Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Get Up Mum by Justin Heazlewood What's it like to be 12 and looking after a mentally ill parent? B y the time he turned 13, it was part of Justin Heazlewood’s routine to find the little ceramic container, pour out the tablets and count them as a way of making sure that his mother was taking her medication regularly. The Australian writer, musician and comedian – who also performs under the name the Bedroom Philosopher – has built a career on irreverence and satire. His last book, Funemployed, balanced humour with social commentary by taking aim at the bleak reality that comes with working in the creative industries. But his latest work, a memoir entitled Get Up Mum, is far more personal and intimate. “I always knew this book was going to get written some time,” Heazlewood tells Guardian Australia. “It was something I had to write, not wanted to write.” Focusing on one year of his youth, between the ages of 12 and 13, Get Up Mum gives readers a vivid insight into life in the coastal Tasmanian town of Burnie in the early 90s. On the surface, it seems almost like a stereotype of happy family life: there are family slide nights, trips to the seaside, and uncomfortably relatable scenes of awkward first crushes. But woven in between the familiar coming-of-age tale is the reason why, for Heazlewood, this is a story that needed to be told: it’s a way for him to finally face his experience growing up as the only child of a single parent with a debilitating mental illness. A young Justin Heazlewood: the book is peppered with excerpts from school assignments and diary entries. The story is told in present tense – a way for Heazlewood to give readers a chance to “hang out with 12-year-old me” – the good and the bad mixing together to form a picture of what was, for him, normal life: playing computer games at a friend’s house, watching Astro Boy before school, anxiously monitoring his mother for the warning signs that another dark spell was coming on, trying to drown out the sound of her talking to herself in the next room. He decided to write the book from his 12-year-old perspective because “for purposes of trying to get the message across of how intense my life was at an age that’s usually portrayed as fun and games, I thought, you really need to be there in the passenger seat”. Stepping back into the mind of his younger self was made easier by the fact that he had unusually rich source material to draw from. In between the unfolding story, the book is also peppered with excerpts from school assignments and diary entries from the time. “I think a lot of my mum’s love for me is just wrapped up in the fact she kept every single piece of schoolwork I ever did,” he says. It’s a bittersweet statement – this material shows just how matter-of-fact the pre-teen Justin was: “Cooked Jacket potato. Was Beautiful! got home. Mum was in a bad way. She was talking of killin’ herself. hell! did 3 and a half laps of track.” In addition to the diaries and assignments, there was also a wealth of secret cassette tapes he recorded as a child. He describes hiding his tape recorder at family get-togethers, secreting it near the couch during the regular weekend visits to his beloved nan and pop’s house, or furtively tucking it away during a family caravan trip. The cassettes also give an insight into the mindset of the person who made them. When asked about a scene in the book where he tapes over a somewhat nagging conversation with his nan, Heazlewood laughs. “It’s already such a weird hobby but then it gets weirder because … I’ve edited as I’ve gone … A picture drawn by a young Justin Heazlewood. “I think it was kind of an amazing exercise in me building my own narrative of my family … and it’s pertinent that there were no tapes from home in Burnie with my mum. Like, zero. It’s like – why would I tape this?” What the young Heazlewood was left with then was a record of all the good bits and none of the bad. “It’s almost like for a kid who didn’t have enough happy memories because I had to endure trauma at home, I needed to have access to more happy memories to sort of feed on in desolate times . I needed to be able to lie in bed and listen to the fun caravan trip last summer because there was just a wasteland around me.” On the page, the adult Heazlewood fills in those gaps between the curated memories. “I really was just a junior documentary maker who I’m now collaborating with.” Get Up Mum is equal parts funny and devastating. There are tender moments, like young Justin and his mother settling in to watch Melrose Place together and cracking jokes, or the early weekend mornings spent taking long coastal walks with his nan. Then there are the darker times: Justin approaching the house and hearing music blaring far too loudly and knowing what this signified for the coming weeks; coming home to his mother shredding pop cassettes because there were “evil spirits”. The full picture is complex, showing three generations of a family who love each other but struggle with managing the everyday reality of mental illness. “Mum had this illness that no one even used the name of, let alone knew what to do about it,” Heazlewood says. “There was virtually no support whatsoever.” Much of the responsibility fell to him. Throughout the book, the young Justin grapples with the consequences of this: whose job it is to take care of