Musical meanings

 I’ve always loved musical sound tracks in novels. Knowing the music they listen to is another way to get to know the characters.  Music, rhythm and even silence can define their identities.

Whale Rock has its own sound track from salsa to rock ‘n’ roll. Most of the characters are misfits and damaged people. In a sense, they have lost their rhythm. In particular Rafael, a Nicaraguan immigrant, is out of tune with life in a new country where he doesn’t feel he’s accepted. The way the characters’ alienation in this world intersects with music, however, also gives their stories meaning.

In one of the units I studied as part of my Masters, we looked at The Time of our Singing by Richard Powers (2003) where the music, while carrying identity, is a metaphor for a wider look at racial tension, brutal societies and personal trauma. It can also be a metaphor for divisions between people in an uncaring society.

This dense and poetic novel is set during the tumultuous civil rights period in the United States. Rebellion was in the air and was reflected in the music. Rock’n’roll was crossing over from only being performed by Blacks to a wider audience as it paid homage to its roots - the slave songs and chants of the cotton fields that became the blues and the gospel that became soul.

In Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom (1986), Peter Guralnick describes soul music as: “the far less controlled, gospel-based, emotion-baring kind of music that grew up in the wake of the success of Ray Charles from about 1954 on and came to its full flowering, along with motown, in the early 1960s”. He says, it was “an expression of rebellion, or at least of discontent” and “accompanied the Civil Rights Movement almost step by step, its success directly reflecting the giant strides that integration was making”.

Music in itself can be political, not just the words of the songs but the sheer act of listening to it in defiance of the authorities. Music during the civil rights period strove to break down barriers between the races, but in Cuba and Latin America it was a sign of class differences, and to a certain extent, ethnic differences between the Blacks, Indians and the Spanish descendants.  Like blues and soul, much of Latin music would not exist without the African slave trade.

In Cuba, the rumba is a dance of the common people, in particular Black Cubans, and it is the racial tension exemplified through music and the influence of Santeria  (or Cuban voodoo) in the  revolution that informs the narrative of my play, Havana, Harlem. 

In 1960, around the same time as much of the setting of The Time of our Singing Cuban leader Fidel Casto visited New York to speak at the United Nations. Banned from every hotel in Manhattan he and his entourage were offered accommodation at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem by local Blacks. My character, Celia Sanchez, (Castro’s right hand woman and the white daughter of a sugar plantation doctor) learnt rumba from Jose, her former Black lover and guerrilla fighter, who just happens to be a waiter at this hotel.

The “revolutionary baby” of Cuba was Nicaragua in Central America where the Sandinistas, a group of left wing revolutionaries, toppled the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. Among the leaders of the new government were novelists and poets such as Sergio Ramirez, Giaconda Belli and Tomás Borge, who wrote about social issues and patriotism and the actual experience of being guerrilla fighters, as well as the revolution’s aftermath.

While revolutionary music took the form more prominently of folksongs in Nicaragua, it would be hard to find a Nicaraguan who couldn’t salsa, a musical form also formed by the merging of African and Caribbean musical traditions. Other popular music there with even stronger indigenous roots is the Palo de Mayo from the Atlantic Coast.

Belli fictionalizes her experience in The Inhabited Woman where Lavinia, a middle class architect, is introduced to radical politics by her enigmatic boss, Felipe, and finally joins the revolutionary Movement. Like many Latin writers post-1970s Belli has found politics can be felt most keenly in the ordinary, when people are prepared to continue with everyday life in the face of war and economic embargoes, and that includes dancing.

Belli also seems to be saying that in times of change and war,  music as well as being escapism from the drudgery of everyday life, may be the only way such men, who have been ruled by machismo, can finally express themselves.

In Whale Rock, an accident on a building site triggers traumatic flashbacks to Rafael’s own experiences of torture in Nicaragua in the 1980s, a time when he was a street fighter in the revolution and later a cameraman working with an American journalist, Lana. He has Post Traumatic Stress 

Disorder but has managed to keep it at bay, until this accident “returns” him to the original trauma.

