S2 Ep6: Simone O'Brien (Pt.2)

This is Part 2 in Episode 6 with Simone O’Brien: performer, firercracker, unapologetic feminist and a bloody great storyteller!

We’ve heard about feminism, patriarchy, queer 90s warehouse parties, menopause, sexuality and as we continue with Simones's story, we’ll hear what happens when a world‑touring aerial performer falls from a silk to come crashing to the ground, broken but not defeated. 

Combine that with a life changing diagnosis that forces a reckoning, with her body, her past, and even her father.

We’ll hear what happens after burnout, floods, and a lifetime of physical performance and creative pursuits which lead her to rise again on a cabaret stage as one half of the post punk band called MUTTON.

If you love stories about resilience, rebellion, and women who refuse to shrink… you’re in the right place!

Find out more about Simone and her work here - Mutton the Duo

Series 1 & 2 were made possible with assistance from the Community Broadcasting Foundation. cbf.com.au.

Support future episodes of WOW: Wise Older Women - here

Contact Host & Executive Producer Rasela Torise - aloha@plantationstudios.com

Music generously provided by Purple Planet Music

Thank you for listening. We hope to bring you Series 3 of WOW in the near future!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Wow, Wise Older Women, wisdom that grows louder with time. It's a podcast dedicated to raising the status of aging women and dismantling the narratives that silence them. Here, older women speak with authority, beauty, depth, and fire. Their stories challenge, inspire, and illuminate. In a world that too often ignores, isolates, or diminishes older women, we choose to listen, to revere and celebrate their brilliance, courage, humor, and tenderness. They bring along plenty of high vibrational wisdom carried in their words. These conversations aren't just stories. Each one of them is a teaching, a personal map from the past, forging the way ahead, full of magic, medicine, and momentum. This storytelling series presents aging not as a decline, but as a scent. It's a platform where older women don't need to hide. This is where they're honored, uplifted, heard, and held with reverence, respect, and wonder. Their voices are powerful, their wisdom is vibrant, and their stories are a gift to us all. Welcome to the podcast. Settle in. Let their voices guide you. Welcome to part two in episode six with Simone O'Brien. We've heard about feminism and patriarchy, queer 90s warehouse parties, menopause, sexuality, and as we continue with Simone's story, we'll hear what happens when a world-touring aerial performer falls from a silk to come crashing to the ground. Broken but not defeated. Combine that with a life-changing diagnosis that forces a reckoning with her body and her past and even her father. We'll hear what happens after burnout, floods, and the lifetime of physical performance and creative pursuits. And celebrate the rise again of Simone on a cabaret stage as one half of the post-punk band called Mutton. This is part two with Simone O'Brien, performer, firecracker, and unapologetic feminist. If you love stories about resilience and rebellion and women who refuse to shrink, you're in the right place. I'd like to welcome back my final guest in episode six of the podcast series Wow, Wise Older Women. Wisdom that speaks louder with time. Everything changed one day when you took a fall. Can you take us back to that day?

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Well, there's two incidents that I'd tell you about because they're related. So the first time I fell off the trapeze, and that was in front of the audience, I miscalculated my timing. And I kind of learned the lesson that you can't be an aerialist and party hard. You have to get enough sleep, you have to treat yourself with respect, you have to treat what you're doing with respect. So I wouldn't say circus is dangerous, I would say that there are risks associated with it and you mitigate against the risks. And so if you're not careful with your risk mitigation, that's when accidents happen, because an accident is an equation. So I learned that falling lesson. It's like, right, I'm going to get enough sleep, I'm going to make sure that the activities that I do the night before cease at a certain amount of time, yada yada yada. The first fall, I only broke my wrist. It was fine. It was unfortunate for the audience because they had to witness it, but they weren't sure. Is this part of the show or not? The second time that I fell, we had formed ourselves into a company, and because we were a company, we had to take out work as compensation so that we could all be safe and protected. The second fall was human error, again, not my human era, someone else's human error, a series of events that meant that we had run out of time to do the rigging tests properly. We were still rehearsing, doing the tech rehearsals on the evening of opening night, and ideally you should be doing them the night before. We were pushed for time thinking that we could make it because it was for the opening night of a Mardi Grass season was at the Seymour centre. And the piece of equipment that I was on, the silk, the aerial silk, otherwise known as a tissue, wasn't rigged properly. I had tested it and it was okay, but the testing hadn't been done for long enough to reveal the mistake that had been made. So we were halfway through the dress rehearsal, and this is like four o'clock in the afternoon, and we're on in a couple of hours, and the silk and I fell to the floor, so its rigging came undone. Luckily, I was upright. I was about to turn upside down, but I was in a leather gimp suit, you know, replete with leather mask and leather pants, and because the show was called Raise a Baby, and we're a bunch of gender warriors, so it was in that part of the show. Luckily, it was also the York Theatre of the Seymour Centre, which has a very bouncy floor because the bouncy floor is a cover for the orchestra pit because it's the amphitheatre theatre. So I was upright and I remember hearing the sound of the carabiner hit the truss and thinking, that doesn't sound good, and feeling the pull of gravity and thinking, but I've learnt the falling lesson. I'm a good girl I am. And then hitting the floor, feet, bum, hands, and thinking, ouch, that hurt. The first time I fell off the trapeze because it was so unreal and my foot had slipped out, and I kind of did this Alice in the hole in Alice in Wonderland, like slowly falling, and the time went really slowly. The thing that's not supposed to have happened has just happened. What do I do? So I think I was relaxed. A friend who saw it said, it's just like you melted into the floor. The second time with the silks at the Seymour centre, February 17, 1999, I was like, What? I would have fallen about three and a half meters. I was tense. This isn't supposed to be happening. Da da da da and then I broke my left heel, the last bone in my coccyx, fractured the third segment of my sacrum, broke both wrists and fractured the left bone in my shoulder, and at the same time I had inflammatory bowel disease.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

