Davey Dreamnation (1972–?) was an Australalian musician, vocalist, pirate and record-label owner who now lives “in the third person”. No, wait. That’s not what I meant to paste there. But then, where should I begin my Substack origin story?
Maybe I could start by explaining how I came up with my semi-fictitious alter-ego’s name, by fusing the title of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation album with one of my own diminutives. But then, who was I before this Davey came along?
Perhaps I could commence instead with a bloated version of the professional bio I’ve been writing for over 20 years. But “David Prater is an Australian-born writer and editor currently living in the third person” just sounds weird.
I could just begin more honestly. I was born in a hospital on unceded Wiradjuri Country in a settler-colonial city called Dubbo. Of course, Dubbo’s not a “city” in the global sense. But, then again, the Wiradjuri don’t call their Country “Australia”, either.
Even though I no linger live in Australia, as a non-Indigenous person born on unceded Indigenous Country I continue to benefit from the outcomes of the invasion, settlement and ongoing colonialism of that Country.
For the past 16 years I have lived in Europe, first in the Netherlands, then in Sweden and then later still in France. Three months ago my family and I moved back to the Netherlands, to a small village in the province of Fryslân.
This is where I am writing from today. My window looks over the rooftops of Wânswert, a small village with around 200 inhabitants. From my chair I can see our shed, the old church tower and many green trees.
It’s the end of summer. Just now a hailstorm ripped through town, making merry music on our roof. We’ve got solar panels up there but I am too scared, as yet, to climb the rickety ladder to the rooftop to inspect them.
Yesterday I wrote a post on LinkedIn about an experience I had while riding our two sons home from school. It started out as a kind of career update, albeit not one of those “I’m humbled to announce that I’ve started as X” posts.
Instead, the post drew on my recently concluded time as a Publications Co-ordinator at the International Transport Forum at the OECD, specifically my role as an editor of the ITF’s publications on road safety, cycling and walking.
Each one of the above paragraphs could serve as the opening of an origin story for the Davey Dreamnation newsletter. By listing them all and refusing to elaborate further, perhaps I’m implying that this post is a kind of origin story, too.
Recently I re-read Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being, a book which moves effortlessly between multiple streams of inquiry and narrative threads, built on a rich bedrock of eerie quotes, quirky factoid and cosmic observations.
Maybe it’s possible to “build” this newsletter along similar lines: to embed longer narratives as discrete fragments between more cyclical, time-based or thematic observations. Kind of like Olga Tokarczuk’s Bieguni [Flights] in short chunks.
If this turns out to be possible, then the invitation implied by the subtitle of this post will have been fulfilled. In the meantime, enter the Dreamnation with a patient heart and an inquiring mind. As the Antarctic explorer Lawrence Oates said:
I am just going outside and may be some time.
This is a cross-post of my very first Substack. If you’d like to follow or subscribe, hit this big old link.
