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Thrilled – and just a little trembly – to be having a new novel out next year, through Ultimo Press, a new imprint of Hardie Grant, via the incredible Robert Watkins who brought BODIES OF MEN to the world.
A few words from the top folk at Ultimo: ‘We have been bewitched by Nigel Featherstone’s tender, insightful novel, MY HEART IS A LITTLE WILD THING. 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. Deeply personal and lyrical, Nigel has woven a story exploring love – both familial and romantic – in all its complexity.’
Deeply personal? Indeed.
I first had the idea for this novel back in 2013 and a few drafts came and went, none of which felt as though they were sufficiently lively – filled to the brim with pulse is what’s needed.
Then a few things happened.
Thanks to the generosity of a wonderful person, I spent a week living in an old barn on a farm on the Monaro, a beautiful though remote district at the foothills of the Snowy Mountains, in New South Wales.
Then I realised that I had been enjoying writing nonfiction, including an essay about my mother’s final days, which was published in 3:AM Magazine, and another about my childhood holidaying in the Blue Mountains, which was published in the Australasian edition of the Chicago Quarterly Review. (During the writing of MY HEART IS A LITTLE WILD THING I would be commissioned to write an essay about my father.) What if I wrote this novel as though it were non-fiction, by which I mean as though the main character is writing a memoir?
And then Caroline Stacey, the artistic director of The Street Theatre in Canberra, who directed my song cycle THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, said to me, ‘Remember that sometimes good stories don’t start with the bad thing; they start after the bad thing happened.’
Some weeks later, eminent Australian poet Melinda Smith introduced me to the notion of ‘duende’, which she defined as being what drives written work that says what we’re not meant to say, or not allowed to say.
It seemed some key pieces had fallen into place.
So, I had one last go at the manuscript.
And here we are.
A few more words from me: ‘What do I hope readers will take away from this novel? A renewed awareness of life always being complex and messy; that sometimes, if we want to find ourselves, we must go back to the beginning; that a human being is entirely dependent on the environment in which it is placed; and that love is a wild, wild thing.’
And some last words from Robert, who is Ultimo’s Publishing Director: ‘Nigel is such a considered, lyrical writer – and MY HEART IS A LITTLE WILD THING is a beautiful novel. Readers, I’m sure, will relate deeply to the conflict Patrick feels between his love for his family and his yearning to pursue his heart. I’m so delighted to be publishing Nigel again on our new list at Ultimo Press.’
MY HEART IS A LITTLE WILD THING will be published in May 2022.
Rather unbelievably, it’s already available for pre-order.
Big thanks to Gaby Naher at Left Bank Literary, who keeps the show on the road. Author photo by David Lindesay, who somehow managed to get me to almost smile.
Now to have a nice quiet faint.
Once I’ve recovered, I so look forward to sharing this novel with you.
Do stay well.
Despite the world having serious wobbles at the moment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic (though thankfully, miraculously, Australia appears to be faring much better than many other countries), some good things continue to happen.
BODIES OF MEN is still doing its humble little thing: finding readers here and there; it’s such a joy to receive messages from folk saying that they have enjoyed the novel. In rather lovely news, for the month of April Amazon has the e-book version on special for $2.99. If you’re a Kindle user and would like an affordable way of reading the novel, now is your chance! Also please do help to spread the word – it’s autumn in Australia so the chooks have gone off the lay, which means more trips to Woolies, which means I need to have a few coins rattling around my pockets.
In related news, like many writers I have lost a number of gigs due to The Virus, but at least one is still going ahead, albeit online: a panel organised by the Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane, Writing War, which features Melanie Myers, Simon Cleary and your old Goulburn mate and facilitation by Cass Moriarty, will be held via Zoom at 6pm (Queensland time) on Monday 20 April. Tickets are just $5 and can be bought here. It would be terrific to see you.
