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Transcript

What I've Learnt - Spring Series Gems (September) (2022) · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, welcome to the Weatherflight Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Luke, one of the producers of the show.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: As a producer, I love my work and helping Deborah and our team share so many wonderful stories.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: From food to fashion and art to music, we've got you covered.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we will be looking back at some of the best moments of this past September.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So sit back and enjoy.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_05: Nikki Gamel is the best-selling author of 13 novels and four works of non-fiction.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_05: They've been translated into 22 languages.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_05: Her distinctive writing has gained her critical acclaim in France, where she's been described as a female Jack Kerouac.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_05: The French literary magazine Lyre has included her in a list of what is called the 50 most important writers in the world, those it believes will have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_05: Her first renowned work is the 2003 novel The Bride Stripped Bear.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_05: An explicit exploration of female sexuality thrust the new author Nikki into the headlights and the limelight.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the publishers were very aware that there was this traumatized person at the centre of everything, but they also wanted to sell books.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it made me realize brutally that, you know, this is a business.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is a business for them.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is a great story to sell books.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I also, because I felt like I'd lost control of the narrative, I wanted to explain myself.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, but part of the stress of the whole thing was explaining myself over and over again and people not listening, people just making up their own minds, journalists just not accepting my side of the story, thinking they knew the best.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: The one rock in the whole thing, ironically, was my husband.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think if he had been traumatized by the whole thing, furious, uh, had disowned it, whatever, that would have just, you know, broken me.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: But he was, he was supportive.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: I can remember when he read the manuscript for the first time.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, oh God, don't read it, don't read it, you don't have to, oh god, I'm so embarrassed.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's really embarrassing.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, blushing saying it.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: He was turned on.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_04: It was like, I love that.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, I get it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, oh Nikki, I reckon that is the best line of all.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_05: That your husband was turned on by the revelatory, you know, it's like a reverse sort of it's really fascinating that that was his response.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_05: But that goes to why the fact that you'd shown him the manuscript first was a good thing, but also it shows that that he at the core of what your story is is that that authenticity between the two of you.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, from bride onwards, with my relationship with him and with my writing, it made me real, it makes me realize honesty works.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: Honesty is powerful.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: If you say the truth, if you tell the truth, it's authentic and it doesn't actually push people away, which is what I completely feared about the bride student bear.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: It draws people in.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: And the main thing about that book was its vulnerability.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's a book about female vulnerability when it comes down to sexuality.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it kind of was talking about stuff that I had never articulated to my husband before or any of my sexual partners before him.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I think for him, yeah, it was really good to just uh have the honest conversation that the book kind of exploded between us.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I realized as the months and years went on that a lot of partners were having very honest conversations because of that book and what it triggered in relationships.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's true, and it expressed a lot of what other women couldn't express.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_05: So you actually became a very powerful voice and still are and still do.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_05: And and and moving along to your book Cleave, which I also loved, um, and and you know, you you talk about, you know, um that you know, you'd like uh book it was one of a trilogy about women in tough places, and you say regarding that, I wanted in a way to subvert the boys' own adventure genre, to write about sensual, sexual, feminine experiences of traditionally masculine environments like the Central Australian Desert and Antarctica.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_05: So you're very much about uh, first of all, the setting is is very powerful.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_05: And you say my novels begin not with character or plot, but with place, which I thought was interesting.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_05: Cleve began with the Central Australian Desert.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_05: It's very interesting.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_05: So talk to me about that and how you gave birth to that one.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: I I love deserts, I love um landscapes that hum with silence in a way.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I was working out in Alice Springs at the time uh when I was writing Cleve, and I was just like fascinated and entranced and enchanted by this very brutal world out there.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I was I was a young journalist for ABC Radio at the time, but I had my novelist notebooks alongside my reporting notebooks.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: I never really wanted to be a journalist, a reporter.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: I always wanted to write fiction, but I needed, you know, I needed um money.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I just didn't have any family money behind me.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I had to make a living for myself.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: I was raised by a single mum.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: She'd always said to me, never rely on a man.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_03: You have to be financially independent.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: I had those lessons drummed into me from early from you know childhood.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so I was out in Central Australia making a living, but dreaming of being a novelist and writing in my notebooks, you know, what the landscape looked like, conversation scraps, thinking about ideas for a story, a road trip, all the rest of it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: So that's where Cleve came from.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, another great book for my listeners to put on their list if they haven't read it already.