So you're already dealing with IBD. How did those two health crises collide?

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Well, according to my friend Jules, who's also no longer with us, I had Pluto and Saturn, you know, square against each other in retrograde. So on an astrological level, I had to deal with the Saturnian gift of repeated delays and frustration. Pretty heady combination. So I had the inflammatory bowel disease, which I was doing a pretty good job of being in denial about because I couldn't see any joy in following the Western medicine steroidal path, going on steroids. I was interested in exploring complementary health medicine approaches, but they weren't working well either. And then I was finally being paid to do the thing I love to do. So I just kind of ignored it. I've got an advanced capacity for denial. I think denial is very underrated. We wouldn't be able to live in this crazy world if we weren't in denial about the reality of things. So my capacity for denial kicked in, and also the denial is like that high pain threshold. This doesn't hurt. Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. No, just tell yourself. Just tell yourself, you just tell yourself, just tell yourself. So it's a very dominant voice. Then I had to face this sore shoulder that I had, this digestive system that was very unhappy, that was bleeding, that was more often than not diarrhea that was painful. So with the broken wrists, I went to my GP and she, Nairi Dodge, she also practiced Chinese medicine. The first time I broke my wrist from falling after trapeze, had great results from the traditional Chinese medicine for bone knitting. So I knew it was good for that. So I went back to Naira and went, Oh, can you give me the bone knitting recipe? And you boil up the herbs and you do it. And lo and behold, my poo went back to normal. Like, no blood, fully formed, fluffy floaters. I was just like, woohoo! Naively, I thought the disease is gone. Great, marvellous, wishful thinking. So I got workers comp and so I'd seen a sports physician and said, My left shoulder's still hurting, it's you know, it's aggravated, and he put me on hardcore anti-inflammatories that are chondraindicated to ulcerative colitis. So basically, if you've got that, don't take these. And I took them. Yeah. Because what anti-inflammatories do is when you get an inflammation, the body produces a kind of mucus. It's like a padding to protect the injury. What anti-inflammatories do is they stop the production of that mucus. It's the same mucus that is produced to line your stomach and help you digest, which is why they say, you know, take the anti-inflammatories with food, because you you can digest it first. So yeah, it really, really escalated.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

So you were hospitalized eventually and got down to 43 kilos facing the removal of your large intestine. How did you take that news?