Music in Rafael’s home country is strongly linked to race and identity. He feels that in Australia his music has been appropriated by people who do not share this background and have no understanding of its roots and meaning. In Australia where so many people either feel they can’t dance or really can’t dance, the latest fashion is more recognised than deeply-held beliefs, or so Rafael believes. The music scene here only reinforces his alienation.

The other main character, Shannon, is an Australian former dancer in her thirties of Irish descent, who runs a café in Sydney’s eastern beaches. She has suffered a stillbirth and her marriage has broken up; her five-year-old son lives with his father. She too feels as if she’s lost her rhythm, her reason for being. She no longer wants to dance or even enjoy music.

Sensory triggers of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch force characters back into their involuntary memories or as in the case of Rafael flashbacks that as his PTSD progresses become more and more terrifying.

The experiences recalled are traumatic in different ways. But a stubbornly recurring memory in fiction as in life doesn’t have to be of something horrific but one that provokes strong emotion. Incidents that cause shame, humiliation and embarrassment can give rise to flashbacks even if they don’t involve violence. Those suffering trauma in Nicaragua particularly from the effects of the war against the US-backed Contras in the 1980s have said that “certain songs” have had the power to trigger painful memories.

A flashback is used in novels as a device for time travel and also dramatic tension. But music can also, in fiction as in real life, suspend time.

Music can also be used to express the talents but also the cultural gaps, dilemmas, frustrations and eventually tragic emotions of the main characters. 

WHO DO YOU WRITE FOR?

My Uber driver asked me if I was going to work.

“No,” I said. “I work from home.”

And of course then came the inevitable question: what sort of work do you do?

I explained I was a journalist and writer and my novel was about to come out.

“Oh, so do you write to please the readers or yourself?” he asked.

I thought that was an odd sort of question, after all how on earth can you please all the readers all the time? I answered, to please myself.

“Well, if you want to make money you have to please the readers,” he said.

I don’t think you can write fiction with that aim in mind. You have to write what you must write, what you feel you HAVE to write, what is affecting you deeply and filling up your waking hours (and your non-waking ones most of the time). I’m still mulling over his words although at the time I did not find them particularly useful.

Anyway, my copies of Whale Rock have finally arrived. And they’re looking good. The hard work so far has paid off.  IndieMosh has done a fantastic job, very efficient and helpful the whole way through the process. And I love the cover design by Ally Mosher.

My story began many, many years ago when I was living and reporting from Nicaragua, covering the Sandinista revolution in the mid-1980s, where I heard a rumour about a military hospital using unusual methods to treat soldiers for what was then known as war neurosis. The term PTSD hadn’t yet been universally adopted.

I had become interested in the subject of trauma, or in this case, the psychological effects of war when meeting former soldiers there who were suffering from it. I interviewed Auxiladora Marenco, a Nicaraguan psychotherapist, who explained it wasn’t a topic that the Sandinistas wanted to embrace. They wanted people to believe that none of their soldiers would be traumatised for they were fighting for the fatherland. 

I wanted to tell some of this story in my novel as a series of traumatic flashbacks experienced by Rafael, a Nicaraguan former soldier who has lived in Australia for more than 20 years.

Here I have witnessed the impact of the traumatic policies that led to the Stolen Generations, those who were taken away from their parents, and their children and grandchildren. My character, Colin, is based on the people I know and love.

Another character, Vesna, has also had her own share of trauma, covering the war in Kosovo while Shannon too is shattered  by her grief. 

It has been said that grief and trauma are powerful triggers of character-based flashbacks, and a situation, sight or smell might trigger suppressed memories of the past.

We have come to know much more about this phenomenon since the Vietnam War, and the willingness of veterans to later speak out about their memories. Perhaps earlier veterans may have been less forthcoming for cultural reasons. (I know for example that it took a long while and an interview with a PhD candidate for my father to talk about the psychological effects of his war experience.) 

The willingness of a new generation of veterans to talk may have given non-combatants a new understanding of an old phenomenon and so contributed to its wider exploitation in fiction.

