By Darby Hudson
Joy and surprise can be found in the most unlikely places and even during the darkest of times. So, there they were, Blu-Tacked around the inner west in the days of the pandemic lockdowns, strips of paper carrying typed messages about finding ourselves, finding each other, and rooting around to see what’s hidden away in our pockets ‘full of nights.’
The person responsible for this poetic assault on our streets is writer and artist Darby Hudson. His small book, Youre going to be ok (you read it correctly, more on the missing apostrophe in a moment) is a deep mine of ideas to challenge a dispassionate and complacent response to life in the 21st century.
And the challenge starts with Hudson’s typewriter that doesn’t have a working apostrophe key. It’s a useful, if unintentional device. Trained as we are in the rules of grammar, we quickly hit speed bumps when the rules aren’t followed. Hudson’s missing apostrophes interrupt, sometimes with a jolt, the flow of reading. Which is exactly what his short vignettes, angulated observations on life and personal anecdotes will do. Because Hudson’s ideas don’t necessarily follow conventional thinking. The mind’s eye is made to slow, pause and give time to what’s being shared before moving on. It’s not a book to race through.
Hudson’s tone can be polemical, protesting that ‘society is designed to wilfully misunderstand you then use it against you,’ whilst returning time and again to ‘the inner magic of the individual’ to resist and fight back. There’s visual whimsy aplenty such as when he suggests that walking a dog on a ‘long leash is really just flying a ground kite.’ Elsewhere can be found a deep compassion for the human condition, how it is that in our darkest moments ‘everything you do or say will be used against you by your brain.’
Youre going to be ok is a witty antidote to our hyper-consumer, social media divided world. Hudson exhorts readers to engage critically and artistically with life rather than passively consume media that leaves you watching other people live theirs.
Youre going to be ok, along with Darby Hudson’s other books and art can be found at: darbyhudsonart.com
