Why the lock, Johnny Lock?

What a silly and yet fantastic name — at least, I think so.

Jaidyn is my name. It starts with a J.

Johnny.

Luke is my middle name. It starts with an L.

Lock.

We were around a weak rectangular coffee table mid-way through last year. Jay, Robin and I, elbows on the table-top. Laptops, typewriters, books, papers, pens, pencils, chargers, phones, all laid out across the table and floor.

The early drafts of There’s a Tale to This City were mostly compiled and edited around this coffee table in Robin’s apartment. Writing was the easy bit — we could write about everything we’d seen as street observers in good detail when we bounced off each other’s memories. The next stage was where we had to make sense of it all — the nonsensical, the senseless, the whole catalogue of stories we had recorded off the streets.

It was always our intention to change our names in the story, to create alter-ego identities for our tales — tales that don’t end at There’s a Tale to This City. Early drafts of the book didn’t focus much on ourselves, but on the exterior, the observatory, the witnessed and encountered. Around the coffee table that night, we began to realise this book was more than just a collection of stories about strangers, but a time-capsule journey of our time in Melbourne as a trio. And so, our characters became more prominent to the whole project.

But we needed to name them.

Jay was adamant. He was keeping Jay. But he switched from his one-name mononym to ‘Jay Khan’.

Robin managed to conjure up ‘Rick Walkow’

And I … I was being crushed by too many ideas in my head. Bizarre names. Boring names. Names that had been done to death (including Johnny). I tugged on the bronze lock hanging from a chain around my neck, stroked it, twisted it — the symptoms of the physicality of my thought process. I made it physical by using an object to help me think.

I was always wearing that lock. My accessory of choice. No gold chains, no wristbands, no dyed hair (not at that time) and no piercings (not yet). It was always the lock, always the chain.

LOCKDOWN 2020:

I’m searching through the garage of my mother’s house, exhausted by my failure at home-learning, failure in relationships, failure in taking care of myself. I scavenge through old plastic tubs of electrical cords, cupboards and drawers full with tools, screws, nails, dust, webs, dead insects, old bullets, rusty coins, photo albums, old toys, old phones, old love letters … and then I find a piece of galvanised chain. Too long for any kind of necklace, but still cool. I take a hammer to it, unlinking several of the silver links until I like the length. I wear it around my neck for the next few weeks. I eventually see a lock one day in the city, latched onto a mesh-fence. I go home to turn my garage upside down in search for a lock. Any lock. I find an old bronze lock from my high school locker. I hook it onto the galvanised chain and my ‘super-cool-totally-awesome-not-at all-edgy’ necklace became even more super-cool-totally-awesome-not-at-all-edgy. I wear it every day after this, comforted by the weight on my chest. Soothed by the cold of the steel on my neck. Subdued by the feeling of security it gave me. Amazed by the confidence it gave me to wear it. I tell the world that I know it’s a strange, bulky thing to wear around one’s neck, but I don’t care. It’s my lock and I’ll carry it around on a chain around my neck if I want to.

Around that table, we discussed our our individual styles — writing styles, fashion styles, personality types, ambitions … and realised that our individual clothing choices actually said something about our characters.

Jay and his button-up shirts, jeans, boots, belt, tattoo of a woman on his arm — he was dressed for anything and ready for business, but he’d had a crazy life.

Robin and his tweeds, his Ralph Lauren shirts, his coats, his blazers — he was entranced by fashion and culture and had always dressed and studied well.

And me with my oversized clothes, my stripes, my blacks and greys and navy-blues, mismatched socks, my wrist tattoos, and my lock-and-chain — I was finding myself, drawn to the quirky and alternative, expressing myself freely, artistically and honestly.

If our styles were a window into our characters — the real us, around the table — then it made sense that our styles would shed some light onto our characters in the book.

And then it came to me. ‘Johnny Lock.’

‘No …’ Jay smirked. ‘Oh wait, because of your lock!’

I looked down at it. ‘So what do we say? Johnny Lock? Lock it in?’

And we did.

Johnny Lock is the name of the protagonist in the scenes I wrote in There’s a Tale to This City. He emerged on the page as an accurate reflection of me as his writer. Johnny Lock is, like me, a street poet. He is also, like me, a deeply paranoid individual with a lot of mental health issues and internal struggles. He has a convoluted family history, is exhausted by studying at university, and eager to come into himself as a street poet.

