Two Hearts Beating

“and once my mind is free and empty I hear the rhythmic hoot of owls. The two birds call each other and when suddenly one of them fails to respond my heart stops for a moment, waiting for the call. It soon follows and a strange pleasure begins to pulsate through my body.” (Subhash Jaireth, To Silence, p. 17)

The above caught my attention while I was reading my friend Subhash’s book. I’m not sure why exactly, but the passage brought back to me memories of the first night I was left to look after Clea on my own. She was just over seven months of age, and Mum went away for a much-deserved girls’ night on her birthday, her first night out in many years. Not that I was overwhelmed by responsibility. Far from that. I actually felt elated to be alone with my daughter.

It was, of course, a cold July night in Yass. After giving her dinner and her daily hot bath, I proceeded to hurriedly eat something. Then I sat down next to Clea. We read books and sang songs, played silly little games and had some giggles. At some point I went back to the kitchen and got myself a glass of red wine.

As the night progressed Clea became a little restless and began crying. I turned on the TV, put it on mute and picked the channel that was about to show the Bledisloe Cup match between the All Blacks and the Wallabies. I downed the rest of the wine and placed Clea on my abdomen, and a blanket on top of us both.

Heartbeats synchronised. Breathings became relaxed, restful. My mind was free and slowly drifted into sleep while the two hearts, father and daughter, beat in unison, a strange and rare joy of living synchronicity. A heart pulsating, calling on another heart, the heart of a pulsating being that is your own flesh and blood, to reply. Can anything else feel closer to the sense of a perfect union?

As weeks, months and years pass I find myself clutching at things, sounds, smells even that can prod my memory, willing myself to bring as many memories of Clea back as it is possible for me to do. G.W. McLennan’s One plus One was one of the songs Clea would sleep to during her first year’s afternoon naps. Two hearts beating, Papá y Clea, One plus One.

Treaty yeah!

A great Yolngu man died yesterday. Yunupingu died of kidney disease at 56 years of age, at an age much younger than most Australians have died or will die. Like so many of his indigenous people, he died too young. Australia has lost a great man, a great artist and a great indigenous leader.

Yunupingu was the leader of Yothu Yindi, a fantastic band. In 2009, during one of the school assemblies, my daughter Clea and all the students in her year danced and sang along to one of Yothu Yindi’s greatest hits: Treaty. She played these bimli, the clapping sticks, which she had hand-painted herself. It was a fantastic display of energy, of commitment, of youth who could believe in themselves and in a more just future for all their connationals.

It feels it was only the other day that I was standing there, watching and clapping along, encouraging the very young school kids in their singing and dancing, in their embracing the indigenous culture of the First Australians, in demanding a Treaty for this country.

Maybe one day there will be a treaty. Probably not in the next few years, I'm afraid. I think Clea would have liked to see a treaty for all her people, indigenous and non-indigenous.

She's now buried in this Ngunnawal land, where she was born: she's also part of this land.

An Amazing Voice, an Amazing Woman

A few days ago I was again wonderfully surprised by someone whose musical skills and talents are only matched by her profound sense of understanding and her big-hearted display of friendship.

More than a year ago, months after I had written and printed Lalomanu, I learned that musician and composer Faye Bendrups had put music to one of my poems, ‘Roto’ [‘Broken’]. Faye transformed my poem into a beautiful milonga, a type of Argentinean melody that preceded the internationally better-known tango.

‘Roto’ was first performed at University House, in Canberra, in 2011. There is a video on Youtube that I recorded (here) and, despite its poor quality, you can get an idea of Faye’s amazing voice and musical flair in TangoMundo’s extraordinarily beautiful rendition of the poem. Even today I cannot comprehend how Faye was able to give such beautiful music to my words.

While in a recent visit to Melbourne, Faye surprised us again by giving the most beautiful gift a friend artist can give: she has put music to another one of my poems in Lalomanu, ‘Epilogue’. ‘Epilogue’ is the final poem in the book. I could never thank Faye enough for the gift she has created and shared.

Given the muted response Lalomanu received from some quarters, I am not only immensely moved but also forever grateful for this amazing woman’s respectful, artistic homage to my poems. I still believe the Lalomanu poems are simply words of immense sorrow, of unspeakable terror, of indescribable pain.

Let the world know that I feel privileged beyond measure. Thank you so very much, Faye.

New Life

In April 2009, while in Spain for a work-related trip, I bought several CDs, among them Ojos de Brujo’s Aocaná. Clea took an instant liking to the music – I had got her used to the music of this eclectic Barcelona-based band earlier, so it was no surprise to me that she liked the new tracks.

The CD sleeves included the lyrics (in Spanish) and some quite competent translations into English. At the time we used to drive around a fair bit, and Clea would sit at the back of the car, between her twin brothers, and carefully read the words as the music played on. Her favourite song was this, Nueva vida:

Nueva vida was the final song that was played at her funeral. We chose to play a few tracks from this CD. I know not what people thought of our choice of music; it may have seemed unpredictably cheerful for a funeral. In any case, it was not about them or even us, but about Clea. This was her favourite song at the time death took her in the form of a tsunami.

Even a six-year-old can develop certain musical tastes and follow trends. It was indeed unusual for an Australian girl to like a Spanish band. But Clea was perfectly bilingual and had developed a taste for other things.

I can vividly remember seeing Clea in the mirror, intently reading the lyrics of Nueva vida in the car as the song played and I drove on. It was late September 2009 and we were on our way to Sydney Airport, from where we were to board a Polynesian Blue plane that would take all five of us to Apia, Samoa, where we were going to have a wonderful holiday, the first overseas holiday since we had been to Spain, when she was only two.

Clea would ask to play the song over and over again. She loved the looks of Marina, the singer, her unusual hairdo and clothes. She would say she wanted to look like her when she grew up. I sent Marina an email a few days after Clea’s funeral, thanking her and the band for having filled Clea’s life with music. I never got a reply.

Why did she like this song especially? It is of course a catchy song, probably the most commercial one in the whole album, but there must have been something else that appealed to her.

We will never know what that something else was.

99 pumpkins?

Lula

One of the purposes of this blog is to give the reader some sort of account of Clea's life and to provide some insights into the sort of person Clea was. Preparing these notes helps me remember things I do not want to forget, but I also hope they will help the reader have a meaningful perception of who she was, if you never met her; or to help  create a better defined picture of my daughter, if you were fortunate enough to meet her.

Just like every child, Clea loved watching cartoons on TV. She had many favourite shows (“Arthur” was one of them), but as a toddler she had discovered the Spanish program Los Lunnis, which she was able to see in Spain over a month. Here in Australia, I would record episodes for her whenever I was able to from the internet.

Her favourite character was Lula, a bit of a femme fatale in the magical world of Lunalunera. Clea had learnt all the Lunnis songs and loved listening to them when she was little.

Though she was bilingual, there were of course many idioms she could not understand. One day I downloaded the videoclip of a song titled ’99 calabazas’, which was a play on words, based on a Spanish idiom, ‘dar calabazas’ [to give someone the brush-off, to give somebody a cold shoulder]. The song is rather an amusing ballad about how Lula has given the brush-off to Lulo (the extraterrestrial rapper) 99 times, and pleads for her not to give him ‘number 100’.

The clip shows a forlorn Lulo considering all the pumpkins he has been ‘given’, while in every other scene Lula appears to be truly annoyed or fed up with him.

Clea laughed every time she saw Lulo regarding his many pumpkins with a glum air about him. I suppose what she found hilarious was that someone would give pumpkins to express dissatisfaction or annoyance.


I hope you will enjoy seeing one short videoclip Clea liked.