I am presently enjoying the writing of famous American author JD Salinger, who  was heavily influenced by his own war experience, which informs his short stories, in particular For Esme – with Love and Squalor, and A Perfect Day for Bananafish.   His descriptions of the soldiers who are obviously suffering PTSD are chillingly brilliant. But he also uses humour in the conversations with Esme and others.

People who have gone through these experiences often have the best senses of humour – even if dark and often cynical – and compassion for their fellow beings. I certainly found that when I interviewed women (and their partners) who have had stillbirths. They have deeply inspired me to write the intertwining stories that form Whale Rock.

Googling Salinger I discovered that he apparently also helped to introduce the modern concept of “selling out”.  According to one writer, to Salinger, selling out, or abusing a talent to receive money is one of the worst sins an artist can commit. So take that, Uber driver.

TO BUNNINGS VIA TAMWORTH

Dobe Newton of The Bushwackers

You couldn't feel more Strayan than when singing along to I am Australian at a Bushwackers gig at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

The song was written in 1987 by Bruce Woodley of The Seekers and Dobe Newton - the very colourful lagerphone player/front man of The Bushwackers - and it has been suggested many times that it would make a much better national anthem than the one we're stuck with.

"We are one, but we are many" seems to sum it all up very tidily.

I can't remember when I first went to hear the Bushwackers play their Australian music but last Saturday night was up there with those early concerts. It was a wonderful performance including Celtic instruments, rousing singing and much enthusiasm even if I'm not a big fan of people over 60 wearing beach gear at a night event.(The theme was Back to the Beach.)

The Bushwackers 

We had a brilliant few days at the festival, running from one show to the next, starting with the free concert in the park, including the trio, Bennett, Bowtell and Urquhart, Kimberley Gold at the Post Office Hotel, a beautiful vaudeville performance on Saturday afternoon at a pub by legendary Mic Conway, fantastic, raunchy and moving Beccy Cole, the fun duo, The Sweet Jelly Rolls, some brilliant buskers in Peel Street....and much much more. 

Mic Conway

                                          
For a live-music-starved fan it was Heaven. Only gripe: come on audiences move a bit with the music and show some enthusiasm and appreciation of the incredible musicians. You don't lose your rhythm as you get older, it just gets a bit sloppier.

Peel Street buskers 

So for those who want to show their patriotism on Australia Day (January 26, stupid date) there is no need to wrap yourself in an Australian flag. You could just use your imagination and brains and write a bloody good song.

Meanwhile, The Bushwackers have a new and very appropriate song also for this day - Another Trip to Bunnings. Might just take myself over there to buy a curtain bracket, some plugs and screws and grab a sausage sandwich while I'm at it.

'ave a bloody good day, mate.


For my foreign friends who don't know the song here are the lyrics:
(it's more like 70,000 years but still.....)

I came from the dream-time,
From the dusty red-soil plains.
I am the ancient heart,
The keeper of the flame.
I stood upon the rocky shores,
I watched the tall ships come,
For forty thousand years I've been
The first Australian.

I came upon the prison ship,
Bowed down by iron chains,
I fought the land, endured the lash,
And waited for the rains.
I'm a settler, I'm a farmer's wife
On a dry and barren run,
A convict, then a free man,
I became Australian.

I'm the daughter of a digger
Who sought the mother lode.
The girl became a woman
On the long and dusty road.
I'm a child of the Depression,
I saw the good times come,
I'm a bushie, I'm a battler,
I am Australian.

We are one, but we are many,
And from all the lands on earth we come.
We'll share a dream and sing with one voice,
"I am, you are, we are Australian"

I'm a teller of stories,
I'm a singer of songs,
I am Albert Namatjira
And I paint the ghostly gums.
I'm Clancy on his horse,
I'm Ned Kelly on the run,
I'm the one who waltzed Matilda,
I am Australian.

I'm the hot wind from the desert,
I'm the black soil of the plains,
I'm the mountains and the valleys,
I'm the drought and flooding rains.
I am the rock, I am the sky,
The rivers when they run,
The spirit of this great land,
I am Australian.

We are one, but we are many,
And from all the lands on earth we come.
We'll share a dream and sing with one voice,
"I am, you are, we are Australian."

