Ah The Humanity!

On Donating Blood, Surprising Gifts & Finding Community

Dec 27, 2025

There are things that are meant to be relaxing that … just aren’t.

My Pilates teacher was excitedly telling the class recently that she was going to a sound bath later that day for her birthday. She didn’t really know what to expect but she said she really needed to chill so was looking forward to it. I’m not really familiar with this stuff either, so next time I saw her I asked her how it was and she looked completely baffled and said she lay on a hard floor while Cher’s ‘Bang Bang’ was blasted in her direction, followed by ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ and then some chiming instruments were struck aggressively near her head.

Now ‘Bang Bang’ is an absolute masterpiece (Nancy Sinatra version is my favourite) but the tragic story of doomed love and broken hearts followed by the ultimate disco paean to regret hardly seems like the best choice for a super chill elevating birthday experience. I guess some people really don’t listen to lyrics. I wonder if this sound bath-er gets many repeat customers? I really want to read her Google reviews.

Yesterday I went to donate blood for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience - if you ever need a little pick-me-up I can highly recommend it. Firstly, there was no inappropriate music playing, just a gentle busy hum of humanity. Every single worker I interacted with thanked me sincerely, made little jokes, offered me drinks and snacks and kept directing me to sit down and relax. Before they slipped the needle in, heat packs were placed on my upper and lower left arm, to increase the blood flow I guess but it just felt kind of soothing and nice. I sat there while my blood filled a little bag and read my frankly quite terrifying book about Scientology in Australia (Fair Game by Steve Cannane) and felt nothing but a warm peaceful glow.

I was prompted to donate for a few reasons. Firstly, I’ve been meaning to since I haemorrhaged after giving birth when I was 20 years old ( a very long time ago). An old school Matron told me I had the choice between drinking a tall Guinness or eating a blue steak first to see if that would bring my iron levels up, or else they’d be looking at a transfusion. As a vegetarian, I took the medical Guinness option and apparently it did the trick, but the whole experience made me wonder about who these people were that willingly gave their own blood in case someone else needed it in an emergency.

I have recently spent quite a bit of time in Emergency (not for me) and even though there’s always a torturously long wait and its such an exhausting experience, I always leave in absolute awe of this fluid responsive machine that operates in such an efficient but kind and human way - each nurse and doctor seems to take time to really connect and care and check in, despite being pulled in a million desperate directions at once.

Has anyone watched The Pitt? I have never been drawn to a medical drama before but this is just on another level, and a great reminder that there are true superheroes and angels among us dealing with humanity at its most base and visceral and they’re not on a Marvel screen, even if I watch most of it through my fingers. (Spoiler alert here, skip to next paragraph if you want) Just a few days before the terrible killings at Bondi, I watched an episode where doctors are giving their own blood as a last ditch effort to keep patients alive after a mass shooting. I guess it felt like a wake up call for me, to do the small thing I could do, that I’d been meaning to get around to for well over twenty years, to contribute to the well being or maybe even the survival of the humans around me.

I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised to discover that donating blood actually felt like a gift to myself. I felt useful. Community spirit is not a feeling I’m used to, I’m generally just living in my own little world doing my own little thing, by myself, and I like it that way.

I really like this new song by Bill Callahan and its music video featuring the photography of Daniel Arnold, which delves into similar themes of humanity and community and isolation.

It also reminds me of a photograph I took recently in Melbourne, while sitting in a cocktail bar with my love, watching wedding guests emerge from an upstairs function room for a sneaky fag on the street. There was a bit of a mafia vibe going on, and it was fun to impose imaginary lives on the people as we watched.

I especially loved the smoking bride (who doesn’t love a smoking bride?), knocking back a glass of red after her big moment, back to reality, a bored/curious little cousin taking it all in from the upstairs window….