A trip down (rock & roll) memory lane...

I have been following photographer Jonathan Ganley's photo-blog for a while now as he posts his photos of bands from the '80s and '90s - a great nostalgia trip for anyone who was in the music scene or just went to gigs in that period.

The latest photos are from 1990 and feature the Cakekitchen, the band I played in as a young 'un (started when I was 17, finished when I was 19, not long after these pictures were taken). This particular gig I remember as being one of the highlights of my musical career - we packed out the Basement theatre and it was hot and sweaty and we played well. Look how serious we look! Look at my gorgeous Musicman Sabre bass!

Even though I was only 17 when I started with the Cakekitchen, it was the third band I'd been in, and I went on to play in three more after that, before I sold my bass guitar and bought my first laptop, swapping one creative endeavour for another, I suppose. But I always knew that music was a hobby for me, whereas writing was what I really wanted to do.

We recorded an EP and two albums in that line-up (CDs can be found here and here; the single, Dave the Pimp can be found on the Flying Nun box-set and on the Flying Nun video compilation DVD); drummer Robert Key and I left that year and Graeme Jefferies headed off to Germany where he recruited new band members and continued the Cakekitchen project until this very day.  

It's all coming to a head now.

Madness. My novel is just about finished. Just a final polish and then off it goes to various publishers and agent, three weeks ahead of deadline. Which is just as well, because it will need to go through the editing process and I need the extra time up my sleeve. From August 23 I will be a little indisposed with a new family member.

Four months ago the deadline was looking impossible: I written had 40,000 and those words had taken me a year to write. The more I wrote, the longer the book wanted to be. I was feeling sick and tired all the time. But then something happened. It all started falling into place. Suddenly that life growing inside me wasn't being such a burden. I had spent so much time thinking about the book that suddenly my writing sped up and what was going onto the screen was no longer about finding the voice and the story of the novel: I already had those. So when the words eventually fell on the page they were mostly the right ones. I have been describing it as the novel reaching a critical mass in my head. It was bursting out of me.

Writing a novel is a little like having children. It gets easier as it goes along, so much so that when it is going really well, you forget how hard it was in the beginning, and you do it all over again. This book was agony to write at times - last year I had some dark days, weeks even, when I couldn't imagine ever finishing it or getting it right. But all that is behind me now.

Just a quick mention: last weekend I went to Wellington to visit family and friends, and was very privileged to witness the gloriousness of The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra at the Michael Fowler Centre, on the first of two sold-out shows in one night. The sound was superb, as was the set and it truly was, as they advertised it, a magical evening. Those harmonies! Those lead breaks! As their friend, I was pleased and proud. As a fan, I was just so happy to be there. This is a show that deserves to play at similar venues all around the world in my opinion.

I will leave you with a picture of the ukes at one of their first ever gigs: my wedding, in 2006. They played 'All You Need is Love' as we signed the register and the wedding ditty as we walked down a makeshift outdoor 'aisle' on an unusually glorious Wellington day in February. Don't I feel smug. 

Bits & pieces.

I am back from a great few days in Melbourne. I love that city so much. I would actually consider moving there. After all, I can work anywhere, usually. It would just be the logistics of moving the family there and finding the right things for everyone to do. I often think about the life that might have been. It's not that I wish I'd lived a different life - far from it - I just wish there was a way to live parallel lives. In one of those lives I would have moved to a foreign country where I didn't speak the language and made an effort to stay there and learn. I know I can still do those things, but it doesn't seem as easy to move around. Of course, I am forgetting I had my own shackles in my 20s too, usually lack of money or useful work experience that would make it possible to uproot for foreign shores.

I worked in London a couple of times - once for a year, then again for six months - but it's not the same as the challenge of going so far outside your comfort zone you don't even know what the local words for 'comfort zone' are. I'm sure the reality wouldn't be as glamorous as I am imagining.

Anyway, back to Melbourne: I shopped, I drank, I ate, I danced, and best of all I caught up with very missed friends. You see, with friends like those I feel as though moving to another country with a small child might just be tolerable - there would be willing babysitters and lots of fun things to do with friends that don't involve finding a babysitter in the first place.