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_05: I come to dissolve your book that obviously you were talking about that at the festival.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_05: And I I've actually read it and I'm reading it again because it's another.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I love that book.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_05: Fabulous.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_05: I would not go back unless it was good.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_05: It was so um I'm actually reading again and I love the rhythm.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: And obviously, I'm a journalist, so I love the way you do incorporate that journalistic road trip feel, that genre.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_05: It's entrancing.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_05: What inspired this tale of love and liberty?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_05: It just somehow, it's well, the word dissolve just in itself makes me want to read something coming up with the title.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, no, it made me go, dissolve.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_05: What's dissolving?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_05: Her, him, what, you know.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_05: So so talk to me about dissolve because you know, a lot of people are really interested in this if they haven't read it already.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: So dissolve um came from a very dark chapter in my life that I had never written about.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh in my mid-20s, I was going to get married.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I had the chapel booked at my old convent school.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I finally felt normal.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: This was after years and years of really kind of bleak, lonely one-night stands and never really having a proper boyfriend and thinking, am I unlovable?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: Am I never going to be able to do this whole relationship thing?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: What is wrong with me?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: I can't do it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm so envious of all those couples that I see in the park on a Sunday afternoon.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's never going to be me.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know, years and years of bleak kind of loneliness.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then I fell truly madly, deeply in love with someone in my mid-20s for the first time in my life I had ever felt like this.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: It was the coup de foudre, you know, which the French term of literally you are just swept away by someone, and the passion is so extreme and immense.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: And we had this, you know, incredibly sexy relationship for a couple of years.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: He was a writer, an older writer.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: I desperately wanted to be a writer, and by that I mean not a journalist, but a fiction writer, a creative writer.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: So he was everything I held in high esteem.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: And um, we were gonna get married, you know, it was all kind of ticking along.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then one day he took me out to an Indian restaurant and he just said to me, I can't do it.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: I just can't go through with this.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I was about 25, 26.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: He got it.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_05: Two weeks, yeah, two weeks before the wedding, wasn't it?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_05: It was quite a little bit.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: I was a little bit more, it was a little bit more than that.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: It was about six weeks before the wedding.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: Still, it feels mortifying, humiliating.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: I felt your greatest fear, yeah.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: My greatest fear, you know, I'd come from a split family or traumatically split family.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: I I felt ever since childhood that, you know, maybe I just couldn't do this love thing because I didn't have any role models for it.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know how to do it, I didn't think I could ever do it.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so when he said, Oh, you know, I can't, I can't go through with this, he completely just affirmed all the self-hatred and the lot lack of self-esteem within me.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, I just I it took me years and years and years to recover and to have any self-worth from that time.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I'd never written about it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it was something about me too that kind of galvanized me into thinking the me too movement.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: I just kind of look back at all the relationships I'd had, um, and just uh, you know, what I'd gone through as a young woman, including on a film set when I was 16, and thinking, you know, in terms of power and older men and the expectations of men, the confidence of men, what they expected me to do as a young woman, how they weren't even interested in me, in seeing who I was, in having a conversation with me.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: They just wanted to perhaps have sex with me, or not even that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: I just I've always kept journals.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so from about 14 onwards, as I became, you know, sexual in my late teens, lost my virginity at 18, you know, I'd go back and I'd write out everything that happened and everything I felt, including the night that I lost my virginity in a room with with with yeah, what was that story?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because I uh yeah, that was uh wasn't it quite a well that that made me, you know, and I look at young women now.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: And and you know, for me, that night was I was just a hole to him.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was just a hole.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: He was he he was with he took me over to a a group of his mates, they were all university guys, and they were ended up in the lounge room, we peeled off into a bedroom.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I can remember as I lost my virginity, it was like, oh is that it?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah is that is that what this is all about?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I had so desperately wanted to lose my virginity for years and years, craved this moment.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think what shocked me most of all was the complete absence of tenderness, and in a way, I've sought tenderness forever onwards, and you know, and I I've just I I just feel like it's crucial to have the courage of your tenderness.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, DH Lawrence talked a lot about it in Lady Chatterley's Lover, that yeah, that what made Melors, the gamekeeper, stand out was that conviction of his tenderness and you know that kind of generosity in a lover.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: You can sense it immediately, and it's transformative for a woman, for anyone on the receiving end.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, the interesting thing is also though, your experience I think is much very universal for a lot of women.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and therefore it resonates a lot and it's really confronting when it was just sort of a lot of people just experienced that, and it was just like, yeah, so what?