March and April Consumption Diary

BIOGRAPHICAL INTERLUDE

It's the first of May as I start this. I have COVID for the second time. Last year it went through my house at the start of the Easter school holidays. This year it was at the end of the holidays. Like last year, I was the last in my family to succumb, so my isolation period will be longer. Unlike last time, I'm not putting the finishing touches on the first draft of a novel. That first draft remains unimproved. Instead, I'm preparing for a presentation on my doctoral research proposal. I started my doctorate in July last year and the first twelve months involve upskilling each cohort to be able to go off and complete their research and thesis in 2-howevermanyittakes years.

Oh, and the Sacramento Kings lost in Game 7 to the Golden State Warriors this morning. Stephen Curry scored 50 points and the Kings imploded in the third quarter when they couldn't grab a defensive rebound. It was a fun season and Kings fans haven't felt this feeling in 17 years... actually longer. It's more like 1999-2000 when the last great Kings team was on the come-up, but needed to experience adversity to toughen them up for period like today's third quarter. 

So now I have more time to think about non-basketball things... maybe, even with my doctorate, I'll have time to return to last year's novel...

Oh, I'm going to Europe with the family at the end of June (health and geopolitical stability willing). So maybe not?

BOOKS

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (novel, audiobook, US, 2019)

I grew up with a father who loved rock documentaries so I enjoyed this. Spent a lot of time wondering why others who might be less of an anorak when it comes to music would enjoy it - the love triangle never quite joins up, which means it skirts around the worst cliches of these kinds of tails but it doesn't really have a huge amount of tension to drive the narrative forward. 

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (novel, audiobook, US, 2022)

From rock stars to sport stars, in this case tennis. More of a straightforward first person narration with occasional "implags", the interest here was whether the story was going to use Carrie's position on the Autism spectrum as a "twist"/big reveal. It didn't. I was glad. Again, I'm a bit puzzled by how this worked, when the outcome of every tennis match described was easy to forecast and the description of said matches was often something like: "I served, she returned, I returned, she returned, I returned, she missed... Then it was match point and I won with a forehand slam."

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (novel, audiobook, US, 2020)

Another kind of novel that doesn't care much for things like character development or careful observation at the micro-level. This is all about the macro: what if poor performance against the Paris Agreement meant there was a Ministry for the Future to try and drive intergenerational justice (and what if that needed to be complemented by a dark-wing to get stuff done without bureaucracy). I got very depressed to begin with (I deal with this shit every day, so nothing was a surprise, it was more like: why I am listening to this while I work in my garden?!) but it kind of justified this depression through the journey it goes from this launching point. 

Quit by Annie Duke (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2022)

I didn't know about Mohammed Ali's late career exploits. Great way to start a book about why gritting it out isn't always the best approach. 

Better the Blood by Michael Bennett (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2022) 

My brain enjoyed this, but I didn't really feel it elsewhere in my body, if that makes any sense.

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy (novel, audiobook, US, 2022)

All talk. Madness... Genius.... Where's the line? I think McCarthy is possessed of both, so maybe there is no line.

Foster by Claire Keegan (novella, audibook, Ireland, 2010)

It's probably only a short story, but it's packaged as a standalone book, much like Small Things Like These. Loved this one. Every books should be this short.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2021)

Essays penned during the pandemic. Manages to avoid being intolerable. Patchett is smart and kind. I've enjoyed her novels in the passed. Convinced me to go back and read Bel Canto.

The Story of Art without Men by Katy Hessel (non-fiction, audiobook, UK, 2022)

Listening to an audiobook about art isn't the best experience, but it helps to know what you don't know much about (so long as you keep asking questions).

Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey (novel, audiobook, NZ, 2020)

There's always a hump to get over when a novel is set in Nazi Germany, especially when it's a NZ author's second book set there (though it's a standalone tale), but I got sucked in and bowled over. Good stuff.