Hell, this character, who is me, or a representation of me and not the whole me, is such a cool character who, I think, deserves to be explored deeper.

So I’ve written more about him. Johnny Lock will make a swooping return this year in two separate books:

1. My upcoming poetry collection, The Street Poet, will collate my experiences as a street poet riding the underground wave in Melbourne — and thus, Johnny’s experiences. He has more traumas to unveil, more stories to tell, more truths to be unburdened. And he’s growing into himself, challenging himself, acknowledging his weaknesses. This one will be the first book written entirely by me — so I guess that makes it a debut? It will release somewhere in the Australian winter.
2. My second book as a co-writer with Jay — detailing our last journey as street writers together in a locked-down Melbourne, days before his flight back to Europe and the UK. The last of Jay’s Melbourne days. This one dives deeper into Jay Khan and Johnny Lock, picking on their weaknesses, playing with their strengths, bringing them closer to the metaphorical camera. And much like There’s a Tale to This City, it will reflect on more happenings in Melbourne/Naarm — lockdown blues, protest furies, crime and addiction in the city. More poetry. More Dear Stranger letters. More narrative. And more fun.

So that’s who Johnny Lock is. That’s how he came about. And that’s why I wear a lock on a chain around my neck.

Now here’s the poem from The Street Poet that gave the book its name:

THE STREET POET

I look down at my chest and see a bronze lock hanging from a chain,

and so I am Johnny Lock.

That is my name now.

This is my metamorphosis.

The bronze lock will be my mark, the symbol of the street poet.

I would even wear it in the shower if I could.

I wear it when I first meet Jay the Englishman,

the wandering traveller with no surname and sloppy handwriting,

Tall and lanky,

with a punk attitude and a reckless charm,

trapped in Melbourne during a global pandemic, no going home

to Yorkshire.

Raw and uncensored, that’s him. Wild and adventurous,

definition: Jay Khan.

I am not me anymore but a new face. I am Johnny Lock

thanks to the letter I found

posted underneath the creepy smiling entrance of Luna Park:

Dear Stranger. The light-spreading letters to passersby

in an otherwise grim pandemic-mad world. Lockdown City.

He gives back to the streets the stories the streets give him.

His letter is my awakening,

and a sign that the city was waking up with me.

I go home. I buy a typewriter. I decide to be a street poet.

I write a poem. I stick it to some card. I catch a train.

This is huge news for me. Leaving the house? With purpose?

I stick the poem on a wall. I wait for someone to read it.

I step into the battered black boots of Johnny Lock.

Before this day I am a damaged recluse recovering

from obsessive addictions like love and transitory pleasures.

I am the cheated on, the betrayed, the abnormal –

the dissociated mess of a mind, neither here nor there or anywhere,

a skeleton with flesh and hair and motion but no thoughts,

no joy behind my eyes, no reasons for wide smiles.

I am dead already. I stare at blank walls. I listen to the nonexistent

and those voices feed me evil notions:

Cross the road without looking.

Lock the door.

Open the door.

Tell your friends you hate them.

Break the plate on the tiles.

Tear up all your books and stop reading the lives of better people.

Spread secrets.

Lock the door. Open the door.

Find whoever did this and bring them to me.

Egg his house. Smash the window.

Numb yourself with drugs, I’ll be your voice of reason.

Lock the door. Open the door. Lock it again.

I tear at my scalp until tufts come clean.

I smoke the pain away, numbing where she hurt me.

I want out of me. I want to walk the world and see the people

and learn about everything and nothing and grow into the boots of Johnny Lock.

I become him becomes me becomes him becomes me. Who am I?

Johnny Lock stares down the hallway and sees his old reflection

and pities the mere silhouette of Jaidyn. The paranoid. The pathetic.

Poetry is his only hope. His last chance at saving himself.

Without it he is dying skin and brittle bones and faulty consciousness.

He is dead. He saved himself.

He wrote the poem. He became me.

I am Johnny Lock.

I meet the mysterious street writer Jay Khan, and the Johnny Lock dream feels real.

We roam, we drink, we keep track of every soul, collecting them like treasure.

We recruit Walkow and become a trio of mad people on the hunt,

searching for gold in the grime, wisdom from the wider world.

It feels rebellious. I am Johnny Lock now and I am a street poet.

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