Moving from the page to the stage: my new play – with songs – has been selected for a creative development through the First Seen program, which is an initiative of The Street Theatre in Canberra. Last month I had the opportunity to spend two days at The Street doing a preliminary creative development with dramaturge Anne-Louise Rentell, which was such a productive experience. First Seen will offer an even deeper experience and involve a range of creative voices exploring and challenging the work. While usually this would happen over an intense 7-day period in the theatre’s rehearsal space, due to COVID-19 the sessions will be over Zoom and spread across 2 weeks in May.
The text for the work is still very much a work-in-progress, but here is a sample from one of the songs:
Who is he,
the man who dares to himself himself
‘father’?
He is my
he is your
crumbling wall
What I find (sometimes almost overwhelmingly) fascinating about writing for the stage is being able to access input from so many creatives, all with their different perspectives and requirements. In a way, there’s no way of knowing what will emerge, but, to be frank, it’s exciting.
To end: during the week I posted on my socials a photograph of me from when I was about 5 years old; it’s at the top of this post. Although I said online that the photo was taken in my backyard, I was actually at a holiday house my family used to rent at Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains, to the west of Sydney. Throughout my childhood we spent many holidays at Mount Wilson and I adored it; I still think about the place. And write about it. A lot. My first novel, REMNANTS (Pandanus Books, 2005, largely out of print but information is available here), was set at Mount Wilson, a significant chunk of BODIES OF MEN involves Mount Wilson, and a recent memoir essay I wrote for the special Australian Issue of the CHICAGO QUARTERLY REVIEW explored my ongoing association with the place, including an event that has continued to resonate. (You might be pleased to know that new projects have moved ‘off mountain’.)
The caption I used for the photo when posted online was ‘One minute you’re a happy little kid playing theatre in the backyard; the next you’re a gloomy bloody author. Either way, buy a copy of the BODIES OF MEN e-book and cheer this old bugger up?’
Perhaps I’ll end this post by simply saying: if you’ve ever bought a copy of one of my books, or you’ve come to one of my shows or events, if you’ve commented here or on the socials, thank you.
Very much.
Snowfalls. Orange skies. Face-masks. Raging flames. Ash on the letterbox. Hail the size of apples. Half a billion animals gone. Dead trees. Lives lost. Floods.
It was the Summer from Hell in Australia.
And now the daffodils are coming up. In March. As they say in polite society: what the fuck?
Still, writing manages to happen.
Firstly, I was chuffed to have been asked to write a piece for the special Australian Issue of the CHICAGO QUARTERLY REVIEW, which is now out. I wrote about my childhood in the Blue Mountains, Patrick White, and one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made.
The opening paragraph:
I stood on the edge of the lane and stared at the black house, at the old concrete water tank, at the lawn stones that might have been foundations. Some minutes later, after deciding that as it was midweek and the house likely a weekender, I took a step, then another— until I was standing in the garden, in the very place where my bedroom had once been. I stretched out my arms as if to touch the missing walls and said, “This is where it happened.”
Such an honour to share the pages with writers such as Claire G Coleman, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Krissy Kneen, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Behrouz Boochani, Van Badham, David Malouf, Kim Mahood, Simon Cleary, Quinn Eades, and Inga Simpson among many others.
While writing for the page continues to be my focus, writing for the stage is something I’m doing more and more, even though I never intended to go in this direction. Ah, the twists and turns in the writing life.
So, it was rather exciting to be informed recently that three of my songs from THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT will be performed in November this year at Carnegie Hall’s Recital Hall in New York by international baritone David Wakeham.
To be frank, this is rather special: the song cycle, the score for which was written by the amazing James Humberstone, is about a high-raking Australian soldier who returns from his latest tour of Afghanistan with a dark secret; all he wants to do is heal on his family’s grazing property on the Southern Tablelands – what he doesn’t know is that his family have a dark secret of their own.
To have elements of the work performed in the US? Mind-blowing.
Finally, earlier this month I spent two days at The Street Theatre in Canberra. Three songs from THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT may well be off to New York, but I have a new work for the stage in the very early phase of development i.e. crappy words on bits of paper.
