Stereo Stories @ VU Bar

Stereo Stories combines personal stories and popular songs, featuring writers and musicians onstage together. Stories of pathos, humour and love read with doses of jazz, soul, pop and rock. As writers read their stories about particular songs, musicians weave in and out of the narrative, playing parts of the song. 

Stereo Stories has been a hit at the Williamstown Literary Festivals and Newport Folk Festivals. The 90 minute VU performance will include some stories by students and lecturers of the VU Professional Writing and Editing course and some of the best musos in the land. 

THURSDAY 30 JULY, 7pm start.
VENUE: The VU Bar at Footscray Park campus, Building M.
Cost: $15, or $10 conc.
Bar and meals available. Books on sale.

RSVP TO Sherryl.Clark@vu.edu.au or leave a message on 9919 2904. It helps the Bar with staffing.

See more about Stereo Stories here: http://www.stereostories.com/

Call me 'cute'

Today I was listening to Life Matters on Radio National, in which comedian Dylan Moran was being interviewed and talking of life’s four stages: Child, Failure, Old and Dead. I understood the humour in that, but it got me wondering about where I'd sit on the continuum. I often still feel like a child and a failure (like most people who have lived long enough to screw up a few things), but I suspect that given my adult children have started referring to me as ‘cute’, I’m somewhere between the Old and Dead stages. It means I’ve hit that age threshold where keeping connected with the modern world are seen as me making an effort as the world moves away from me. Aww. Isn't she cute? 

Sometimes in your 20s and early 30s, middle-age and beyond looks to be so far away, that those in the younger age group are unable to conceive of what life is like so much further down the road. In fairness, what do they have to compare it to? Certainly not the depth of experience, the mistakes and the learning. Often there is an assumption that older people do the same thing every day. That they are not open to change, and yes, occasionally they try new things, which makes them, well—‘cute’. It’s hard for them to imagine that people continue to have dreams and aspirations and desires until the day they die. Sometimes these are silenced by other demands and by the perceptions and disinterest of others about how those in middle age and beyond should, or do, behave.

Coincidentally, the day before listening to the program, I had read an article in Overland Literary Journal, about emerging writers and questioning why it was usually young people who were entitled to emerge. As a more mature writer, and one not having had the opportunity in my younger years to follow this path, I do feel occasionally that I’m struggling with the perceptions of what I would bring given that I’m ‘emerging’ at a later stage. But it’s not stopping me. I will keep doing the work and finding new ways to improve myself. 

So, yes, I will remain ‘cute’ and possibly expand my cuteness. I’ve already warned my children that if I am hit by the proverbial bus, there is to be no reporting that the grandmother of *insert number at the time* was collected by the 903 to Mordialloc. No, no. They are to ensure that it adds—social worker, corporate trailblazer, writer, author, artist, teacher, mentor and a PhD candidate—to the descriptions of wife, mother and grandmother. While I love what those parts of my life give me, I was a whole lot of other things—ME—before them and I don’t want them forgotten because I'm ‘cute’. Some of my accomplishments started and carried through from my youth and others I have come to in later years. I have not stopped. Yes, I've been slowed down by heart surgery and chronic pain, but so what? The space between Old and Dead is full of possibility and vibrant, not just with desires and dreams, but with action and accomplishment.

In the interview, Moran said, 'People sort of look at older people and go, "Oh, they just wake up at the same time every day and they eat a cheese sandwich at lunch and they walk the dog." But it’s not like that. People are quieter about their inner life, but it’s still happening.'

He absolutely right and I'm not going to be quiet about it anymore. 

Image via The Nth Degree 

A hard act to follow

Recently, my father, Salvatore Romita, and I appeared on RN's The Drawing Room with Waleed Aly in a session on Stereo Stories, a wonderful website that is the brainchild of Melbourne writers Vin Maskell and David Linden. The idea behind the website invites us to recall a song, a time, a place. In my case, the song was Lilli Marlene and my recollections were of the song, as played by Dad on the piano accordion, and its history in our family. In particular, it was about Dad recording the song in 2007.

