comes downstairs but my tram arrives at the stop before we can say hi. I listen to Wildflower by Billie Eilish on the tram and I’m feeling sad. I don’t even like Billie Eilish but I like that song after a few drinks. This year brings a repeat of years prior, in February we all re-downloaded BeReal and now I’m seeing all the people I used to again and I’m standing outside the Crossroads Cafe again. Everything is the same but I’m tired, my face even looks a bit older - I think this might be because of my new hair colour. I talked to Jules about my previous stamina for going out every single night, she reminds me that it’s winter. I feel like the cold didn’t used to bother me this much, BeReal is back but nothing is happening.
I had a dream about the Bell Motel, it was similar to a dream I had about the Albion Charles back when I was in high school. One of India and I standing on a balcony on the first level. It had a Lynchian feel to it, like The Great Northern Hotel in Twin Peaks. I’ve always been drawn to the roadside motels of the inner north. The St Georges Motor Inn, the Bell Motel, Parkville Motel, etc. Going past them every other day, I imagine who stays there, they seem suspended in time, at least in the 15 years I’ve observed them again and again. I imagine criminals, scandalous affairs and people come from across the country to start new identities. I know the reality is people visiting their families or stopping in Melbourne for a work conference. In fact all the times I’ve stayed at similar motels it has just been that combination - passing through in a mundane and unmysterious way.
Today, I arrive at the motel with Lily, and we check in at a wooden counter that looks like the bar of a shitty comfort pub like the Brandon. I stare at the floor. The red tile that we’re standing on is arranged in a 2 x 2 metre square, a little island of luxury to welcome guests, cut off by metres of plain grey carpet opening out behind us onto the most beautiful dining hall I have ever seen. Above reception hangs a bright red dart board, the numbers repeat themselves, but I never paid any attention to them anyway. I’ve always only cared about getting a bullseye and never counted any scores. I ask the lady at the desk if I can play, and she says no and hands me the key to our room.
I’m distracted by the dining hall; people are dancing and they’re playing the soundtrack to Pretty Woman - the tables and chairs have been pushed to the edges of the room.
It feels like it’s the last time any two people in there will see each other, each part of a devastating love story on par with that of Hiroshima Mon Amour. This is at odds with the music playing - smooth FM sweet love ballads. It makes sense to me though; I always found those songs so sad. It’s a sound that popular music keeps trying to evoke now but never quite gets right. One woman sits alone at the bar, she looks back and seems frightened of us, I recognise her from somewhere. Maybe from a time in my past but I don’t bother lingering on it, this will also be the last time we ever see each other. I know that because that’s what the lyrics in the music say.
Lily and I move along to our room, there’s still work to do. The sun burns red
through the lace curtains, I sit at the wooden dining table and pour myself a drink.
Words by Raisa Mclean
Raisa Mclean (b. 2000) is an artist and curator making work in Melbourne/Naarm.
Through a practice of visual song making, her works explore landscapes of intimacy engaged with philosophies of deconstructionism as a way of looking at memory- based artwork and writing. She utilises the literary practices of auto-fiction and auto- theory as a conceptual framework to work from. Working across sculpture, etching, embroidery and found objects her practice links disparate materials through repeating written and visual motifs.
Working predominantly with materials that are usually used as support structures rather than in finished artworks with the intent of exposing multiple points of reference to memory, meaning is further deconstructed in her works.