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like it was an invisibility.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_05: And that's something that I'm hoping the next generation, and certainly your kids, my daughters, that there's a sense of I think they're much more educated, empowered, and and and have a voice.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas I think, you know, you and I in that generation, a lot of women I knew experienced that very almost, you know, duplicate version of your story.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's it's not uh exactly it was not uncommon at all.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's what's so uh yeah.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: I I wrote I wrote dissolve um for those younger generations of women in a way, you know, to say this is what we went through, kind of the bewilderment of feeling wrong.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: And why why aren't I getting tenderness and why am I just treated as a whole?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I can remember afterwards when that loke who took my virginity, he walked back out to the lads in the lounge room, and he just kind of raised his finger like that, like you know, I've done it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that just reduced me to literally the whole.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: And you know that feeling of humiliation and mortification and bewilderment that that was all I was to him.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I look at young women now and I think, my God, they're so sparky and stubborn and outspoken and articulate, and it's fabulous.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: But reports tell us that, you know, we were we are most confident still, aged nine.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: What happens to us as we go through puberty, as we, you know, walk through those young teenage years and into early adulthood.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: We question ourselves.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: We gets eroded.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, something gets eroded.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: What is that?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: Our confidence.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's why I wanted to write Dissolve 2.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to examine all of that and write it for young women as a handbook of you know, us as women who've gone ahead of them to say it's okay what you're feeling.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: We understand we've gone through this too.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Here are strategies possibly for climbing out of it.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: If you feel like you're wrong and the world doesn't understand you, you're not alone.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's how I felt when I was younger.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: I just felt so alone and so odd and weird that I felt like misaligned with the world and what the world was telling me to be.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I don't want to be that.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to quieten my voice.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to be this meek, nice little girl, you know, that accommodating.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's that accommodating a client.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: That that's the only way we can succeed.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: But that's what I was had drummed into me, and so many of us did.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_05: And that also came from often a religious perspective or a school context.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_05: There was that sort of overlay always, that lens, be nice and everything will work out.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_05: But actually, it really doesn't or didn't necessarily for a lot of people.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_05: I think the voice of a lot of the young women that I see, and I'm sure you you um see this yourself, there is a lot of them, many of them are standing up and being much more assertive.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_05: However, one could argue that social media, why it gives them, I suppose, platforms to express that concern that you just raised.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_05: It also cultivates an element of compliance, you know, that is really disturbing.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_05: So that's a whole other thing.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_05: You and I did not have to deal with.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's something that we all have to, as mothers, as women, be very mindful of.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_05: And a lot of the girls are talking about it, which is good to hear.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_05: A story about family love and the cost of freedom, My Heart is a Little Wild thing, serves as a reminder that we all deserve to pursue our dreams.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I first saw author Nigel Featherstone engaging us all on a Byron panel at the Writers Festival.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_05: He had us all in the palm of his hand, enthralled by the veracity, intensity, and authenticity of an author who is an articulate force of nature.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: We just we just ended up on stage, and wonderful Alex Abset, the Cripoliberry Agent, just asked some really basic, open, wonderful, warm questions.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course I just started telling stories as Trent did and Hannah did, and um yeah, and the the one that came out of my mouth was how I actually live in Gulburn now in regional New South Wales, but um back then I lived in Canberra and uh I grew up in a very conservative part of Sydney, and um you know there was no language about being gay.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I've got two two old older brothers and you know, conservative parents.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: My mother died two years ago, and um it was just uh yeah, which it was just every gay culture was underground, and I was born in 1968, so 1978 was the first of the Mardi Gras, so that was you know, I can remember sort of thinking, oh, that's kind of interesting.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and then in 1983, which is when I was 15, New South Wales Parliament was debating to get rid of its anti-gay laws, which are actually anti-sodomy laws, but they were translated as anti-gay laws.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember looking at the front pages of the City Morning Hill and reading these articles, you know, these headlines of you know what will happen, you know, with the um Parliament, you know, making its making up its mind about this stuff.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking, I think they're debating about me.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, what else happened in 1983?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: AIDS came to Australia's shore.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as I was saying, Oh, I think you know, maybe Australian Parliament, well, New South Wales Parliament is trying to get its act together, then AIDS came to Australia Shore.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: So basically for 10 years I did nothing, just just did nothing.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I fell in love with guys.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, I had very intense emotional relationships with guys, but that you know, because of those ads, the Grim Reaper ads.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, I remember them well, they were very scary.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: They were, and maybe they saved a lives, but I think they actually destroyed a lot of lives too, because people like me just thought if I touch another guy, I will die.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, so yeah, so I um moved to Canberra to get away from Sydney.