Robyn Davidson | Among Australia's Most Mythologised Lives... 'Memoir Is The Slipperiest Genre' - Unfinished Woman, Tracks & A Life Of Nomadism

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Here I am today with Robin Davidson, somewhere in rural Victoria.
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Robin is, in my opinion, an amazing and totally engrossing writer.
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She's published several books.
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The main two, with which I'm familiar, is the aforementioned tracks, and her most recent biography titled Unfinished Woman.
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She's been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia.
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Is that akin to a knighthood?
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Gosh, I don't know what the equivalent is.
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I don't think so.
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Our highest honour.
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As is a perennial theme in this podcast, Robin's ride to literary fame was unintentional and riddled with serendipity.
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She did not seek the subsequent fruits which that journey across the desert brought to market.
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To get some money, she wrote a piece to National Geographic.
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It took off perhaps unlike anything else they'd ever published.
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Robin was now on the scene as one of Australia's great writers.
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London, famous circles of people, publishers, movies, praise all became doors ajar to Robin.
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But she wasn't chasing that.
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Maybe even hated the new fame and the expectations.
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She just wanted to pursue her interests.
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Robin has an enduring fascination for nomadism.
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She's contributed a quarterly essay to the topic, many other articles, a book, and has walked the walk, spending years at a stretch with various nomadic communities across the world.
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She speaks very straightforwardly and sympathetically about depression, talks openly about suicide, and is as eclectically interested as anyone I could ever hope to meet.
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Robin is without a doubt, and please forgive for the brown nosing, but a dream guest of mine on this podcast.
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I once responded to a question in a grant application that the people I admired most were great adventures, great writers, and great journalists.
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In Robin Davidson, we have a pure expression of that combination.
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Anything else you want to add there?
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No, that's so lovely, though.
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I feel a bit shy.
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Well, it is my absolute pleasure to now play the interview for which we just recorded.
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Thank you, Ryan.
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That's very sweet.
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Just dive right into it.
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Do.
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You're worried about the narrative fallacy in writing the memoir.
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But do you think the same applies to doing an interview?
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I think whenever you have to speak in a certain way, in a certain form, no matter how truthful you want to be, there is some process by which you are making a character of yourself.
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So there's a weird kind of doubling going on.
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And you're worried about doing the Robin Davidson performance.
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The Robin Davidson performance, exactly.
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But what does that what does that mean?
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Well, I I suppose I I see it more when I'm writing.
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It's much more clear then.
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Um that the Robin Davidson on the page is not the real Robin Davidson.
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And that doesn't mean there's any untruths or any lies or that it's not genuine.
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Um I take a lot of trouble to try to be, to try to get my ego out of the way.
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Um, but nevertheless, the process of writing is a creative process.
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Um you are emphasizing some some things, ignoring other things, creating structure.
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Uh, and all of that, particularly when you are a character in that work, well, you become a character.
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Is it because it's all so elevated?
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You spend so much time constructing the perfect sentence, and it feels like that maybe isn't really who I am.
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This is the best possible version of myself, or is it something else?
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No, it's something else.
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It's something else.
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I mean, I care deeply about making good sentences.
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You know, I care a lot about not writing shit, basically.
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Um, it's more to do with making a character on the page.
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And that character is a sort of doppelganger.
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She is me, but she's not quite me.
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Um it's quite disconcerting when you think about it.
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I think most writers don't think about it, but um, particularly in this memoir, um it was very important for me to be aware of that, and as I said before, to get my ego out of the way as much as possible.
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And that's because the problem of memory, which you have spoken about.
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Like you're you're finding correlation between causation when in fact how can you even say so many is past the event whether they had anything to do with each other or not?
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Yeah, indeed.
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Look, it's partly that, but I think it's more subtle than that.
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It's um some strange process.
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If you're a writer and if you're using the first person pronoun, you are necessarily creating a character.
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Um and how conscious you are of that is the sort of, I guess is the morality of the memoir.
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Um, and I do think it's an extremely slippery genre.
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In fact, I don't particularly like memoir.
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Um, but I felt compelled to write this one for all sorts of reasons, but also compelled to to take it very seriously in the sense of uh the responsibility of talking about other people, the responsibility of trying to get to the truth of the past, whatever the hell that is, um, and the responsibility of keeping that instinct to make yourself better than you are, which is what I mean by the ego, um, very present.
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So each time I'd sit down at the computer, it would be uh a real conscious effort to get that sort of stuff out of the way and really try to get to something I hate the word authentic, but that's kind of it.
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Why do you hate the word authentic?
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Oh, just because it's overused and it's not quite the right word either.
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It's something tr I suppose truth, to try and get at the truth, uh, you know, without ev without us even knowing uh what the truth is, but trying to get to the value of truth, I would say.
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Because of the memory gap and the difference between your person and the other person's experience when recalling a memory.
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Precisely.
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You've only got one perspective there.
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Precisely.
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And even that perspective is up for grabs, you know, because what I noticed was that um I'd go back to some memory and it would be as clear as a bell.
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Okay.
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Then maybe two months later, I would go back to that memory, and it wouldn't be it'd just be slightly different.
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You know, just slightly different.
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Which calls into question.
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What was the first memory or the second memory the one to go off?
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Or is it the third and final?
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Well, I think what happens is that in retrospect, you know, memory is imagination.
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It's not a a fixed, you know, it's not a fixed thing.
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It's mixed and merged with imagination necessarily.
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So that is what memory does.
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It um transforms and slightly alters and brings in a bit of this and leaves out a bit of that.
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Did you ever see, or read rather, Ian McEwan's Atonement?
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I haven't.
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I've got it, but I haven't read it.
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Well, it's exactly this sort of theme.
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Right.
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Uh this event that takes place from three or four different characters' perspectives and each one's memory of it being different, with it having disastrous outcomes.
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Of course.
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Well, there's a famous um Kurosawa film, Rushamon, which is it was exactly that premise.
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Um, and you know, you see the first bit of the film and you think you know exactly what's happened, and then the second bit of the film you see it from another spec perspective, and the first perspective's completely thrown aside, and then the third one, and so on.
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So you get a kind of composite of what might have actually happened.
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Right.