SPEAKER_02 10:08

That was like being given a cancer diagnosis. I felt like I couldn't process the information. It felt like I was had been given a death sentence. I was in shock. I was also really angry. Like I had a shrink say to me once, why do you work so hard to get noticed? I just thought my growing up was normal, and she was like, Oh, you know, you were bullied by your brothers, and I was like, was I? Oh, I didn't look at it like that because you just take it as normal and I'm no victim. You know, I'm a survivor, I'm tough, I can't show vulnerability. And the large intestine is, you know, long-held grief. Now I didn't want to look at that oogie boogie stuff at the time. I wasn't ready to look at it, but I was so angry that the nursing staff at St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne went to the mental health unit and went, Can you send someone to see this woman? She's really difficult to deal with. And so I thought that I was seeing this shrink because everyone who was going to lose an organ got that level of support. Wasn't so. It was because I was so angry and in denial and obstreperous, and they found me very difficult to deal with. And so they sent me this shrink, and at first I was like, I'm not crazy, I don't need to see someone. And then I thought, well, actually, this person's being paid to listen to me. They're not a family member, they're not a friend, they're a professional. Oh yeah? I'll give you a run for your money, sure. Blah blah blah blah. I mean, awful, just awful behaviour. Not awful me, absolutely terrible behaviour, entitled behaviour. She was a bit of a cold fish and I didn't like it. So I was like, I don't like you. You're a cold fish. I want to see your boss. Send me your boss. Oh my god, can you believe it? Luckily, they sent me her boss, who was the head of psychiatry at St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, the incredible Professor Sidney Block. And he was a wise Jewish professor, very learned, very patient, who basically did a year of dynamic psychotherapy with me on Medicare. I wasn't in hospital the whole time, but I would go and see him at the hospital. And he was one of the little Jewish professors that saved my life. The other little Jewish professor that saved my life was Professor Eli Bokey, who was the colorectal surgeon at Concord Hospital. And I ended up having my large intestine removed in 2001. But at that time, this would have been about 2000 when I was at St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, where they first said to me the cure for ulcerative colitis is total colectomy removal of the entire large intestine. So going back to your question, I felt like I had been told that I had bowel cancer, and that meant that I was going to die. I mean, I'm pretty good at catastrophizing. So being the drama queen, I was like, oh my god, I'm going to die. And so I asked myself the question what is the one thing I would regret not doing before I died? And see, I was quite deaf literate because mum was so literate in it and so conversant about it, and because of all the training that she'd done, and I remember mum talking about that, don't leave it until you die, leave with no regrets. And I thought, what is the one thing? I was like, having a conversation with my dad. Finding out why he treated us like that, why he treated mum like that, like what was his story? And I was doing reading at the time I should do in hospital when you have a, you know, a life-threatening illness. And it had been a journey up until that point. I had gone down to Smith Street to score recreational heroine as a painkiller. And that was another one of those moments is like, why am I going down to Smith Street to score whatever when I live in a Western liberal democracy with universal healthcare? What am I doing? You're in denial, you're sick. If you're not using this for pleasure and you need it for pain, go and get the good stuff. And that's when I went to St. Vincent's hospital and saw a gastroenterologist, and she, that's when she said, You are walking out of this office and you are walking across the courtyard and you're checking yourself into hospital now. Can I go home? No, you can't go home. Okay, I was in a bad way. Again, that denial. And so then I thought, okay, I'm going to die. I may die from this. What is one thing? Dad. And I'd been reading Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your Life. What does the large intestine represent? Long held grief. I'd been reading Conversations with God, Neil Donald Walsh, and I had found that, having been brought up a Catholic, I had a great distaste for any kind of take on Jesus, having been indoctrinated and, you know, tortured by the Catholic Church, particularly by the Dominican, the Order of Preachers, you know, St. Dominic invented the Inquisition. So I'd had an absolute distaste for organized religion, for chanting, for singing, and particularly the Catholic church's cover-up of pedophiles, and I was really against it. One of my takeaways from the Conversations with God book was he had this great reframe on Jesus. It was about forgiveness. So here is a man who's preaching peace, preaching love, radical at the time. He's being targeted, he's being cancelled, and um his message is one of forgiveness. So basically he's like, I will prove to you that forgiveness is such a powerful force that I will be tortured to death and forgive the people who are torturing me to death. And that was is is still now such a powerful reframe. And I was like, oh, forgiveness, okay. Mum could never forgive dad, and I totally understand, but I'm like, okay. And then the Louise Hay, the tape was like, meditate on what it is that you want to do, see yourself doing it, and now do it. I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it. The moment is now, seize the moment, open the drawer, took out my mobile phone. It was like 6 a.m. on a Sunday and I rang dad at home and he answered. And I was like, Dad, I'm in hospital, I've got ultra tube colitis. They want to take out my large intestine. I feel like I'm going to die. I'm not dying, but before I I just need to know why were you like that? Why did you do these things? Why were you so mean? And um I don't remember what he said. I just remember the tone that that he had like I was a child. Like he used to talk to me because we had a good relationship, you know, like I was his only daughter. We did have fun. It wasn't all bad. You know, I do have some fond memories. Unfortunately, they're dominated by the majority of unpleasant memories, particularly what mum had to endure. And it took him by surprise, and it took me by surprise. And I remember him saying sorry, and I remember the tone of care and vulnerability that he had. And then I remember blabbing on and saying to him, okay, it's great, you know, and projecting into the future. It's like, okay, well, I think we all need to go through family therapy and having all these suggestions, which you know we both knew weren't going to happen. I think I believed my myself that they might. And then I did the Louise, you know, when when you do the Louise Hay thing, because it it's also about forgiveness. And she says, you say to the person, I forgive you for not being who I wanted you to be. I forgive you and I set you free. I said the words and I forgave him, and then we hung up and I was high, probably the highest I've ever been in my life. I was high on forgiveness. I I reckon I had Christ consciousness for about half an hour. I was off chops with forgiveness. I forgave everyone. And I swear I had, you know, the religious light that coming out my ears and a halo, and I just felt so light. And it was great. And then that passed. So I reckon I was enlightened for about half an hour. And then I remember telling my brothers, some of my brothers about it, and they were like, Well, you know you're not going to change him, which is true. I didn't, and it didn't cure the disease. I kind of had hope somewhere in there. It's like by forgiving him all those cells that were holding on to the anger and would let go and magically, it's not that simple, as my shrink says. You know, I'd go to him and go, I made a breakthrough with my dad. And he'd go, Oh, Simone, I shudder at the word breakthrough. I don't know, why? He goes, Because life is a process. And so dad didn't change, the disease didn't go away. I had my large intestine out, but I had that milestone with my dad, and I was could be at peace with him.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

You also had some photographs taken with your new bag, and you have a friend who had his own ideas for you. Tell us a little bit about your friend.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

My gorgeous friend Boomy, who's also no longer with us, and he had a similar upbringing to me, like grew up in the same area. We reckon his dad and my dad drank together at Claude Foy's at, you know, Hornsby. So he's an Irish Fijian family, and he had one of the best sense of humours I've ever met in a person. Also, because he came from a large Catholic family. You're not allowed an ounce of self-pity in a large Catholic family, not a minute.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

