By now half the world knows the story of Arthur Stace, the reformed bum, metho drinker and WWI veteran who roamed the streets of Sydney for 37 years writing the word “Eternity” in his own unique style. It was a one word message that stuck, to become immortalised on the Harbour Bridge at the millennium.
Well, there is now another message on the streets, all over the city centre, out to Newtown and beyond. The message is not quite as uplifting as Stace’s; you have to remember it, go home and plug it into your computer. It reads: “www.brokenman.net: Find your voice”.
When you plug it in you go on a journey, following various paths to, well, nowheresville. Along the way you encounter homilies such as “10 people that speak make more noise than 10,000 that are silent.” Apparently something wonderful will happen, but who knows what? The creator of the site has, however, managed to sell some CDs off the back of it. In all, not particularly spiritual, enlightening or even coherent.
Stace was practically illiterate. He heard the word that would become his signature shouted by a fundamentalist preacher.
“He repeated himself and kept shouting ‘ETERNITY, ETERNITY’ and his words were ringing through my brain as I left the church. Suddenly I began crying and I felt a powerful call from the Lord to write ‘ETERNITY’. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and I bent down there and wrote it.”
It’s one of those cases where less is definitely more. You really don’t need to hear anything else. The power of the word, the beauty of the style in which it was written and finally the mystery and persistence of the writer’s mission became the stuff of legend, with documentaries and a flurry of newspaper articles leading up to Stace’s ultimate memorial on the bridge at midnight on 31 Dec 1999.
Much more coherent than “brokenman” Jordan and infinitely more amusing is John Howard’s web log:
"Canberra makes everything look lame. Except the ALP, who look lame in any state. Canberra just makes them look like, super-lame. I told Simon Crean that, and he was all, "Yeah? Well the Liberals are like, super-lame times one hundred!" And I'm like, "Then the ALP are super-lame times infinity plus one, no returns!" So he stuck his tongue out at me then ran off like a baby. He's so immature."
I Googled to try and find out who is behind the site but without luck. So then I dropped them an email.
And here's the reply:
"Rob,
My name is Ruth, I'm 17, I live in Melbourne, and I enjoy long walks along beaches and romantic candle-lit dinners. I have a dog I don't really like and a computer that I do like, but I'm fairly sure it's going to die soon. The dog, unfortunately, is in good health. My current ambitions include finishing year 12 without going on some sort of killing-spree through the school staff room, and to somehow utilise the technology used in anti-terrorist fridge magnets to repel scientologists from stopping me on the street to offer free personality tests.
As for media, yeah, I had a fleeting 15 minutes last year when the SMH did an article about the site (I think it's still available online if you chuck it in google). I think it got a write-up in a few other things, possibly the Bulletin... bah, I can't remember. Have also done a few interviews on radio about it. Haven't done much media stuff for a while, because clearly major world events like the break-up of J-Lo and Ben Affleck, and Shane Warne's sex life take precedence.
Hope that helps,
- Ruth"
I was hoping it'd be something as perfect as that.