Is it another song cycle? Perhaps it’s more of a play with songs?
Thanks to some lovely funding from Create NSW, I was able to spend two days with Wollongong-based dramaturge Anne-Louise Rentell. Together we talked about big ideas and then we tore the draft into small pieces and started putting it back together.
Not all the words are coming together yet, but here are a few:
A boat, I see
an empty boat blown by the wind
to the shore
of a lake filled to the brim
with life-giving water
that’s no more, like three boys
They drowned, they said,
and I believed them
Is the script in a better shape now? Yes. What’s the next step? Who knows. But I do love being in the creative space, both physically and mentally.
Thanks again to Create NSW for the opportunity, The Street Theatre for hosting these preliminary creative-development sessions, Anne-Louise Rentell for pushing me into some uncomfortable terrain (almost literally), David Sharpe for joining the dots, and Paul Scott-Williams from the Hume Conservatorium, who, by commissioning me all those years ago to write the libretto for what became THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, sent me in this exciting direction.
Perhaps if humanity survives long enough there might be a new work on the stage before long?
Quite honestly, who knows.
Who knows.
Good celebration, and some very good luck. Photo credit: Andrew Sikorski
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: book launches make me want to vomit.
My own, that is.
Will anyone turn up? Will the speakers remember the date and time? What if there’s a massive storm? A traffic jam? A terrorist incident? What if I become too nervous, drink too much too early, and then embarrass myself?
I’m a natural hermit. Even going out of the house to get groceries is a trial. And having to go into a bank? Forget it.
I’m happiest (if that’s the word) wearing terrible clothes and spending day after day writing and reading and making simple little meals. So the idea of being the centre of attention for an evening fills me with a heavy, almost dangerous dread – I can’t wait for it to be over. But I’d be lying if I said that I don’t also find the idea exciting – the celebration, especially after so much isolation, the community, the good cheer, the love. Yes, it’s exciting, and, now I think about it, healthy.
Which gets me to the launch of Bodies of Men. It happened on 16 May in Canberra at the fabulous Street Theatre. There were books and wine and olives. There were powerful personal responses to the novel from Robyn Cadwallader, who has published her notes on her blog, and CJ Bowerbird, who performed a spoken-word piece about his experiences serving in the Australian military. And there were people: family, friends, my agent and publisher, some folk I recognised but didn’t know by name, some strangers – all appreciated.
There were also more than a few embraces.
And a dinner afterwards. In the last hour of the evening my partner and my agent and I found ourselves walking through the campus of the Australian National University and having a lovely chat to a rabbit, which is clearly the sign of a good night.
Thank you: Robyn and Chris, The Street Theatre, Harry Hartog Booksellers, Gaby Naher, and Robert Watkins and the Hachette Australia team. And thank you to all those who came out to celebrate Bodies of Men.
I won’t forget it.
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PS There was a rather lovely review in the Canberra Times, so there’s that too. A summary of critical responses can be found here. Bodies of Men can be purchased in your favourite bookshop and can also be bought directly from Hachette Australia – as well as the print version, there are e-book and audiobook versions. Over and out. For now.
The leaves on the trees are beginning to yellow, I’m sitting at my desk and wearing a dreadful pair of black tracksuit pants, a blue-striped hooded top, and a pair of red woolen socks – the mornings are cool but the days are still warm, if not very warm – and there is an ever-so-perplexing feeling in my chest and legs, as if tomorrow I will head overseas on an adventure. But I’m not heading overseas tomorrow. On 23 April – so, in six weeks’ time – my novel BODIES OF MEN will be officially published.
Bodies of Men: now with added endorsement from Karen Viggers
Yikes.
As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I began writing the novel in 2013 when I was a writer-in-residence at UNSW Canberra, which provides the campus for the Australian Defence Force Academy. Since then I have had the great fortune to work on some other projects, including THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, but progressing (reworking, re-imagining, refining) the story that would become BODIES OF MEN has been a mostly private obsession.