The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 2022)

I enjoyed the playlist I found on Spotify of the songs mentioned in this book more than Dylan's parsing of the lyrics or hepcat word associations (and don't get me started on his version of making America great again).

Nonzero by Robert Wright (non-fiction, audiobook, US, 1999)

Culture and Sustainability by Janet Stephenson (non-fiction, PDF, NZ, 2023)

FILM & TV

Down in the Valley (40 for 40) - great watch on the eve of the NBA playoffs

The Matrix Resurrections

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

Men - I vow never to watch another Alex Garland thingamee

Emily the Criminal

Nope

Lewis Capaldi: How I'm Feeling Now

Mindhorn

Beef - Season 1 - I mean, how could I not fall for dialogue like, "I thought I was Webber, but I might be Stojaković, right?" 

The Last of Us - Season 1 - gave up after 10 mins of the pilot (zombie is my least favourite flavour of apocalypse) but was lured back in by raves. The Ron Swanson-Armond romance episode was sweet. I liked the way the season dealt with time (...three months later...). So yeah, worth watching.

Succession - Season 4 (first half) - sometimes you just want to hang with characters from the bottom right corner of the D&D moral alignment chart

Chad and JT go deep - Season 1

Cunk on Earth - Season 1

Taskmaster UK - Season 15 

The Night Agent - Season 1 - I kinda hated this  for being so fucking basic, but I devoured it like a stupid idiot anyway

Barry - Season 4 (1st half) - feels like a real drag... Like the writers got sick of the characters, or gummed up by what happened in Season 3...

MUSIC - APRIL

Flame out/flame on: Fortnights 8 & 9 of The Burns

Self-portrait, Assisi

Fortnight 8 (8-21 May)
Total words: 9,781 (1st week: 5,897; 2nd: 3,884)
Breakdown: Novel 1,903, Blog/essays 5,898, Poetry 1,980

Fortnight 9 (22 May - 4 June)
Total words: 0

So, I left for Italy on 20 May and got back to NZ on 4 June, which explains the goose egg for Fortnight 9. I actually wrote about 5,000 words of notes while on my research roadtrip and took over a 1000 photos/videos, so it was quite productive, but it was a slip back into Pre-Production rather than time spent in Principle Photography, as they say in the movie business, so I'm happy to call it 'zero' and reap the rewards of massive and intimidating wordcounts in subsequent fortnights (not to jinx anything).

As for Fortnight 8, there was the Dunedin Writers Festival, which involved some prep and some poetry on my part, which I wrote about in part here. And prep for my Italy trip, which meant there wasn't a lot of time (or headspace) to push the novel forward.

-

What to say about Italy?

I don't want to say much, because I want to funnel most of it into my novel (or its first draft). But I will say I found the question of sharing my journey on social media was a fraught one.

There's the temptation to share pictures and videos to make people eat their smartphones in jealousy. This is doubly so when you see others doing it while you're travelling.

But my trip is so much more interesting that yours! 
But my meal was so much more epic! 
My driving in Italy story so much funnier (and better told)!

But, of course, the reality of travel, especially solo travel for a specific, work-related purpose, isn't all jealousy inducing. There's all those meals alone (and the orders you regret: walnuts? walnuts!). The relentless mental load of getting all the places you need to get under your own steam. And the fact Italy can be a frustrating, backwards, unfriendly fucking place at the best of times. But it's easier to share the sunset shots, the flashmob in the Pantheon that gave you chills, the humblebrags about how many km's you've carved out and leave the static schmucks back home to slowly pickle in their own bile.

And with that, some pics...

Papa Francesco addressing us at the Vatican

The Pantheon 

Amatrice

 

Flying into Brindisi

Santa Maria della Grottella, Copertino

Driving to Martina Franca

Montescaglioso

Altamura

Driving the A14

My Nissan Micra for the week, approaching Assisi

Assisi

Pietrarubbia

San Marino

San Giuseppe da Copertino taking flight

Fossombrone

The tomb of San Giuseppe, Osimo

My haul (Fossombrone and Osimo)

Lido di Ostia

Through the embers: Fortnight 1 of the Burns

1.

