Riding the new wave - hang in there, baby!

SJ Finn in dappled shade
that's me on her knee

So we missed the Melbourne's New Wave panel, with "four of Melbourne's hottest young writers talking about their debut novels, and how it feels to send them out into the world". The panel featured  SJ Finn (This Too Shall Pass), Raphael Brous (I Am Max Lamm), Jessica Au (Cargo) and Melanie Joosten (Berlin Syndrome)"  The session was chaired by Estelle Tang, who writes such lovely things about books and the festival.

But what we did manage to do was catch up with SJ Finn before the gig. How does she feel about on a panel titled Melbourne's new wave when she's been writing beautifully for years?  She's got a nice laugh, she has, and she told me she's got no problem with it... she's read the books by the other panelists of course and she reckons it's all fine writing, so she's in good company.

We found a dappled spot to sit in and spent some time wagging our chins before the session, on Miriam's lunch break. Nothing like a lunch break to get Miriam's chin wagging.

SJ Finn's got a really nice energy about her - which you would have noticed probly if you went to the panel this afternoon!  We started off talking about her book, about the story itself and about one of its major themes, of the way big decisions in your life end up with a double alteration - an alteration in the way you look at things, in the way you live... and the other alteration is in the world's response to what we do. Sometimes we have to make a decision that will put us through enormous changes - life changes. When Monty from This Too Shall Pass makes the changes she has to make, to be true to herself, the response from 'the world', from those around her is somehow more about the world than it is about Monty. Not all the responses are positive. Sometimes a negative response is the price you pay. We talked about the 'mainstream' and Miriam wondered if there is such a thing. Perhaps a construct, said Finn... a backdrop against which real life is shown in stark relief. So again, like in our short chat to Mandy Sayer last night, we encounter this idea that writing can bring to life the paradox of living a unique life, by setting it against a mainstream; by speaking of the extra-ordinariness of a normal life in an ordinary tone of voice.

And on her own journey, of getting this book written, edited, published, reviewed? Finn says it's been a learning curve.  She's staying grounded. There's always something else to look to. She says, you read the reviews and even though ten out of 11 are great, the niggly little comment in number 11 will be the one you focus on. She reckons the thing to do is be tenacious. Hang in there. Just keep working, writing, reading. We think she might be onto something.

The Stella Prize - launchy thing

Every festival has its themes, and this one has a few. One of the big ones, getting comments and replays all over the shop is Feminism (note capitalisation). As you can imagine, Miriam has some thoughts on what she tends in her trademark minimalist style of articulation to call 'that whole thing'  and no doubt she'll be gearing up to put some thought-through thoughts on paper at some point.  But like many women, she experiences a conflict when these subjects are in the air. She's of the generation separated from the kind of fight for equality that Germaine Greer and Anne Summers were fighting - those women were at university at the same time as Miriam's mother, and so their names and their thoughts were part of Miriam's bringing up, as a girl and a young lady [was she ever that?]. Miriam's grandmother was a single mum bringing up two girls on her own in the fifties - something a little bit unheard of at the time.  She feels ambivalence about the idea of Women's anything. The Women's Jazz Festival, Women's writing prizes... she'd rather believe that it isn't necessary. That that fight has been fought and won and now we're just getting on with being human beings.

Which is why the address by Anne Summers AO at the launch of The Stella Prize was a bit of an 'oops!' moment for Miriam. It sent her away thinking... Summers talked about the state of play for women writers in 1975 when Damned Whores and God's Police was first published. And how much improved it was when she wrote an introduction to th 1994 edition. And now, she says, we've taken some steps backwards. You know those moments when you realise you've been wandering around, not really looking at reality, but relying on some previous version that you were comfortable with and forgetting to check whether anything's changed?  That's what Miriam's been doing [which I could have told her if she'd bothered to ask]. We'll be keeping our ears peeled for updates.

Mandy, love and a free drink for Miriam

Hanging off Mandy Sayer's drink. Nice!
(she's fascinated by one of my stories here)

Okay, first thing. Embarrassing. Mandy Sayer turns up at the appointed meeting place (Beer Deluxe of course, everybody's appointed meeting place isn't it?) and a drink is ordered at the bar. Miriam does that thing where you turn your wallet upside down to make sure you've retrieved every last coin [you know, the gesture; it evokes the moths of disuse] and starts mumbling about  hoping she'd have enough change. Mandy immediately grabbed a lobster out of her own bag and bangs it down on the bar. Nice of her, but what the hell was Miriam thinking?