"I am, you are, we are Australian."

Written by Bruce Woodley, Dobe Newton • Copyright © Spirit Music Group, BMG Rights Management US, LLC

Cool cars on hot days

The best place to be on a 44-degree day is an air-conditioned car. We left Foxground on the NSW south coast at 9.18am and arrived at Bathurst at 4.01pm.

At Crookwell we stopped to peruse a shop called Bush Rangers and was told by the lovely shopkeeper this had nothing to do with bushrangers. But we later learnt that the Ribbon Gang hid out at Abercrombie Caves and finally were caught. In true Australian fashion they were hung, and a lane was named after them in Bathurst.

We had coffee at a converted picture theatre where we were told the rich sat upstairs and threw jaffas at the poor down below.

We ended the day with a gin and basil smash at Webb and Co bar. The best way to cool down on a very long hot day.

Rebecca and Kate Kelly

I met artist Rebecca Wilson in Beijing in January. We had a great chat and she invited me out to Hill End, where she lives in western NSW.  I wrote the story below after that visit. It was fun, but very cold. It snowed the following week. I learnt a lot about Kate Kelly through this and saw some wonderful country. Keep an eye out for updates on Hill End and what other artists are doing out there in the picturesque and historic gold mining village.

Jul 09, 2016 1:37p MyCareer cover: From gold mine to art and organics m.smh.com.au My story on artist/writer Rebecca Wilson, who lives at Hill End, NSW. Loved spending time with her - and Kate!

Some other good travel blogs to follow

I thought you might be interested in this:

http://travelboatinglifestyle.com/best-36-travel-blogs-to-follow/

TRAVEL FACES: VALE TANNY POLSTER

I met Tanny (Nathaniel) Polster in 1986 in Washington DC. I was on the way to Nicaragua to spend a year or so covering Central America for The Age and other publications.

My friend and colleague, Mike Steketee, had given me his number, saying he was a remarkable older journalist, really worth looking up. We kept in touch through my time in Central America and later New York and then when I returned home to Australia, becoming great friends, pen pals in many ways, writing letters in the early days and emails later. He encouraged me with my writing, sending me books and other interesting and unusual presents. Whenever I could when I was in the US I visited him.

Tanny was born on December 30, 1921 and died at the age of 93 this year.

According to the very brief death notice I found he was a World War Two veteran, anti-poverty program worker, lobbyist for the National Cancer Institute, and publisher of specialised medical newsletters of heart, lung and blood and adolescent medicine.

From what he’s told me over the years he grew up in Columbus, Ohio. His father had come to the US as a teenager from then Austria-Hungary, while his mother’s family was from Russia.

Tanny was a political animal. Being a Jewish man and a humanitarian , he was horrified by what he saw in Europe during his time in a US Air Force squadron but even more horrified by the later treatment of refugees by the US.

“The military never told home folks we bombed Switzerland during WW II,” he wrote in an email. “Minor mistake by navigator of bombing crew.”

He told how he met a mixed race couple at a party in Chicago, who had been living in Switzerland, and how the “white wife said her mother was in the town bombed by U.S. planes. Her mother had her in her arms as she ran away from the explosions”.

“I detested telling her that my bomber group dropped those bombs.  My automatic cameras in the planes verified the town bombed.

"That day, a Brooklyn G.I. warned me to insist on flight pay in the few flights I took.  His plane exploded on take-off a few minutes later. No survivors. Futile memories. We got rid of Hitler while committing genocide of German civilians.”

Back home, he worked as a journalist at the Washington Post and in the Deep South including Savannah and Charleston, Georgia. He was deeply involved in supporting the Civil Rights movement.

It was during this time that he met John Tiller, a Black former college basketballer from Philadelphia, who later became an adviser to Alexander Haig and George Bush Senior, particularly in the areas of health care reform.

“He and I became friends when that was extremely rare, white and black,” Tanny said, almost surprised that they were able to overlook their different political views for all those years.

He considered John the best man he ever knew.

Tanny and I were having lunch in a Washington restaurant one day I think in 1987 when I glanced out the window to see a tall, striking man glide past. And then he came inside, pulling a chair out and sitting at our table.