I wrote 4,266 words over 7 writing days (week one started on a Wednesday; week two started on a Tuesday due to family being down for Waitangi weekend). All of my efforts were spent on two short stories: the bio story I mentioned in my previous post and another story, which I selected from the master list of things to write that I compiled. Let's call this story 'Robinson'.

Both stories are progressing, but I wonder if they aren’t too similar. I might have to write a third story (less arch, less ‘laugh at him, now comfort him’) this month to bring a bit more balance to my output and exorcise one more set of ghosts before I dive back into THE LOCATION SCOUT.

 

2.

I will tire of fire-related puns soon enough.

3. This is where it all happens

Parting shot from last year's fellow
(possibly how I contracted this punning disorder)

My desk, my Mac, my mess

The gravity-forced attrition method of choosing which story to write next.
Helps when you have off-brand Post-its.

My magnolia

At first I thought it was a bible, but it's The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns.
Thanks Victor!

My morning ride

It's always like this...

Except when it's like this (hail from yesterday's weather bomb)

It's official. Come & visit!

4.

One consequence of all this newfound writing time is I need to spend more time finding new (or remembered) music to add to my ‘Working’ playlist. Which is not a chore at all. 

If given the option of not being able to read any more, and not being able to listen to music, I'd choose not reading. Not happily, or lightly, but I would.

5. Further exploits in procrastination

I found myself searching online for a coffee mug. I considered personalising one to commemorate my year in Otago. Like, a picture of Mr Burns from the Simpsons with the caption: ‘Burns Fellow’... something so lame and obvious that I managed to snap myself out of it. 

So I’m still using the dinky little Arcoroc cup I found in the dinky little kitchenette and having to make too many trips to make tea during my day and maybe I will end up ordering something in another moment of weakness.

 

6. You can never step on the same wildlife cruise twice.

Over the long weekend, I took my wife, kids and in-laws on the Monarch Wildlife Cruise, which goes out round Harrington Point at the end of the Otago Peninsula. 

We saw fur seals,a seal lion eating a squid, nesting shags endemic to Otago, Bullers albatross, Southern Royals, a couple other mollymawk species, nellies, terns. No spoonbills or Hectors dolphins like my first trip five years ago. Still a good haul, but nowhere near as much fun as the first time for all manner of reasons.

Giant petrel taking off

Sea lion with black-backed gull

White capped albatross

Compare and contrast with our trip to Tunnel Beach at the end of Jan. No bird or marine mammal sightings of note. When we got down to the beach it was high tide so there was no sand to stand on. My son decided he didn’t like being carried on the way back up, nor did he feel like walking. For the last 500 metres (which is at a 15 degree gradient) I carried him like an inconsolable lamb.

And that trip was fricken great. The kind of day one should be careful not to sully by rushing back again too quickly.

Everyone enjoyed it, honest

7. Research highlight

An article by Catrien Santing on Pope Benedict XIV, who is often held up as a supporter of the enlightenment, but also canonised a bunch of folks who did some science-defying stuff, including my boy San Giuseppe da Copertino.

The article was titled ‘Tirami su’.

I never really thought about whether the name of the dish meant anything (maybe it was a place, or a person), but when I translated it (Pick me up / Lift me up / Raise me up) the phrase made sense for a coffee-soaked dessert and an article about a levitating friar.

Pity I can’t stand coffee, and gag at the sight, smell, mention of tiramisu.

8.

8.1 - I went to an open lecture on Brexit, Trump and the rise of populism. It was interesting. I'm still trying to figure out how contemporary I make THE LOCATION SCOUT. Like, is it Feb 2017 and two non-Italians are driving around Italy talking about the Muslim ban and the precariousness of the Euro? 

