GOT ME A FESTIVAL

Last weekend was that most wonderful reminder of why I got into this writing gig: the guest appearance at a Writers Festival. In this instance, I was flown across the country and put up in a hotel in my favourite City of them all, the beautiful city of Brisbane. 

It's never real until the tag arrives.

I've always loved Brisbane, especially the South Bank, where the Festival was located. It's superbly picturesque, and a thousand blessings to the person who had the imagination and foresight to place so many cultural and artistic nodes within such proximity to each other. The Gallery of Modern Art, State Library, Museum, State Theatre, Griffith Music Observatory, performance bowl and others stand shoulder to shoulder along the sculpted lawns, so that every morning I walked an 800 metre corridor of art between the hotel and the Festival. No surprise that I arrived each day in an uplifted, happy mood, ready to work. 

Art. Just standing there, being all arty and stuff,

like it can just be all... arty. (Sigh) I love Brisbane.

Mind you, the fun had started almost from the moment my heels hit dirt. Checking into the hotel was going swimmingly, until the man serving the couple next to me looked at his screen and went "Oh." See, the screen had changed colour, without him touching it, and it should'na oughta done that. He pressed a key. It did the same thing. The woman serving me said, "Oh." The man came over. They looked at her screen. Then they looked at his. I smiled at the nice couple. They smiled at me. The hotel staff pressed buttons. They came back to my screen. The man looked at me, then at the couple, then at me.

"Um," he said. "You're not married, are you.....?"

See, when you're talking literary Battersbys in this country, there's me, and then there's the stupendously lovely and talented Katherine Battersby. And we'd never met. Until that moment. And then we discovered that we share the signing tactic of offering kids a choice of coloured pen to sign with. And then I managed to sneak a graffiti note into her pencil case that she didn't notice for a day and a half, and well, frankly, meeting her would have been reason alone to love the Festival, if I hadn't also caught up, and had such joyous and happy responses to my lurking presence, with a series of old friends, each of whom treated me like some sort of lost prodigal: meeting Trent Jamieson, Angela Slatter and Kim Wilkins again was like an extended gathering of the clan, and getting to see Kate Eltham-- someone Luscious and I genuinely hold very close to our hearts-- was like catching up with family.

Slatter and Jamieson. Comics at large.

Sweet, pretty and talented. It's a Battersby thing. 

To have that, and to meet new friends like Katherine and Yassmin Abdel-Magied; and work with delightful and warm-hearted peers like David Burton, Amie Kaufman and Jaclyn Moriarty, was a visceral and wondrous reminder that my community is a lot wider than I think of it, and that my horizon is a lot broader. But the Festival was about more than just hanging out being a writah-dahling (although I can do that like a fiend). It was about work. 

And work I did. 5 presentations, a panel and a Masterclass across 4 days -- which is exactly what I love to do at these events: I'm not one for propping up the bar when I could be geeking. And the volunteers, particularly Green Room co-ordinator Kristy, were some of the loveliest people I've ever worked with (to give you an idea, one of them-- the entirely-too-sweet Olivia-- realised one of my signings was going so long it was beginning to impact upon my arrival time at my next presentation, so ran up to the Green Room and filled a box with lunch so I'd get something to eat). 

Getting my work on.

And the kids I worked with were incredible. Kids are usually pretty damn fearless when it comes to art, much more so than adults, but even so, I was blown away by how many had actually read the book, and how many had taken the time to formulate intelligent and critical questions about the text. Every session began with an introduction speech given by a student, and taking the time to chat to them helped me realise just how much some of these kids were prepared to work just to get there. In my very first session, I was chatting to Michaela, my MC, who came from a school called 'Chinchilla'. (No spoiling it for the others, those who know where that is).

What's the name of this thing, again?

"Cool school name," I said. "Where is that?"
"Four hours away," she replied.
Four hours. To attend a 9.45am session. Turns out, thee kids had boarded a bus at 5am, just to get to Brisbane in time for my session. They were seeing me, and one other 45-minute session, then trooping back on the bus for another 4 hour journey home.

Brisbane. Where even the seagulls are front-rowers...

Yeah. I'd come from Perth and it had only taken me 90 minutes longer. Faced with that, how can you do anything but work yourself into the ground to try and give these kid something worthwhile for their dedication? It seemed to work: by Friday morning, the Festival's stock of Magrit had sold out, I was the 3rd highest-selling author for the day, and I'd resorted to signing school hats, casts, programmes and water bottles-- frankly, anything the kids pushed across the table at me. What else can you do?