You know, my friend Andy Ewing, their family used to sing, He feels sorry for himself for himself. You feel sorry for yourself.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

And so I said to Boomy, I was in hospital and Boomer rang up and he said, Oh, you know how you're feeling? I was like, oh my god, they want to take out my large intestine and give me a bag. Quick as a whip, he goes, didn't allow me a beat. He goes, Oh, what are you gonna get, babe? Some matching shoes, Prada or Chanel. I was like, I hate you. Not a moment, not a moment, self-pity am I allowed? He goes, No way, babe. So that put me on a path of like, I'm gonna do a um matching bag and shoes. Photo shoot, get a professional photographer and makeup person, and make myself look like a supermodel, and have that contradiction of the grotesque and the glamorous, which is something that I had learned from my party line days from working with artists like Gail Kelly. The idea of female as monstrous, that was also a lot of the themes for some of the work that we made. So I was able to do that with my own body. Here's this monstrous operation scar iliostomy bag against this body that is underweight, probably just on the borderline of you know, looking anorexic, which is fetishized in modelling and so kind of working with those tropes. So I did the photo shoot, and I still have the photos, and I've never done anything with them yet. Do you still have? The bag? No, it was a temporary iliostomy bag. What the operation entailed was the removal of my entire large intestine. The function of that organ is to take the liquid waste that comes out from the small intestine and then turn it from liquid to uh solid over a journey of 24 to 48 hours. So basically it takes the water out. All your digestion, except for one or two of the B12s, all your digestion is done in the small intestine. So you can live without a large intestine. And they did a little bit of craft with the end of my small intestine and created a pouch out of it, what they call a J pouch. So you think of a sock, if you fold a sock onto itself and you kind of slit the sides and sew them up and make a hole down the bottom and attach that to your anus, that's what they did to me. So I now have a mini colon out of the end of my small intestine, but that takes about three months to heal. So then they give you a temporary iliostomy, so they divert the end of the ilium to a slit on your stomach, a stoma, which is the Greek word for mouth, which is ironic because what it is is they've moved your asshole from in between your cheeks to your stomach, and then put a bag over it. And so you can have some fun with the bag because if you drink too much carbonated drinks, the gas gets trapped in the bag. And so you have to be fastidious about emptying it, or I had a few fun times with beers because beers are carbonated, and uh if you drink too much beer and you go to bed and you haven't emptied the bag, you began working with naturopaths, traditional Chinese medicine.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

How did all of that tie in with the conventional side of medicine to shape your healing?

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Because I wanted to avoid long-term use of steroids, which is what was being offered. There was another Western medicine, this kind of radical gastroenterologist. He had a theory that it was a pathogen, because they call it an autoimmune disease, because they can't identify. So his solution was like five years of hardcore antibiotics, some of which would turn you orange or sterile. I was like, well, I'm not interested in that either. So what else can I do? The surgery was the last straw, and I knew that I had to explore everything, including a poo transplant. So I did psychic colonics. I did the poo transplant. I drank my own piss, colloidal silver. What else did I try? Traditional Chinese medicine with a gastroenterologist. That was great. That worked really well. Seeing a really amazing naturopath who basically went fish, rice and vegetables, no yeast, no dairy, no alcohol, no fermented. I did those two things together. But also, that stuff's expensive. So after I broke my wrists and I was on compensation and I couldn't work, I had someone to come over and help clean my house and do my law. It was fabulous. I had the time to do the vitamins, do the Chinese herbs, do the shopping, and that was a massive turnaround. But everything only worked to a point. So then that kind of really restricted diet, you know, after three months, it's like I can't go out. I'm that annoying person at the dinner. And I remember my naturopath saying, Well, what do you want to do? Do you want to live or do you want to suffer a bit of social embarrassment? Okay, if you put it like that. She was great. But again, I had to work with what worked for me and and my personality. So everything worked up until a point that traditional Chinese medicine, the diet, the poo transplant. The poo transplant was one of the last things that I did. And that worked for a while. Like I was doing misa cell enemas. And I remember one time living up here, it was like early noughties, living up here and having too much jazz cookie and freaking out because all I wanted to do was go to bed, but before I go to bed I had to give myself this enema, and it's like if I don't give myself this enema, that means I'm going to have to have the surgery because I have tried everything. And that was another one of those watershed moments, and that spun me out. So the poo transplant was the last thing and I did that and that was okay for about ten days. I mean, there's nothing like shitting out someone else's shit. That's not mine, that doesn't smell like mine, that doesn't look like mine, but you know, another one of life's opportunities to do that, and then about a week later, things went bad. I was in extreme amounts of pain, running to the toilet a lot, blood, all that, and then that's when I said, Okay, I'm ready, I'm ready for the surgery. And I had to be at that place. And then fortunately, I was living in Anadar with mum at the time. The nearest hospital was Concord Hospital, and I had the best colorectal surgeon in the world, and he was amazing. He was very good at what he did, but his bedside manner was extraordinary. We used to talk about how his rabbi would help him to meditate. He would give you all the time in the world, time would slow down, and it wasn't until many years later, many, many years later, when I saw him, that he also revealed that he too had ultra typicalitis, but it was never about him.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

You ended up in the Northern Rivers having had all of your medical needs seen to at that time, I imagine, in some kind of recovery. COVID came and then the 2022 Lizmo floods. Then after that, you hit burnout. What did that time reflect to you?