So, on with the chat but you know what Miriam's like. We're out under an umbrella in the cold, she's blushing a bit on the inside because she's been socially clumsy (she should be used to it by now - I am!!)  She's had a long day in the office, her shoes hurt and all the questions she prepared seem to fly out the window.

Luckily, there's a connection, kind of. Mandy's had a life filled with jazz - a strong connection with the music - and she's a writer who Miriam loves reading. We both really enjoyed her latest book Love in the years of Lunacy. Mandy's speaking today at the festival about The Fiction of Love on a panel with Craig Sherborne (Mandy says you've got to read his book The Amateur Science of Love. It's effing wonderful), Jo Case and Eleanor Catton. There's a few of those unexplored dark corners in gender relations in Mandy's book, we noticed. It's not a spoiler to say that the main character, Pearl, attempts and somehow pulls off a pretty good impersonation of a bloke through a large section of the book. We loved the whole thing actually the music, the setting, the relationship between brother and sister, the love, the jungle.

One of the things we like most about Mandy's writing is the way she writes so naturally and without affectation about odd behaviour. There's an acceptance behind this, that the human experience is rich and varied; the acknowledgment that a mainstream life is not actually the norm. Paradoxically.

So much for the interview. Miriam says 'thanks Mandy!' for the Gin and Tonic and for being so gracious about Miriam being a ditz. Miriam owes you one. I'll make sure it happens, don't worry.

Event details?  Today, Friday 2 September at 11:30 am The Fiction of Love

A classical education?

Sometimes you go to panels for the panel. And before anybody starts jumping up and down about me getting my sessions mixed up, with an image from one session (Lines for Birds) and a title from another. Well that's because Miriam's socialising kept us away from the Lines for Birds event and I wanted to make a point. And also to mention that this gorgeous book is the next planned purchase for her nibs. It's all she wants right now.  She's loved John Wolseley's work forever and is new to Barry Hill, so her coffee table will have one of these little beauties on it shortly!

Intrigued by the title of this chat about the classics, Miriam suggested we go. Okay by me - looked like an interesting panel of thinkers. It was interesting too, although the lovely chap in the salmon shirt three seats up from me had to be prodded by his wife when he started a gentle snoring in the middle of Barry Hill's segment of the afternoon. Lovely intro by Peter Rose. Though I should add that we all, including the people on stage, acknowledged that we hated that dreadful intro recording. Unease is building!  We should put a petition together! Peter did a much better job and we were off. Ian Morris from Stanford via various other places, Barry Hill of Lines for Birds and a great deal of other poetry thinking and word and Eliot Weinberger, policitical commentator and poetry person, who is spoken of in many conversations I've overheard recently as a hit of the festival. A real 'must hear'.

Miriam says she thinks the big idea she took away from this session is that the idea of classical texts or a classical education is bigger than just the texts or learnings of the Romans and the Greeks. The tracts of Confucious, the glyphs of the Mayans - the classics are different for each culture although some are shared by many.

Ian Morris started us off with a bit of a rundown of history's relationship with those Roman and Greek classics.  Barry Hill spoke of Songs of Central Australia by T.G.H. Strehlow as an Australian classic, whose essence he asserts we will find in other works from this country, which is what makes it a classic. Eliot Weinberger spoke about the classics in terms of culture rather than [the Morris approach] of history, and there was some discussion also of an essay from early this century where Weinberger bemoaned the lack of connection with the poetic tradition and the poets of the wider world, that he saw in young poets of the USA. He also said he feels there's been some improvement on that score. I guess I should say that in case all those young American poets reading this blog start sending him inappropriately castigating emails. As I'm sure they would have.

On the way to the writers festival - coffee, drinks, laughs

A coffee at Marios 'on the way in to the writers festival'

So apparently when Miriam says we're going to 'spend the weekend at the writers festival' it means we're going to hang out with people, in the general vicinity of the writers festival, or maybe in the inner suburbs, and we're going to drink coffee, check the program again, drink juice and talk and laugh for hours.

Thought I should warn you in case she ever says to you 'let's go and spend the weekend at the writers festival'.