whom; whether being 13 means he’s a man or a child; if it’s OK to call the doctor on someone else’s behalf; about loving the mother he has but hating the things that lie outside his control. “Someone can have two completely conflicting opinions about their own life given the time of day,” Heazlewood says. “You can have two opposite forces just running side by side and they’re both valid and they’re both true. I was angry at the universe for putting me through this at the time. But then I’m so grateful … I’m so lucky to have the nan and pop I do. I really love my mum.” He pauses. “Even when she was sick she would get up and make me breakfast … no matter what … That’s a testament to her as a wonderful woman who I love dearly who was just also doing her best with an appalling situation and an appalling illness – just like I was doing my best.” Get Up Mum is out now. The Get Up Mum Melbourne launch is today at 4pm. All welcome. Men bring a plate. Meet my new boyhood memoir. 12-year-old Justin is keen to meet ya (but a bit shy). Signed copies available from the author HERE. Hear a conversation on RNs Life Matters. Read an interview in The Guardian. Hear an excerpt on Soundcloud. Watch the trailer on YouTube. There’s never a good time to have a baby or quit smoking or write your childhood memoir…you just have to do it. Get Up Mum. The acclaimed boyhood memoir in tuckshops and online via Booktopia. 2020: I’ve made a Get Up Mum soundtrack which will be released on Bandcamp May 28. It marks the two year anniversary of its release. Here is the first single Reverse Purgatory. 2019: The big news is I’ve been working on a 10-part series of Get Up Mum for some months. Everything will drop on RN’s Life Matters May 27. The episodes will air daily from 9:20am and be available on the Life Matters page. There’s also a big scrolling story about my tapes that will be featured on the ABC News site that day. It’s all rather exciting. You’ll be able to hear my cassettes. There will be voices. MEDIA. I make my Guardian debut in this classic interview from fellow only child Elizabeth Flux. A tender and compelling chateroo with Myf Warhurst. Pseudo counselling session with excellent psychologists on Triple R’s Radiotherapy. Lifestyles of the poor and infamous, or eloquent expose by one of Australia’s hardest working artists? You decide as I bare my artistic soul for Kill Your Darlings. Another day, another insanely personal interview with Frankie magazine. Rigorous pow-wow about schizophrenia on RNs Life Matters. Plus more radio action with ABC Adelaide & ABC Sydney. Sunday afternoon driving home with Mum (excerpt on Soundcloud.) Watch the trailer on YouTube. READER RESPONSES. “My name is Belinda, and I have just finished reading Get Up Mum. I heard about it on ABC News 24 early December – my apologies that I have forgotten the lady that recommended it, but regardless I am so glad she did. This message comes to say a huge thank you – I could imagine there would be so many mixed emotions writing and re-living the events you have captured in this book, and it certainly stirred many within myself as I read it. While I am a bit older than you, your book brought back so many wonderful memories of my childhood – especially the music and hours spent playing with tape recorders, the Australian comedy shows, and the skits we presented at school! However, now I also have direct experience of being a mum with a mental illness. Reading your experiences definitely pulled at my heart strings, thinking about the suffering that my illness brings to others too, especially my family. It truly hurts when you so desperately want to care for others, but have such a hard time some days even caring for yourself. It is wonderful though – since reading your book, every morning as I greet the challenge of getting out of bed, I find myself saying to myself “get up mum” – it is such a great way to stop myself paralysing myself with pity, and reminding myself of those that need me too. So thank you again Justin – the spirit you captured brought much joy, and the hard times you shared has given me a much greater insight and drive to do the best I can each day. I can’t help but wonder though how you feel about the time and events you captured? How was the journey up an out of this situation? I look forward to reading more… Until then, With kindest regards, And smiles, Belinda.” REVIEWS. ‘Unfortunately, this beautifully written, evocative memoir will only appeal to anyone who has had a childhood.’ Judith Lucy. “The lows in this tale are always complemented by affectionate highs. Heazlewood displays wonder at the world and its possibilities for delight – in his grandmother’s garden, in salty fish and chips, in swims in the sea. Littered throughout the novel are lines of poetry that almost startle, asking to be read and re-read… Get Up Mum is a warm, humorous memoir about coming of age, and the deep love between two individuals who need each other equally.” Readings Monthly. ‘A young’uns tentative forage through a thorny scrub of filial love, written as postcards from the nestling.’ Tim Rogers . “I’m halfway through this book and it’s GODDAMN WONDERFUL and heartbreaking. Justin’s writing voice is so phenomenal, such a perfect combination of funny and whole-hearted without being syrupy, woe-is-me and sentimental. I have a feeling a lot of people will find “oh my god that was me” relief in this book, especially if they grew up with parents who were dealing with any kind of mental illness.” Amanda Palmer. … [Heazlewood] does evoke what it is like to live in a loving, if flawed, family. In particular, his nan and pop – the latter the closest he has to a father – jump off the page as beacons of stability. Ultimately, if Get Up Mum is about youth, it is also about growing up too fast. Told to be a man while still a boy, Heazlewood feels responsible for his mother. Maybe, then, this is his way of finally letting go.” The Saturday Paper . “Superbly written… perceptive account of what it’s like to grow up with someone who has [a mental illness]….written with no judgement – it’s just a simple recounting of his life and their lives but done in such a beautiful and perceptive way.” Book of the week, Burnie 7BU. GET UP MUM BLURB. It’s 1992 in Burnie, Tasmania and 12-year-old Justin lives alone with his mum. When she is well, Mum is perfect. She knows he likes his carrots raw and his toast cooled, and she knows how to sooth his growing pains. But when she is sick she cries uncontrollably and never gets out of bed. High school is on the horizon and Justin is bursting with adolescent energy. But his mum’s mental illness hangs over him like a shadow and he feels the need to grow up fast. Told with youthful exuberance, Get Up Mum is a wildly endearing, entertaining and incredibly powerful memoir about love, family, and coming-of- age. GET UP MUM SIDE STORIES. To mark two years since the release of my childhood memoir, I’ve made there be a soundtrack album on Bandcamp. For bonus amusement, here are some beside the scenes tales of nostalgic and emotional interest. 747. In primary school I clocked my transition into maturity as switching over from ABC cartoons (repeating Wizard of Oz for the 10 th time) to the Southern Cross antics of Monty the weatherman and Roscoe the newsreader. The Today Show with Steve Lieberman and Liz Hayes had a clock in the corner which helped me track my timing to leave for school. I had a game where if it read 7:47 I’d sing the line ‘riding along in a 747’ in my head. It was from some country song Uncle Ken must have played when I visited his place in Canberra in grade four. I wanted to include this detail in my book (I’ve probably been singing the line ever since). As you can imagine, I was pretty keen to hear the song again – the first time in 30 years. Thing is, I had no way of tracking it. I googled the lyric in many variations but there were no matches! (Not you Beatles 909! I’d be late for school.) I wasn’t in touch with my Uncle, so asking him was moot. Over the time spent writing, this was the white whale of nostalgia trips, which is saying something considering the most obscure Commodore 64 games are on YouTube these days (you mean Trapdoor did have gameplay, you didn’t just wander around aimlessly opening and closing the door?) Late in the piece I had another cheeky search ‘riding along on a 747’ and found a hit! It seems the Australian singer/songwriter Kevin Johnson (no, not the Phoenix Suns point guard) had launched a new website which included the lyrics to Man of the 20 th Century. He was a bit of an unsung Australian JJ Cale type best known for Rock and Roll I Gave You The Best Years of my Life. The song and album are fantastic. Do yourself a favour. Deep Deep Trouble. My favourite moment of ‘constructive procrastination’ was listening to one of my many tape recordings from the 1992/93 childhood season. In the one marked SLIDES with NIGEL POP JUSTIN – Pop, Uncle Nigel and I (funnily enough) spent an evening in the summer before grade seven clicking through the family slide collection. We’re up late being silly and eventually wake up Nan! Uh-oh. Uncle Nigel is pretty funny and pins the blame on the infamously placid Pop. “We might be able to get away with it, with a few swingin’ words,” he jokes, “but not you pal, you’re in big trouble.” You then hear squeaky lil’ me sing “you’re in Deep Deep Trouble.” When I searched I was pleasantly reminded that The Simpsons put out the single in 1991. Do The Bartman gets the attention and reruns on r a g e (it was written by Michael Jackson you know?) but I’d completely forgotten about the difficult second single. From this discovery I was able to reference the ‘Bart in hell’ scenes as a reference point for my childhood understanding of the afterlife. So, within that session you could surmise that twelve year old me was helping with the writing of his own story. Coolness! My Friend Jenna. At the Fitzroy Writers Festival launch of Get Up Mum in 2019 I met a fellow only child with a Mother with schizophrenia. This ultra rare combo match twin was exciting for a lonely Gemini. Consider that until this point I was only friends with about two other only-children (we’re quite rare in my generation) and I knew of only two other people who had a Mum with a mental illness. Between striking up a friendship with Jenna and the several other mental health organisations such as Satellite Foundation who reached out to me (all of which I wasn’t previously aware of), Get Up Mum really did act as a distress paper firework of light and hope. The Kid and the Whip. I liked the Sydney book launch because not only was the effervescent Benjamin Law hosting but a lady came up afterwards and said that Jon Faine was really unfair to me during the notorious Funemployed interview from 