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Which is the what do you call it, uh, the morally dubious or morally a better adjective after the morally, the problem of memoir by writing.
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I think so.
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Um people think it's an easy genre, but I think it's the hardest genre.
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To make something of, to elevate it above just me, me, me, you know, look at me, look at me.
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Because uh in my case anyway, the uh I of the narrative, the personality of that uh person is just not at all interesting to me.
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The fate of that person is interesting, and it's the fate that I know best because it's mine.
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But uh the it wasn't written in the way I think a lot of memoirs are, which is sort of about the self.
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It wasn't really written about the self, it was written about this rather extraordinary fate.
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And it is also uh kind of an unusual memoir because it isn't just a linear timeline of a series of events that in your extraordinary life have happened to you and you've experienced.
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Uh, it's kind of this is also a very cliche word to say kind of mythical or or spiritual or i it it it's grand descriptions of a place and then we'll move on 20 years down the timeline to another experience.
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And so in that way it's also maybe rather unusual.
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Is that your attempt to lift?
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It was my n not an attempt to lift, but an attempt to write according to how I think the mind actually works and how memory is for me, certainly.
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We try to make this linear narrative, but the truth is, at least for me again, when I think of the past, I see it more geographically than temporally.
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Um I can sort of with a lot of effort try and make it fit into a timeline, but that doesn't come naturally at all.
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Um it's like spotlights on a on a dark field, and there's an enactment in that spotlight.
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And then next to it might be another enactment that happened ten years later, and then another one sort of over there that was when I was a child.
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Um so that's sort of how I see memory.
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And in writing the book, I tried to make the structure reflect that.
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I've re-jiggered Nasim Taleb's definition of the narrative fallacy.
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Tell me if this fits with what you're thinking.
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Okay.
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We invent neat, linear, emotionally satisfying stories to explain what happened.
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But the world is rather messy, chaotic, and driven by chance.
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The narrative fallacy makes us overlook randomness and uncertainty because we crave meaning and coherence.
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That's it.
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Very well said, yes.
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Indeed.
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Indeed.
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Well, we have to make coherence out of it somehow.
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Yes.
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And so is being complimented on your writing the highest form of praise you can receive.
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Personally, or you mean for the books?
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Personally.
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No.
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Um I'm I'm very glad of it because, as I said before, I don't want to write crap.
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But you know, I I have no illusions about my vast talents.
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I don't I don't sort of care about that in a way.
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I want to make something as good as I can make it.
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Um I don't possibly I'm unusual in this way sense that I don't identify, you know, totally as a writer.
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And perhaps that's because of the strange way I came to it.
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But I feel that my identity is filled with all sorts of um characters.
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This is a pretty sappy question, but like how would you then identify yourself if not as an author and a writer?
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A person.
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Just a person.
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Hence the sap in the world.
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Well uh well, it's a very difficult question to answer without being flippant.
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Um, and when I say person, that is a flippant answer.
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Um obviously when I'm writing, I'm very deeply involved in it.
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And if someone asked me what I was then, I'd probably say, yes, I'm writing a book, and it's therefore I'm a writer, I suppose.
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But I don't quite feel comfortable saying I am a writer.
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What does that even mean?
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You know, I am a dog trainer, uh, I am a householder, I am a thousand million things.
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Obviously, writing's a very important part of that, but it is not my it's not how I encapsulate my identity my identity.
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Yeah.
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Uh and maybe in the in the with the theme of the book, this interview will also be very nonlinear.
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Probably.
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So we'll jump to say your 30s and 40s in the Himalayas.
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Yeah.
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There is, at least from my best attempt to make a timeline of your life, many years here without you publishing work and writing.
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That's correct.
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So what are you doing in this time of your life?
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Again, it's quite hard for me to answer questions like that because I have to think linearly.
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Oh, what was I doing?
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Um well, I I think the easiest way to answer it would be that I, after tracks, which I thought would be a one-off thing, um suddenly it was assumed I was a writer, a born writer.
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And so I was sort of pressured into writing another book.
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Um it's okay, I sort of took that bait.
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Um I wrote a novel, rather bad novel.
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Um and then after that I was sort of at a loose end, not quite knowing what I wanted to do.
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And I decided then to do this project in India with nomads because it fitted into, I thought, um, this interest in how your publishable niche.
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Well, no, it actually wasn't that at all.
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Um, I was very resistant to writing another travel book in inverted commas because I didn't want to be labelled.
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It felt quite important for me to sort of sidestep all of that um fixing and labelling.
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Um but it it came about through chance that this opportunity arose to to uh do a project in India with these nomads and it fitted into something I was deeply interested in, which is how nomadism or how people move affects uh their culture how and how they think.
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Um so that's when I uh went to India and Desert Places came out of that.
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Again, after that well, I did the anthology and various small things, but I wasn't driven to write another book.
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Again, it comes to it comes around to this idea of if you have a firm identity, then you're sort of trapped in it.
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And I really didn't want that.
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Um if I was going to write another book, it'd have to be something I really wanted to do and had an importance for me, not just because I was a a writer who had to produce another book.
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Yeah.
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Another commercial opportunity.
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Yes, exactly.
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I've never cared about that.
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The theme throughout Unfinished Woman is a lot of the road not taken, what ifs.
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And so because of um a letter, I think it was Doris something, you wrote her a letter.
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And she said, Well, if you can write a letter, you can write a book.
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Yeah.
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And then all of a sudden she said, if you can write a good letter, you can write a letter.
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Right, exactly.
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I suppose there's an important distinction.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Christopher Hitchens once said, uh, it's true that there is a book in every person, but in that person is where most of it should stay.
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That's exactly quite right.
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Um, but because you write this good letter and you're encouraged to write the book, and because of the enormous success of that National Geographic article that was written about you, no, but you wrote uh with Rick's photos, there was a you know, publishers knocking on your door, etc.
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Like the story had demand.
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Yeah.
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Um, but had you not had you just turned your your eye away from all of that?
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You know, do you have a sense for or at last or at least a romantic idea for how your life would have um God who knows gone after that?
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Who knows?
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It could have gone in a billion directions.
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None of us understand that, you know, just on the tiniest, tiniest turning point, you can head off in a billion different directions.