Actually made it to Fed Square
a quick juice with pianist Mike Nock

I should add, in case she's reading this that if I had to choose between being in her handbag in a sock (sometimes even at an event) or being out on a table with a coffee or a juice or a wine and a friend, then I'd go for the latter. Or the latte. Every time.

We got to one event today.

One.

Meta sprezzatura

27 August, 4:00 pm - In Conversation with Cesar Aira

Cesar Aira had his translator Chris Andrews with him, and a linguistic assistant Ramon [didn't catch the name]. One audience member thanked them for an elegant interview and that's the perfect word. There was a simpatico between Aira and his translator that was tangible throughout the conversation and Aira's writing and themes were opened up for us. Ramon did not seem a good match - the gentle Chris would have been fine on his own - but it was a thoughtful gesture to have all that linguistic support - and it was barely necessary in theend.

Estelle Tang has done a blog post at MWF that Chris Andrews recommended and since I know nothing about Aira's writing and Miriam knows only slightly more, I have to limit my comments to what I heard and Miriam jotted down. She's reading The Seamstress and the Wind at the moment and she says that reading it is like listening to free jazz. There's a certain letting go that is required. And on the idea of jazz, the concept of improvisation is a big part of how Aira writes and edits. He writes each day in a cafe - just one or two small pages, he says - and that's it. Very little revision. Improvised writing, not unlike improvised music in its execution. He reads sometimes as many as 10 hours a day. Maybe that's the equivalent, in a way, of the hours of practice that an improvising musician needs to do, to be able to perform, unrevised, on stage. It may be a long bow, but it mades some kind of sense at the time.

Cesar Aira had a certain studied nonchalance about him - he talked about his writing by saying it was 'just me'  for the good bits and teh bad bits. A kind of ironic shurgging of the shoulders.  He explained the word sprezzatura to us, yet seemed to embody it. Elegant, restrained, intelligent. Very very Buenos Aires.

Plotting the perfect crime

L-R Michael Robotham, Tess Gerritson and
Rochelle Jackson (standing at podium)

27 August, 11:30 pm - Plotting the Perfect Crime


Peter Temple couldn't make it but Michael Robotham (with his book The Wreckage on display) and Tess Gerritson (with The Silent Girl) were relaxed in the morning Melbourne sunshine. Miriam chose a seat up the back, near an aisle. Like she does. Nice to be in the BMW Edge in the daytime.

Already getting sick of that [swear word swear word] pre-recorded introduction to events this year. The speaker is almost agressive. She projects her information and instructions at us. While probably intending to welcome us to an event, the intro actually makes us all tense up a bit. Also it ends with a generic 'please welcome our guests' and the audience hangs, silent, waiting for the names. I reckon Miriam should mention it to the festival and see if they'll change it. Maybe I could do the voice! What a good idea!

Am I grumpy today?  Rochelle Jackson got me a bit confused with an introductory journey of 'writers make it up' to 'writers are pathological criminals' to 'actually writers really do make it up' introduction. Michael Robotham and Tess Gerritt were great though! Robotham talked to us about character. He said that in crime fiction it's the characters we remember rather than the plot. Tess Gerritt talked to us about how women like reading stories with women as victims. Apparently it's a thing. She's a doctor and an anthropolgoist and loves archeology. Chock full of anecdotes and great stories! She talked about process - how she'll write a scene for the worst that could happen, and keep doing that to keep the story interesting. She told us the story of the nursing home at Nantucket where the doctor in charge was hard of hearing and when called out to confirm that a resident had passed away, he would check them with a stethoscope and not hear anything, declare them dead and then the 'body' would be taken to the morgue. The Nantucket Morgue was nicknamed the House of Rejuvenation for a while because a number of the residents woke up there - not dead at all!  Gerritt talked about these sorts of weird stories as starting points for larger narratives.

Question time and Miriam had to ask a question. She makes me so embarassed sometimes. It was a lame attempt at gender rebalance by asking Robotham how he felt about Gerritt's assertion that women like reading about women victims. Miriam was wondering if men like reading about male victims. Robotham said that actually men liked reading about men as the investigators and the criminals. Weird, eh? The truth is not particulary comfortable.