I had no literary activity whatsoever, except I did read some of the stories, as promised, in Paula Morris's Forbidden Cities. It was the perfect book to take with me (this from someone who regularly confesses to preferring novels over stories any day). I urge anyone to check out this book - there really is something for all moods, especially when travelling. My favourite stories so far are the ones with a satirical touch - I guess they are more like the Paula I know in person. But the one I loved best will come as no surprise to anyone who knows my own short stories: it was called Bright and it was quite short and finished from a dog's point of view. I like a good dose of whimsy and melancholy in my stories, and this one has just the right amount of both. I've still got a few stories to go and they are now my perfect travelling companion on short journeys too - the bus to work.

I have decided not to write about seeing Goran Bregovic in concert. Let's just say it was love. I am far too daunted at the thought of putting the powerful feelings the show generated into words. I'm sure you can imagine the awe of seeing "a 15-piece all-male choir; a 12-piece string orchestra, a six-piece brass 'Wedding and Funeral' band; two female singers from Bulgaria; a guest vocalist Alen Ademovic and, of course, Goran Bregovic!" I will leave you with this image though: I wondered as I looked at everyone sitting so politely in the four-tiered-seating State Theatre when we arrived just how we could experience the promised overwhelming urge to dance. I wondered if an arts festival crowd is the ideal crowd and a theatre the appropriate venue. I needed have worried. By the end they were dancing in the aisles, clapping and singing. Two middle-aged women at the very front finally got up the courage to dance at the very end and were so pleased with themselves they high-fived.

Maybe I will write about it another day.  

Forbidden Cities.

I was going to call this post 'Foreign Cities' and say how appropriate it was that when I go to Melbourne this week my book of choice is called Foreign Cities. But it's not; it's Forbidden Cities by Paula Morris (see Bookman Beattie's recent interview with Paula here). I was getting it mixed up (again - sorry Paula!) with Charlotte Grimshaw's novel Foreign City.

So. I am going to Melbourne this week to visit friends and have a small holiday, and I shall be taking Paula's new book of short stories, which I'm very much looking forward to reading. Even though I'll be in a foreign city with much to do, I will also be in a nice quiet hotel with all the time in the world, and if there's one thing that I don't get much of these days, it's lolling around reading.

I love Melbourne. I've only been once before but if I was going to move to Australia I wouldn't have much trouble settling there I think. It certainly isn't what I would class as a forbidden city; at least, nobody has forbidden me to go there. It might be forbidden in as much as I'm a bit worried about shopping temptations and perhaps drinking too much with my lovely friends. Ah, the decadence!

The Melbourne Arts festival is on and I'm going to see Goran Bregovic's Tales and Songs for Weddings and Funerals on Saturday night. Bregovic made the music for Emir Kusterica's films Time of the Gypsies and Underground, both films I loved, with the music contributing significantly to that love. Here's the blurb:

"The maestro of this timeless new sound, Goran Bregovic, melds a 37-piece ensemble from the best of the Balkans: a 15-piece all-male choir; a 12-piece string orchestra, a six-piece brass 'Wedding and Funeral' band; two female singers from Bulgaria; a guest vocalist Alen Ademovic and, of course, Goran Bregovic! The result is a recipe for riotous fun, passionate performance and exhilarating energy – featuring Bregovic’s much-loved film scores, hot-wired revivals of traditional tunes and new fusions of flavours from Gypsy to rock."

I can't wait. Perhaps afterwards I'll try and give another stumbling music review, where I try and put into words things that I only feel with my gut.

I'm also going to see if I can't get a bit of dancing in, since Melbourne supposedly has one of the most vibrant swing dancing scenes in the world. And speaking of early-20th-century-dance-styles, Melbourne is also home to one of my literary guilty pleasures: Phryne Fisher, the can-do 1920s flapper detective gal, the creation of Kerry Greenwood. If you want maximum escapism with fabulous frocks and mint juleps, you need look no further than Phryne.

Life outside of writing.

Wearing:

Little Tweeters Necklace from mammaslittlebabies at etsy.com



Wishing I was wearing:

Ashley dress from Trashy Diva



Listening to:

Beirut



Watching:



Dancing:

Lindy hop!



Playing with:

A ball - a lot! With my son.



Reading:

A crazy mix of blogs by women who are heavily into clothes. Blame a cat of impossible colour for introducing me. These aren't shallow blogs by fashionistas wanting the latest Prada handbag; they are usually about creative things to do with home-made and thrift store clothes. I am rediscovering my 20 year obsession with vintage clothes.