SPEAKER_02 27:59

The incredible community that is up here in the Northern Rivers. In 2023, I'd been living up here for about 10 years and had been working for Spaghetti Circus and then co-founded my own community arts social circus organization and put on this massive show in Lismore to celebrate Lismore as the birthplace of the world's greatest tight wire walker ever. Concollino, a Gamilroy man born on Widgeable Wirebull country. His mum was Gamilroy, this incredible Lismore to legend story, rags to riches story, of this indigenous wire walker who fooled the world, had this Spanish Toryador persona, was the first person to perfect the front salt on the tight wire, which until then was seemingly impossible. He was rich, he was handsome, he was like black excellence all over, performed for Hitler, Mussolini. They thought he was Spanish, in the meanwhile, he's this Gamilleroy man, Liz More born, 1899. So I'd been teaching a lot of circus in schools, particularly out at say Coracai, a lot of First Nations students out there and trying to connect the dots, like who are the Aboriginal circus heroes? Oh my god, oh my god, Concalino, born up the road, the goat, the greatest of all time, because you can't be what you can't see. So connecting those dots and going, look what this fella did. Rich, handsome, successful, famous, hard working, persistence, resilience. So it's like, let's do a show. And I was inspired by a show that the Galway Community Circus had done, and they put a tight wire over the river at a suicide spot in Galway, let's do that in Lismore, to rewrite the narrative of that spot where lots of people would throw themselves into the river in desperate situations and rewrite the narrative of the spot in in a life-affirming way. And at that point in time, youth indigenous suicide rates in Lismore were at chronic levels, and the elders had come to an organization called Big Heart and said, Will you do a community engagement project? So I put two and two together and went, positive risk taking. That's what a lot of circus is. That's when you say it's dangerous, it's like actually no, we take the danger out of it by managing the risk. So it's positive risk taking, and because there are so many negative risk taking activities that you can do and antisocial. This is a pro-social positive risk taking. So we can work with y indigenous young people to get them to get their kicks in a positive way. I wanted to put the tight wire over the river. The idea before the floods was that we would do it. And then after the floods, different story. The river spoke. The river had a mind of its own, and also the trees that we were going to rig off, the big camphers, you know, where the Ballinar Bridge is. It just wasn't feasible. And then also organizing something like that, making the precedent. It's a full-time job for probably about two people for two years. I was a part-time artistic director of a small community arts organization. We have amazing philanthropic support. So we had a have a philanthropic sponsor who sponsors us every year, and a bunch of other organizations. Thank you very much if you're listening to our sponsor, particularly, you know, community and women's organizations. But the scale of what I wanted to do was way beyond the resources, which is one of my patterns, you know, no surprises there. We got a lot of funding, but not quite enough. So the compromise was to do it in the quad of shipping containers. Great, for NADOC Week 2023, indigenous wire walkers, indigenous students from the River Secondary College, worked with the Widgetable Wireble Leadership Team, got as many Indigenous artists working on the project as I could. We did cultural awareness training with Wii Ali, got Jambi in there, Mitch King, Blake Rhodes, Teddy Rhodes, Carla Dickens. And it was interesting actually because it coincided with a project that Carla Dickens wanted to do about the history of black residents in Lismore and the circuses at the Saichos and the boxing rings around that time that Con was born. So there was a lot of synchronicity. We ran high wire camps, training camps for indigenous young people at our place in Mainarm. Like, you know, it was a really great project. Worked with really fantastic artists, mainly artists from the Northern Rivers, very much it was about creating employment opportunities for First Nations artists, First Nations led as much as possible. Co-directed it with Kirk Page and did a series of developments and then did the big show, partnered with Council. But it was challenging. The arts landscape is broken in Australia. Because of COVID, a lot of artists and production managers and people who work on the tech side of theatre, who work as independent artists, who work on their ABN, their sole traders, did not get included in the job keeper package because they're not casual employees of an organization, they're sole traders. So they lost all their work. So so many people left the industry, retrained, went to work for the mines, went to work for film, went to work elsewhere. Why would you stick around? There's no money in it. I mean it's a bit of a love job anyway. And then when you don't get looked after they left. So there's this darth of qualified people to do the job. So we got people up from Sydney and also you're working in and with and for a community still in recovery from the floods. So people are still in shock. They're not doing their jobs properly, or they can't anticipate or problem solve because they still don't have secure housing or they're still dealing with the shock. So it was really difficult. And I was finally doing this major work that I've been wanting to do for so long that spirit had guided me to do that. The ancestors were aligning, my ancestors, Conn's ancestors, because Conn had Irish, he was born Cornelius Sullivan. So the Sullivans in the spirit world are kind of yep. But uh the spirits in the finance world weren't aligning. So it was just it became too hard, and I was hating it. Was finally doing the thing that I was doing, and I was like not getting enough sleep and drinking too much and and the menopause, I was off the HRT, the MHT by that stage, and also dealing with bad male behaviour. Some of them people that I thought were friends, you know, that I had employed, you find out through working with them they've got a problem with female leadership. Don't