*Shrug*

Open lecture

8.2 - I was on a panel with two other writers about the writing process here at the university. It was mostly about how we find the time to write. I've tried a lot of different things, working around different work and family situations.

My current situation, I have to say, is pretty sweet.

The Mannequin Makers Location Guide: Part Three: Crossman's Gully

What the guidebooks say

Name: Crossman's Gully

Nature: Fictional

Location: A day's ride (by horse) from Marumaru (also fictional, see part one).

Importance in The Mannequin Makers: features in Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. Without giving away the plot, let's just say the climax happens here.

Inspired by: Earthquakes (the town), Clay Cliffs, Knottingly Park Bush Hut

What the novel says

"I made my way slowly to the door and eased it open. The hinges gave a creak but the man did not wake. Outside, I surveyed our destination for the first time. To my left a curving wall of rock rose up to a height of thirty feet. The rock was yellow with black tarnished edges and greenish-black vertical stripes. A collection of square-sided boulders lay at the foot of this cliff, their surface brownish-grey with pocks of the same sandy yellow. Dry, thorny bushes and larger trees with waxy green leaves sprang up from gaps between the boulders but I stood on a sort of plain with knee-high grass that swirled in the breeze like some diaphanous material. The grass was bound by another curving wall of rock perhaps forty yards away. It was as if I stood between two cupped stone hands." (p.109)

Skirting around the spoilers

The locations in Part One and Two weren't too difficult to talk about without spoilers. I guess saying there's a shipwreck in the subantarctic is a bit of a spoiler, since it happens halfway through the book, but it's pretty clearly signalled on the back of the book.

Crossman's Gully is a bit different.

Let's just say it's a place certain characters retreat to in various times in the novel when town gets a bit too much. 

The notable features of this gully are it's geography and the hut from which Avis has just emerged in the passage above.

A world of pure imagination

When I first ventured into Crossman's Gully in the first draft of Part Two of the novel, I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't even know it would have a name.

So the first draft was a bit vague. There was a hut in a gully.

Good stuff.

I knew that I'd need to flesh it out more in future drafts, and when I returned to the gully in subsequent parts of the novel.

With this in mind, I went on my road trip in late January 2012 (third time in three posts it's been mentioned... must've been important).

Clay Cliffs and Earthquakes

I blogged about my visits to Clay Cliffs and Earthquakes here. Basically, I was drawn to these places by their names. I didn't know what I'd find exactly, and certainly wasn't thinking: this can be my gully.

But when I arrived at both I thought: this can be my gully.

First up was Clay Cliffs, near Omaramara. The geology of the place was pretty interesting, but I was more struck by the view looking back through the formations to the braided river, the brown plain and the foothills.

And a bit further around, you glimpse the snow-dusted Southern Alps.

The scene I'd already written in my gully occurred in early January. I was there late January, so it was pretty similar. I began rewriting my scene in my head.

I thought I'd cracked it. I thought Clay Cliffs was enough.

Then I went to Earthquakes. And I was like, "This is my gully."

And then, when I went to Waimate, I had the final piece of the puzzle: Knottlingly Park Bush Hut, the design of which I shamelessly appropriated for the hut in my gully where events happen.

In the end, Crossman's Gully is all of these places and none of them.

The Mannequin Makers Location Guide: Part Two: the Antipodes Islands

What the guidebooks say

Name: Bollons Island (aka Horseshoe Island, Lemon Wedge) and Antipodes Island (aka the big island)

Nature: Real

Location: The subantactic (about 860kms south east of Steward Island)

Importance in The Mannequin Makers: the islands were Gabriel Doig is shipwrecked.

Inspired by: Museo del Fin del Mundo, birds, Wellington's south coast.

The beginning of the end of the world

Here's where it all started: Ushuaia, Argentina. The southernmost city in the world on the cusp of winter, 2009. 

And in this town there was a museum (Museo del fin del mundo, the museum of the end of the world). And in this museum there was a small room devoted shipwrecks. And in this room there was an bilingual information panel. 