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And also, my reasons for writing tracks were complicated.
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Um in fact, one of it was Doris who sort of talked me into doing the book, didn't talk me into it, but said that that's when she said, if you can write a good letter, you can write a good book.
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Um but more important for me was I thought, because I was so, sorry, I'm being a bit incoherent, because I was so um, because the sudden fame and attention was so unexpected, I mean totally out of the blue, I had no idea that was going to happen, because the journey had been a very private um something that I wanted to do just for itself.
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I had no intention of writing about it, nothing.
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It was just for me.
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And then all this brew ha ha happened.
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Um so I thought, in my innocence, if I write a book, the the sort of public world can have the book, and I will be left alone to get on with my life.
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And of course, what happened then?
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The book became a big bestseller.
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Um so every time I've sort of tried to step back from it, it's like fate takes over and makes a bigger brou-ha-ha.
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It's funny you thought that because instinctually, maybe it's just through my own experience I would think this, but you know, I would attach so much romantic projection onto the author of that book.
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Who is the person who would do such a thing?
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It must be endlessly interesting and fascinating, and I want to know everything that they're doing from now until the end of time.
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God help us.
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Which is, I suppose, how it went.
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Well, it had a strange effect, that book.
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And I'm still not sure quite.
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I mean, it's still it's never been out of print.
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I still have gorgeous young people coming up to me and saying, You change my life.
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Young people.
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Um there was something about that book that caught, it didn't just catch the Zeitgeist at the time, which indeed it did, but there was something more than that at the bottom of that book.
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I think it was some sort of it follows some sort of mythical trajectory, perhaps.
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Um, and of course I was occupying what had traditionally been a sort of male male place, I guess.
00:19:46.559 --> 00:19:55.279
Not that I thought it thought of it like that, but I can see how other people might have thought, uh particularly other women, would have thought of it like that.
00:19:55.920 --> 00:20:02.319
So the effect that book has had has also been very surprising and somewhat bewildering to me.
00:20:03.279 --> 00:20:08.079
Um I mean I'm very lucky, dead lucky.
00:20:08.559 --> 00:20:10.960
Okay, uh forgive me, we are jumping around a bit.
00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:14.480
But so this is after the success of tracks.
00:20:16.160 --> 00:20:26.480
But the journey itself off tracks, I suppose maybe it's hard to say where it begins, but I'd like to start from at least you moving to Sydney after your school has finished.
00:20:26.559 --> 00:20:27.039
Yeah.
00:20:27.200 --> 00:20:29.279
And you're vagabonding around.
00:20:29.519 --> 00:20:32.799
I believe you you squatted in an abandoned Erskineville house.
00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:33.519
I did.
00:20:33.759 --> 00:20:35.759
You fell in with uh a poker den.
00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:39.279
You were renting in Paddington and a whole bunch of places.
00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:39.759
Yeah.
00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:40.400
Okay.
00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:44.960
Well, it we have to situate all this in a particular era.
00:20:45.359 --> 00:20:46.720
Very important that.
00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:53.440
I mean, I'm sort of made by 68, early 70s, that culture.
00:20:53.519 --> 00:20:57.519
And it's a very narrow little window, that sort of 68 to 73, I think.
00:20:57.920 --> 00:20:58.799
The revolutionary moment.
00:20:59.279 --> 00:21:15.440
That moment, um, and young people in particular were all, you know, pushing boundaries, really pushing boundaries, and kind of there was the sense that it was we were tilling new ground because there was nothing ahead of us.
00:21:15.680 --> 00:21:19.519
To we were breaking new ground all the time.
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:23.039
It was a terrific time to be young.
00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:27.119
Um, but of course there were a lot of casualties to that time as well.
00:21:27.599 --> 00:21:30.480
From produce everything, wildlife, you know.
00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:37.279
Um but I'm very grateful that I was formed during that time.
00:21:37.359 --> 00:21:44.079
I think it was um uh enriching and incredibly privileged in lots of ways.
00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:52.000
Um when I say privileged, I don't mean with money, I mean with a kind of psychic opportunity, I guess.
00:21:52.240 --> 00:21:52.799
Something like that.
00:21:53.119 --> 00:21:54.480
Well what does what does that mean?
00:21:54.640 --> 00:21:55.519
Uh breaking.
00:21:55.839 --> 00:22:13.839
It meant that we that my lot had this sense of Of going out into the world, and freedom was this huge value, and sort of finding out what you could do, who you were, um, how you could change the world.
00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:18.319
We really did believe we could change the world for the better.
00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:31.920
Um, so hugely experimental, dangerous uh in lots of ways, but also very um we really looked after each other.
00:22:32.079 --> 00:22:38.880
There was a tremendous sense of um brotherhood, sisterhood, if you like.
00:22:39.599 --> 00:22:49.279
Globally, not just in one place, but a whole sense that you belong to this movement of w what movement was that, at least in Sydney?
00:22:49.680 --> 00:22:52.480
Well, uh it was sort of like everywhere.
00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:54.240
It was politics.
00:22:54.400 --> 00:23:06.079
Politics was the root of it, changing things, making things um uprooting what had been corrupt and um sort of anti-human.
00:23:06.880 --> 00:23:15.359
So it involved rights for aboriginal people, it involved feminism, it involved, you know, a thousand and one things, racism, economic upheaval.
00:23:15.759 --> 00:23:16.240
All of that.
00:23:17.839 --> 00:23:31.359
Um so there were various um flavors, but there was a sense of great community as well, even when there were um antagonisms within.
00:23:32.240 --> 00:23:37.920
Um at the foundation of it all was this sense of togetherness and making a better world.
00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:40.000
Really, it was like that.
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:44.720
You you just sort of stumbled into it because you went to Sydney with sixty dollars in your pocket.
00:23:44.880 --> 00:23:45.039
Yeah.
00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:46.880
And I loved this detail from the book.
00:23:46.960 --> 00:23:58.240
You're just walking through Centennial Park, walking up to North Bondi, just walking around for the entire day and then sleeping on a park bench or squatting in an abandoned house at night, then you end up falling in with these people.
00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:01.359
Well, I was a very unformed young person.
00:24:01.920 --> 00:24:04.000
Um for various reasons.
