All Is Given

  Shortly after hearing the song, I moved to Newtown, at the heart of Sydney’s inner west. In those days, Newtown was gritty and dynamic, home to performance artists, singers, musos, comics and actors, as well as a colourful assortment of ratbags and desperadoes, all vibrating with creative hopes and schemes. I started playing with a number of bands in the evenings, improvising and orchestrating string parts, and busking in Kings Cross and various places across town during the days. This generated most of my income: I couldn’t calculate the number of hot meals I bought courtesy of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

  I’d pretty much forgotten my idea of playing with Ed when one day I passed him in the porridge aisle of the local supermarket. Knowing he lived locally inspired me to try to give him a recording of my music, in the hope he might like the idea of having a violin play on his songs.

  I didn’t know of any formal ways to approach him. I asked a few people in the area what they thought of me knocking on his door, or slipping my tape into his mailbox. Everyone said it was a bad idea. He was known to be somewhat aloof and didn’t suffer fools at all. So I let the idea rest for a while. In the meantime I seemed to hear his music everywhere: on the radio, in bars and cafés.

  Busking wasn’t a reliable source of income, and like many other musos I had to resort to the dole to tide me over when work was scarce. One lunch hour, I was on my way to Social Security in the arcade near Newtown station when I saw Ed. He was heading towards me, accompanied by two young men I assumed were in his band. It seemed so fortuitous that our paths were about to intersect that I stopped right in front of him, summoned up my courage and asked if he thought he’d ever need a violinist on his songs. I expected him to live up to his reputation and walk on by with a look of disdain. Instead he smiled at me and asked if I had a business card. I didn’t.

  He suggested I send him something. If I had a pen and paper, he would give me his PO box address. All I had was a Social Security envelope and a lipstick in my back pocket. He seemed dubious, but tolerant, as I used them to write down his address and put the lipstick-smeared paper back into my pocket. He said he’d get in touch when he’d listened to my demos.

  I didn’t expect this encounter to come to anything, but I sent off the recordings and waited. And waited and waited. A couple of months later, out of the blue, I received a call from Ed. He asked if I was available for a recording in a couple of weeks at EMI’s Studios 301 in town. I was. Of course. After one rehearsal session, I turned up one evening and played on a new version of the classic Australian song ‘Sad Dark Eyes’. It was for Earth Music, a charity album in support of the environment. The recording took hours and we stayed at the studio well into the night. Other musicians became irritable and bored with the delays, but I was thrilled with the new experience. Learning about the art of recording, something I felt would be significant for my future, was a bonus. Despite Ed’s generally inscrutable personality, I enjoyed the process and felt I’d found a kind of entrée into a brave new musical world.

  After ‘Sad Dark Eyes’ came out, I played with Ed on and off during the next couple of years. There were many highlights. Our second recording together – another cover, ‘If I Had a Ticket’ – reached the Triple J Top Ten. We went on tours around Australia and New Zealand, performing with Crowded House at the Hordern Pavilion, with The Cruel Sea at the Big Backyard, and to a crowd of 1200 at the old Phoenician Club on Broadway.

  We also played to seven people in a small bar in New Zealand, and to a hostile crowd in Newcastle, where old punks yelled at Ed to play his Saints songs. I got some idea from those gigs how tough it must have been in the early days of punk, with its alcohol-fuelled aggression and rowdy anti-authoritarianism, often levelled at the performers as much as anyone else. Sometimes out-of-it punters would lay their heads on the bass amps at the front of the stage, and I worried – in my decidedly non-punk way – about their hearing. Once I fell off the edge of the stage while backing away from a crowd surge. Ed found it funny. So did I. Kind of. And alarming too.

  I never really got used to the intense volume of his shows but eventually enjoyed the raw freedom of improvising on electric violin. Along with the grinding, sometimes primitive rhythms, there were interludes of surprisingly sweet songs: ‘I Wish You Were Here’, with which we used to end most shows; and an acoustic version of ‘The Way I Made You Feel’.

  This wasn’t the music or the performing conditions I had grown used to in the classical world, where the chairs are set up for you in neat rows, where rehearsals start on time and performances end respectably early – and where you are paid union rates. This was music on the frontier, music in the wild. I also saw up close the highs and lows of being an independent musician in Australia, in the days when having a career meant performing live as much as you could. I marvelled at Ed’s tenacity in the face of criticism, how much his dogged self-belief made him keep going when others would have folded.

  I discovered some unexpected things about Ed: he had an almost encyclopaedic appreciation of pop music’s history, an extraordinary vinyl collection, and the type of loyal fans who would follow his musical odysseys no matter where they took him – or them. I also observed how a long musical career did not always equate to popularity, and that the point sometimes was to just keep going.

  I never really got to know Ed, though, and sometimes we approached each other like we were different species of aliens. He thought I was a bit of a musical princess, while I sometimes imagined him as a soldier facing down the enemy with his blaring electric guitar.