2014, which was one of the nicest (and most accurate) things anyone had said to me in a while. It was one of the few launches where small children were present. These weren’t just small kids but restless ADHD-ish youngsters. Towards the end they were running around getting glasses of water and being a bit nuisance. I drew them in by holding up a blank tape and describing in detail how magical it was that this brown ribbon could trap magnetic particles and turn them into sound. The kid had a good look before peering up and asking “could you use it as a whip?” In a troubling snapshot of the post-Fortnight generation’s mindset, the kid had managed to weaponise a TDK 90 cassette. Ha ha! A whip, I dunno mate, maybe torture someone to death with Michael Bolton. Amanda Palmer’s Post. [Now, just because I am preternaturally conscientious and self-aware doesn’t mean I’m not immune to some straight up ego-shooting and name- dropping, as I am well within my rights to do as my jaded friend Jo accused me of in 2005 after returning from tour with Tripod and daring to refer to them by name in answer to the question ‘so how did the tour go?’ No sheepishness present from the presence of excommunicated friends at this juncture, just an alarmingly unguarded and unsolicited outburst of conscious rationalising, for which you can assume a psychologist would be all like ‘you go girl.’] [[Think what you like but as Kurt Rambis said ‘you miss 100% of the shots you never take.’ Kurt, Kurt he’s our boy, if he can’t do it no one….will.]] [[[Rest assured that being me, I will still manage to self-deprecate my social standing to its lowest possible ebb. Cover up that light people – COVER!]]] Amanda Palmer posted out of the gates early, having been given an advanced copy. It was a rather confronting time as I contemplated sharing my secret life story with the cosmos. From my furtive glances betwixt the slits in my pillow case, I noted there were what seemed like hundreds of comments below her post which almost entirely consisted of impassioned confessions of American experiences of mental illness. The only comment mentioning me said that my promo photo (sans glasses) made me look like Paul Dano (which is true). This was mildly exciting in that it was the first time I had been assigned a famous person I look like without glasses. (For the record I used to like to think I had a Christian Slatery vibe.) Oh, I have been assigned about (last count) 102 people I look like with glasses. Austin Powers anyone? NOTE: Paul Dano’s 2012 film Ruby Sparks is pretty close to a documentary on me. Although I’d attest that if I was ever invited to Annette Bening’s house and had a hot girlfriend like Zoe Kazan there, there’s no way I’d just sit around reading a book while everyone played in the pool. NO WAY! Honesty Training. Being such an intensely personal book, I was shaky about the thought of doing interviews. To assist me with this my publisher Affirm set about preparing me. (Cue Rocky style montage with More Than This and me pushing myself on a swing at Burnie Park laughing and crying.) This was the first time I’d been given any kind of media training in my life. My publicist Laura transmitted me a set of practise questions to cut my heart on. I found the support helpful. There was an eclectic spectrum of emotional niceness from journalists. “You should have expected being asked about that,” was fired at me accusatorily a couple of times. Journalists desensitise themselves as an upskill. It sure was weird being trapped in my favourite restaurant on a blind date digesting invading personal questions about my Nan. (Did you know I have a secret conspiracy theory that media goes harder on me because I’m a comedian and because I’m a boy but there’s no way to prove this until the next life?) Others like Myf Warhurst were especially warm. This approach coaxed no lesser potency of frankness out of me. Arguably more. “Warmth will get you further than shock” as Charlie Pickering once told me. Would I do it all again? Shit no. Justin 2.0 I’m going straight into advertising and learning to drive. Read my Age Lunch Feature interview about Get Up Mum if you like candidness to the apeshit. Metallica Email. We were trying to get permission for using lyrics to popular songs included in the manuscript. I was actually sending an email to Metallica’s management at one stage (unforgiven_2@hotmail), which is a pretty rock and roll thing to do on a Wednesday. I was trying to imagine James Hetfield flicking through my book about caravan trips and Nan going on about the mossies. In the end there wasn’t really much time or budget so we just did a bit of paraphrasing. Funfact: The song Unforgiven is h e a – v y. That Question. Everyone (everyone) wanted to know what Mum thought of the book. So what does your Mum think of the book? “I’m not sure what Mum thinks about anything” was the preferred reply (come up with months after the event.) Thanks media training! Look at me go like a swimmer at the Olympics just taking it one lap at a time. Mum read the book, which was a lot for her considering she may not have read a whole book since Mozart’s biography. (To which I found her in her room laughing more than anyone in history over the reference to his brisk walking style as ‘old scissor legs.’) Laughter is contagious and the memory is beautiful. Mum thinks my book was well written. Of course there was a pause