00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:09.279
I hadn't developed certain skills in life.
00:24:09.599 --> 00:24:12.000
Um and I knew that about myself.
00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:27.519
I knew that I was uh unformed, ignorant to the back teeth, and needing to learn, leading to l needing to catch up and to learn really how to be a human in the world.
00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:34.559
Um so that really was my project at that time.
00:24:34.720 --> 00:24:37.279
I guess I was 18 or something like that.
00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:41.599
So I hopped on a truck, got a lift on a truck, went to Sydney.
00:24:41.680 --> 00:24:46.880
I as you say I had 60 bucks, which was quite a lot of money then, it felt like a lot of money.
00:24:47.119 --> 00:24:52.559
Um and I just landed in Sydney and I lived on the streets.
00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:00.240
But these days, if you say you lived on the streets, it means something very negative or something tragic.
00:25:00.480 --> 00:25:03.599
Whereas for me it was complete freedom.
00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:08.160
It was like being an aristocrat, being a traveller in the world, you know, free.
00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:12.000
Um I slept in parks.
00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:14.240
I don't know how long that period was.
00:25:14.720 --> 00:25:18.160
A month probably, maybe I, you know, it's all fuzzy.
00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:19.359
It's a long time.
00:25:19.599 --> 00:25:20.319
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:20.559 --> 00:25:22.079
But I learnt that city.
00:25:22.720 --> 00:25:30.079
I walked everywhere, I walked miles and miles every day, sort of learning where I was, learning how it worked.
00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:37.599
Um, and then eventually found this abandoned little cottage and went in and squatted there.
00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:46.319
And started reading, um, mostly stealing books, frankly.
00:25:47.519 --> 00:25:52.160
Which I think was you said the the only type of theft you never felt guilty about.
00:25:52.559 --> 00:25:53.359
That's right, that's right.
00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:59.599
And I also one thing I'm very proud of is that Tracks for a number of years was the most stolen book in Australia.
00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:01.920
So I feel I paid my dues.
00:26:02.319 --> 00:26:02.960
Absolutely.
00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:12.880
Um so it was a huge learning period and self-education, autodidact um period of life.
00:26:13.359 --> 00:26:40.480
And when I felt that I had done enough of that to be able to sort of move out a bit, um then I sort of became part of that political life in Sydney with what was then called the Push, which was a very um disparate group of artists and bohemians and intellectuals and um and so on.
00:26:40.720 --> 00:26:48.400
And so I lived that sort of life, sharing houses, um, and again learning, learning, learning all the time.
00:26:49.519 --> 00:26:56.400
Um money, of course, was always, you know, we were always getting odd jobs.
00:26:56.640 --> 00:27:06.880
Um I was a waitress often, bars, um uh artist model, and then got a job in this gambling club.
00:27:08.640 --> 00:27:13.759
And fell in I became a poker dealer.
00:27:13.920 --> 00:27:16.319
That was my role in the club.
00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:19.039
But I just fell in love with that game.
00:27:19.119 --> 00:27:21.519
It's the transcendent game, poker.
00:27:21.759 --> 00:27:22.799
And it was five-card stud.
00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:24.160
Five card stud, yeah.
00:27:24.799 --> 00:27:27.119
I think as well, you also played it quite a bit.
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:28.480
I played it enough.
00:27:28.720 --> 00:27:33.440
Yeah, there was a back and forth about how you sometimes had to manage the table to make sure the sharks would stay.
00:27:33.599 --> 00:27:34.960
Not the sharks, the whales would stay.
00:27:35.119 --> 00:27:35.200
Yes.
00:27:35.440 --> 00:27:36.480
And the sharks would leave.
00:27:37.279 --> 00:27:39.680
The punter, you know, the mug punters.
00:27:39.920 --> 00:27:58.160
Um yes, uh well there'd there'd always be a house player at the table, and usually that was the proprietor Billy, and sometimes he couldn't be there, so uh often it'd be one of the mm mm bouncers, but sometimes that couldn't happen, so it'd be me.
00:27:58.319 --> 00:28:00.000
So I had to learn how to play.
00:28:00.400 --> 00:28:12.400
The true shark at the true and I just um it it was sort of um absolutely fascinating to me that game.
00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:16.799
Um and it was an extraordinary experience in that club.
00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:32.799
You know, often we'd be playing a game for 30 hours, um, keeping going on speed and whiskey and coffee and um and with this in this because it was illegal then, so it was a criminal fraternity.
00:28:33.359 --> 00:28:37.519
Um and they also were fascinating people.
00:28:38.559 --> 00:28:46.960
Um and that was, I guess, a couple of years of my life, or a year, I can't remember, but it seemed long enough.
00:28:47.519 --> 00:29:01.759
Did that working in gambling, was that vice a part of the revolutionary political freedom this push movement was involved in, or did you catch some, you know, side eyes from some of your friends?
00:29:02.319 --> 00:29:04.960
No, they would never have judged judged me, no.
00:29:05.279 --> 00:29:07.759
They wouldn't have some of them were gamblers.
00:29:07.839 --> 00:29:11.119
Uh i I mean, it's hard to explain that era.
00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:33.440
There was tremendous generosity, um always um this sort of bohemian, I suppose way of choosing to be against a system that we felt essentially corrupt.
00:29:33.839 --> 00:29:44.160
So even say in the in the gambling club, okay, it was run by these Krims, but they were paying off the police.
00:29:44.400 --> 00:29:50.000
Um the whole of the sort of um legal um police structure was corrupt.
00:29:50.480 --> 00:29:53.839
So, you know, who's the who are the bad guys there?
00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:54.640
Yeah.
00:29:55.359 --> 00:30:16.319
It really does sound like I suppose that's why there's so much romanticization looks back on that period, because I can imagine it would have been great to have just been able to fall into a group of people who all generous, kind-hearted, and crazy people, and yeah, c kind of wild and open-minded, nothing's off limits.
00:30:16.559 --> 00:30:24.079
Truly, you know, that um, but then you do write that, and this is also there's a lot of echoes in some details of your life with Christopher Hitchens.
00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:25.599
I'm not sure if you're aware of that or not.
00:30:25.839 --> 00:30:30.000
No, um, but so he I won't go into it now, maybe we'll get it later.