like being told what to do by women. And you can't sack 'em because they're a crucial part of the rigging and the safety. And they've got anger issues and da da da da da da da. So, you know, like being white-anted. So there was a whole bunch of factors that came to play that made it difficult to have the resources that enabled me to do that job and maintain and that passion and good mental health. So I got severe burnout and went, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. The system is broken, there's not enough money, there's people in the sector that are resource guarding. I think it found us. So after, you know, I did the recovery from burnout and I had mentored someone to take over my position, another community member, incredible artist who I knew would bring fresh energy. So I did a handover. And that took a while, that took about 18 months, and that was great knowing that there was an end in sight. And I thought I've done my time for community for a while, like I'll volunteer for community, but I need to separate my arts practice from my income making capacity. So I'm just going to do my arts practice for me. Not for anyone else, not for any other kind of outcome than my own pleasure and my own fascination. And I don't know what that is. Uh I was going through some shoulder issues left over, aerialist issues, so I couldn't get back on the trapeze. It was like I was in pain. And so I was like, I need to do something else. And I remember a friend, you know, he went and saw the shrink and he was unhappy and the shrink was like, Oh, go back to your childhood, to what made you happy in your childhood. And he was like, horse riding, and the shrink's like, do that. I was like, uh, what would make me happy? It's like, well, performing. So, you know, I was organising this regular impro group with a bunch of friends, and we were doing movement and theatre impro-based stuff. I'd also been mounting some she-rated cabarets with friends Gigi and Claudie, and we'd been creating space for female performers to do weird cabaret acts because I've got a bunch of weird cabaret acts, but I don't want to do them on my own. Have much more fun doing them with others. So created vehicles so that I could show off, you know. And so then it was the end of one of these impro sessions, and Gigi said, Oh, I've always wanted to be a drummer in a punk band. And I was like, I've always wanted to start a band too. Well, if you're going to be a drummer, you'll need a bass player, because the rhythm section's the most important part of a band. And I had done a certificate three in music at TAVE in 2013. That was the year after Mum died, because after mum died and the family implosion happened, and I saw her very distressing and long and drawn out painful death, I was like, I'm just going to do things I want to do before I die. I'm going to go to clown school and I'm going to go to music school. I'm going to do the stuff mum didn't allow me to do while she was alive. Now that she's dead. And so I went to music school, went to clown school, and music school was a year ultimo taf doing a certificate three in music playing the ukulele. Because at that stage I was also working for the Arts Health Institute as a humour valet, which was going into retirement age care facilities and being like a clown doctor, but for people on the other end of the aging spectrum who had dementia, who were in care, in memory care units, and coming in and singing songs, making jokes, doing dances, doing dress-ups, whatever made the person laugh, because they'd done research that humour is just as effective as de-escalating a person with dementia who's in distress. Humour is as effective as medication. So the Arts Health Institute had done that research through UNSW. So a whole bunch of us had done this training. So that's one of the reasons why I did the CERT 3 to learn how to play the ukulele better and learn more about music and da da da. So I'd had that love of music. So when Gigi was like, Oh, I've always wanted to start a punk band, it's like, oh, I'll start one with you and I'll learn bass. And so that's what we did, and we did it for fun. So it was never about doing it for money. And because we have performed together in various character iterations through working with Valley from Roundabout Theatre, who ran a beautiful theatre company that had lots of different, like the lollipop ladies or the Valentines who would write love letters or the cupcakes on stilts. She had this incredible imagination in creating characters that could invite you into other worlds. So Gigi and I had done a lot of work together performing there, and we really enjoyed working with each other. She has a lot of experience in impro and clowning, as do I. So basically, we kind of approached this 58 and 59-year-old woman who like going to start a punk band. Who do you think you are at your age? It's a bit mutton dressed up as lamb, isn't it? And I said to Gigi, I've got the name. She said, What? And I was like, mutton. It's like very mutton of us to think that we at 60 can start a punk band, but why the F not? And she's like, I've always wanted to play drums and sing, and you know, my mum told me I could never sing. I was like, everyone can sing. I've got a little bit of training in music. I've got a certificate. I know how to play a little bit of everything. I know how to play the ukulele, know how to play the guitar, know how to play pianos. It's like bass, can't be too hard, it's not a chord, it's like one string at a time. So that's what we did, and we're like, okay, well, what's a famous song that has a band with two people in it? Well, there's the white stripes and seven nation armies, a very recognizable riff. Bow, bong, bank, bank, bank, bow, bow. So we started there, and then there's nothing like a deadline. We'll write a song for the vagina conversations, which is the annual fundraiser for domestic violences services here in the Northern Rivers. That's been going for 10, 11 years now. And we said to Zenith, who organizes it, yeah, we'll mutton will do a song for you, and because it's a vagina themed performance, we'll do a vagina-themed song, and so we rewrote the words to Seven Nation Army to Cantloving Army and started from there.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

What do you think makes mutton resonate so deeply with your audiences?