Beginning to notice the themes for all the writers we've been hearing - genre or literary. The questions about character values, their autobiographical sources - all the same, regardless of the writer

Books as [old] artefact

Saturday 27th August 2011
We're not going to be able to make it to the session this afternoon with Des Cowley on State Library Rare Prints  (at 3 pm) but we were able to catch up with Des earlier in the week and find out about this session and the Fine Impressions exhibition and the Curator's talk for that on Sunday 4  on Sunday. You know how Miriam is about books!  She goes on and on recently about eBooks and print books and what's going on and blah blah blah. I think somebody at the Jonathan Franzen endless introduction session on Thursday said it perfectly. Paraphrased, "I'm sick of talking about it and sick of hearing about it. The book will not die."

Des Cowley - mid-chat with me and Miriam's notebook

But I digress. Just one coffee into the day, and heading out to the festival in a little bit... and Miriam is doing a few loads of washing so I've managed to sneak onto he computer.

Des Cowleyis the Rare Printed Collections Manager at the State Library of Victoria.  He was happy to sit down and give us some info.

An artist's book, Des tells us,what happens when a print-based collaborates with a writer to create individual or very short run works of art in book form. It's a growing area and links in with the idea of where a physical book might go. Some artists even do print books as their main thing. The Fine Impressions exhibition shows work by 23 Melbourne artists spanning 11 years. It's a timeframe that crosses the millennium. Apparently significant. Note to self. I've got one of those timeframes that cross the millennium things going on too. Why isn't there a Noam session at the festival? 'Blogging Noams through the ages'  How about that for an idea! I like it!

Digressing again.

So, Des is a mine of information about artists books. He told us about William Morris, printmaker, writer, artisan and champion of the artists book 150+ years ago, with Kelmscott Press and his dream to make the ideal book. Miriam was pretty impressed and she's been Googling William Morris and Kelmscott ever since. Whatever keeps her off the streets, I say. And then a kind of rennaissance of the Artists Book that happened in the 1950s as artists began to get all excited and creative with the form. So it's an interesting area of discussion and there's and exhibition at the State Library until 16 February next year. Even after the MWF is finished you can take a look. Might see you there!

They had to put me in a special plastic bag to make
sure the book was protected. Humph.

Lucky for me, Des was generous enough to let me look at a couple of very old Artist Books. He explained that they need to be very carefuly looked after. He wasn't joking. Listen to this... when he showed me the book, he put it on a pillow. A pillow! Softer than my sock!  I'm going to start hanging out with the rare manuscripts!

Left speechless by a story with music and no words

She finally left the office and came down to Fed square where I was enjoying a glass of wine with a friend. I figured it was going to be okay - we're taking the tram home tonight and I don't have to drive. So there I was, just hanging off a glass of white wine, as one does.  Chatting to a random MWF volunteer!

Then off to the Melbourne Recital Centre for tonight's keynote event: Ben Walsh's score to Shaun Tan's The Arrival. Strange that on the way to a gorgeous screening on a large screen, we had to make our way past a big screen in Fed Square showing news at high volume. Disconcerting. Grumpy making. But, then again, mustn't dwell on the negative.

At the Recital Centre, we filed in to our seats, lights down and then the musicians appeared one by one on the stage, dressed like immigrants from a time long gone. Images started to appear - the story began. Ben as a kind of narrator and guide with his back to us and - standing in front of his drum kit,. Simultaneously drumming, conducting,  checking the screening. I think perhaps the right thing to say would be some wordless equivalent of miraculous and transcendent... these exquisite pictures of Tan's narrative, their depiction of the main character's experience of finding his way in an alien landscape... and as Tan said in his introduction, in this strange world we live in perhaps we're all immigrants.  For an hour and a half we were transported. Then we were sent out into the night, with our spirits lifted, our hearts lighter. I hear that this event will be presented in Adelaide in a few weeks. If you can see it, be prepared for music that complements the wordless narrative of a master story teller. Even Miriam was quiet for a minute.