Put simply, I could not let the story go. Or perhaps the story would not let me go? Either way, here we are, with the novel soon be published by Hachette Australia.
How do I feel? Grateful.
A little about the story:
Egypt, 1941. Only hours after disembarking in Alexandria, William Marsh, an Australian corporal at twenty-one, is face down in the sand, caught in a stoush with the Italian enemy. He is saved by James Kelly, a childhood friend from Sydney and the last person he expected to see. But where William escapes unharmed, not all are so fortunate. William is sent to supervise an army depot in the Western Desert, with a private directive to find an AWOL soldier: James Kelly. When the two are reunited, James is recovering from an accident, hidden away in the home of an unusual family – a family with secrets. Together they will risk it all to find answers. Soon William and James are thrust headlong into territory more dangerous than either could have imagined.
Novelists chatting with booksellers in Sydney. Photo credit: Hachette Australia
Four reasons for that feeling of gratefulness:
- as of yesterday, the final edits are done and next week Hachette sends the novel to the printer (to push the travel metaphor, it feels as though the boat’s being slid into the water and either it will take us to the other shore or we’ll sink somewhere along the way);
- international best-selling author Karen Viggers has provided an endorsement: ‘A beautifully written, tender and sensitive love story told within the tense and uncertain context of war’ (how wonderful it was to receive Karen’s response and then see it placed on the top of the front cover);
- in the past fortnight Hachette sent me and four other novelists to Melbourne to meet booksellers over lunch and dinner, and then we did it again in Sydney this week; it was so terrific to spend time with those who work tirelessly to get novels in the hands – and hearts – of readers; these sessions also provided me with the first experience of talking about my novel in public, which I was a bit rubbish at initially but soon managed to find a way of doing it succinctly (I hope); and
- BODIES OF MEN will be launched in Canberra at 6pm on Thursday 16 May at The Street Theatre – the forever thoughtful novelist Robyn Cadwallader and engaging performance poet CJ Bowerbird will provide personal responses, and there will be book sales, and, of course, booze.
So, it’s autumn. Within weeks there will be the need to go looking for firewood, and the second doona will have to be put on the bed, for dinner there will be soups rather than salads and red wine instead of white, and, this year, there will be a novel called BODIES OF MEN in the world. Yes, I’m grateful, very grateful, and I’m also excited – I might just have to buy a new pair of tracksuit pants to mark the occasion.
Paul Scott-Williams (Goulburn Regional Conservatorium), Caroline Stacey (The Street Theatre, Canberra), and your old mate – 13 November 2018
It was wonderful to zip down the Hume Highway earlier this week to see THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT pick up a 2018 Canberra Critics Circle Award.
Congratulations to all involved in our song cycle: Paul Scott-Williams at the Goulburn Regional Conservatorium, which commissioned the work; Caroline Stacey at The Street Theatre for the powerful direction and so much more; James Humberstone for the extraordinary score; and exemplary performers Michael Lampard and Alan Hicks.
Big thanks to Katy Mutton for the exquisitely evocative art work (as commissioned by The Street Theatre) that was used to market the work.
Last but by no means least, thank you to everyone who came to one of the shows – there is nothing like an audience, and an audience’s response.
Might this be the official end of this project? Hard to tell. But perhaps it might be nice to leave with the words to the last song in the cycle:
FROM HERE
From here
I mend
From here
there is a bend
in the river
From here
there will be
the sea-hawk and the shore
and the red-belly black snake
in the rocks
so stand with me
stand with me now
From here
we mend
From here
we mend
From here
we mend
together
Composer James Humberstone (left), baritone Michael Lampard (right) and myself post-show. Image credit: Anne Casey
Oh, massive thanks to all those who came out to see THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT in Sydney last week – it’s hugely appreciated and I’m most grateful. Thanks also to those who have been saying nice things and sending me messages. It means the world to me.
Really.
