Won't somebody think of the children

I’ve been working with children lately. I have been astonished and astounded by how creative they are. It must be physiological. It’s just a fact that they flick an instantaneous switch and suddenly there’s a connection that wasn’t there before.

I was attempting at one point to link some of the stories we had written together. I said to one of the kids, ‘Hey so I’m trying to link this story about a painting of a face to this other story about a series of secret underground tunnels beneath a school. Any ideas?’ This kid, who had been staring out the window, thought for a second and then said, ‘Nostrils are tunnels’.

And just like that, we had a link. Our main character crawled through a nostril which became a portal to a series of tunnels under a school. It was the easiest thing in the world for this kid to do. They were flexible, too. I changed things on them more than once and they absolutely went with it, coming up with ways of making it better as we went. I honestly thought, ‘I need to take these kids with me to the next writers room I’m in’.

I’ve been reading up on it since. Do we drum the creativity out of them? Is their underdeveloped brains that make connections we can’t make because ours can do boring things like see potential consequences? It’s a bit of both apparently. I recommend it to anybody creative. Except if it’s late in the afternoon on a Friday and it’s over, say, 15 degrees centigrade. Give that session a miss. You’re welcome.

Write it down

Our dad always used to say to us, ‘Write it down’. If we’d have an idea or even tell a funny story. Write it down. His mother, our grandmother, kept a diary her entire life, into which her unfiltered thoughts would be poured like honey from a jar. Did she think anybody would read it? Was it just for her?

I never kept a diary properly. My diaries are all elaborate first entries followed by months-later apologies (to the diary? to myself?) for not having provided more constant updates. I preferred to imagine entire worlds and turn them into books and plays and films and stories.

Now, though, I’ve written a book about my life, my family, and the strange fact that other people seemed to know our Dad everywhere we went. A lot had to change for me to make the decision to write it, but now that the book is in bookshops, the strange new part for me is that I don’t get to be there for the next bit. Unlike in theatre, where by the end of the first week of the season you’re quite sure which bits work and which bits don’t, this is in other people’s hands now.

I was pleased to discover though, that some of the anxieties I had to tackle head-on in writing the book had been noticed by Matthew Ricketson, who reviewed it for The Conversation. WOULD THAT BE FUNNY is definitely the most personal thing I’ve written. This weekend, instead of doing the list of things I’d been planning, I slept. And then I accidentally slept again. And then again. Is it possible that talking about yourself is more exhausting than making up a whole world? I posit to you that it is, because I’m suddenly becoming unaccountably sleepy. If you can’t sleep tonight, may I suggest you pretend to do a radio interview with someone you’ve never met about your childhood. Really tuckers you out.

An odd day and a book launch

This morning, I was about to leave the house when my partner called me and told me he had my keys. In his hand. On the other side of the city during peak hour just before I had to drop some children off at an educational institution. The keys contained a key to the house (without which I could not leave) and a key to the car (without which I could not drive). I had a zoom meeting with a journalist that was set to start at 9:30AM. It was 9am.

Things went uphill from there thanks to a spare key someone remembered at the last minute and the kindness of our neighbours who let me drive their car, after which I returned to a phone call from another neighbour asking me to use a spare key to unlock the front of THEIR house because? They were locked inside it.

I saw one of my favourite people today, so I’m not going to complain, but it was a day full of surprises, which leads me to report the following: today I witnessed a man push a brand new office chair three blocks down a Fitzroy street AND a woman, immaculately dressed in full make-up and a faux fur coat… eating… yoghurt… out of a tub… with her fingers.

It was a very strange day.

At the end of the day though I was sent a link to my book launch. Of my actual book. Which is a book. That I wrote. Which is being launched. You can book here. The day contained, in other words, one thing that wasn’t completely bonkers. Potentially a little bit bonkers, but there’s really no telling at this stage.

Things I Noticed at my writing residency at a local school

• The deployment of the most dramatic phrases (‘slay’ for instance, or ‘I’m obsessed’) via the most deadpan tone available to humankind.

• Cool kids, who don’t want to say or do anything, are the ones you feel sorry for when you’re an adult.

• An incident where a child kicked a ball up a tree causing half a dozen other kids to spend most of their lunch break piffing objects up the tree in an attempt to dislodge it. For some reason, the fact that I could not hear any of this through the glass window made it all the more fascinating, poignant and hilarious. A lunchbox lid, a banana, and several drink bottles were deployed. Break-out groups were strategising. A girl from the other side of the playground was sent for (incredible aim, very good arm) and it was she who, with a drink bottle, dislodged the ball. Like a sporting hero, she was descended upon by her team of supporters who jumped in unison and raised the ball in celebration. The banana was eaten by the kid responsible for the ball being in the tree in the first place. The ball was abandoned.

• One kid, wry smile, always surrounded by friends, always leaning against a wall reading a book. Occasional interruptions to answer questions. Asymmetrical haircut. The question is not WHICH arts festival this child will one day be Artistic Director of, but how quickly it can happen.

• A little kid planting a garden of offcuts from surrounding bushes while another little kid ‘swept’ a path through it with a tree branch.

• A child lying on the oval - injured? tired? - being tended to by another child, leaning over in a parental posture of concerned enquiry.

• Drink taps. Never not broken.

Sometimes I go for walks

Sometimes I go for walks and I find myself thinking of the person who made that choice today. Like the council workers who saved these guys from a violent death.

Or whoever did this, two storeys high on an old terrace.

And sometimes the reason I am on the walk is so I can remember that life is actually quite interesting and people can be okay sometimes.

The littlest things

My writing is often about the littlest things. A tiny moment. A quietly developing relationship. A walk through the streets of Fitzroy. The Fitzroy Diaries, my audio series, was developed from observations made while I walked down the street with a brand new baby strapped to me. Years later, when I was presenting to that baby’s year three class about story-writing, a kid stuck his hand high in the air and asked, ‘Why do you write? What does it do for the world?’

Had it been a movie, it would have cut to my face. Cut back to the kid. My face. The kid. A real “out of the mouths of babes” moment. I’m not sure I stuttered, exactly, but I muttered, for sure. Something about how sometimes words can convince people of things, words can right wrongs. The teacher, a quiet bloke with an unshakeable sense of calm about him, asked if he could interrupt.

“Another reason to write, though, is to entertain, isn’t it?” he asked me, the expert. “To make people feel things. To validate their feelings or distract them or make them laugh.”

Not since Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a middle-aged man looked so much like an angel.

I haven’t forgotten this exchange, because that’s exactly what my writing strives to do, but in defending the noble work of writing, I picked up the biggest tool I could find and bludgeoned my audience with the idea that words are worthy and important.

Sometimes they are the opposite and how delightful.

So I’m hoping if I think of little things, I might pop them here, for now. You can comment down below if you’d like.

Some word-photographs from my week:

Yesterday an old friend stood at my doorway playing Tina Turner at the highest volume imaginable by way of alerting me that it was time to go and eat pancakes. Friends. In a moment I had to myself today, I thought about the miracle of friendships. How some stick and some don’t. How you can know your office mate intimately for three years and then never see them again until you bump into them at a farmer’s market and now they have two kids. Today another friend bought me noodles and did an impression that was so funny it made me suddenly unable to cope with the chilli in my soup.

I made the po-faced woman at the medical reception of a place I go to hoot a laugh so surprising the woman next to her put someone on hold to ask if she was okay.

A little person asked me, ‘What was before us?’

The school administrator called me for the second time that day to alert me of a medical incident at the school. My child had, she said, ‘left sickbay, said a fond farewell, and then walked into a tree’.

It’s the little things.