This isn’t your typical memoir.
This is a book born on the unholy streets of Melbourne, written between lockdowns, breakdowns, and late-night tram rides through a ghosted city that didn’t want me. It’s stitched together with biro ink, cracked voices, and stories scavenged from strangers who lived in the cracks.
When I first came to Melbourne, I was a loner with a little black notebook and a heart full of noise. And what followed made me out to feel like a leper desperate for a cure. I started writing letters to strangers and taping them on street poles. Not because I thought anyone would read them — but because I needed to believe the words I was posting.
I was looking for connection in the ruins.
Trying to turn panic into poetry.
Hoping that if I stitched together enough stories, maybe I’d remember how to be human again.
Every letter I wrote was a lifeline.
Every stranger I met was a mirror.
Dear Stranger, Origins is a street-born confession about loneliness, hope, and what it means to be seen in a world that walks right past you. It’s a love letter to invisible people. To city ghosts. To anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t belong.
You’ll see Melbourne as I saw it: not polished, but honest. Not perfect, but alive.
I didn’t write this to be a bestseller.
I wrote it to stay alive.
To hold a salvaged lighter against the dark and see who might come walking toward the light.
Maybe it finds you at a time when you need it too. If you’re wading through setting concrete, grabbing at any opportunity, doing your best to keep the light inside you alive, punching and kicking cynicism away, then this might help you swing a little harder.
Read it. Lend it. Leave it behind for the next stranger.
Let’s be less alone — together.
– Jay
“During lockdown, I taped handwritten letters to lamp posts to inject hope into strangers’ eyes. This is what happened next.”
Purchase contains:
1 Signed Dear Stranger, Origins Book.
Novel length: 200 pages.
1 Signed Limited Edition Mystery Dear Stranger Letter.
There are three letters to collect, fate will decide which letter you recieve.
AN EXCERPT: 'The majority of my favourite stories come from the same pool of people. The working class. Or the beat down, lost-it-all-kind. The people grounded down to the ground by the chains of struggle. The folk living in the real world, dealing with real problems. These kinds of souls usually don't believe they have any interesting stories to tell, but to their surprise, when you get them talking, they have an endless tap of unfiltered stories. The best kind. Unintentional poetry.' - Dear Stranger, Origins.
AN EXCERPT: 'After writing that little moment onto my arm, something inside of me buzzed. I felt an injection of life. A shot of ecstasy to the frontal lobe. For the first time in weeks I felt like I had done something, achieved something, captured something REAL. And because of this feeling, I decided to write some more. I began carrying that same biro pen with me wherever I went and forced myself to write one moment a day into a little black notebook to keep the darkness away. I grew obsessed with the task of distilling and simplifying the emotions of our locked-down-times into a few words. Even if nobody but myself would ever read them.
During this time, I dedicated all of my hours to the task of writing about moments from my day, to make me feel less like a loser and more like a saviour. Even if the only person I was saving was myself. Writing became my rope, and with each moment I captured in writing, I climbed an inch higher into the light. It was only once I understood what the pit of darkness looked like that I began to understand the power of writing. The eternal light. The reason why people write. I was writing to try to see.' - Dear Stranger, Origins
Jay's memoir reminds me of Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London,' and I dare say that his work has surpassed the latter. I'm certain that anyone who reads will be kinder and more compassionate when they reach the end. Most importantly, they'd be possessed by an indomitable creative spirit.
Historically, artists have been forced to go through a tug-of-war between their need to survive and the voice in their heads which persuades them into creating something exceptional. For a lot of us, that voice grows faint over time, while some hear it loud enough that they fall into loneliness and despair as no one around them can comprehend why they would rather scribble their thoughts or paint their visions instead of centring their lives around their jobs just like everyone else does.
Even when an artist is under the spell of the voice, most of them lack the willpower to go out to the world and get it done. Some are afraid of judgement, some are too prideful to be vulnerable, and some could just be lazy like I am. It's rare that an artist would go on to achieve what they set out to do, and Jay is one of them, thanks to his grit.
The memoir captures the travails a working-class artist has to endure, and Jay doesn’t censor his experiences. His prose is immaculate, and every chapter captured my interest. Nevertheless, what fascinated me ultimately was how he kept his sensitivity, kindness and conscience intact, while most of us would’ve grown numb had we been in those situations. He had to deal with some of the most miserable people out there and still had the heart to post letters in public spaces to give hope to people during the COVID lockdowns.
Dear Strangers: Origins not only inspires me to push out of my comfort zone as an artist but to also be a better human being.