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I left there when I was 18, and I I I went to you know, really discard myself just slowly and fell in love with another guy, and but still couldn't do anything because I just the AIDS stuff was just still so present in my head.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I got to got to, I was actually 27, and I thought, you know, I've got to act on this stuff.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and I I thought, you know, I was hanging out with most of these straight people, as a lot of gay people do.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I'd I'd hang out with my mates on a Friday night drinking beers in pubs and bars and whatever, and I'd go back to my little flat and I'd go.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I remember saying to my very good friend, female friend, this is the year that I'm just gonna I'm gonna go exploring.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm you know, I'm very cautious to the wind.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: I know AIDS is still the thing, HIV is still a thing, but I'm just gonna have to, I can't keep on falling in love with guys and not doing anything about it.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, I'd get back to my little flat, get changed into my little nightclub outfit, and ride my bike about five kilometers from where I lived into the city.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I did it, you know, under the cover of darkness.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's a little pushback, and you know, had a little literally a little uh torch strapped on with masking tank onto the front, you know, that was that was my light.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd be because I'd be quite drunk, and that was the only time I could get into this nightclub and and just do stuff because I'm very, very shy, a real shy introvert.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if I was drunk enough, I'd be able to get on the dance floor and you know, dance away and try to chat with guys, and it was a complete disaster to it.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was just terrible.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I'd go back home at five in the morning and try to do it all again the next night.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I did this week in, week out.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: No one had any idea.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um it got to about eight weeks of this, and I just thought, look, I'm having fun, but I've met no one, nothing's happened.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe this is not my thing.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then one Friday night, I I was again very drunk, and I got dressed into my little nightclubbing outfit and rode my bike in.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to actually go through this park and I had an S bend, but being a little bit pissed, I kind of forgot about this S bend which had this fence.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then next to me, there's this massive crash, and then I just skidded across just the bike path, and just you know, I had gravel on my hands, and and I just I just thought, oh fuck, what am I doing?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember rolling over on the on the bike path and rolling over onto my back and just looking just so clear, you know, even though I was very drunk, I remember this.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And like went to an Anglican school in Sydney.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: I just not that was a particularly religious thing, it was just the reaching out thing.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: I just went, God, if you're gonna, if this is the right thing to do, you're gonna have to give me some sign.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the ironically, the the nightclub was called heaven, no longer, no longer exists.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_06: But perfect for this story.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_06: I'm like, the story, it's really yeah, and and it was a very gritty nightclub.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of art school people went there, a lot of young women went there because they felt safe.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: There were art shows as well as drag shows.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it was really it was really good.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And because it was the only nightclub in Canberra, like it did have a diverse sort of thing.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like an Oxford Street nightclub, which might have a certain clientele.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: This had a very diverse clientele.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just closer to to heaven than home.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just thought, well, just wheel your friggin' bike because it's closer, and then maybe I'll just get a taxi back to my flat.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I walked my little bike and the wheels were buggered, and I got to the nightclub and and walked up the stairs and still with gravel all over my hands.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I just remember dancing away on the dance floor, and the the I know it all does sound so cliche, but I'm just awful.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_04: I love it though.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really sticking to the details of the truth because this uh the smokes mission or the smoke just parted, and this guy who's a bit younger than me, maybe five years younger than me, just you know, slim and tall, and and he had massive Doc Martin boots, tight black jeans, this little tight Top with these sort of straps, so his sides were bare, so it looked like something a Depeche Mode singer would wear.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and he had this sort of like arm bracelet thing and blonde hair, and he had moves, and and I just said, Whoa, what's going on here?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is good.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, we ended up on a couch, you know, talking at you know, at the back of the nightclub.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and actually, I didn't tell this bit up in Byron because it's just so cliched, but um, he said, Look, you know, I've got to go, my friends want to go, but are you gonna be here tomorrow night?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, yeah, sure, let's meet up tomorrow night.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sort of, we're just going to the steps of the nightclub.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, I think I'm gonna hang around, not to see anyone else, but I just thought I'm having a good time now, I've met someone.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then he gave me a kiss on the lips, and I just remember thinking, Whoa, this is and that was the first gay kiss that I'd ever had.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And um, then he sort of smiled and left with his friends.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the next day, next morning, ringing my two female friends, and I said, I've I I've I've had I've had a gay kiss, and she goes, What was it like?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh, now I know how Romeo and Juliet felt.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_06: I love it, I love it, I love it.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_06: That story is so beautiful, and I like it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's like what I'm just it's just so poetic.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was just ridiculous.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: She actually said, Oh, come on, Nigel, it's just a kiss.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said, No, no, no, like it's more than that.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, I spent the whole day looking forward to seeing this guy again.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, will he turn up?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Will he not turn up?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And did the whole thing again.