SPEAKER_02 41:27

I think we live the ethos of punk, which is we've got something to say, we're gonna say it, we don't care what you think. The message is the most important thing, a platform for politics to say something about a world that has very many terrible things wrong with it. We're not perhaps not going to change that, but we can certainly say something about it to bring awareness, but also inspire other people to say it. And also Gigi and she's French originally, but grew up in Britain in the punk era. So both of us had a lived experience of punk. I was twelve in 1978 when the Sex Pistols first came on the scene. So my formative years were surrounded by punk and a whole bunch of other 80s music, but having that lived experience of it as opposed to it being a fashion, you know, like watching and listening and understanding why and where it comes from, that doesn't leave your body. That reverting back to the DIY, to the lack of virtuosity, being not bad on purpose, but being bad is part of the charm, but also the charm of having a go, having a laugh, laughing at each other, laughing at ourselves, laughing with the audience, and also very much role modelling to other women, you know, the defiance of fuck you and your older invisible woman. Punk's got a great middle finger lever, and being able to pull and push on those levers, I think is part of the appeal. And we also talk about the menopausal experience, like our funniest song, and one I had a title for for a long time, but didn't quite have the tune or the verses yet, got a great title, you know, The Lack of Libido, I can't be fucked to be fucked. And then the CBF, it's like, you know, young person talked about having a bad case of the CBFs, and I was like, Oh, the CBFs can't be fucked, yeah. And then, you know, loving the dead Kennedys and that great dead Kennedy song, Too Drunk to Fuck. And it's like putting those two together. Soon as we start singing that song, people in the audience and also tired people, it's just not menopausal women, tired people, younger women, you know, it's like, oh, it can't be fucked to be fucked. Having that title in the CBF two BF, hanging out with friends who are museos and you know, songwriting machines and giving them the title of the song and them coming back with a riff and four verses and going Great, excellent. Just gonna reframe that from a man's point of view to a woman's point of view. And then Gigi just it's her happy place, playing the drums. I swear to God, I felt a golden shaft of light come down out of the sky, and out of my mouth, without me even thinking about it, came the words play the drums. She loves nothing more than sitting down in the drum kit half an hour every day. And so it also gives you purpose and meaning, and then also resonating with we are unashamedly making work for women like us. And guess what? Women like us are the people that spend the most amount going to see theatre and music. They're the culture vultures and makers. So it's a win-win. And also it's that feminist thing is like resistance, defiance, but also politics, poetry, poignancy, care, compassion, you know, the three jewels for patience, simplicity and compassion. So the simplicity is great because, you know, punk is very simple. You have one note, the 30-second song. So now I'm back doing my second certificate three in music at ByronTafe and learning how to make music with a computer program with a digital audio workstation.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

And this is in between touring the country. Where can we expect to see you next?