00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:32.319
But um goodness, I had no idea.
00:30:32.559 --> 00:30:34.240
Well, maybe we'll get into it straight away.
00:30:34.400 --> 00:30:36.720
Uh, it does turn towards your mother though.
00:30:36.960 --> 00:30:38.240
So okay, sure.
00:30:38.319 --> 00:30:39.039
No, up to you.
00:30:39.119 --> 00:30:40.559
I'm happy to go where you go.
00:30:40.799 --> 00:30:44.000
So Hitchens was born 49.
00:30:44.319 --> 00:30:45.279
Right, yeah before me.
00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:52.799
Very similar to you, and he was raised in Portsmouth, uh, which was a navy kind of rough and tumble town in the UK.
00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:54.720
His father was much older than his mother.
00:30:55.279 --> 00:30:55.599
Similar.
00:30:56.000 --> 00:31:00.640
His mother was not an urbanite, but had aspirations for it.
00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:29.119
You know, she wanted to go to the concert and she wanted to have witty conversations with her smart friends at a London restaurant, but instead she was um put in this rural, kind of austerity-driven, with an older, former army um husband who who maybe really wanted to, you know, ha have this emotional side to him, but but it was never accessible.
00:31:29.359 --> 00:31:29.839
Yeah.
00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:31.279
Sounds very similar.
00:31:31.599 --> 00:31:33.279
And she ended up uh suicided.
00:31:33.599 --> 00:31:34.240
She suicided.
00:31:34.319 --> 00:31:36.960
Yeah, how old was Hitchens in his early 20s.
00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:38.160
Huh, okay.
00:31:38.319 --> 00:31:39.200
I I didn't know that.
00:31:39.279 --> 00:31:40.240
I know you knew Christian.
00:31:40.480 --> 00:31:41.759
And she was ethnically Jewish.
00:31:42.319 --> 00:31:43.920
Boy, yeah, so scary.
00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:47.440
It's and and I I'm not surprised that you would have known Hitchens.
00:31:47.599 --> 00:31:50.079
You at least at one point definitely travel in the same circles.
00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:50.720
Yeah.
00:31:50.960 --> 00:31:54.880
Um, but anyway, he also speaks in his own memoir.
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:59.839
Much more comfortable with making it all about him than you were.
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:00.400
Yes.
00:32:00.559 --> 00:32:15.920
Um, but about him also being swept up in this revolutionary moment of 68 and 69, and you know, he was a big shot at Cambridge and and politically at the front of it, holding speeches and we're gonna change the entire fucking world, watch us.
00:32:16.160 --> 00:32:16.319
Yeah.
00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:18.240
And then it all sort of crumbling down.
00:32:18.480 --> 00:32:18.720
Indeed.
00:32:19.039 --> 00:32:31.599
And him making the same observation as you, which is that half of them um maybe completely burnt themselves out with psychosis and all the drugs, and then the other half just went off into white shoe law firms and legal firms.
00:32:32.319 --> 00:32:32.640
Yes.
00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:37.680
Which they would have done if the if that little period hadn't intervened, you know.
00:32:37.839 --> 00:32:39.359
Um sure.
00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:40.400
Yeah.
00:32:40.960 --> 00:32:59.599
Well, there was for me anyway, one of the reasons why I think I did the trip across Australia was something to do with that, the mood of of the early 70s of having failed, or it having been a bit, we're all, well, what happened, you know, like poof.
00:33:00.720 --> 00:33:22.000
Um and a lot of the energy, that sort of confident energy, had sort of dissipated into different sorts of movements and um that sense of purpose had pretty much uh dissipated, at least for me.
00:33:22.799 --> 00:33:38.720
Um so finding something to replace that, something that again that search for meaning that we all do, um that was a large part of choosing to do the camel trip.
00:33:39.119 --> 00:33:52.319
And so you get in a train to Alice Springs, you have this shocking introduction to the city on the train, this old fella comes up and essentially just tries to court you directly in for the price of a beer.
00:33:53.039 --> 00:33:54.240
I've forgotten that, you know.
00:33:55.119 --> 00:34:00.079
No, but it's just such a stark introduction to this frontier town, which was Alice Springs.
00:34:00.400 --> 00:34:05.680
Yeah, it was a very rough place then, a very um racially tense place.
00:34:06.880 --> 00:34:10.079
Um it was a horrible place, actually.
00:34:10.639 --> 00:34:12.480
Yeah, you describe it very, very, very well.
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:18.000
So I I'm gonna butcher it completely, but some feeling is I hated this place, but I really wanted to be here.
00:34:18.079 --> 00:34:19.280
Yeah, something along those lines.
00:34:19.679 --> 00:34:20.400
Don't remember that.
00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:28.559
But it was certainly a compelling place because also, again, politically land rights legislation was about to happen.
00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:49.679
Um, I got there just before the influx of young, tertiary educated, left-ish people who'd came in to help administer the act and to set up pro-Aboriginal organizations to help Aboriginal people organize themselves, um, to work for Aboriginal people.
00:34:50.159 --> 00:35:00.159
So the first year there was really very grim because I was uh I stood out like a I really stood out.
00:35:00.320 --> 00:35:00.800
Right.
00:35:01.199 --> 00:35:04.079
Um and I got a lot of antagonism.
00:35:04.639 --> 00:35:11.920
Um and I was genuinely appalled when I saw the kind of overt racism and cruelty there.
00:35:12.559 --> 00:35:23.519
Um and then these young people started arriving, and of course they became my sort of friendship group, and those friends are still very tight even now, yeah, decades later.
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:25.039
They still live in the sp in Alice?
00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:28.719
Some do, some don't, mostly d mostly not.
00:35:28.800 --> 00:35:35.199
Um But you get off the uh train and you end up falling in at the pub working there for a bit.
00:35:35.280 --> 00:35:38.480
This is after as well, kind of vagabonding for a period of time.
00:35:38.639 --> 00:35:38.960
Yeah.
00:35:39.119 --> 00:35:46.639
Um, but then you fall under the the employment of Kurt, who just seems like such a maniac.
00:35:47.039 --> 00:35:51.760
He was a complete maniac.