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think I probably got a little bit drunk by myself or with friends, and then went in and and waited.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, he did turn up, and and we went back, you know, to the the um couches and we're snogging this time and talking and introducing ourselves.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and then he said, Yeah, embarrassing question time, um, your place online.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I just got this massive amount of fear, and I just went, I think I'm just gonna go home.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and he sort of said, Okay, at least give you a lift.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I must have walked in because the bike was buggered.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, okay, maybe you can give me a lift.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I fully intended for him just to drop me off.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: But up Northbourne Avenue, which is the main drag out of Canberra, I remember saying to myself, for God's sake, Nigel, this is this is a nice guy, a really lovely guy, handsome guy.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're in fine hands here.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, I got to the bottom of the steps and I got out of the bottom of the steps up to my flat.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Okay, we'll see you.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I just thought, come on, this is it, this is your time.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I turned around and said, You can come up, you know.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, You sure?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I just said, Yes.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, you can use your imaginary imagination of what happened then.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the the coder of that story is that's that's my partner Tim, and we've been together 25 years.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_05: It is actually the best story.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_05: And the I must say, when you told it as you know, you you told her rendition at the um the pan at on the panel at the Byron Writers Festival, everyone just loved it.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_05: There was this sort of heaving response, like people were breathless to hear how it ended.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it was just, but I think what it did, it also showcases your capacity to articulate and to be an amazing storyteller, which is why you are so successful and why people love your books.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and that story really, I suppose, is a reflection of that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you talk about your books being revelatory and often they can reflect things you can't, you know, you're trying to process in the real world through your fiction.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_05: Tell us also, you know, this recent book, there's a fascinating sort of lens that you put on this story.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_05: And also I want you to talk about your relationship with your mother too, which you do also refer to and you did reflect on in the, you know, when you were speaking um on the panel.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_05: Tell me a little bit about that, because I find that quite interesting, the way that fiction and reality and how things, osmosis and the way that certain relationships come out in different ways in fiction.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's um, yeah, where do I where do I start?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, being a novelist and primarily primarily a fiction writer, I've written a lot of short stories and novellas and I write for the theater as well.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess we're all trying to explore, we're trying to document, we're trying to communicate.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, a lot of things that I write about of uh actually not my experience, the novel before This Bodies of Men uh is a is a second world war story, uh, you know, about two Sydney guys that were friends when they were at school and then they disappeared, and then they um met each other when they were serving in Egypt.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um uh, you know, that's that's not my story, but um I wanted to explore Australia's, you know, obsession and nefarious obsession with uh military history.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I'd written, you know, a lot of stuff that really wasn't anything to do with me, you know, my libretto, which was for a song cycle that was professionally produced in Canberra at the Street Theatre, that's actually an Afghanistan war story.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd been doing a lot of war stuff because I was a writer in residence at Australian Defense Force Academy in 2013.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I had been trying to work on this novel for my My Hard is Little White Thing for uh about 15 years.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I kid you not, Deb, when I finished the novel and it and it was with my agent and then it was acquired by my publisher, um, I was tired, I have this little little routine is I I tidy up my writing studio once I've finished a project.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And once I know it's acquired, I got the that manuscript is done.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have to tidy everything up and I clear everything out because the next project I need the my studio to be a blank slate.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just tidying stuff up and putting it.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a little library next door to my writing room, and I went in there and I was tidying up and I was putting it um some stuff away, and one of my old journals fell out, literally fell out of the bookshelf, and it opened onto the floorboards, and I just picked it up and I went, Oh, I wonder what you know, I wonder what it opened at.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it just said lonely, kind of buckled middle-aged man goes to a property down on the Monero, um, sees an animal that changes his life, and it was dated um 2015.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, 2007, July 2007.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, have I had this idea for that long?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it and it's just true.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I tried different versions of it and they failed.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I did another version of it.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, I think it's much better.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I sent it to my agent, Gabby Nea, in Sydney, and she said, no, Nigel, that's not a go-a.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: That one does not work.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I did another version, and then just between the drought breaking and the bushfires and the pandemic, I was able to spend um a week down on a property on the Monero.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually did find her through Instagram.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: I did message her, and I can see you smiling because you know there's a little letter here.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I love it.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I do she is a she is a um the farmer is a wonderful garden writer that my mother did know of.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I've got, you know, there's some of my mother's books there, and I I thought I know this person.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I messaged her and I said, Can I stay?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Yeah, you can stay in the steadding, which is an old barn.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a heritage listed property.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the Monero, for those who don't know, is between Kosyosko, um, the Snowy Mountains and the far southeast coasts of New South Wales.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this is barren, it's barren, barren, but naturally barren.