when we finally met up and spoke about it. She said, in as many words as she was comfortable with, that she was happy if the book was going to help others. You may want a neat little answer to put in your compartment (sorry ‘you’, I know you’re a card-carrying individual with rights to a separate autonomy, I was just amalgamating the last few women and Auntie staff I’ve met), but almost nothing in my life works that way. Please assemble pieces into an esoteric hexagon. To be honest I’d say that there was a little guy inside me secretly disappointed that not a single person thought to ask ‘so what do you think about the book’ but that would be saying a lot more about me than it would about the audience which is beside the point and out of bounds on the full. Izzy from Art School. Way back in the day Mum was friends with Izzy from Art School. They lived together in a sharehouse in Hobart when Mum was working in the Miss Fitz & Co shop (at Fitzgeralds, a Tasmanian department store) and training to be a Mothercraft nurse. They used to push each other around in shopping trolleys and have paper sailboat races along the sodden streets. In the chapter in the book which gives an overview of Mum’s history I made sure to name drop Izzy. The two had long since lost touch and Mum wasn’t even sure of her surname so there was no way of tracking her down. Izzy ended up reading Get Up Mum and reached out to me by email. It was from there that I was able to set up a reunion lunch between the two in Burnie. Paper firework to the rescue! Seriously, write a book – it’ll do cool things. Love Graffiti. There’s an iconic bit of graffiti along the beige cement walls as you head to Wynyard after passing Burnie Park (the best way to see Burnie haha). During my childhood the thick paint always read 1981 ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE with a peace sign. For NYE 2001 Someone ‘updated’ it artfully (not) turning the 1981 into a 2001. Disastrously, this only drew untoward attention towards the freshly complicated missive triggering the wrath of the local council who covered it up like a streaker at the football. The unnecessariness of this maneuver was matched only by its lack of execution. The graffiti wasn’t hidden. All they did was leave a scar of the love, a lighter shade of beige. I referenced the message in my book, going to the trouble of using Windows 95 Paint spray can feature to render the original as authentically as I could. (Thanks Mr Badcock.) A few months after the release of Get Up Mum someone spray painted over the words in white paint! I chose to assume that my book, which had been received surprisingly passionately and positively in Burnie, had somehow shone a light on the cultural significance of the artefact. All you need is John Lennon. There’s no year this time. The message is timeless. Love is for all ages. Check out the Google Map reference to the graffiti pre-2019 makeover. Thanks old mate Dion McCall for this pic. LYNX. Get Up Mum is available from Booktopia. Check out the RN radio series and freshly minted soundtrack. You can hear some more tape samples and promotional videos here, here & here. BONUS: Man of the 20th Century (or 7:47 as it can be known) was released in 1976 and came during a very cool era for smooth rock dudes penning songs about air travel. See also JJ Cale’s Travelling Light (1975) and Steve Miller Band’s Jet Airliner (1977). Books, books & more books. Sign up to our emails and be the first to know about new releases, special offers and more. Readings. Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021. Get Up Mum by Justin Heazlewood. Justin Heazlewood’s debut memoir launches the reader into the seemingly innocent world of a pre-pubescent boy in 1990s Australia. Giddy with joy, twelve-year-old Heazlewood meticulously details the small events that cause a child so much excitement – athletics carnivals, getting crushes on girls, and the affection of family. Yet he also contrasts this with the struggle of having to grow up too fast. Get Up Mum tells the story of young Heazlewood living alone with his mother, who suffers from mental illness. At her highs, she is an attentive, caring mother, yet at her lows she struggles to leave her bed. As a boy on the cusp of puberty, Heazlewood tenderly expresses what so many of us ultimately face, a fear of time and remorse over the transience of moments. This feels all the more acute at an age characterised by first-times and self-discovery. The lows in this tale are always complemented by affectionate highs. Heazlewood displays wonder at the world and its possibilities for delight – in his grandmother’s garden, in salty fish and chips, in swims in the sea. Littered throughout the novel are lines of poetry that almost startle, asking to be read and re-read: It’s so early but it’s not night and the day hasn’t started yet. The world is on pause. Everything is set like jelly inside a fridge, waiting to be dug into with a spoon. For now it’s soft and gentle. Life is vivid through Heazlewood’s eyes, and we are immediately transported back to an Australia characterised by Keating, Rage and Carlton losing the footy. YetHeazlewood’s wishes are not the wishes of a normal young boy; they are for his mother’s health and a regular childhood. Get Up Mum is a warm, humorous memoir about coming of age, and the deep love between two individuals who need each other equally.