  One incident sums up what I learned from these experiences. The first full-length album I played on was Character Assassination. As was my habit, I’d asked for recordings of the songs in advance, so that I could practise for hours and come up with parts, as I had been trained to do. But this time, for some reason, I didn’t get a chance to prepare.

  I was a bit nervous when I got to the studio and I asked Ed to run the tape of a song called ‘The Cockfighter’ so I could work something out before we recorded. As I listened to the track I fumbled along with the music, sliding my finger around the strings, searching for the right notes. Unsure of what I should play, but feeling my way as best I could, I was confident that with another couple of run-throughs I’d work out something we could use.

  At the end of the song, Ed stopped the tape and asked me to go over and put some harmonies on what I’d just played. I was horrified to find out he had recorded my fumblings and intended to use them on his album. I begged him to let me record it again. He argued that no matter how hard I worked at it I would never be able to re-create what I had improvised when I thought no one was listening. When I wasn’t judging myself.

  Believe me, he reassured me, people around the world whose hearts are pure will remember that part more than anything you worked out or performed well.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but he was right. Even though to my ears it was full of wrong notes and weird sounds, there was something about its uncertainty that was more than just lines of music: it became what the song was about.

  When the album came out, Rolling Stone singled out that solo as something special. I sometimes quote the review to others. Not so much to boast – after all, it was Ed, not me, who ensured my part stayed the way it was on the album – but to illustrate how musicians from different worlds can connect with each other through a song.

  Sometimes there is a difference between being perfect or even good and being real and true. Maybe that’s where the art happens. That day in the studio I stepped out of the safe classical world I came from, and into the wild blue musical frontierland where Ed seemed to stride, a man on an independent mission, armed with his bravado, his energy and his blazing electric guitar.

  Epilogue: All Is Given

  I thought I would always travel but since I was diagnosed with a chronic illness my movement has been curtailed. Sometimes getting to the end of
the street is an epic journey. But I have discovered that one does not always have to travel far to find people to meet. In the last two months, I have welcomed a variety of nationalities into my home – people from Argentina, Zambia, Sudan, India. These are not travellers. Most of them are refugees who have made a home in the city where I live. They visit me as domestic assistants and, as I sit in the chair while they work, they bring the world to me while I am at present unable to go out to meet the world.

  These travel stories are not complete. There are many I have left out, like the time I spent living with the grandson of a duchess in a castle near the border between Austria and Czechoslovakia. I met him in Freak Street, where many years later I met Gabriel. His name was Sigmund and, after leaving him in Kathmandu, I would eventually take the train from Waterloo station, London, to meet him in Vienna. With him I travelled in a red sports car with his grandmother the duchess up the highway from Vienna to their castle, where they lived in the old servants’ quarters. It is a great story but I won’t tell it here. I leave it up to you to imagine and to fill in all the blank spaces that I am now telling you I have left in this book. I also left out the time I was the only white woman in a sari on a beach in Kerala, in the south of India. I was surrounded by children that day. I was an oddity in whom they found delight. I was happy then. But I have left that story out too.

  I also have not told you about the time while sitting in a room full of silent meditators in Dehradun, a town north of Rishikesh in India, I felt the earth move beneath me. Many others felt it too, and for a while some of us were convinced that our meditations had levitated us above the earth. Because it was a silent meditation retreat, it took a few hours for us to be informed that in Kashmir, over a hundred kilometres away, an earthquake had broken the surface of the country. They say ignorance is bliss, and that day it might have been true, because before we knew the facts, some of us could dream that the impossible had actually happened.

  Ten years after that earthquake, another reduced the city of Kathmandu to rubble. Durbar Square and its surrounding streets were destroyed. I don’t know what happened to Studio Acoustica. A small recording studio in a Buddhist square did not make the news.

  Two months ago, my wise friend Sophie rang me after a long silence. She had been grieving for her sister, who died last year of leukaemia. We spoke about letting go and moving on. She told me of an old Latin saying that meant ‘it is given’. We talked at length about what it meant when one could just relax into life and accept, after all the struggles, that life would give you gifts you could not imagine. These stories are the gifts that I could not have imagined. And as I have written them, I have been transported back to those places, and those times, and those people, whose hearts became entwined with mine. And I’ve realised that life gives you gifts even if sometimes you are looking in the other direction. And just as songs sometimes dropped out of the sky into my body, to be born as music, these stories appeared before me, to be born as this book.

  As I remember the stories that I have told and have yet to tell, I remember moments of sheer joy: when I danced on a beach, when I sang to a crowd, when I held the hand of a stranger as I walked through chaos. I especially remember standing in the middle of no man’s land between the borders of Austria and Czechoslovakia, when in a moment of bravado I did an Isadora Duncan dance to the invisible guards in the watchtowers. I was happy then too.