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so I stayed down there and um I just I just thought I was working on another version of the manuscript, and I thought, I just don't think this is working either.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I just sat down there on the steps of this old barn and it was just looking out on these bare paddocks.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And there were a couple of trees that had obviously been planted.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, if there was a guy planting trees right now, I would go up to him and say, just I'm here for a week and I'm meant to be working on this manuscript and it's buggered, it's not gonna work.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: So can I just spend, can I help you plant trees?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because that would be a better use of my time.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I had this imagination that he said, Oh yeah, sure.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and um, and I had this imagination, imagine if he was like a like a rock star, but he was just he was like a bit broken too and was a bit exhausted.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I'm here kind of like trying to rehabilitate my own life by planting trees and by rehabilitating this land.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and then I then I thought, oh, there's something interesting here going on in my creative head.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, hang on, I can't just in the story, I can't just go up to a guy and say, plant trees.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: I have to, and then I went, ah, yeah, this little animal, there's this little animal that needs to happen.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, what if I see this animal who leads me to meet this man who's planting trees to rehabilitate himself?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the next morning, I shit, you know, I got in my car and I drove three and a half hours back to Golburn and parked the car, fed the chooks, walked into my house, dumped my backpack, had to wear the same clothes, which is ug boots, tracksuit pants, and I live in a very old house and um so two layers of thermals, top and bottom, and then uh then um B, and then a very old jumper, which is actually which my mother knitted me when I was 15.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I've I've kept it all that time.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I put all that on, went straight into my writing room, sat down at the desk, I write everything by pen on paper.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And 14 days later, I had the novel.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote the whole thing by hand.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_05: Love Regardless, the second collection from Melbourne-based author poet Barbara Camler, is an enthralling gallery of poetic portraits celebrating love that endures.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_05: It features a unique mode of storytelling whereby interviews with 14 couples are poetically crafted into rhythmic syllabic verse.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_05: For each couple, each poem explores the intimacy of first connecting and the various complications negotiated along the way.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_05: Crushing pressures of sexual or racial norms, the challenge of chronic illness or disparate histories, and demands of extended family geographic distance or migration.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yet these are sanguine stories that transcend the trials of the everyday, making real the possibility of mutual love and joy over a lifetime.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, finishing.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: I was just gonna read you just a little spec that kind of touches on that because um this is a couple call, and all the couples have pseudonyms and they've different names and their real names.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the people in their lives will know who they are, but it kind of takes at a level to say, you know, this is not absolutely true life.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's been mediated by me, it's their stories which I've crafted and created.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: But um, the couple, one of the couples who's been together the longest, together for 52 years, had terrible conflicts, particularly earlier in their marriage.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he he needed to keep the peace at all costs, and she was very outspoken.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: He used to just die when she would speak her mind, even to send a cup of coffee back if it was too cold.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, she felt he never defended her adequately in front of his parents, her, you know, and so there were a lot of things.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and the way I think it's interesting the way they talk about what changed for them.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll just I'll read you a speck from her.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, I'd love that.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: So Rosie says, the most profound change in my understanding of Saul's behavior, how often it stems from feeling bad about himself.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: When I see that small child with little mothering, told at age 10 to attend school and pretend nothing happened when his mother had a stroke.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: When I comprehend him, I can be different.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: No need to get irate when I see him with greater compassion.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, despite our many conflicts, we never wonder whether to proceed with the relationship, never look elsewhere for something better.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's too much shared history here.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: The glue that binds is not about being soulmates.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's making a choice to commit absolutely, no matter how we provoke or aggravate.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_02: And is that the key, do you think?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the key?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, certainly that is that is for some of the people, it's just it's a decision not to go elsewhere.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Evacuate.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, to not evacuate, actually, in times of crisis.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, really, uh a young woman who likes this book very much, who read it, said to me, Look, during COVID, she and her husband um were in a very small apartment, you know, locked up together.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: They were having a lot of trouble with each other and sustaining it.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And all of her friends kept telling her how to get out.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, I wanted to stay in.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: I needed somebody to help me know how to stay in.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was very inspiring, she said, to read stories of people who did that, you know, to know that it is possible.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_05: Do you think there's a culture of excavation though?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_05: Do you think that in some ways there is a culture that has emerged of we'll help you get out?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's okay, stand on your own two feet, you'll be fine.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_05: Some of which is valid because obviously there are people that do need to get out for you know safety or you know, for valid reasons.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_05: But I do think there has been an emerging culture.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_05: I thought about this when I was reading the book of when you know things get tough.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_05: Um, hey, you know what?
