Cath Crowley's Blog, page 6

the reconstruction of memory itselfI’ve been listening t...

the reconstruction of memory itself

I’ve been listening to this radio lab episode again on memory and forgetting.

Below is a print a friend made for me years ago – a horizon spread out across tissue paper and sticks, old wallpaper and maps and faint pencil  - the reconstruction of memory itself.

The artist’s name is Esther, but I only know that because it’s on the work. Not because I remember.

 

 

 

 

 

the reconstruction of memory itselfI’ve been listening...

 

the reconstruction of memory itself

I’ve been listening to this radio lab episode again on memory and forgetting.

Below is a print a friend made for me years ago – a horizon spread out across tissue paper and sticks, old wallpaper and maps and faint pencil  - the reconstruction of memory itself.

The artist’s name is Esther, but I only know that because it’s on the work. Not because I remember.

 

 

 

 

 

knitting revolution

Melbourne Street Knitters have come to my suburb. You can find them on facebook. And on the streets knitting little revolutions.  It’s strange, and I’m not exactly sure why, but I really love it when inanimate objects wear jumpers.

 

 

 

waiting for the tender stars

and sometimes the night will be full of stars with no hearts left, the kind of stars that don’t read poetry, the kind of stars that drink too much beer and light one smoke from the next and fill the sky with grey. don’t wish on those stars. wait. the tender-hearted stars will come out. they’ll listen to you talk about the soft places you want to find. and they’ll kiss the dark skies in you to silver.

 

who we are – the niceness of not knowing

So the question for last Sunday was –  just how much creative trouble are you in when you find yourself in Officeworks at 9 am, thinking that you could write the next scene in your novel if only you had an electronic label maker?

 

Quite a bit.

*

But then I met a group of students at St Margaret’s in Berwick.

There was a student who likes to practice growing (some stretching involved, some thinking)

A student who likes to watch snails in the darkness

Another who loves the exact moment when ocean waves hit her

Another who loves watching crabs come out of their shells

Another who loves watching baby turtles try to make it to the sea

Another who gets afraid for all turtles when they get stuck on their backs

 *

We talked about ghosts, shell collecting, what it’s like to want things we don’t have, want brothers, want twins, want to be a sumo wrestler when you’re just too skinny, want to be invisible so you could freak people out driving cars, want to be invisible just so you could live without being seen, want to travel to real and imaginary places, want to sort out the jumble of disconnecting lines under your skin.

*

They reminded me that even if we could make a list of every single thing that we love, every single strange quirk that goes on under our skin, every single memory we have, we still, most days, wouldn’t be exactly sure who we are.

*

And for some reason, that makes me want to start writing again.

Graffiti Moon UK release date, floating and photography

Hello there. I hope you’re having a lovely day.

 

Some news from me.

 

Graffiti Moon comes out in the UK  with Hodder Children’s Books in July this year. Very exciting. I love the little bird that’s about to land on my name. I think that everyone should have a little bird about to land on their name at some point in their life. And I was very lucky to have Jenny Downham write that beautiful comment for the cover.

 

 

 

 

 

Other news…

 

During my swimming lesson tonight, I actually moved in the water. Usually I’m stationary, which is actually much harder than it looks. To be stationary in the water for a whole forty-five minutes takes quite a bit of consistent effort. But as it turns out, moving is even harder than standing still. There’s something in that about life but I’m too tired from all the moving to work it out.

 

The Real Fauxographer has a lovely Graffiti Moon inspired photograph on her blog.

 

The days have been warm and blue skied and I’ve sat underneath them and written more of The Howling Boy.

lovely Leonard Cohen.There is a crack in everythingThat...

lovely Leonard Cohen.

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

 

conversations with socks, egg cups that look like my dad and a Graffiti Moon giveaway

These are some egg noggins that you can buy at Curious Grace, a lovely store around the corner from my house. This could be a picture of my dad. He looks exactly like the blue-hatted noggin on the right.

 

 

They're by Tanya Edlington. If you click on the link you'll see some lovely things and this description of Tanya –  "Conversation specialist, writer, voice artist, actor, songwriter, lifelong choir member, knitter and culture taster extraordinaire."

 

 

 

 

Her page is definitely worth checking out.

 

 

 

 

I would like to have a conversation with a conversation specialist, just to see what it's like.

 

 

 

 

To see why conversations with hats are different to conversations without hats, and why conversations are so different when both people aren't wearing any socks. Any why conversations where one person is wearing socks and the other person isn't wearing any are almost impossible.

 

 

 

But onto the thing I really came on the blog to say – there's a GRAFFITI MOON giveaway! You can enter if you go here to this fantastic blog Mostly YA Book Obsessed.

 

Queen of the Night Leanne Hall

Last Monday I had the great pleasure of launching Leanne Hall's new book, Queen of the Night. It's divine. You should read it. It's the sequel to This is Shyness so treat yourself and read that first. I thought I'd post the launch speech. It's a long blog post but I adored this book and what's a blog good for if not for a bit of book adoring?

 

  

 

I met Wildgirl and Wolfboy in Leanne's first novel, This is Shyness. They spent a night together in a suburb where the sun doesn't rise. I followed as they circled each other in that endless night, two characters so real, in a world so beautifully built, that I was in love with Leanne's imagination and writing and overwhelmingly jealous of them at the same time. I often needed a cup of tea between pages because I was wishing so hard that I'd written it myself. I gave myself a little headache.

It was the same with Queen of the Night. I adored this book.