Sometimes there is life outside of writing, we just don't talk about it on blogs about writing.

Renee-Louise Carafice.

I know this is supposed to be a blog about books, but I don't remember the last time I got so excited by such an immense musical talent as Renee-Louise Carafice, and I have to write about her. I feel as though I'm in love, or at least have this massive crush - on her songs. Imagine melding Liz Phair with Joanna Newsom, but the product being even more stunning than the sum of its parts. To make a more New Zealand connection (Carafice is a New Zealander, now living in Chicago), I see her in the same vein of musical genius as David Mitchell (3Ds) and Ed Cake (Bressa Creeting Cake), with songs that reach deep inside you in a way you just don't quite understand; it's like they've always been there inside you and only now someone is pointing them out. You didn't realise they'd been missing from your life, but it's as if someone has just told you that you need air to survive, or that the ocean exists.

I feel ashamed to call myself a writer when trying to articulate how I feel about music - which is why I could never be a music journalist. The music I love best is the music I have such a visceral response to that putting it into words seems to trivialise it.

I only just discovered this wonderful musician when I heard her being interviewed on National Radio last Sunday. In between playing her songs, which I found fragile, defiant, surreal, funny and steeped in meloncholy, all at the same time, she talked. For once I was hungry to listen to what a musician had to say (unlike 99% of contemporary musicians I hear being interviewed). She talked about her time in a mental institution where she was treated for depression, and most of the songs on her debut album Tells You to Fight seem to be about that time in her life. But she talked about it in a way that didn't make me feel sorry for her; it just made me want to hear more about her way of looking at the world, a world where she rows a boat out on the ocean to sing someone to their death, or burrows far into the earth and makes a kingdom of the people she finds there.

Luckily for me, she is touring New Zealand at the moment and I went to see her at the Harbourlight in Lyttleton last night. And seeing her live just made me love her even more. Sitting there alone on the stage, swapping instruments with every song, that strange and beautiful voice... lyrics that were wickedly funny, and heart-breaking, but not just words: the melodies so weird and sad as well. The music I most relate to makes me think of my own work, makes me want to make it better, to try harder to convey a certain atmosphere, feeling, aesthetic. Her music makes me feel the way I want my books to make me feel. I came away feeling inspired.

For that reason, she's going on my list.

Thanks, Renee.

An example of some lyrics (apologies if I get them wrong, going from memory):

I will raise a bird army

they will peck you to pieces

they will tear your house down

and use the banisters as roosting places.

The wonderful video for Bodhisattva can be found here.

Swings and Musical Roundabouts.

After moaning in my previous post about how I had lost it, the muse came back to me the following day. As I say in the title, it is very much a case of 'swings and roundabouts', an expression I love. I had two major breakthroughs this week. The first, although seemingly a minor fact about my protagonist, will actually shape the whole novel and made everything fall into place with a resounding 'click'. It has sent me off on another research tangent, but one which I am thoroughly enjoying, and being resident at a university is certainly helping.

The second breakthrough arrived unexpectedly. I didn't even know I was looking for it. I was walking home from the bus last night listening to the soundtrack of The Piano, music by Michael Nyman. It was one of those gorgeously still and very cold Christchurch evenings, with clear indigo skies lined with pink. I relish that walk. It's only ten minutes, but it is my last chance to be fully inside my head and to mull over what I have been working on during the day, before I arrive home to bright lights and cosy air, the chaos of the child's dinner, bath, bed routine. I always have my iPod on and have lately been listening to music that feeds the mood of the novel. I hadn't listened to The Piano for a long time - perhaps years - and it brought back many a melancholy moment I had drawn out by listening to it. Maybe it is a coincidence that, like The Piano, some of my novel is set in colonial New Zealand, but perhaps Nyman's music so perfectly evokes that time, he had sent me there without my realising it.

The breakthrough was the end of the novel. I had been working with a vague idea of a resolution, but hadn't thought about it too much as I trusted that writing my way towards it would make it clearer. So I was surprised when it arrived unannounced in my head apropos of nothing. And it had quite a kick. I was a bit stunned and when I got home had to fend off the family while I wrote it down. It is one of those endings (I hope), that is surprising (it surprised me, for a start), but utterly inevitable. I hope.

Of course, in this crazy writing playground, the swings and roundabouts could just as easily come back sometime in the future and knock my wee ending out of the park.