Mini Artists Retreat

On Friday I came back to reality after spending four creative and relaxing days in Eden, a small coastal town in New South Wales. I had gone there with an artist friend of mine, she to paint and I to write and we had chosen Eden as it is halfway between Melbourne, where I live and Sydney where she lives. It had been awhile since either of us could fully concentrate on our creative sides and it was planned as a mini artists retreat.

We stayed in a two bedroom self contained unit overlooking the water. We brought our own food, alcohol and items necessary to be creative – in her case, canvases, paints, brushes and drop sheets, in mine, a computer, internet connection and my usb. The first two days we had simply wonderful weather, blue skies, sunshine and, when the clouds appeared, they were the most creative and artistic clouds ever.

Eden is a fishing town, with a season of whale watching, which unfortunately we missed by a week. We didn’t do a lot of sight seeing, but what we did see were spectacular views surrounding a town that sleeps in the winter and no doubt comes to life in the summer. The only downside for both of us was the drive there and back – around seven hours for each of us.

By the time we left on Friday morning, my friend had the bones of one painting well underway and I was halfway through my second short story. My aim is to finish both stories before the end of next week in order to send them off to two competitions. I’ve decided I could seriously cope with the lifestyle of a full time author and writer, provided of course that I can live with ocean views.

I see old people!

I went to a concert of 60s and 70s music the other night. It was advertised as being a concert made up of the original bands and artists, but there were only a handful of originals there, the rest of the band members were ringins from a different, more modern era. I have a fairly good recollection of music from that time but even my memory didn’t stretch far enough to remember some of the artists on stage and I can’t recollect many of the songs they sung. However the crowd that was there obviously did recollect the songs and proved it by belting out each chorus while gyrating as best they could considering the creak of arthritis that filled the air and the beer guts the men were toting with them.

I spent a fair bit of the night gazing at my fellow audience members, as I often do when I go out, and it was frightening to see how many old people were gathered in one spot, under the same roof without being anywhere near a retirement village. It was then the first awful thought hit me – I was one of them. Sure I wasn’t the oldest member of the audience, but I wouldn’t have been the youngest either. I was surrounded by my generation, with all its wrinkles and flabbiness and fake tans and pot guts. Trust me; I did not like that thought at all. That thought made me shiver “like bad news on the door step”... ah but someone has already used that line.

The only thing scarier than an older audience dressing up like they did in their teens and getting all groovy with each other, is watching musicians in their 60s and 70s attempting to swivel sexily while croaking out the songs that made them famous. It is either awesome or embarrassing that they are still on stage at this time of their lives and I’m leaning toward embarrassing. There is something about the effects of emphysema and the use of a cane that detract from their overall performance.

Now I have nothing against any of these performers in their heyday – although there weren’t many that performed the other night that I actually followed in the 70s. But some music just doesn’t cut it when performed live by aged musicians. We aren’t talking Bach or Strauss here – classical music can be produced at any age, one only has to read the tabloids to follow the careers of virtuoso musicians from 8 to 80. We are talking full on rock and roll, which, when performed live, requires all the relevant hip jerking, sexually explicit grinding motions that normally accompany it. Not to mention the jumping up and down and around the stage. It is painful to watch someone 60+ attempting to make those same moves.

I went to the concert with a friend of mine. She had bought tickets for herself and her husband but he refused to go once he had seen the list of performers. Whatever I thought of the entertainment, I enjoyed the night out catching up with my friend and the other people on our table (total strangers) added a bit of comedy to the evening. She never stopped talking and he never stopped trying to shut her up, in between the chatter and the shooshing they drank copious amounts of alcohol and regaled us with stories from their youth.

Wolf Hall

As soon as I saw this book on the library shelves I felt some slight apprehension. It is a very thick book and I wondered if I would ever finish it. My uneasiness only worsened when, glancing through the pages, it dawned on me that this was an historical novel and I don’t usually like historical novels. Luckily the story line was set in a period of English history that I don’t mind reading about – the time of Henry VIII.

When I curled up in bed that night and began to read Wolf Hall the first thing that struck me was how easy it was to read. The language flows in an almost poetical style and, although you get the sense of olde Englande, it is actually easy to understand. Following who is talking can be slightly tricky at times and Mantle’s use of person sometimes confused me, but overall I enjoyed the actual reading of this novel.

The characters were well described and even the lowliest of them was quite interesting. I especially got pleasure from the consistency of the characters’ behaviour as a few of them were with me throughout the entire story and it was nice to know they became reasonably predictable.