  As for the specifics of the stories I have told, do you really need me to fill in the blanks? Should I tell you that five months after meeting Gabriel near a Buddhist temple, I returned to Kathmandu and recorded an album of love songs in Studio Acoustica with Bizou and all the rest of the Nepali boys who dreamed of music? I did not take photographs on that trip, although Gabriel took them of me. The record I made was in song.

  *

  As I’ve told you, I’ve played music in many different ways. First of all, learning violin in a nun’s music room. Then playing with pianos and other violins, school orchestras, youth symphony orchestras, chamber orchestras, string quartets, string orchestras. I went electric and played in rock’n’roll bands. Then I unplugged, went acoustic again and improvised for meditators in the hills behind Byron Bay. In many ways I have travelled through music as well as through countries. When I was preparing for my lounge-room tour, I used to sit in my lounge room and play my songs in simple acoustic versions to my friend Estelle in my cottage in West End. After many years of travelling through music, playing in my lounge room to my friend felt like coming home. But it was the beginning of another journey. These stories I have told you are like songs as well, and I have found many different ways of telling them: from the fabulous to the delicate, from the bustling movement through third-world cities, to high tea in Shanghai, to a walk along the river in Paris. In ending this book, I have discovered a truly intimate way of crafting a story. Because at this moment, I am sitting in my lounge room in Brisbane, Australia, telling my story over Skype as once I sang a song to Estelle, who is typing down these words for me as she sits in her flat in California. And, despite the distance between us, the feeling is as intimate as if we were together, sitting in the same lounge room, as we once did.

  Acknowledgements

  It took many years to make this book, and there are many people who helped grow it along the way. First of all, thanks to University of Queensland Press for supporting the publication of this book. In particular, to my publisher, Alexandra Payne, whose unwavering and inspiring support for the book helped me finish it. To my brilliant editor, Ian See, whose insight, skill and kindness helped it become a better book than it otherwise might have been. To my agent, Clare Forster, for her guidance and care. And to Gail Jones and Zoë Morrison, for taking the time to read and respond to the manuscript before it was published.

  Many friends and colleagues gave their invaluable time and support. Thanks to Wendy Foley for her wise advice and consistent friendship, and to Dr Estelle Castro-Koshy, whose generous and empathetic editorial support and practical help with typing up the manuscript were crucial in bringing this book to fruition. Sophie Pearce, Claudia Taranto, Joanne Douglas and Anna Nolan all read early versions of the manuscript. Thanks also to Ross E for his enduring love and support, Gabriel P for sharing beautiful adventures, and Maureen Strachan for encouraging me to keep going. To Martin Ma, for his enthusiastic collaboration. To my sister Janice, for her courage and inspiration, and to my generous, radiant sister Cathie, who also loves to travel. To Stephen Neil and Paul and Kym Bosley-Neil, for their ever-present laughter. And to Finn and Kel, for lighting up my life.

  Thanks to the Chinese International School in Hong Kong for sponsoring my trip to Mongolia, and to the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland, AsiaLink, the Shanghai Writers’ Association, ABC Radio National, the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composers’ House and EMSAH at the University of Queensland – in particular, the late Jan McKemmish, and Dr Bronwyn Lea – who all provided financial, residential and collegial support for my development as a writer.

  And to all my friends, new and old, around the world, who inspired, encouraged and loved me through the years. I love you all.

  Linda Neil’s music is available at

  http://lindaneil.bandcamp.com/releases

  First published 2016 by University of Queensland Press

  PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

  www.uqp.com.au

  [email protected]

  Copyright © Linda Neil 2016

  This book is copyright. Except for private study, research,

  criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act,

  no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior

  written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover design and illustration by Alissa Dinallo

  Typeset in 11.5/16 pt Adobe Gar
amond Pro by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Earlier versions or extracts of these pieces have been previously published: ‘Spike and Me: A Fantastic Adventure’, Meanjin, vol. 60, no. 2, 2001. ‘Bahut Acha in Bharatpur’, M/C Reviews, 25 May 2008; extempore, no. 5, November 2010; and Rick Hosking and Amit Sarwal (eds), Wanderings in India: Australian Perceptions, Monash University Publishing, Clayton, Vic., 2012. ‘The Flower Lady of Zhongshan Park’, Shanghai Daily, 12 December 2011. ‘Singing Love Songs in Kathmandu’, Molossus, 19 December 2011. ‘On Kindness in Kolkata’, Sunday Life, 1 February 2015.

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through

  the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  This project has also been assisted by an AsiaLink Arts Residency

  with the Shanghai Writers’ Association.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  ISBN

  978 0 7022 5409 3 (pbk)

  978 0 7022 5732 2 (ePDF)

  978 0 7022 5733 9 (ePub)

  978 0 7022 5734 6 (Kindle)

  University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.