Miriam knows a few of the musician, e.g. - Sandy Evans, Lucian McGuiness, Matt Ottignon, and was happy to introduce me to them and to meet some of the others, like Eden Ottignon, Bobby Singh and Grant Arthur ... there were more but you know what she's like - taking notes when she shouldn't and forgetting to when notes would really be the thing to do... We had a bit of an adventure getting into the Green Room - when the bloke at the desk heard that a reporter wanted to go upstairs, he started nevously calling people and we had to laughingly (ha ha ha ha!!!) tell him that Miriam was friends with some of the musicians and that the 'reporter' was a garden gnome about 6 cm long... no, hang on, we didn't do that last bit. From where I was, in the handbag, snug in my sock, it was all a bit 'mumble, mumble, [insert self-deprecating giggle here]' and the when we had permission, it was up the stairs, I came out of the sock and the fun began. You know how Green Rooms can be...

Yes, this is THE suitcase!  I'm an immigrant!

Ben Walsh wondering how I came to be drinking his beer

Grant Arthur balancing me on his hat. Fun!

Woo Hoo! Planking!

Hanging with Matt Ottignon

Sandy and me, getting acquainted

Back home. Tired. With the monster (aka Mikki the cat). Awww.

AAO at Bennetts - and being a writer listening to jazz

This little Australian Art Orchestra (AAO) residency at Bennetts Lane has been a bit special. Miriam went to one a couple of Thursdays ago and the AAO doesn't actually do terribly many 'regular club gigs' and after having enjoyed this series, she said she hopes we get a chance to hear more of them in this mode in the future. The configuration for this residency has been his nibs Paul Grabowsky on the pianner, Lachlan Davidson, saxophone; Tony Hicks, saxophone (and a bit of the ole clarinet which he loves loves loves playing); Scott Tinkler, trumpet; Eugene Ball, trumpet; Jordan Murray, bass trombone; Erkki Veltheim, viola; Phil Rex, double bass (and ye old tuba); Stephen Magnusson, guitar; and Niko Schäuble, drums. Plus special guests Peter Neville, percussion and Scott McConnachie, saxophone.

The photo above is what the orchestra looked like in the big room at Bennetts, as we lounged in the doorway, turning up towards the end of the first set, and inevitably in the middle of a quiet bit. It was actually a Scott Tinkler bit... where in the concert from 11 August, Miriam's notes say he sound pied-piper-like, leading us into a mysterious green forest. Not quite so pied-pipery this time but still that same sense of mystery and fairy tale in those sounds. Then the sinister notes of Erkki's strings, a kind of dissonance and we feel as though the forest is not the nurturing welcoming place it first appeared to be. This is music that seems to evoke landscape - it moves through this forest with bird-calls and hidden messages, and later the sky seems to widen and the sea is not far away. Miriam has confided in me that she thinks perhaps her lack of musical knowledge forces her to rely on metaphors within her own realm of understanding to articulate some of the things she hears. Like landscape. Always with the landscape. Possibly because it allows her to 'move forward' through the musical 'narrative'. I tell her (again and again actually, but she still worries) that that's okay. And in any case, the musicians don't seem to mind. They're happy to be playing for people who can listen - whatever form that listening takes.

Hanging out with His Nibs, Paul Grabowsky

And of course something else that Miriam loves about jazz and improvised music is that its musicians understand the creative process in a way that she can related to. Writing is done a little differently to music... its moments of creation are often edited in different ways, but there are many things that writers and jazz musicians have in common... and sometimes a writer finds it easier to talk to a musician about the creative process then to another writer!

Here's a little bloggy item Miriam wrote on this subject for SPUNC a while back >>>>

So... on with the writers festival...  More music in the next post, with Shaun Tan's The Arrival and the Orkestra of the Underground

Thanks to Paul Grabowsky for the lovely chat and for letting me hang off his glass of wine, briefly. Thanks (no really, thanks, Paul) also for the Rabbit Ears. Humph

Jonathan Franzen opens with 4 questions he doesn't like and finishes with another 4 he probably didn't like much either

Well, when I say Jonathan Franzen opened the festival... it took a bit of time to actually get to Jonathan, but well worth it.

The queue went around the corner - I stood in the end of it and Miriam's main festival friend La Luna (that's a fake name by the way) got there early so we scooted up the line to meet her, stoically ignoring dirty looks along the way.

