2011
Over So Fast
7 October 2011
How did it all get to be over so fast? Four days of books, writers, issues, laughter and sheer pleasure - all that talking and listening suddenly all finished. Mind you, I could not keep up the pace for much longer. I am a wobbly wreck. Plenty of time to recover now though. So much to tell you of all the writers I heard speak - I missed as many due to there being sessions in three different venues at any one time and probably had a totally different festival experience from others by what I chose to go to. I did not hear Paul Kelly for instance (but had in Byron Bay) His late night concert was sold out - we hung around outside the venue hoping to hear his music booming into the ether but I gave up waiting for it to start by 11pm and went home to bed. Cathy, who had tried to buy a ticket earlier, was at the door talking to Steve Bisley (a well-known Australian TV actor) who, as it turned out, was to compere the show, and he took her by the hand and led her inside! She got to hear the concert - and for free- she could not believe her luck!
Today, the others have all just left on the bike ride - I'm having a day with Melinda, Arif and little Zak, coming up from down south where they are holidaying. The others all went to the Festival Closing Night party too and I decided to give it a miss, as I was suffering overload and needed just to sit quietly by myself for a bit - I knew you'd have to stand for hours there. However I missed the best night ever apparently - fabulous music and extraordinary local talent – fire-juggling dance too, to Balinese/ disco fusion. Cathy is raving with the amazingness of it all - so next year I will have to summon up the energy to attend the party and not be so lazy.
On Saturday night we had our evening of luxury and bliss at Amandari Resort, with Alexander McCall-Smith. It is my favourite 5-star hotel in the area - Balinese style, over twenty years old and in a setting to die for, even on a wet evening. Colourful cocktails and nibbles - AND, early in the evening, McCall-Smith passed us where we were sitting waiting for the event to start, and stopped to chat and shake hands. And later I found myself next to him when the tiny girls, children of the staff there, danced a welcome dance for us. With my interest in language I talked to him about his series of comic stories about a German linguist which preceded the Mma Ramotswe series – one of them Portuguese Irregular Verbs. I had read these books years before he became famous with the Botswana series. He told me he has just written a fifth one, Unusual Uses for Olive Oil. He and his wife are staying at Amandari and love it. Once we had all been seated in the open air pavilion he was interviewed by the comic, Nuri Vittachi, and it was absolutely charming - Smith was at his relaxed best, laughing at his own jokes, and expounding on his acceptance of being labeled "a man of cozy ideas" (having just spoken in Sydney at the "Festival of Dangerous Ideas"). His characters are never nasty - they believe in gentleness and politeness and he makes no excuses for not writing about ruthlessness and violent crime in his novels. Instead he pokes gentle fun at his characters’ foibles. He posed the question, is it "dangerous" to promote positivity and compassion in his writing in a world where enough horror and nastiness is going on? In question time I asked him about his child prodigy character, Bertie in the "44 Scotland Street" series - Bertie seems to have remained 6 years old for seven years. He spoke so lovingly of Bertie it was as if he were a real child and Smith cannot bear to have him grow up!
On Saturday night we had our evening of luxury and bliss at Amandari Resort, with Alexander McCall-Smith. It is my favourite 5-star hotel in the area - Balinese style, over twenty years old and in a setting to die for, even on a wet evening. Colourful cocktails and nibbles - AND, early in the evening, McCall-Smith passed us where we were sitting waiting for the event to start, and stopped to chat and shake hands. And later I found myself next to him when the tiny girls, children of the staff there, danced a welcome dance for us. With my interest in language I talked to him about his series of comic stories about a German linguist which preceded the Mma Ramotswe series – one of them Portuguese Irregular Verbs. I had read these books years before he became famous with the Botswana series. He told me he has just written a fifth one, Unusual Uses for Olive Oil. He and his wife are staying at Amandari and love it. Once we had all been seated in the open air pavilion he was interviewed by the comic, Nuri Vittachi, and it was absolutely charming - Smith was at his relaxed best, laughing at his own jokes, and expounding on his acceptance of being labeled "a man of cozy ideas" (having just spoken in Sydney at the "Festival of Dangerous Ideas"). His characters are never nasty - they believe in gentleness and politeness and he makes no excuses for not writing about ruthlessness and violent crime in his novels. Instead he pokes gentle fun at his characters’ foibles. He posed the question, is it "dangerous" to promote positivity and compassion in his writing in a world where enough horror and nastiness is going on? In question time I asked him about his child prodigy character, Bertie in the "44 Scotland Street" series - Bertie seems to have remained 6 years old for seven years. He spoke so lovingly of Bertie it was as if he were a real child and Smith cannot bear to have him grow up!