00:35:52.079 --> 00:36:02.639
But the more I sort of think about Kurt, you know, now that I'm older, I realize how much I actually uh owe him in a way.
00:36:02.960 --> 00:36:04.480
I mean, he was a monster.
00:36:04.639 --> 00:36:12.400
I mean he treated me appallingly, and um he backed out of our deal after I'd worked for him for nothing for a year.
00:36:12.719 --> 00:36:27.840
But I think because he was so rigid, um I had to learn the skills that he had really well, like from the bottom up.
00:36:28.079 --> 00:36:29.840
Um so I owe him.
00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:43.280
Um he had a camel farm and I went to work for him, and um he was a bully and a monster, but every day, you know, I was up at five, I had to do everything perfectly.
00:36:43.519 --> 00:36:46.480
He insisted that I do everything perfectly.
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:49.599
Um so I learned.
00:36:50.079 --> 00:36:51.760
I learned a lot about camels.
00:36:52.159 --> 00:36:55.360
And the idea was that you would work for him and then you would get three camels.
00:36:55.599 --> 00:36:56.079
Yeah.
00:36:56.400 --> 00:37:00.079
And he totally scored you on the deal.
00:37:00.239 --> 00:37:00.880
Yep.
00:37:01.119 --> 00:37:05.920
And you ended up uh then getting camels from this really kind Afghani fella.
00:37:06.239 --> 00:37:13.280
And it turns out that uh with Afghani immigration, I don't know the year, but they brought in a bunch of camels.
00:37:13.679 --> 00:37:15.039
Sort of 1850s, roughly.
00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:15.440
Really?
00:37:15.599 --> 00:37:16.079
That long ago.
00:37:16.239 --> 00:37:16.559
Yeah, yeah.
00:37:16.880 --> 00:37:20.719
So why did we why did Australia bring them over to begin with?
00:37:21.119 --> 00:37:23.360
To open up the desert areas.
00:37:23.519 --> 00:37:35.519
Um they were building the Overland Telegraph, that came a bit later, if I remember, but to build roads, build infrastructure, get goods out to remote communities.
00:37:35.920 --> 00:37:42.239
Um so the Afghans brought these long strings of camels for transport.
00:37:42.719 --> 00:37:46.000
Um, yeah, they're extraordinary people.
00:37:46.559 --> 00:37:50.800
But they were constructing um their own demise in a way.
00:37:51.119 --> 00:37:51.360
Indeed.
00:37:51.679 --> 00:37:52.960
Because they were no longer necessary once all that.
00:37:53.679 --> 00:37:57.760
Once all that infrastructure was there, and it's sort of a sad story in many ways.
00:37:57.840 --> 00:38:04.880
Um, because they let their camels go when they were no no longer economically feasible.
00:38:05.119 --> 00:38:20.960
And of course, what then happened was that the camels had found paradise, and they have replicated, you know, hugely, and they're now doing a lot of damage in the desert along with all other introduced animals.
00:38:21.519 --> 00:38:23.679
Um, so it's a sad thing really.
00:38:23.760 --> 00:38:26.400
Um but they are world-class camels now.
00:38:26.719 --> 00:38:36.880
They're very well, the sorts of camels they brought in were draft animals, you know, heavy lifters, so they're not racing animals like you see in UAE and places like that.
00:38:37.280 --> 00:38:42.159
Um but they're pretty much disease-free.
00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:56.400
They're very strong because um because of their original genetics, but they've also um been in this fabulous place for them, you know, they're fat and and doing very well.
00:38:56.880 --> 00:38:59.920
So, yes, they're very high-quality camels.
00:39:00.480 --> 00:39:10.239
And then you end up getting these camels and you embark on this magnificent journey, and at some stage Rick comes into your life.
00:39:10.480 --> 00:39:16.719
Do you think that without his photos, that the story would have ever gotten as big as it got?
00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:19.840
And the poor the photos were a huge part of it.
00:39:20.719 --> 00:39:25.360
And um, I was very ambivalent about having the photographer there.
00:39:25.599 --> 00:39:33.119
Um, I was very ambivalent about approaching National Geographic um because I felt I was selling out.
00:39:33.599 --> 00:39:35.920
Um But you needed the money to it.
00:39:36.320 --> 00:39:41.920
I absolutely had to somehow find a couple of thousand dollars, and that's all it was.
00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:47.360
And again, it doesn't sound like much now, but it was a lot then, to get my equipment.
00:39:47.599 --> 00:39:52.960
Um I had to build everything myself, but I still needed stuff.
00:39:53.119 --> 00:39:55.679
I needed to buy a rifle, I needed blah blah.
00:39:56.320 --> 00:39:59.039
So I met Rick in Alice Springs.
00:39:59.280 --> 00:40:07.360
Um, he'd seen me cleaning windows, which was one of my jobs out there, um, and I think he was a bit dazzled.
00:40:08.159 --> 00:40:12.239
Um and he said, Well, why don't you write to Geographic?
00:40:12.320 --> 00:40:32.320
And I said, I Geographic, um and he convinced me, and I did, and there was a very sweet editor there who took it seriously and came to visit me, and they gave me four thousand dollars, I think, can't remember, something like that, a fortune.
00:40:33.280 --> 00:40:39.440
So that actually allowed me to get all the gear together and plan the whole thing properly.
00:40:40.079 --> 00:40:51.119
But I uh was very ambivalent about Rick visiting me on the trip to take pictures.
00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:54.159
I didn't want him there, I didn't want anyone there.
00:40:55.119 --> 00:40:57.599
And I think I was a bit naive about that.
00:40:57.840 --> 00:41:04.320
I didn't have any idea really what that would mean.
00:41:04.960 --> 00:41:18.239
Um I mean, certainly personally it felt I felt a bit queasy because it was like selling out, as I said, but I had no idea how it would affect a public persona.
00:41:18.639 --> 00:41:22.320
And of course, uh he took the most exquisite photos.
00:41:22.400 --> 00:41:25.360
I mean, they are beautiful, beautiful photos.
00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:29.840
But when I first saw them, I said, Rick, you've made me look like a vogue model.
00:41:29.920 --> 00:41:31.039
That's not me.
