WORD Christchurch: Soundtrack, or Dancing about Architecture
‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.’ Martin Mull’s quote gave this session its subtitle, and described how difficult the task set to the four speakers was: to present new writing on the music that has provided the soundtrack to their life’s work, or just to their life. Immediately each writer was given an almost impossible task, as host Kiran Dass sympathised, that being, who and what to write about? Over the course of Soundtrack it became evident that music is integral to the lives of these four writers.
Nic Low shares the chaotic music that was the soundtrack to writing his first, terrible (his judgement) novel for two months. He lost his ability to speak. pic.twitter.com/hv0PKynGIN
— WORD Christchurch (@WORDChCh) September 1, 2018
Nic Low talked about growing up in a musical family, his claim to fame as a baby being ‘the ability to sleep through drum solos.’Low’s contribution to today’s soundtrack were the two CDs he took with him on the Avoca Residency in 2007. One was
electronic/dubstep compilation Tectonic Plates Volume 2, disc 2. The other, American jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp’s Soul Song. Low would play these two CDs, and only these two CDs, on repeat as he wrote his first novel. ‘It’s never been published and it will never be published.’ Low’s attempt to get out of his head and channel the “wild energy” of the music was perhaps a little too successful. ‘On the plus side, listening to two albums on rotation I got a real consistency of tone, and on the downside, I got a real consistency of tone.’
Chris Tse’s addition to the soundtrack lightened the tone, and gave us some pure pop joy. Though as we heard from Tse, it turns out pop isn’t all just sugar sweet, but contains some spice when you scratch below the surface. Tse spoke of how Kylie Minogue’s 1998 album Impossible Princess was the beginning of what is sure to be a lifelong love affair with the Pop Princess. Tse presented a solid case in favour of Minogue, talking about her versatility and ability to reinvent herself. Tse says this discovery of Minogue’s music while in high school ‘Put me on the path to accepting who I am.’
Pip Adam wrote about The Front Lawn’s ‘national anthem of loss,’ Andy. Before reading her essay the song was played in its entirety to a silent, attentive, and traumatised theatre. As Adam wrote of the song, ‘It’s not just sad – it’s innocence visited by tragedy.’ She spoke of her research into the song, an autobiographical work by band member Don McGlashan. Adam wanted to know why not just the lyrics, with their ‘genius of the late casual reveal,’ but the music, sounds so sad. This is the genius that Adam has to offer; the ability to take things to the next level, to never stop enquiring ‘why?’ And then to take her learnings and use them in her own work, comparing the rhythm of the song and its protagonist’s beach walking to swimming scenes in her latest novel, The New Animals.
Philip Hoare read a piece on profound loss and grief. It was a journey of discovery for those of us listening, as the more Hoare read the closer we came to figuring out the identity of his musical subject. Hoare never spoke of David Bowie by name, only ever referring to him as He, with what sounded like a capital H. Hoare’s piece drove home just how affected we become by the artists we love. We claim them as our own, and develop close personal relationships with them through their music. Of the last time Hoare saw Bowie live he writes ‘I didn’t know I was saying goodbye.’ Hoare goes to see Bowie’s Pierrot the Clown costume, only to find it ‘hollow like the shell that a butterfly leaves behind.’
Hoare explained how ‘great artists…give you so much more than music, they give you culture.’ All of the writers’ pieces today spoke to this. Their essays were not just about music, but on the transformative power great music can have.
Reviewed by Gem Wilder
So writes Chris Tse in his poem, Punctum. And this quote is the first thing I find in the blurb of He’s so MASC after flipping over the dazzling cover. If you’re familiar with Tse’s debut poetry collection, 
This short story collection feels truly “2016.” Each genre-defying story contains a miniature dystopia: floods rise to swallow the earth, monsters invade workplaces, and a society reverts to brutal survivalism. Maybe you’re feeling that you’ve had enough apocalyptic events this year to last a lifetime, but if humour is the best medicine Cooke’s extremist fantasies are the perfect, darkly funny antidote to this year. Her unhinged characters – like walking, talking Freudian ids – are strangely loveable, and the title story, a Lord of the Flies scenario set on a fishing boat, manages to be both unsettling and hysterical.
The first thing you notice about Laing’s graphic memoir is the visual deliciousness – the warm and affectionate drawing style makes it hard to stop turning pages. As you read on, you will become immersed in a frank, funny and understated exploration of Laing’s life. What sets this book apart is its dual narrative: Laing’s story is interspersed with Mansfield’s own. Laing brings Mansfield’s spiky, brilliant, often tormented character to life through Mansfield’s own words and striking black-and-white images. There is a bare honesty which lets you feel the most poignant moments of both women’s emotion: their self-doubt, deep pain and passion.
Ann Patchett has a great talent for evoking situations that feel deeply real. She is unafraid in exploring the darkest folds of humanity, but also casts light on moments of beauty and warmth. Commonwealth follows ten different characters in two entangled families, the Cousins and the Berts, over five decades. The story begins with a striking scene in which married lawyer Bert Cousins shows up at the christening party of acquaintances Beverly and Fix Keating. A drunken kiss between Bert and Beverly is the single catalyst for irrevocable changes in both families. Patchett is a dab hand at pulling the rug out from under you. Characters who initially seem incurably heartless are slowly softened under Patchett’s empathetic touch. Commonwealth is a universally relatable story of family.
In How to Be Dead in a Year of Snakes, Chris Tse uses poetry to transmute history into a living pulse of emotion. The collection is loops around an event 1905, when white supremacist Lionel Terry murdered elderly Cantonese gold prospector Joe Kum Yung. Multiple voices sing through the collection including that of the unhinged Terry himself. But one beauty of this book is the way it turns history on its head, giving a voice to the Cantonese immigrants and Maori whose voices were written out from the Pakeha historical narrative. Tse explores death both in literal and symbolic senses, as Yung is erased both physically and narratively: ‘As you bleed out/ the night rejects your history,’ and Tse brings him to life again. These are deeply evocative, empathetic poems with words that ring and echo.
Coming Rain, set in the harsh outback of Western Australia, explores the human condition amidst a mesmerising evocation of farming life and the desert. The novel is set in 1956, largely set in the ‘marginal wheat and sheep lands’ of the South West of Western Australia. It follows the young Lew and the older Painter, who work together, shearing sheep and charcoal burning, traversing the land in Lew’s truck. Two concurrent stories weave and intercross: the quiet, tragic narrative of Lew and Painter and that of a pregnant dingo being tracked by a hunter. A book which delves into the minutae of the outback with beautiful, haunting descriptions, and leaves space for the deep, quiet sorrow of its main characters to fill the narrative.
The finalists in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards have now been announced, giving readers 16 fine books to take a second look at, and consider among the best New Zealand books ever produced. The judges had an unenviable task, with 18 months worth of submissions considered, and of course they haven’t chosen everybody’s favourite books (wherefore no The Chimes?) , but it is a pretty fine list nonetheless.
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