Afterwards I left the others to linger and dashed into town on the first shuttle to meet Marg de Wit in a restaurant. She is over from The Netherlands on a week’s holiday after some work visits in Bangkok and HK (she works for the International Baccalaureate middle school languages program) so it was great to catch up. Vern was there too and Siobhan. Siobhan, now doing her PhD in Bali on classical Balinese art, attributes her path as an Indonesianist to Margareth who was her Indonesian teacher at North Sydney Girls High twenty years ago - and to Marg bringing her class here on a school trip. I remember actually running into them that year, here in Ubud, as I was here at the same time on a trip myself. Lovely chatty evening of old friends catching up - I last saw Marg when I was in Singapore with Josh eighteen months ago and she was at a conference there - or was it a year ago at her villa in Bali with Alex and Gab? Anyway our paths cross remarkably often for people who live on opposite sides of the world. (Yesterday was another 15-hour day without a break back at the hotel!)
The highlights of yesterday's program were the excellent terrorism panel and a powerful interview with a Palestinian doctor from Gaza who, despite a terrible history (refugee camp childhood and he lost three daughters in an Israeli bombing raid in 2008) is devoted to trying to broker a peaceful solution. He has written a book with a title something like I Shall Not Hate. He had a booming voice and spoke in a heavy oratorical style (perfect English) which I found at first to be too studied. However in fact he spoke from the heart and it was indeed heart-rending to listen to him - not a dry eye in the house by the end of the hour. He is a vocal presence in the peace movement, listened to by the Israelis - in fact he was all set to speak on Israeli radio
from his home in Gaza at 5pm just moments after his daughters were killed - the line was already open and he went ahead in his grief - this interview was responsible for the Israelis stopping the bombings of Gaza ( on that occasion!). The Australian journalist who interviewed him (Andrew Fowler who wrote the Assange book) almost tenderly coaxed him through his story with short, softly-spoken questions- and hugged him at the end! Very moving.
Another highlight near the end of the day was Jennifer Byrne, Marieke Hardy and Nuri Vittachi and one other all talking about the books they loved and the ones they loathed - hilarious!
Some excellent panels on the last day too - one on writers who have faced various 20th century coups and wars. A Turkish woman activist speaking on the endless military coups in Turkey in her youth, only ending when the CIA decided to stop funding them. (Her interpreter was the most brilliant I have ever heard.) An old German engineer has a book about his time in Indonesia over the events of 30 September 1965 and the huge massacre that followed (I wrote about this last week) - he is saying that more recent estimates are that maybe 3 million were killed at the time, not 1 million). The CIA was behind this too, setting up the coup against left-leaning Soekarno and arming Soeharto to put down the communists. And Tariq Ali brought his fine mind to bear on the Vietnam War and these other situations - and seems to think America, despite all, is the only superpower in the world - China no threat - yet. He says the CIA's putting down of the left in all sorts of Asian countries including Indonesia has created a vacuum where a realistic political opposition might have existed, and this has been filled by Islamist movements in some cases. (I bumped into Tariq Ali at Amandari too - staying there I think - and shook his hand.)
In the afternoon was the launch of the book of translations of the young Indonesian writers - a lovely small event. I was asked to speak about how I went about the translations and some of the issues that arose, then they read from their work - alas, only in Indonesian, so it was hard on the westerners in the audience, though they could follow the translation in the book. Only three of my five writers were there, the ones I had already met - got them to sign my copy of the book. A Malaysian writer who has an online magazine he writes for, interviewed me afterwards, pretty well asking me to give the same speech I had already given earlier that he was unable to record. Doing this meant I did not get to say goodbye to anyone - but later I did get to have a drink with Nury Vittachi and a local expat friend of mine Kerry he was with, who had come in then. It was held at the lovely Javanese restaurant, Pulau Kelapa.
Am sure there is a lot more to write about - another time perhaps when I have the program out again to jog my memory - my brain is overloaded, as you can imagine.