As mentioned in previous Homesong diary entries, it’s a nerve-wracking experience writing for the stage, partly because it’s so exposing – for all concerned, no doubt – and partly because it’s hard to know how an audience will respond. Indeed, in the weeks before a show, there’s a lot of worrying about whether or not people will come along at all. So, another thank you: to those who helped spread the word through social media or email – every effort was valuable and valued.
In the lead up to the Sydney shows, James wrote a wonderfully illuminating piece for Limelight Magazine about how he approached composing the music.
In the end we had good audiences, in terms of numbers and responses. We had some terrifically lively foyer conversations afterwards, and longer chats over beer and wine!
Some kind and generous folk put notes up on social media. This, from award-winning Australian poet Anne Casey, was especially appreciated:
THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT is spellbinding, spine-tingling, heartbreaking and gloriously uplifting. Extraordinary performance by operatic baritone Michael Lampard and pianist Alan Hicks. This was a stunningly moving, beautiful, haunting and inventive production from the very first breath to the last.
What happens from here?
Another rest. There’s talk of the show heading into regional NSW, which, after all, was the original intention of the Goulburn Regional Conservatorium who commissioned the work; there’s also the possibility of a run in Melbourne, perhaps next year.
Personally, I’m looking forward to preparing for (i.e. worrying about) my novel BODIES OF MEN, which is forthcoming from Hachette Australia in 2019.
Thanks again for all the interest and support.
It’s gold. And it’s a balm.
Michael Lampard performing as The Soldier and accompanist Alan Hicks at the Canberra premiere in March 2018, The Street Theatre (Image credit: Shelly Higgs/The Street Theatre)
Book launches make me want to vomit.
My own book launches.
Of course, it is wonderful to have a crowd of people help celebrate your new book, but it’s also stressful. Will the speakers be entertaining? Will I make a fool of myself? Yes, launches make me feel sick; or, at the least, make me want to head for the hills.
Which is why, at the world premiere of The Weight of Light, a song cycle, in Canberra earlier this year, it was surprising to feel positively calm in the foyer before the performance: I drank mineral water, I chatted, I gave and received embraces, and all the while I was relaxed and happy. But then – but then! – the bells rang and the audience entered the theatre and as the lights went down I could feel my heart making bone-shaking explosions. How was the audience going to respond? Was the work inherently problematic? And why had I been so naïve to think I could produce a text to be sung?
Boom! went the thing in my chest…
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Keep reading at ArtsHub, which published this piece on 23 July 2018. Thanks to Richard Watts.
Composer James Humberstone during the creative development sessions at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, December 2017. (Image: Ryley Gillen)
When I first met James Humberstone, over dinner in 2015, he looked like a guitarist in Radiohead: joggers, funky trousers, coloured T-shirt, and a cardigan that looked like something a soccer player would wear in the garden. With his English accent (he was born in London and migrated to Australia in 1997) and a brain full of opinions, which range from veganism to marriage equality, James is terrific company. In terms of music, I remember us that night chatting about Malcolm Williamson, the Australian composer who was also the Master of the Queen’s Music from 1975 until his death in 2003, but also the stratospheric English rock band Muse. James has an irreverent sense of humour, with political conservatives coming off second best.
With the Sydney shows for THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT just around the corner – Friday 27 July, to be precise – James and I had a chat about our influences, and, after all these years, what we think is at the core of our song cycle.
NIGEL
In terms of music, who inspires you?
JAMES
Howard Skempton (image credit: Clive Barda)
The biggest influence on my own composition has been Howard Skempton, the English post-experimental composer. I remember the first time I heard his Lento, at the age of 16, I was struck by a music that was timeless in more than one way. Timeless because it was obviously new, but seemed ancient, too. And timeless because structurally it felt like the piece didn’t go from A to B to C, but instead just occupied the time for which it lasted.
At university I was able to find more of his music, and loved it equally. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Howard’s music over 20 years ago and was lucky enough to study with him privately for a short time before migrating to Australia.