“I’ve invited John because I know he can show you all the best dance clubs and bars in DC,” Tanny announced.

John and I stayed friends until his death from lung cancer in May, 2012. And some of the best times of my life were spent with those two.

In the 2000s, Tanny met his second wife, Janet Schirn, a well-known interior designer - past President of the American Society of Interior Designers as well as a Fellow of the Society -and moved to Chicago. She was a wonderful, artistic, inspiring woman, who told me once Arnold Schwarzenegger was among her clients.

I visited them when she was very ill in 2008 and she told me Tanny was the love of her life.

But after she died he had to move out of the apartment, finding one closer to the lake, where we went swimming together the last time I visited him in 2011.

Tanny was still working, lobbying to make changes to a society he felt was not just economically bankrupt but in many ways morally as well.

While ostensibly a Democrat, he was no fan of the Clintons and more an admirer of Michelle Obama than Barack. He believed change had to come from way above the president.


This is from one of his later emails to me: “My great nephew (age 40 or 50) moans that we are a 3rd world nation. China owns us via U.S. government bond purchases. France, Spain, Japan, and other dinky nations have faster trains.  Our bridges are falling down. Our roads are pitted. Obama, the social worker, told the Wall Street crooks to stay out of jail and put taxpayers into eternal debt with not a community person, not a layman, not a non-crook in on the talks. Now he doesn't know how to pretty-up the $6 to $11 million a year that the crooks are paying themselves. Rubin is God's gift to anti-Semitism. He re-appoints the government officials who presided over the chaos.  Manufacturing is down.  Automobile makers and airlines are bankrupt. The daily newspaper industry is dying.”

He felt so strongly about the newspaper devastation that he spent a year working on a plan for the Chicago Tribune that he thought would “1) expand circulation and 2) wake up America's sleeping electorate.  I tried selling it twice, but fumbled the ball.  I have taken months to improve the selling of it. Just finished tonight”.

He wept at the inefficiency of American public transport, noting he could only get a midnight train to visit his sister in Pittsburgh.

“Inter-city travel in the U.S is now a crushing bore: Full body X-rays to learn if you have a tooth capped or a bomb in your bowel.  Rules, I.D. cards, delays, long lines, mistakes,” he said in an email to me in 2011.

He was also very funny, with a wicked sense of humour that many did not understand or appreciate.

Once her ordered me a martini in Chicago and told the waitress to “cut the vegetables” – ie the garnish!

“Down the street there is an institution where girls in mid-thigh skirts and spike heels attend,” he emailed once.  “It is named Detention (no joke).  I've never been inside, but I had my pocket picked nearby. On weekends 2 or 3 police cruisers monitor the folks.  It's not in South Dakota, but you could write about it.”

Until his later years Tanny was pretty fit. He’d take an inflatable boat in his car boot to one of the Chicago rivers, blow it up and row for miles. He took me once on a freezing, winter day.

He was a ladies’ man, always admiring good looks and intelligence – he liked to have a woman companion.

There is a lot I don’t know about Tanny – about his first marriage and daughter although he did tell me a little. And forgive me if there is information I have left out.

“My first wife, Iris, was sitting at a lunch counter in Savannah, demonstrating against segregation.  A white man came in and stuck a foot-long dagger into the back and lungs of a man (demonstrator?) two seats from Iris,” he said once explaining what it was like in the South during the Civil Rights period.

In later years he become involved in a movement called the Villages for older people -  voluntary non-government groups  where members seek help from one another.

“These new units area all called Village something or other and are therapeutic for usually abrasive city living in U.S.A   A club of journalists inside the Village are engaged in writing memoirs and trading them.”

Tanny was a trailblazing journalist, activist and lobbyist who never received the recognition he deserved (not that he would have cared one hoot) and an incredible friend.

He wrote to me after a phone conversation with John not long before our darling friend died.

“He makes me realize what a boon it is, knowing you and him during my lifetime.”

No, Tanny, the pleasure was all mine.

 # Travel #USA #Politics #Media