words are my time machine
Sonny Clarke grew up in Brisbane, Australia. The youngest of two children raised by a single, working-class mother. Sonny's earliest memories of story is from childhood when the siblings stayed with an Aunt while their mother worked late in the night, Sonny's mother would make a phone call during her break to read bed-time stories over the phone.
Sonny’s brother also encouraged this love of story-telling by delighting his younger sibling with tall tales learnt from his boy scout trips. One that still sticks in the memory to this day is the story of The Purple Gorilla. There are many versions of this silly story that requires a certain amount of showmanship to deliver well. The version the Boy used to tell included such wonderful word puns like ‘He came to a plain, not the kind that flies through the air, but the kind you run across’ which increasingly got sillier as the protagonist lost limbs in his desperation to flee the terrifying beast, and finally we arrive at 'He came to a plain, not the kind that flies through the air, but the kind you nod across" - alas, our hero is now just a head. How those young minds delighted in such stupidity. Sonny would constantly plead to hear the story again, over and over again until the siblings parted ways into adulthood and the story was lost to them and to time.
Sonny’s brother also encouraged this love of story-telling by delighting his younger sibling with tall tales learnt from his boy scout trips. One that still sticks in the memory to this day is the story of The Purple Gorilla. There are many versions of this silly story that requires a certain amount of showmanship to deliver well. The version the Boy used to tell included such wonderful word puns like ‘He came to a plain, not the kind that flies through the air, but the kind you run across’ which increasingly got sillier as the protagonist lost limbs in his desperation to flee the terrifying beast, and finally we arrive at 'He came to a plain, not the kind that flies through the air, but the kind you nod across" - alas, our hero is now just a head. How those young minds delighted in such stupidity. Sonny would constantly plead to hear the story again, over and over again until the siblings parted ways into adulthood and the story was lost to them and to time.