Wondering if The Age Book of the Year would be announced before or after ... and then we found out. Welcome to country by Aunty Di Kerr, then Premier Ted Baillieu, which is where our appreciation for the Auslan signers for deaf audience members on stage really kicked in. Those two lovely girls (Jodie and Sarah, in case you'd like to know) cut Baillieu's waffle down to a few emphatic gestures and some appropriate filler-y stuff (not that I understand sign, but you can kind of get the gist, I hope). La Luna and Miriam were quite effusive in praise of the signers, and we were all a bit grumpy that they weren't acknowledged properly - except of course by the honoured guest Mr Franzen, bless his polite American cotton socks).

So we sat through Baillieu, sighing (us, not him), then The Age Book of the Year - exciting and mercifully precise and succinct - congrats to Fiona McGregor, fiction and the biggie (Indelible Ink) Jim Davidson,  non-fiction (A Three-Cornered Life) and John Tranter, poetry (Starlight: 150 Poems).Then the lovely Steve Grimwade, CEO of MWF then Ramona Koval and then, finally, Jonathan Franzen, speaking about autobiographical fiction.

Miriam loved it because it tied in with some of her own writing. The 'questions I hate being asked' thoughts that Franzen started with were good, but if Miriam had thought to get me to a microphone (she's a bit dense sometimes) I would have asked him to tell us some of the questions he did want to be asked!  The four questions he took at the end were excruciating... nothing like being embarrassed for the askers and the answerer all at the same time, and luckily S. Grimwade whisked J. Franzen off the stage at the right moment, allowing the distinguished guest to keep himself intact in the face of his struggle with some of the weirdnesses that were being asked.  Like 'if you were be writing your own biography posthumously, what would you have died of?' and 'if you were in a race with other writers, who would you like to pip at the post.' 

Miriam took some good things away, she says. About being personally at risk when writing, about the obligation to work on yourself as a writer, to make yourself the writer you need to be to write the book you need to write (Franzen said it better, but he's better paid for it than I am) 

In fact, so much food for thought that Miriam went walkies after the speech, to think about it a bit and ended up at a jazz club. Oops! I ended up making a 'tonk, tonk, tonk noise in her handbag, as she walked I was shoved in her handbag again,up against the moleskine [of course it's a moleskine] journal she writes in. Read the next post for jazz bits. 

Here are some rubbish photos.Fiona McGregor in a blur. Miriam was a bit shakey, in the presence of an award winning writer, and she didn't want to offend by using flash, ergo, shakey, rubbish photo. I hope she improves.(Miriam, not Fiona. Fiona was very gracious and smiley)

Also pictured, Jody and Sarah the signers. We loved them. We loved the expression, the drama, the literalness of some of the gestures. Thank you both!

Post script:  Ooh!  Oooh! Miriam just ran into Jonathan Franzen on the corner of a street in the city and said hello and wished him well. He was really nice and she ws grinning like an idio.

The festival begins

The festival started today. She'd left me at home - as she usually does when she goes to work - and the monster (aka Mikki the cat) has been freaking out due to harassment by the ginger tom from across the road, so of course she rushes home, feeds the cat, closes the window, cuddles the cat, changes into Writers Festival Clothes (yes, you read right and no, don't ask) and then patted the cat. Halfway ou thte door, remembered to shove me into the sock and then the handbag. The same capacious receptacle, yes, where I have spent many happy (!) hours in the past. On Cape Cod. In New York. Torino. Milano. Grand Plains, Nebraska. Bairnsdale. But it's been a while and now she's volunteerd me for this MWF blogging thing because she's too busy - like what's new - and so it's a 109 tram and Fed Square free-for-all.

Fine

Melbourne Writers Festival program launch

She went the launch, though she didn't tell me. I'd read it on the email and wondered if she was going. It was all 'subscribers only' and 'special event', well lah de dah.  I bet she smiled and chinked her wine glass and did the chit chat and the networking. I mean, she hasn't admitted it or anything. I'm only guessing, because it was Wednesday night and the program wasn't going to be in the paper until Friday, yet she had a copy, tucked away in her handbag, things already circled in it.And she was humming while she got the quadruped's raw-meat-in-a-saucer special gourmet dinner.

Good news is, she's busy and I heard her telling the quadruped that she wants me to blog the festival this year, so she knows what's going on. I'm on a budget. I have to go to some paid events and some free events. I may have to hang off a few wine glasses, get myself photographed with a few famous thinkers, writers, and literary tragics.

Oh well, better than hanging around in the geranium pot like I have been. Should be good actually. Something different.