00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:45.679
And I understood then the implications, the repercussions of having these images, which were essentially Rick's trip, Rick's vision, not mine.
00:41:46.559 --> 00:41:56.159
And if that journey was to do with anything, it was to do with being the subject of my own life, not an object.
00:41:56.559 --> 00:42:00.480
And beautiful as those photos were, they turned me into an object.
00:42:00.719 --> 00:42:03.920
And also, I had no idea I was beautiful, none.
00:42:04.079 --> 00:42:12.639
I had no idea, but you look at those photos, and there's a beautiful blonde young woman in a sarong riding a camel.
00:42:12.800 --> 00:42:14.400
How could you go wrong?
00:42:14.960 --> 00:42:21.360
But all of that had nothing to do with me.
00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:24.000
But you were 27, 28 at the time.
00:42:24.079 --> 00:42:24.239
Yeah.
00:42:24.639 --> 00:42:27.679
How did you not have a sense for your own beauty?
00:42:29.920 --> 00:42:32.239
Um, well, it's a complicated question.
00:42:32.559 --> 00:42:35.599
A lot of women don't have a sense of their own beauty.
00:42:35.760 --> 00:42:37.519
Um, some do and they're lucky.
00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:39.679
Um but I never have.
00:42:40.079 --> 00:42:42.559
Um I don't know why.
00:42:42.719 --> 00:42:44.159
It just I suppose it's not important.
00:42:44.480 --> 00:42:48.719
It's not how I again it's not how I think of myself.
00:42:48.960 --> 00:42:50.880
I think of myself as a person.
00:42:51.519 --> 00:43:03.280
I look in the mirror of this, not bad, not terrible, you know, but it sort of doesn't it's not something I feel I own and therefore can use, if you know what I mean.
00:43:03.679 --> 00:43:03.920
Okay.
00:43:04.480 --> 00:43:23.360
But I just and forgive me if this is really bad observation, but by the time you're 27, 28, you've had male attention, you've met lots of other women, and you surely must have gotten a sense for I I I can evoke these responses in people.
00:43:23.519 --> 00:43:31.440
There must be something about me that is alluring, whether it's not just how you physically look, but also how you are, and I know, complete mystery.
00:43:31.679 --> 00:43:32.239
Right, okay.
00:43:32.559 --> 00:43:33.679
Complete mystery.
00:43:34.079 --> 00:43:48.159
D do you think because I I've having only known you for twenty minutes, um, but having, you know, gotten to know you in a very more intimate sense through reading your books, like there is something alarmingly disarming about you.
00:43:48.559 --> 00:43:50.559
Um d do you have any sense what that is?
00:43:50.639 --> 00:43:52.239
Is is it something you've grown into?
00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:54.320
Do you think you've sort of always had it?
00:43:55.360 --> 00:43:56.800
Do you know I just don't know.
00:43:57.199 --> 00:43:58.400
Do people make that observation?
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:16.960
They have I think perhaps because that lack of nouse that I had as a young person and you know my early history perhaps my I'm an oddball.
00:44:17.119 --> 00:44:26.559
I don't really fit anywhere and things that concern other people often don't concern I don't care.
00:44:27.840 --> 00:44:46.400
Um Yeah, I I don't really know how to answer it m better than that, but I don't My values are to do with something else.
00:44:47.199 --> 00:44:53.039
Trying to find some trying to find out what life's for, what it's about.
00:44:53.519 --> 00:44:58.079
And because the values exist over there, everything over here is just I don't even know.
00:44:58.320 --> 00:45:00.960
Yeah, I don't even know, and it's just chance anyway.
00:45:01.679 --> 00:45:02.079
You know?
00:45:02.639 --> 00:45:04.639
You mean genetically how you might end up looking.
00:45:04.880 --> 00:45:05.199
Exactly.
00:45:05.440 --> 00:45:05.679
Right.
00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:08.000
And in fact, so much of it is chance.
00:45:08.320 --> 00:45:10.719
It's not exactly it's not anything I did.
00:45:11.199 --> 00:45:19.440
Um and therefore I I'm probably b uh it's probably affected my life being beautiful.
00:45:19.519 --> 00:45:23.519
I don't know, but it's not something that I've ever felt that belonged to me.
00:45:23.599 --> 00:45:24.960
I guess that's what I would say.
00:45:25.440 --> 00:45:28.320
Do you think in a sense it sort of belongs to your mother?
00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:32.159
She was pretty and unusual.
00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:35.519
Um no, it's just the luck of the draw.
00:45:36.159 --> 00:45:37.760
Totally chance.
00:45:39.440 --> 00:45:44.159
This might be out of place, but I can't help but think about it, since you've just said that.
00:45:44.480 --> 00:45:54.320
But you close the book and the opening chapter with the same line, which is my mother is as close to me and as hidden from me as my own face.
00:45:55.119 --> 00:45:58.400
With that last part maybe echoing this theme you're doing here.
00:45:58.719 --> 00:46:00.880
But I mean I don't I don't really get what that means.
00:46:01.039 --> 00:46:02.400
I don't understand that.
00:46:07.280 --> 00:46:10.320
Well, the first part my mother is as close to me.
00:46:11.119 --> 00:46:20.000
I'm from her body, so but it's she is hidden from me in the same sense that I am hidden from me.
00:46:20.480 --> 00:46:23.599
You can see my face, but I can't.
00:46:24.079 --> 00:46:30.639
Um you can have ideas about me that may have nothing to do with me.
00:46:31.360 --> 00:46:35.199
Um we're all hidden from ourselves.
00:46:35.440 --> 00:46:48.719
And I think part of being alive is the job of getting closer and closer to what you might actually be.
00:46:50.079 --> 00:46:59.119
And therefore, so much of what we take to be our own is just chance and doesn't have much to do with us really.
00:47:00.480 --> 00:47:04.000
And by take to be our own, you mean maybe our behaviors or our outcomes.
00:47:04.719 --> 00:47:07.599
And what we look like, how we behave, all of those things.
00:47:08.159 --> 00:47:15.039
Yeah, it feels like you're you're really informed by the sort of free will argument, the case being that we don't actually have any free will.
00:47:15.119 --> 00:47:18.239
It's all just one experience after another that started well before we were even born.