SPEAKER_02 45:29

Ah. Anyone who enjoys a good laugh, enjoys the lack of virtuosity of punk, enjoys witty reparte, dodgy covers with the words changed, who has an interest in politics, satire. You know, we're a bit of a slapstick, there's a bit of circus, there's a bit of puppetry in there. We're performing in September at the Cementor Festival in Candos in New South Wales, so that's near Mudgy. And that's a fantastic festival every two years, and we're very pleased to be there. We go where we know we'll find our audiences. So for example, queer audiences, older women. We're not like a regular band that would do a pub circuit. Our work sits between cabaret and theatre and music and satire. So we'll apply to appear in festivals such as the Melt Festival, which is Brisbane's Queer Festival, or the Feast Festival, which is Adelaide's Queer Festival. Earlier in the year we went to Midsummer, which is Melbourne's Queer Festival, and last year we did Mardi Gras plus season, you know, Sydney's Queer Festival. We got some funding to tour to regional New South Wales. We go to where we know our audiences will be and they're already engaged and they're already up to speed on what's going to happen. I also love it. Our show would be perfect for the Manosphere set. Would love to do it in front of No, I wouldn't. So I'd love to do it to get young women and their boyfriends to come along and girlfriends, but you know, if the girlfriends are already initiated in the queer thing, to open up the conversation and open up the minds of men who are they're under stress from AI, from social media, in their echo chambers. I don't know how we reach them. Something I'm gonna go away and think about, but we're funny and we're charming and we've got good songs, we've got satire and props and dumb fun to enjoy. It was good when we were in Melbourne at the Motley Bow House for Midsummer. They had a whole variety of shows on for midsummer, and we were definitely at the older end of the spectrum in terms of performers, and so it was great to be amongst the you know the young queer set, but I I still feel so young at heart. In my body, I'm like 17-year-old boy, and in my head I'm about 30. And then when I look at myself in the mirror, I'm like, oh God. I do really like that on the inside. And so in trying to combat or open up the kind of echo chamber of just appealing to your own niche, also understanding what those audiences like. As a performer, it's following your own fascination and your own desire to say something and interrogate why you want to say it and how you're going to say it, and then putting that in the context of what experience is the audience going to have. So the audience hasn't had my experiences. What can I do to understand where they're at, their context, what's current for them, and talk to that. Thank you, Rosella. Pleasure to be here. People have always said to me, Oh, you've got a great voice for radio. It's all the daries and the cigarettes that I smoked from 16 to 40. I did a communications degree straight out of school, so when I went to Macquarie Uni, I did a lot of video, theatre, and filmmaking. I didn't do much radio, but one of my favourite media. Mum always listened to the ABC radio to go to sleep at night. It was kind of like her white noise, and it was always on in the morning, and it's just a great companion. But you know, I pursued this career in theatre and circus and physical theatre and done all this visual stuff and had learned how to edit video and so always enjoyed working with that. So I kind of fell into radio through going in to do an interview with Nell Schofield, who was then the host of Road Trip and Afternoon Drive Time show on Tuesdays at Bay FM. And I rang her up and went, Oh Nell, can you interview us muttons doing a fundraiser for Save Wallum? We're supporting the Versace boys, we're kind of like their bad Prada aunts. Can I come in and help publicize it? And I was like, sure, and Nell and I have known each other for a long time through Sydney, through that friend Boomi that said, uh, what are you gonna have, babe? Matching shoes, Prada or Chanel. He was our mutual gay husband. So Nell invited me in and we talked about it, and that was kind of August 24. And then um at the end of the show, she invited me to co-host with her. And I was so stoked because I'd always wanted to do radio. I remember one time going down to 2SCR in Sydney because 2SCR is part of UTS and was part of Macquarie Uni. Macquarie Uni is no longer funding it, but UTS has given its unwavering support for it. I remember going down and and thinking, Oh, I I think I'll do radio and you know, become a volunteer. And I went down to a meeting and they went, just because you're going to be a volunteer, don't think you'll get a radio show. And that completely turned me off. And I was like, Well, that's why I'm doing it. So, well, kind of walked away from that. So when radio came to me when I was ready, and Nell said, Do you want to do it? And I said, Absolutely, and so co-hosted with her, and that was just the best mentorship a girl could possibly ask for because it was hands-on. She had over 10 years experience as a broadcaster, she's a great journalist, does her research, writes the script, has the rigour and the patience as well. Again, I'm a collaborator, really enjoyed that rapport, really enjoyed riffing off her because she was just so experienced. So we did it together for about a year, 18 months. And then she was ready to leave and pursue other things and said, Do you want to take over it? And I was like, Oh, it won't be the same without you. Really? She said, I'll come and co-host from time to time if you need me, but I reckon you're good. So took my train and wheels off, and now you can listen to me as Dim Sim on Road Trip, Bay FM 99.9 Tuesday afternoons, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

SPEAKER_00 52:33

Dim Sim, aka Simone, aka, probably some other names that we don't know about. Simone O'Brien, thank you so much for being a guest on Wow, Wise Older Women. I really appreciate everything that you've shared.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Thank you. You're amazing. Thank you so much for still being here and being interested and listening, and thank you for asking. It's an incredible project that you do, and I'm honoured to be just one of many wise older women that you interview. Thank you, Rosella.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

As we come to the end of series two of Wow, Wise Older Women, I just want to take a moment to thank all of the wise and wonderful women who've participated in this project, each of them bringing their own version of honesty and authenticity, bravery, vulnerability, truth and trauma, leaving us with so many messages of positivity and purpose. We've had the privilege of glimpsing into the future via their stories to see that aging is not a slowing down or an end to a life full of experiences that shape and reshape us over and over. It demonstrates to me that the natural design of life is perfect just as it is, with all its triumph and trauma. We walk amongst these kinds of women every day, but how often do we stop to ask them about their day or their week, their life, or simply their thoughts? My hope is that older women are better thought of and respected for the wisdom keepers they are, and that projects like this continue to offer older women a platform on which to be seen, heard, and felt. So here's to growing older, not as a closing chapter, but as the unfolding of a life. Still rich with possibility. May we wear our years with grace, carry our stories with pride, and never forget that there's still so much life left to live, love left to give, and beauty left to discover. Thank you for taking the time to listen. I truly hope it's left you with something valuable to move forward with. Perhaps you're able to look to the future with a greater positivity and maybe even less fear towards the natural process of aging. Whatever it's done, I welcome your feedback. Contact details can be found in the episode description. If you'd like to find out more about Simone and her work, you can also find those links in the episode description. And if you'd like to hear more WoW stories, you can find the entire collection on any major podcast platform. Series one and two were made possible with assistance from the Community Broadcasting Foundation, cbf.org.au. If you'd like to support future episodes of WoW, there are links in the episode description you can follow. I'm your host and executive producer, Rasella Torres. It's been my absolute honour to work alongside each of our guests to bring you this project. A big heartfelt thanks again to the six participants. Catherine Roberts, Eliza Ricks, Gail Q, Gabrielle Griffin, Carter Gray, and Simone O'Brien. Alofartu, much love and gratitude to you, dear listener, for joining us on this journey. May we never measure our lives by the years behind us, but by the love, wisdom, and wonder we still have ahead of us.