I won't give too much of the plot away. Leanne takes the reader to unexpected places and I don't want to ruin that. So I'll just say that Queen of the Night begins six months after This is Shyness, ends. Wolfboy (Jethro) calls Wildgirl (Nia) and what he says pulls her back into Shyness, a place where the line between dreams and reality is blurred.

Leanne explores the importance and the danger of dreams, how it's hard to interpret them. How it's hard to see people and relationships clearly, particularly so when you're living in constant night.

Having said that, I'm sure that when you read the book you'll have a different interpretation. Just one of the things that I admire about Leanne's writing is that like life and people, it raises questions that have more than one possible answer.

One thing I can say with absolute certainty is that it's a trance of a book. A spell. I've read it twice now. I meant to take notes on that first reading but I forgot about my pen and gave in to the pull of the rhythm and the words.

Gave in to Nia and Jethro. Wildgirl and Wolfboy. Nia with her glitter eye shadow and her red velour jumpsuit. Jethro – who has the night in his veins and who wears a pair of jeans very well. I love the humour and the play between these characters. I love the sexiness of the writing. The truth to their conversations. How they take huge physical risks in Shyness, but even bigger emotional risks by revealing their vulnerabilities and edging towards each other. In this surreal word, Nia and Jethro are real.

There's a gorgeous passage in Queen of the Night where Nia thinks back on her first time in Shyness – she reflects, "…nothing about that night was ordinary. Not meeting Wolfboy…Not the feeling that we were just two stars in the endless night sky, as dazzling and dwarfed and stupendous and insignificant as that made us. I let my guard down with Wolfboy, and I think he did the same with me…' (17)

I let my guard down with them, with all the characters – main and peripheral- they're all so satisfyingly drawn. The language is divine.

Leanne has the ability to shift from tiny details to the big picture. The narrative moves with great pace but at the same time it's filled with lines that pull at the reader, asking them to stop and think. Lines that made me draw connections between the characters and myself.

Dr Gregory says to Jethro in the novel – Dreams are windows onto people's desires – desires they try to keep secret, or even desires they didn't know they had. And if you know a man's desires, then you can make him do anything.

Perhaps I over identified with this part of the novel because a strange and beautiful thing has been happening while I've been reading. I've had these incredibly vivid; Leanne Hall inspired dreams. I highly recommend them. A dream is the only time I'll be able to look as good as I did last Monday night in a red velour jump suit. On Tuesday I was out of velour and into a world that flickered deep purple at the edges.

On Friday, the book was on the main stage of my dream. In it I had a long conversation with another author, Gabrielle Wang, about the novel. She had filled a book with lines that she loved, with her questions, with thoughts about her own night. Which of course, I should say for Gabrielle's sake here, were obviously thoughts about my own and not hers. She opened the book for me and on the page was a maze of questions about this world that Leanne has created.

Shyness found a way into my dreams not just because I want to wear that jumpsuit. But because it's so compelling. It's physical place, but for me it's also a suburb that exists under the skin of the characters. And under the skin of us all, I think. And Leanne explores with great depth, the corners of her world and the corners of people, raising questions about what happens to us when we're afraid, when we yearn, when we can't leave the past behind, when we're trapped by sadness.

The sun might rise again in Shyness one day; perhaps the never ending night is a cycle. But in that darkness there's a spark, a girl in glitter eye shadow. In Queen of the Night the darkness doesn't protect Nia and Jethro like it did in the first book, allowing them to hide, but I'm left with the feeling that they're not as afraid of it anymore. That they're starting to understand the cycles. Understand how they can lighten it for each other; understand how they can exist in it, or on the edges.

Queen of the Night is the perfect mix for me – it's an adventure, a love story, an exploration of the inevitable sadness and longing we all experience, mixed with this feeling of hope – a hope that's dangerous if it only comes to us in dreams. For me it's a reminder that we shouldn't give our dreams away, no matter how thick our personal darkness. Leanne gives the reader a hope that's so spectacular because it's glitter set against night.

As Nia comments in the book – My whole life ahead of me glittering and mysterious. She thinks about how her arms get all goosebumpy with the wind's kiss.

Ahead of me is the unknowable ocean, stretching further than I can see.

It's all ahead of you, that unknowable ocean that Leanne Hall will show you. But what it alls means, well, I think that's really up to you. I wish you the dreams that I had while I was reading it. I wish you a dream maze of questions and answers, a world that flickers purple. I definitely wish you a night in that jumpsuit. Whether you dream them or not, I hope you have long conversations with a friend about the beautiful things that you find in this book. Long conversations about the questions it raises.

My first secret tiny stories are coming and they’re so go...

My first secret tiny stories are coming and they’re so good. I’ve also got one secret story picture.

Secret stories

one

 

 

two

Lucy found the photo, and looked at her mum’s breasts for the first time.

 

three

It’s time.

 

four

She looked at the sun like it had told her a joke. Her feet balancing on extreme fluffiness and complete happiness. Her smile filled the universe while she trekked through the cloud forest.

 

Five 

Someone once told me that death will not give me freedom. The knife in my hand seemed heavy so I went down to the river and threw the knife into the water, knowing fully well that it will sink to the bottom and not bother me again. The knife. And death.

 

Six

I used to be braver….

 

Seven

Don’t sshh me….

 

Eight

Are you okay? A meaningless question, yet the answer slips so easily from my lips. Yes, I’m fine. This lie will never be plausible. Not ever.