And on this bilingual information panel there was a short paragraph about the final days of sail power, when steam ships were taking over the world. How some unscrupulous ship owners would send their wooden sailing ships around Cape Horn in the hopes they'd wreck to get the insurance money in order to buy a steam-powered vessel.

Okay, thought I, that's the ship owner's motivation. But what could possess a captain and crew to man an aging vessel being run hard on the most dangerous route in the hope they'd never come back? Money - sure. The thrill of defying death - perhaps. Madness? Perversion? 

As I stood before this bilingual information panel in the Museum of the End of the World, very near the end of the world, characters and plots began to form...

Moving Tierra del Fuego

I began researching what would become The Mannequin Makers in late 2010. As I mentioned in the last post, I was calling it Fin del Mundo at the time. While my initial focus was on Eugen Sandow, department stores and life in urban New Zealand in 1902/03, I knew that I'd eventually need to write about my shipwreck rounding the Horn.

But then a couple of things happened.

1. I went to another museum. This one was closer to home: the Museum of City and Sea in Wellington. And in that museum there was a glass display case. And in that glass display case there were dead albatross.

I took a photo on my phone because I was struck by the size of these birds, even as they lay supine, wings folded away.

These birds has washed up on beaches in the Wellington and Wairarapa regions after the Wahine storm of 1968.

I knew, standing in front of that glass display cabinet, that I knew so little about the southern ocean. I'd thought of albatross as big seagulls, but these were of a different order.

I went back to see these birds a couple of months later and they were gone. They belonged to Te Papa and had been loaned to the Museum of City and Sea. Could I see them in Te Papa? No, they were in storage. 

Now you see them, now you don't. 

2. An emperor penguin came to Pekapeka Beach. I heard about his arrival while at work. The next day was "a writing day", but instead I drove an hour north to sea this interloper from the Antarctic.

I blogged about it here (I'm still sore the nonsensical name of Happy Feet stuck instead of the more obvious/appropriate Peka, but that's just the novelist in me).

Around (June 2011), I felt I'd broken the back of my urban NZ research and was moving my attention to the shipwreck. I started watching Wild South DVDs from the library and reading books.

I quickly became fascinated by New Zealand's subantactic islands. I devoured books about them. The stories about shipwrecks there were amazing. The fact the Government of Southland, then NZ, set up castaway depots and sent Government steamers down there to patrol the islands and pick up the unlucky souls seemed like such a rich vein of history. 

I decided to move my shipwreck from Tierra del Fuego to the Antipodes Islands because I could. Because it would mean I could immerse myself in these books about castaway depots and poorly charted islands and put it all into my book. Because, in a rare bout of patriotism, it seemed like something Kiwi authors should be writing about.

Brass tacks

I'd learn too late about Gareth Morgan's Our Far South expedition to the very part of the world that had captured my attention and I'd attempt to depict in my novel.

So I've never been to the Antipodes.

Of course, I've never been to Marumaru. Or on board a clipper ship. I've been to Dunedin (which features in the novel for a chapter or so) but not in 1891.

I had my imagination. 

I had my books (the most important being Straight through from London: The Antipodes and Bounty Islands, New Zealand by Rowley Taylor which made my top ten books of 2012) and DVDs. 

I had another museum: Te Papa, where I got to see (and touch) biscuit tins and castaway suits from the Antipodes Island castaway depot. And I got to see a scale model of the GSS Hinemoa, the steamer that patrolled the depots.

I had the South Coast at my doorstep. I'd go down to Houghton Bay and stare into the teeth of the southerly, imagine it was twice as cold and twice as windy and that I had nothing at my back but a fingernail of land dotted with tussock and penguin guano.

And I had my trip to Dunedin, where I saw Royal Southern Albatross up close and in flight, and other pelagic birds. I blogged about it here.

And it turns out that was enough.