In Australia, the biggest influence on me has been Anne Boyd, who was my supervisor during my Masters in composition, but also influenced me through the study of her own work, as I engraved it as she wrote it over a few years, and as a friend. I knew I wanted to be an academic-composer early on, but it was Anne who made me sure of it.
Of course, I’m inspired by many other composers and performers. In the last decade I’ve drawn on so many of J S Bach’s ideas, which are still so radical even today. I think Beethoven was probably the greatest composer to live, and don’t ever try to emulate him. As a young teenage composer I was inspired by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Britten, and still often revisit their scores to see how they achieved the amazing sounds that they did, especially orchestrally. While I’d describe myself as a (post-)experimentalist (though if Cage didn’t like that label, why would I?), I’m one of the few who loves the music of both minimalists and the serialists/complexists. In fact, there isn’t much music that I don’t like, although to me the stuff that’s truly inspiring is the music you don’t ‘get’ the first time and hear new things in every time you listen.
I’ve listed traditional western art music composers there, but I must also say that last qualification applies to all of the genres I listen to. The greats include Radiohead and Björk, but there are many writing such interesting music in all fields now – I’m listening to hip-hop, punk and EDM just as much as I am to any art music composer. It’s a feast.
What about your musical inspirations?
NIGEL
My musical life started with Kate Bush and The Cure and has progressed (maybe?) from there. Bands that continue to resonate are The Smiths, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Red House Painters, Frightened Rabbit, and The Go! Team, as well as artists such as Nina Simone, PJ Harvey, Peaches, and DJ Shadow. I went through a huge dance-music stage – series by Global Underground and Renaissance – and I still enjoy the more intricate side of that kind of music e.g. Burial, Kiasmos, and Jon Hopkins. After getting into some wonderful post-rock – primarily Sigur Ros, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Explosions in the Sky – I’ve been immersing myself in more minimal music; I’ve always loved Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Arvo Pärt, but more recently I’ve been listening to Dustin O’Halloran, Jóhann Jóhannsson (rest his soul), and Max Richter – I love his re-scoring of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as well as Three Worlds, his score for a ballet based on the novels of Virginia Woolf. Nils Frahm’s All Melody is that newest album that I adore, as well as Singularity by Jon Hopkins.
I could go on…
Tell me about the literature that has interested you?
JAMES
I’m a complete lightweight, but not because I want to be. I have a job that involves reading thousands of words every day, and while I do find reading for research extremely pleasurable (I won’t say the same for marking university assignments, but they are an essential part of the education process, so I try not to complain), I have little energy left for reading for pleasure, so tend to read page-turners.
Margaret Atwood
Rather like my choice of films and TV series, my tired brain enjoys science fiction as Philip K Dick described it (anything where reality has changed a little bit – not necessarily with spaceships and laser guns!). I’m a huge Phillip Pullman fan, and really want his permission to create an opera trilogy of the Dark Materials books (I’ve asked; his agent says no), just reread Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale after the excellent new TV adaptation, and have been enjoying reading Tolkien and Rowling to my kids.
That may not sound very inspiring for a composer, but I should point out that when one works with words, as I have in my two largest recent projects, The Weight of Light and Odysseus: Live, I’m constantly inspired by the texts that I’m setting. One begins with the words, their emotion, their structure, their intent, the narrative, and everything is planned around that. I’ve been incredibly lucky to work with some amazing writers, and have never had to set a ‘dud’ text yet. I imagine that it would result in a piece of music that wasn’t much cop, either.
Over to you: what’s the literature that inspires?
NIGEL
I love the Russans, especially Chekhov and Tolstoy. More often than not I’m stunned by JM Coetzee. Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx is one of the most extraordinary pieces of literature I know, as is Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave. Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet and The Riders were an early influence, and I’ve also found much inspiration in Helen Garner, as well as Patrick White and Randolph Stow. Of course, there’s Hemingway – what a perfect piece of writing is The Old Man in the Sea. Other authors who regularly inspire are Aminatta Forna, Kazuo Ishiguro, Colm Tóibín, Evelyn Waugh, Michelle de Kretser, Alan Hollinghurst, Anne Enright, Evelyn Waugh, Christos Tsiolkas, and EM Forster. In terms of poetry, for me it’s Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, ee cumings, Philip Larkin, and Dorothy Porter. Recent novels that knocked me for a six: Solar Bones by Mike McCormack and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, both of which are thrillingly, bravely experimental – but with heart.