Nevertheless this book takes some reading and about half way through I started to lose my attention span and wish that either the story had been told in a shorter version or some of the peripheral bits had been left out. I began to get bored and found myself sneaking peeks at the last few pages of the book. Despite my growing lack of interest I managed to finish the book and I’m glad I did.

Reading this book did mean doing some research, although it’s not a necessity and the story can be enjoyed without knowing the historical detail. However I did look up several of the characters including the main man Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary. I didn’t even know Anne Boleyn had a sister until I read this book! I also reacquainted myself with some of the historical facts from that time as my high school history lessons are buried deep in the whorls of my brain and not easily retrievable.

I can recommend this book to anyone who gets pleasure from reading historical novels or anyone who enjoys good characterisation and plot.

The next novel I plan to read is The White Tiger and I will let you know how that goes as soon as I tackle it!

The cons and cons of responsibility

At this moment in time I would like nothing better than to have no responsibility.

I’m tired of being responsible for the household budget and constantly attempting to make ends meet. I’ve had enough of finding budget friendly meals and scrimping and saving on a daily basis. I want to be irresponsible. I want to spend money no matter if I have it or not. I don’t want to pay bills any more. I don’t want to make car repayments or pay the rent.

I would like to stay in bed in the morning instead of going to work. I would like to lounge around all day and read or write or just do whatever I felt like at the time. I don’t want to be responsible for the housework or making sure there are enough toilet paper rolls in the bathroom or check that the milk hasn’t gone off.

I don’t want to be the one who is responsible for keeping the clothes clean, getting the housework done, calling the lawn man to do the lawns or doing the shopping. I don’t want to always be the one who remembers to take the garbage out. I want someone else to do the remembering.

I don’t want to be the person at work that constantly remembers to do things that others forget. I don’t want that responsibility.

I want to be more spontaneous. I want to be more fun. I want to be a teenager again. Those teenage years really were the best. I had no responsibility. I confess I didn’t always go to school. I spent many a summer day lazing on the beach. My only worries were what to wear, where to go and which friend to call next. It was a fabulous time of life, full of fun and absolutely no responsibility. The things we used to do! There were parties that happened on the spur of the moment and nights on the beach around hastily lit bonfires that went on and on. There were trips to the country and drives that took us aimlessly to no place in particular.

But the spontaneous life has gone. I can’t stay in bed or, eventually, I won’t get paid. Someone has to stock the fridge and the pantry or there won’t be any food in the house and if I didn’t clean the house I don’t think I could live in it! If I didn’t pay the bills we probably wouldn’t have a house to live in. I doubt I would be allowed to light a fire on the beach these days and I can’t drive aimlessly because fuel for the car costs too much. The friends I used to spend relaxing days and nights with now live far away and my friends here are also weighed down with responsibility.

The only option seems to be to become enormously wealthy so I can hire someone to be responsible for me.

Focus

Setting a goal is often easy. Focussing on achieving that goal is sometimes difficult and frequently unexciting. No matter how many times one reminds oneself that the outcome will be worth it and reward in itself, the pathway can be steep and lonely with plenty of distractions along the way.

I am already a writer. My goal is to become a successful author and hopefully a financially successful author. It’s taken me a lifetime to realise what I want to be when I grow up but now the decision is made, its one I’m very comfortable with. However, the steps I must climb to reach my goal will neither be comfortable nor painless. I guess I could have chosen an easier career, however I’ve always enjoyed challenges.

I’m taking baby steps now, learning to walk before I fly. I’ve joined a local writer’s club and attended my first meeting last week. They are all really lovely people and I hope I didn’t put them off with my contribution to the weekly readings. I’d brought with me my first unfinished draft of a short story I plan to enter in a competition. I might be wrong but I think they were a little bit uncomfortable with the two “f” words and the delicately worded masturbation scene.

Our state’s Writers Centre runs various events including a once a month “Write Club” (the first rule of Write Club is, you don’t talk about Write Club…) and I went there last week. It was great. I met some like minded people, listened to an awesome poet and drank a couple of red wines. What more could a girl want? I plan on attending Write Club whenever I can, as well as some of the other events at the Writers Centre.

I’ve entered another short story competition and, as I mentioned above, I’m planning to enter yet another one. I find short stories incredibly challenging to write. I seem to either be able to write short posts or lengthy screeds, but not much in between. But it’s a challenge I’m enjoying taking up. I know I have stories to tell and I plan to tell them in the best way I can.

