Malkovich in Disgrace

I'm still mulling over my reponses to Disgrace, the film of the book by J M Coetzee. It was a most disturbing movie on several levels. Malkovich plays a South African professor, David Lurie, who seduces an unwilling student and loses his job as a consequence. He performs an apology to the university committee and later to her family but does not at any stage repent his actual action.
Malkovich's Lurie invites no empathy. He maintains his right to fulfil his desire even if he must dominate women and force his way. When he retreats to his daughter's farm in the hills he doesn't recognise the mirror image predicament she falls into while he is there.
The daughter Lucy has a farm hand come business partner, played by Eriq Ebouaney, who is gradually acquiring land from her, building a house and taking a wife. She falls pregnant to three young black men who rape her in an attack on the farm. One of the attackers turns out to be the partner's simple nephew and Ebouaney's character offers to marry her and afford her and the baby his protection. In return she gives him all her land as long as she can remain in her house and continue her market garden. Lurie thinks he has set the situation up so that one way or another he can fully acquire the farm.
Her desire to remain in her land forces the marriage on her. In a sinister turn she must submit to male desire and dominance to maintain her place in her world. The partner fulfils his desire for land by forcing her to either leave or accept his protection.

Post war Germany

There seems to be a surge in interest in post war Germany - or perhaps I am just sensitised to it at the moment. I saw The Reader a few months ago, then this week enjoyed Karen Schaupp's one woman show, Lotte's Gift, about her grandmother in post war Germany (broken by her virtuosic guitar performances).
By accident I also picked up a novel on war time/ post war German experiences,"The Dark Room" by Rachel Seiffert, a few nights ago. The writing is spare and the subjects of the three stories bleak but compelling. We are created by the cultural forces around us. Our understandings of our contemporary situation formed by the discourse around us is probably even more pervasive now than then. A man in 1997 Germany in the final story struggles to reconcile his memory of a loving grandfather with what the grandfather almost certainly did as an SS soldier in Belorussia in the war. The young man comes to a tentative acceptance of his grandparents at the end but doesn't seem to understand the multiple and fragmented nature of each and every individual. Who is to say that he/ I wouldn't have been capable of the same actions as the grandfather under pressure of the military and racial discourses of the time and place?

Ransom

In the tradition of Imaginary Life Malouf has taken a tangent from an ancient tale and spun a mesmerising story. I can only describe the writing as poetic prose, simple but evocative. A short journey allows Priam whose life has been a performance of being king to discover his human side as father, sensate being and interactive man. It is an interlude in a war and it changes Priam's attitude to his life but not the grisly outcome.
Should we all take regular interludes from our daily lives to discover ourselves apart from our performances as mother, professional, citizen? I think this is what happens when we travel and are far from the places and people in which we are forced to perform certain roles. At least we become aware of them and are more sensitive to what is required of us and what can profitably be discarded.

Memory and place, scent and music

I spent last weekend in another place significant to memory and self. The Sunshine Coast certainly triggers many holiday memories and memories of my grandmother and happy times with her. But it isn't just place that triggers memories... The tropically scented garden of the house I was staying in reminded me of a friend long gone. I had walked with her among heavily fragrant flowers not long before she died. Her thin face and slow words returned as soon as the aroma hit me on Sunday.
Music is also a potent memory trigger. The Carpenters were featured on the radio this morning. Before I had even recognised the music I was wallowing in an infatuation of my youth, sighing along with We've only just begun. Many of the hits from that time recall my emotional state when they became significant to me.

Sydney, a life

Visiting Sydney is like a school reunion: the thrill of shared memories, the rediscovery of familiar places and the space to recall my young self – and the relief of returning home to my settled life in the bush capital.

Gulls fought over the scraps from tourists’ lunches, towers competed for sky while the bridge brooded over the sparkling harbour. The queues for Writers' Festival sessions stretched along the Walsh Bay wharves and people argued over the contentions pouring from the overhead speakers as they waited. The performance poets - or were they stand-up poets? – entertained us with comedy and psalmody. I listened hard to Kate Grenville, Amanda Curtin and Nava Semel as they discussed their fictive takes on history and people.

Nava Semel’s innovative blend of genres in her book And the Rat Laughed intrigued me. Narrative, blog, poetry, diary, testimony and legend are woven into a compelling account of a child’s holocaust survival story. Although it is a pseudo-autobiography/biography it confirmed that the genre of life narrative can stretch to accommodate a plethora of forms and points of view.

a swarm of birds

a swarm of birds
snake across the wind
life with you
often labour
sometimes effortless

Letters home

I’m beginning to think that writing a blog is more like writing a letter than writing a dairy. When snail mail was our only option I was a champion letter writer. Sunday afternoons at boarding school were spent with 30 other girls in the prep room writing letters home. I wrote volumes to my parents and another library to my grandmother. My days with their hassles, angst and hopes were poured onto paper. I was working out my adolescent self in a more public arena than my diary. Because the letters were directed to others I was more conscious of how I revealed myself and chose my subject matter carefully.

The act of writing a blog entry feels similar to writing a personal letter because I know that it will be read by others. The experience of confession and creative expression in blogging is similar to that in diary writing but because it is a self conscious performance it feels like letter writing too. I am writing myself into existence for others’ eyes and responses.

However, a blog is more than a diary and more than a letter. It is a new genre altogether based on a radically different technology. A blog invites interactivity and builds a community of readers. Readers unknown to the blog creator are attracted by tags that label the subject matter in a post. Friends and colleagues can be invited to keep up with the latest activities and as a team can cooperate in building a blog.

My children, now adult and living in other cities, communicate with me daily not weekly. Pleas for help, money and understanding come by email, SMS and mobile phone. My response is (almost) immediate and their use of these means is nowhere near as confessional or reflective as the product of my hours in the prep room.