To finish, in terms of THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT I’ve been thinking that, at its core, the work is about the pressure nations put on individuals to do near impossible things, but the unpredictable chances we get to heal and make new.
What do you think the work is about at its core?
JAMES
Humanity, or the human spirit if you prefer, pulling us through.
Whether we live in Australia, where most of us live in the top levels of wealth in the whole world, or in poor countries where the majority struggle to survive, or in war zones, where it might not matter how wealthy or poor you are, but whether you can save your life and the lives of your family — we all have stories of adversity that we have survived. Most adults have lost someone very close to them. Many of us, even in this country, have struggled with questions of our identity or against forces and misassumptions out of our control. Perhaps just thinking back on those things is enough to make us cry, or break down again.
Yet most of us get up. And get on. And when we see someone who can’t, or at least not yet, we help them. Or, at least, the best of us do.
In THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT a series of devastating events shake our soldier to the core, all over one short weekend. He is down, he is down again, he is hurt, hurt, hurt, and breaking. Yet he gets up. We endure and express so much pain, but we get up. And when we can’t, we ‘cry out for help’, and hopefully our family and our friends are there for us. I hope in this Trumpian, post-Brexit, keep-out-the-boat-people time that we live in, that the tide might change, soon, as we remember our humanity and find a little more compassion and love for those around us – or far away – who are hurting.
Michael Lampard as The Soldier, at the world premiere of THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, Canberra, The Street Theatre, Canberra, 2018. (Image credit: Shelly Higgs)
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THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT: Friday 27 July 2018, 1pm and 7.30pm. Venue: Music Workshop, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Featuring Michael Lampard as The Soldier. Pianist: Alan Hicks. Direction: Caroline Stacey. Tickets ($25/$15) available here.
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THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT was commissioned by the Goulburn Regional Conservatorium and developed by The Street Theatre in Canberra.
One minute, so it seems, I’m a moody youth meeting friends on the steps of the Sydney Town Hall before heading to various record shops to buy new albums from The Cure, The Clash, and The Smiths. The next (i.e. 35 years later), THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, the song cycle I’ve written with James Humberstone, is about to be performed at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
YIKES.
Sydney is the place of my birth, childhood, and teenage years. I left at the age of 18 to have independent adventures, first in Canberra and then Perth; there was some time spent travelling overseas, and then another stint in Canberra; before, in 2010, I headed into the wilds of regional New South Wales. It’s all been wonderful (well, it’s all been an experience!), and throughout has been reading, writing, and music.
There have been two other constants, if I’m entirely honest: a quest for love; and a never-ending questioning of what it means to be a man.
Now I think about it, there’s been something else: an ongoing concern about Australia, this apparently happy, lucky country, this country with a conflicted, complicated soul, this country which has done terrible things both at home and abroad to achieve its aims, and continues to do terrible things.
THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT brings all these themes together. No wonder composer James Humberstone, when he first read the libretto, said, ‘Woah, this is intense.’
And he’s right.
Though there’s no point making art about big issues such as love and war if there isn’t a sense of hope, if we can’t heal from this. There’s definitely hope in THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT. Beauty even.
But best I don’t go on. All I really wanted to say is that if you’re in Sydney on Friday 27 July, it’d be terrific to see you at one of the two performances. Baritone Michael Lampard is extraordinary as The Soldier, and accompanist Alan Hicks is an orchestra with ten fingers.
Tickets ($25/$15) are available here. A brief, teaser video can be found here.
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THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT was commissioned by the Goulburn Regional Conservatorium and developed by The Street Theatre in Canberra.
Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecote 