Playground

Around 2 years old, Moogerah Dam, SE Qld circa 1969/70 - photo by Ron Ivin

I have no idea what it is, but sometimes when I see a kid’s playground, I have this deep, buried sadness well up inside me. I’ve tried to rationalise this every time it happens, but I can’t make any connection with a negative experience or any sort of notion that I missed out on something as a child. Its a lonely feeling. Perhaps it’s some kind of lost childhood synapse firing off. Regardless, it can be consuming and I mostly turn away and make sure I move onto something else. The same thing happens now and then when I see children enjoying a shopping centre ride - horsies, carousels, cars, dinosaurs and so on - their parents standing there, watching and enjoying. I cannot put a finger on why it makes me feel like I’m far away in a different time, where something just isn’t working out. As a kid I certainly did plenty of amusing myself. I was never idle. I liked my toys and the evolving learning and knowledge experience that came with them. I’m acutely aware and grateful of how lucky I was to have a childhood experience free of the things that plague millions of other kids across the planet. I know you don’t think too hard about social injustice and inequality when you’re that young, but the experiences you do have certainly enter your system and become part of who and what you are.  >>>>   I find this sadness confusing. It doesn’t always happen, like if I’m too distracted or too busy to tune-in, but when I do, there’s no escaping it. Maybe it’s because nowadays kids are indoors a lot more than was the norm for my generation in the 1970s, when playgrounds were part of the tool-set, even the less exciting ones. You’d go there on your treadly with footy cards flapping in the spokes. You’d race Matchbox cars down the slippery dip. You’d stage a phase of the latest street war from confines of the sandpit. Even in the screaming heat of Christmas holidays this would go on. They were dangerous places too, but getting a toe crushed from a wayward maneuverer on a see-saw was part of the act. today, these places are often deserted. Maybe that’s all it is… just feeling bad for the playgrounds.  >>>>  I wonder if anyone else thinks like this. Let me know.  >>>>  The above picture was taken somewhere around here.  >>>>  If only I could realise what I feel as music without personal conventions corrupting the idea.  Classical types would just write it on paper, straight out of their heads.