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_05: There's there's plenty of people.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's right.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_05: And that's also part of the contemporary, which has positive elements because it can be liberating.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_05: So people don't feel trapped, but it also means that the notion of longevity in, you know, and love regardless is in itself can be a conundrum because you just go, well, in some instances is that the best decision for everyone.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_05: But obviously, in the in the couples that you've interviewed, that was the choice.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if uh Yeah, I think you're I think you're tapping into something that's not talked about too much.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, is the idea of staying together old-fashioned, you know, no matter what.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh or and of course, you know, I'm I'm a person who's divorced, I had to leave a bad marriage for for many reasons.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um my husband is a divorcee, so it's not like I don't know about the need to end relationships, but I do think that um there's not a lot of cultural support to to bolster people to say, yeah, we know it's really terrible, but hang on, just hang on.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's help, there's strategies about how you can do that rather than immediately uh think that we have to exit.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not, you know, it's not hard to understand why people feel they want to run.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everybody feels that sometimes in any of course.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'm leaving, I'm going for a walk.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like seeing.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Fine.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_06: Deep breath, very deep breath.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, I'm coming, I'm coming back with the dog, but just don't talk to me and don't read me.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but yeah, exactly.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that part of that is also healthy.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_05: There is that that sort of, but but what I noticed with a lot of the the couples you interviewed was in some in some instances, I suppose I'd call it the tenacity of people just like some of those stories.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_05: I just couldn't, you know, keep reflecting, going, wow, how did they actually navigate that and what what kept them there?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_05: So what was what was sort of, I suppose maybe you could give me some highlight, you've just read a little excerpt, but maybe is there one or two stories that really or couples that really stood out?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_05: And then I want to talk to you about how you chose the couples, but let's first of all talk about, you know.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think I think you're right onto it about the word tenacity, you know, that that willingness or commitment to hanging on.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think two of the stories, they all, they all, I love them all.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: They all um illustrated, but one one is a very interesting one.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: See probably the youngest couple in the book.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: They met when, you know, she was almost out of, had just finished, you know, year 12.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: She was on a gap year.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: He was a Canadian, he was traveling, they met in Cannes, had this passionate, amazing eight months together, and just by fluke, because he moved into the apartment building where she happened to be renting, and you know, that was it.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then he went back to Canada.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: And from that moment on, they decided his life was there, her life was here, her family, everyone she knew, everything was here, same thing with him, and but they sustained this friendship through emails.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: They became email deep friends, and over the next 16 years, they had they entered other relationships, they talked to each other about the relationships, they uh had moments when they when one of them would say, Oh, we, you know, I should come to Australia.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: And she would say, No, no, we're doing the right thing, you should stay in that relationship.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other one would waver and they would because they they wanted to do the moral really thing.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't, they they loved each other from afar, but they were in loving relationships with other people, which they felt they needed to stay true to.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then after maybe about, I don't know, 12 years, she she had a conference in New York and um decided to go visit him and his girlfriend in in Quebec.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: And she thought, what in the world am I doing?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so she landed in their life with the three of them.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and finally, um, one she was a microbiologist, he was a translator who worked at home.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: And one afternoon, after um Imogen was touring, she's in his study, and he says, This is just too terrible.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: I still love you.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: I I can't I can't have you here.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Oh my god, I love you too.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, I know.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_06: I I think I I remember that story.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's I remember and then of course once you say the words, once you stop pretending that it's not there, where do you go from there?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: They held on for about another five years, and then bizarre, there was some bizarre event where the Australian couple were going to be in Europe, and so and uh so Luke was in uh where were they?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: I can't remember.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: So they were in Bordeaux, and Imogen they were going to meet, and the plane in Bordeaux caught fire.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: So the two couples couldn't meet.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, talk about so the um Imogen's partner went back to Australia, the relationship was rocky anyway.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh his girlfriend went to the conference and he took the bus to Prague, where she had her conference, and they got together.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they they had four days together, and that was it.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: They just realized that they could no longer live without each other.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: Live without each other.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: And about a month later, he sent her uh uh an email with a receipt of a one-way ticket to Melbourne.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I've got goosebumps when I listened to that story because unrequited and yet unrequited and yet they just stay, they tried to stay true to the relationships they were in, the life they felt was the rational thing to do, and in the end they couldn't sustain it.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: And they are the I think happy now.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_05: What it's such it's such an incredible story, that because I'm sure that's not uncommon.