NUMBER THREE, BABY!

After spending so much time entertaining kids, I finished the festival with a 3-hour Masterclass on the subject of short fiction, in which I managed to pack about 4 hours of theory-based ranting and half a dozen writing exercises, and a panel on YA Survivalist fiction for which I was eminently under-qualified, but managed to survive through a combination of smart-arsery and monkey-boy dancing-- which, incidentally, is pretty much how I intend to survive the actual apocalypse.

Short Fiction Masterclass: Work, you dogs!

And then it was over. Like a cheesy Hollywood movie-- think of me as a fat, hairy Renee Zellweger-- my last act was to walk alone through a deserted library, nod goodbye to a single, uninterested security guard, and step out into the failing light and pouring rain of an evening thunderstorm. Seriously, even I could hear the rising strings. I did not, however, break out into song, Brisbane did not need that. Nobody needs that.

When it was sunny, South Bank was a riot of outdoor dance

floors, buskers, and music venues. I took this

picture when it was pissing down: ironically, not one person singing.

So, I miss it. I miss Brisbane. I'd forgotten just how much I loved the City-- it's been several long years since my last visit. And it all came back in such a rush of goodwill and graciousness that I've been in an extended funk ever since I returned to Perth and to the day-after-day dreariness of my long-soured day job. So, all I can do is recover my pen, get back to work, and try to make my next visit of the permanent variety.

Tally ho. 

Then there was this :(

AN ASIDE ON THE SUBJECT OF LIONEL SHRIVER

Stop me if you've heard this one: a Festival invites a famous author to deliver the keynote speech. The author represents the Festival. There words are the distillation of everything the Festival stands for; every prism through which the public, the media, and the other authors will view each other. Even if that author has a personality so large, so iconic and even inconoclastic, that their personality is a large part of their delivery-- still, even then-- they will take the audience on a journey of discovery that will leave all present examining their own points of view through the filter of the Festival and the artistic aims for which it stands. Picture Lenny Bruce's "Nigger, Nigger, Spic" routine. Picture Graham Chapman's carrot-clad non-speech to the graduation class at Cambridge.

Picture me at the back of Lionel Shriver's Festival keynote speech, watching Yassmin Abdel-Magied leave in tears, seeing Alexei Sayle's face turn a peculiar shade of thunder, waiting for this speech of derision, and contempt, and utter entitlement to turn, to twist, to get to Bruce's self-turned finger and single word, "Yid".

Picture me walking out, between the doffing of the sombrero and the Q&A, not able to be in the same room anymore, feeling diminished by the act of witnessing a speech that was not only the antithesis of the artistic creed of enlightenment and community, but was a sweeping dismissal of any notion of those concepts.

The internet has since lit up with argument and counter-argument. Yassmin was the first, her blog post subsequently picked up by the Guardian and other markets (Don't read the comments. Never read the comments). Since then it's gone viral, with both sides throwing mud, shit, sputum and ancestry at each other in the hope that something will stain.

I am not so affected as others. I can get up any day, any place, and write whatever I like, comforted by the fact that I'm white, male, prosperous, politically unhindered, sexually validated, and my fucking voice doesn't have to fight anybody because it' already won. So, this:

There's appropriation, and then there's exchange. There's riding in like Vasquez, and then there's approaching a culture with respect. Shriver not only claimed that it was not necessary to approach another culture with respect, she claimed it was our right as artists to strip-mine anything we set out eyes on, and if we did a bad job, well, too bad so sad, because at least we had a go. It was unapologetically imperialist thinking at its worst.

Lionel Shriver betrayed the BWF, who asked her to speak on a specific topic, by agreeing to do so, then wilfully and gleefully going off-topic from her first word and leaving the organisation looking complicit with her views. 

She betrayed her fellow artists by using a high-profile moment to throw us under the bus by portraying any who didn't conform to her extreme views as ignorant weaklings.

And most disgustingly of all, she betrayed those that we artists should be standing beside-- the weak, the disenfranchised and the voiceless-- by openly telling them that their status was deserved and that their only value was as narrative grist for those better placed.

It was a loathsome piece of punching down by someone intelligent enough to be better. We should all be better.

So that was a shitty way to end a blog post.

Have a picture of the curve of the sky to cheer you up.