When we listened in to the session, which had been pre-recorded, Dad sat nervously on the sofa, fretting about whether he’d played well enough and answered Waleed’s questions without sounding as if he didn’t know what he was talking about. After Vin’s recounting the history of the website, Waleed asked Dad about his personal history with the piano accordion, an instrument he first was given as a gift by his father who saw the potential for music in his son. I then read my story and Dad played the song. Of course, with the magic of mixing, the music was beautifully interwoven with the narrative and the sound was perfect. Dad began to sob. Puzzled, I handed him tissue after tissue. We listened to the rest of the segment with Dad gulping and the continuous whoosh of tissues exiting the box. The segment ended with Dad, “taking us out” as they say in radio with the song, You Belong to my Heart. When it ended, Dad wiped away his tears and said, “I wish my father could see me now.” At nearly 89 years of age, and on national radio, he felt that his father’s faith in him had finally been confirmed.

This short story of just a few hundred words has given me so much more than the opportunity to share a slice of family history and a song full of memories. It has become a layered experience—a story about the story about the song. It has given me a chance to understand better my Dad and his dreams and aspirations. Together, we've performed this piece at two recent festivals—Williamstown Literary Festival and the Newport Folk Festival. Dad was a hit at each. At his age, his energy and enthusiasm for his music is inspirational and frankly, he’d never get off the stage if you let him stay there. I have learned much from him about living creatively for which I will always be grateful. 

The night after our segment, The Drawing Room featured the work of globally renowned singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. I'm glad they picked such a big name. After all, Dad's a hard act to follow. 

Stereo Stories in The Drawing Room featuring Salvatore Romita, can be heard here. 

      

Confessions of a logophile

Yesterday someone said to me, “I like it when you come in for your appointments. I always learn a new word.” That felt better than someone telling me I look AH-MAY-Zing (which isn’t a regular occurrence and therefore may not be a valid comparison, but still…)

It’s not that I set out to teach anyone new words. In fact, I'm usually the one learning them. It’s a natural consequence of reading. As an early reader, my fascination with words was immediate. At my first university (University of Melbourne, leafy trees, lush lawns, sandstone, and that horrible Redmond Barry building) I became engrossed in linguistics. 

Words and language have always captivated me. The home I grew up was multilingual (English, Italian, Croatian – Dad has a smattering of Spanish and German) and there was an emphasis on reading. My mother was the one who stacked our bookshelves with encyclopaedias and, in 1959 as gift for my father, purchased a Webster’s Dictionary, through which he perfected his English; enough to found an inaugural interpreters’ association and regular work in the Supreme Court. He still has that dictionary. The cover imprint is faded and the pages well-worn. For me, it’s the best book on his bookshelf.

Recently, I've been reading more academic literature. It feels like I have to stop every few minutes to look up something new. I love it! I'm drawn to documentaries on the English language. (Try the DVD series The Adventures of English for a short entertaining look at its origins and history). I admit I can grate on people’s nerves but I'm not giving up my passion. There is something deeply existential about finding exactly the right words for what we need to say to one another, in the right way. That’s why I like the succinctness of Twitter as much as I love the hardcover printed tomes on my bookshelf.

Those around me are regularly driven crazy by my discovery of a new word that sends me to the dictionary, scouring for meaning and origins. I have a word blog, not a food blog, because words are more delicious to me. I like to mix them, roll the syllables and sounds around my mouth, test them out loud, listen to the cadence, bake them into sentences. It’s almost word porn.

I'm an unashamed, logophile, a verbivore, a verbomaniac even. Interestingly, when I ran the spell check on this piece, Microsoft Word edited ‘logophile’ to ‘loophole’.

Funny that. When you love words, there isn’t one.