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_05: I think the universality of the stories in in the book, even though obviously they're very detailed, and but but I think that you know it so many things resonate when you read them, you know.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_05: You you really recognize people you know and you know, things that you've heard.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think that was really interesting, the way that you um selected a really good cross-section, I thought, of couples.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um, there was the one that really also moved me a lot was was it the cellist?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_05: I found that really moving.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_05: Can you just give us a little overview of that one?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_05: Because that really I can.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: I can.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: So I've called them George and Jamie.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um they are both double bass players.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's right, yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, there's not all that many jobs in Australia for double bass players.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: So he is a bit older, his career got started.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, first he was hired by the Sydney Symphony, and she had trouble being seen as anyone other than his wife or his partner.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she was constantly defined through him.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so she went to Europe um to build her career and was very successful, but she it had she had to kind of physically, geographically go away to build who she could become.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: And he was he was devastated by it.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he he could he said it was such a challenge for us.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: He couldn't do anything about it.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: He hated the fact that she was being defined through him, and yet he was helpless to to change it.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, um, and then he got MS.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's the that's the part that actually really, you know, that story.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_05: So to talk about because that's beautiful what he how they manage that.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: He uh Jamie says that she has the way in which she describes him overcoming this MS is pretty extraordinary.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: She but she said because he has a musical brain, she says, he's used to tuning into all the different parts of his body.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so she said he would for days on end look in the mirror and look at his hand and just with And it would take him, could take him three weeks till he got a tiny bit of movement.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_02: He was absolutely dedicated to finding a way to circuit, you know, or get out of the um the disease and re-circuit his brain so that he could actually find movement.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_05: Because, you know, a double bass player who's got MS, it's it's like such a beyond, you know, the imagery.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_05: And then her support of him.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: And her support of him was, you know, massive.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: But he then he kind of went off the deep end and he just decided that he couldn't cope and that he was just going to run away.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: She was in Paris at the time because she was, you know, pursuing her career as well.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he sent her a telegram saying, leaving for Amsterdam with some new woman.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm out.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: And she thought this relationship is not going to end on a text.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: Or, and so she flew back to Australia before you could leave.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, This is not going to happen.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to give it another six months.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then if you want to go, you go.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: And they rebuilt it.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh she stopped, she stopped touring and got a fantastic job with the Brandenburg Orchestra.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so she got based in Australia, and then they came together and they they finally they, you know, they married, had children, uh, had two children, and um, you know, started, they had their parallel careers.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_05: It's amazing.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and then she got a terrible, a terrible kind of disease, and then he had to support her through it.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: And hers was quite debilitating too.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was quite a very debilitating, very debilitating.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was a total balance.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, you know, she just couldn't get focused, she couldn't get balance.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: She was months, months she had to be in bed.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: And isn't it unbelievable that we have we don't get ordinary colds?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: We have these insane neurological events.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: And yet, you know, when I met them, we sat in their garden and they have a little house in the garden where they play their music, and the two double bass instruments were kind of leaning against the wall, kind of touching each other.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I just thought there was everything about those instruments and and also the way they talk about playing music together that was just this incredible metaphor about how they came to regard you.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I can just I'll just read you a little speck of yeah.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_05: That was actually, I think, one of my favorite stories in the book.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_05: It was so beautiful and just moving.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: She says, um, or she's first says it's astonishing.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: Both of us suffer these cataclysmic neurological events.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: We don't get normal things like colds, yet you yet we recover.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: And um we overcome, but we're filled with doubt in the creative process.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: One disaster on stage, we move move from hero to zero.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Reputations dissolve like that, enter one bar early, no one notices, but you fall in a hole of despair.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: You can't say, sorry, I meant to play F sharp, the kids were vomiting last night, I had no sleep.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: We're highly exposed, but isn't it divine when we play together?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, I adore the way you throw yourself into the music, your passion intensely audible to the listener.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's rare.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: The power of communicating without words, a precious space only we inhabit.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: The What I've Learned Podcast comes out every Tuesday for more fantastic stories from amazing guests.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Check out the What I've Learned Instagram for more updates.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as Deb would say, stay tuned, kind, and curious.