However, despite the positive moves I’ve made toward becoming a successful author, I still tend to lose focus now and again. Sometimes I will be sidetracked by other challenges or events or issues and I have to keep asking myself “if I do this will it lead to becoming a successful author?” It’s the only way I can keep on track. If the answer is no, I try hard to ignore the issue, turn down the challenge and disregard the event. There are times I become almost desperate with situations and I have to remind myself to stop, take a breath and refocus on my goal. It’s not easy and it’s not pretty but it has to be done.

Breath

When I was school age I read many books – up to six a day. When I was very young I read Enid Blyton’s novels, the Narnia series, Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”, “Little Men” and “Jo’s Boy” and many other books with authors and titles I can’t remember. As I grew older I read John Le Carre, Harold Robbins, Daphne Du Maurier, Elizabeth Goudge and many many others. Sometimes I read books more than once, but that was pretty rare. With all the books I read the one criterion I had that, in my eyes, made the book a “good” one was whether or not I could put it down. My favorites were the books where I would miss meals in order to keep reading and where I would suddenly wonder why the pages were getting more difficult to read and realise the sun had gone down and it was time to turn the light on.

Breath by Tim Winton is one of those books that are difficult to put down, although I have to admit the responsibility of going to work and looking after a family did mean I had to force myself into the real world now and again. I found I could easily relate to Winton’s characters and, as I grew up in Western Australia, I could also visualise the scenery. Even though the main characters were male, I enjoyed their journeys despite some of the uncomfortable twists and turns. I can really recommend this book as one that is easy and pleasurable to read. I read somewhere recently that Breath is being made into a movie and I wonder how they will translate some of the scenes but I’m sure it will be a good one.

Having read Breath I thought I would read another of Winton’s books “Cloudstreet” which has been made into a mini series. I have to admit I didn’t enjoy this one half as much as Breath, in fact I didn’t enjoy it at all. Cloudstreet is set in the early 1900’s mostly in Perth, Western Australia around the suburbs where I lived from the age of 10. I guess I’m not a fan of historical novels and the characters simply annoyed me as I’m also not tolerant of people who sit around and moan about their lot in life or are extremely foolish in one way or another. I finally finished the book last night and I know for a fact I won’t be watching the mini series!

Strange isn’t it how one can have such different opinions of two books by the same author! I guess writers give birth to books as mothers give birth to children – a lot of hard work goes into the process but the outcome is not guaranteed to be the same as the first or the second, etc. And books really do have their own identities and personalities. Some of them demand attention and some are happy to sit quietly on the shelf, overlooked until needed.

I have one exam on 20 June to study for and then I will start my reading again. Looking forward to finishing the exam and reporting on the next book I read!

The search for identity and belonging

"Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient." Malcolm X

Although I didn’t enjoy reading “The Finkler Question” (see my last post) it did stir in me, yet again, the desire to find my identity. Not that I ever lost my identity, it didn’t fall out of my pocket or disappear down the drain with the shampoo as I washed my hair. I’ve just never really worked out who I am or where I belong.

Once a week I volunteer at an English conversation class for migrants and refugees. For one hour every week I sit and talk to a group of people, young and old, male and female, who are all attempting to learn the English language. They all know where they come from and where they belong. They come from China, Japan, Iran, Korea, Romania, Vietnam and Myanmar. They are proud of their cultures and they belong to their families and their histories. But when they ask me where I come from, I’m not sure what to say.

Do I simply tell them I was born in America and that at age 10 my parents kidnapped me and forced me to live in Australia? Or do I dig deeper into my family’s roots? Do I tell them that my mother’s parents were Russian, but she was born in France? Do I tell them my father’s ancestors were German, but his family lived in the Baltic States? Am I Russian? Am I German? Am I American or Australian?

Citizenship doesn’t matter here. I have dual Australian/American citizenship. Of the two I have always felt more American. I’m proud of the country where I was born and I always will be. But being proud of being born American doesn’t give me an identity, nor does it create a firm sense of belonging. Conversely it makes me feel even more alone seeing that most people I meet refuse to believe I’m American as I no longer have the accent. I am also happy I live in Australia. If I hadn’t have moved here I would never have had my wonderful boys. In a way I have no country, or maybe many countries.

I sometimes wish I had been born into a large family, one with traditions and celebrations and gatherings. But there was only ever me, my parents and my grandparents on my mother’s side. There was an awful lot of religion, but not much celebration and we were too few to gather.

Recently I’ve been piecing together my family history. It’s a fascinating task and one which will take me a long time to complete. Each time I find another bit of information, go down another path, uncover another fact, I’m finding out who I am and where I belong. It’s a work in progress, a journey rather than a destination and one day I might have the answers I’m looking for and the sense of belonging I need.