00:47:18.800 --> 00:47:25.760
Billions of billions billions of um causes and actions that we'll never be able to see or compute.
00:47:26.079 --> 00:47:26.159
Yeah.
00:47:26.480 --> 00:47:27.199
I'm not sure.
00:47:27.440 --> 00:47:29.679
Um I'm sort of on the fence about that.
00:47:29.840 --> 00:47:36.800
Um I don't know if you've listened to Sapolski and indeed Chris Hitchens and a few other Sam Harris.
00:47:37.039 --> 00:47:38.480
And Sam Harris, indeed.
00:47:38.639 --> 00:47:42.400
They're sort of radical um um free willers.
00:47:42.719 --> 00:47:45.760
Free willers or non-free willers, actually.
00:47:46.079 --> 00:47:58.880
But I'd keep a little uh you know, I'm pretty much in agreement, but I'd say there's one percent of me that thinks there's room for There's room for agency, right?
00:47:59.119 --> 00:48:06.159
I think so, somewhere in there, but you know it's very hard to find, um, it's very hard to defend philosophically.
00:48:06.400 --> 00:48:14.719
Um but I do feel somewhere in there is the possibility of agency.
00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:15.039
Yeah.
00:48:15.199 --> 00:48:16.079
But maybe not.
00:48:16.559 --> 00:48:23.519
But therefore, in that agency, you can still take you know full responsibility for a lot of the outcomes.
00:48:23.679 --> 00:48:31.199
I I don't like how sort of nihilistic that idea is, which is like whichever direction I go, it's someone else's problem.
00:48:31.679 --> 00:48:35.679
Rather, you're still the owner of this mind and body moving throughout the world.
00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:36.559
Yes.
00:48:36.960 --> 00:48:41.760
Well, whether you can make a decision, yes or no, we simply don't know, I think.
00:48:42.000 --> 00:48:44.800
That's what I would say about that, and their confidence.
00:48:44.880 --> 00:48:57.440
What I would say about the Sam Harris Chris uh confidence about that is they make no room at all for the sentence, I don't know.
00:48:57.760 --> 00:49:00.000
And I kind of worship doubt.
00:49:00.960 --> 00:49:03.119
I worship the phrase I don't know.
00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:07.920
I think it's because if you don't have I don't know, you can't learn anything.
00:49:08.239 --> 00:49:09.519
Yeah, it's the end of it.
00:49:09.679 --> 00:49:10.000
Yeah.
00:49:10.320 --> 00:49:14.000
I I had to disagree with you, but I think you're doing Christopher Hitchens a disservice there.
00:49:14.320 --> 00:49:18.639
He is certainly at the altar of we don't know, we don't have the answers.
00:49:18.800 --> 00:49:20.480
All we can do is try and figure them out.
00:49:20.559 --> 00:49:20.880
Yeah.
00:49:21.119 --> 00:49:27.920
Whereas, at least in their primary argument against against God, is that they're presenting a book that has all the answers.
00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:31.360
No more questions need to be asked because here is everything you ever need to know.
00:49:31.519 --> 00:49:32.639
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:32.880 --> 00:49:36.480
But that sort of gets away from free will and definitely gets away from you.
00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:37.360
Sorry.
00:49:37.599 --> 00:49:38.880
So we went on a tangent there.
00:49:39.199 --> 00:49:39.679
That's okay.
00:49:39.840 --> 00:49:44.880
So look, Trax is is a great movie.
00:49:45.039 --> 00:49:45.840
Did you like the movie?
00:49:46.159 --> 00:49:47.440
I like the movie.
00:49:47.760 --> 00:49:49.599
The movie has a long history.
00:49:49.679 --> 00:49:50.719
I don't know if you want to know that.
00:49:51.119 --> 00:49:51.519
Let's do it.
00:49:51.760 --> 00:49:54.159
Let's start us off with Sidney Pollock and your lunch with him.
00:49:54.480 --> 00:49:55.039
Sid.
00:49:55.360 --> 00:49:56.639
Oh, Sid.
00:49:58.079 --> 00:50:02.960
Again, I'd had no idea, nouse about any of that.
00:50:03.199 --> 00:50:19.920
Um I was living in London in Doris's house with my then partner Steve, and um once the book was out and there'd been this huge fanfare, I started getting offers for film.
00:50:21.360 --> 00:50:41.280
And my feeling was that a film should be made in Australia by Australians, but most importantly that I wouldn't need to have some control because of the way Aboriginal people might be portrayed.
00:50:41.440 --> 00:50:49.440
And I felt I had that responsibility to them, um, that there wouldn't be misrepresentation or so on.
00:50:50.079 --> 00:50:59.360
Anyway, um, I got an offer from Sidney Pollack, and he was flying high after um out of Africa.
00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:05.280
Uh a film I didn't particularly like, but anyway.
00:51:05.440 --> 00:51:09.199
Um, so he took me to lunch and he was utterly adorable.
00:51:09.519 --> 00:51:18.880
I really liked him, and he was very funny, and and the first thing he said was, um, well, honey, you're not gonna like what I'm gonna do to your book.
00:51:20.480 --> 00:51:24.079
And I just loved him for that because it was so upfront.
00:51:25.119 --> 00:51:27.039
He offered me a lot of money.
00:51:27.360 --> 00:51:33.599
I thought about it, and I said no, for the previous reasons that I gave.
00:51:34.079 --> 00:51:36.880
And then I sort of forgot about it a bit.
00:51:37.119 --> 00:51:51.280
But then I started getting these other offers, and people, you know, they would send me manu uh scripts of such appalling, unspeakable wrongness in every way.
00:51:52.000 --> 00:51:53.760
Just terrible.
00:51:54.239 --> 00:51:58.559
You would die rather than see this film made.
00:51:58.960 --> 00:52:02.800
Um, and some of it was very funny.
00:52:03.199 --> 00:52:18.159
Uh so eventually I gave, I sold an option to an English company, a small, um, they just made a lovely little film called My Brilliant Laundrette.
00:52:18.320 --> 00:52:20.559
I don't know if you remember, it's long ago.
00:52:20.800 --> 00:52:22.719
Um, terrific little film.
00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:24.480
So I sort of trusted them.
00:52:25.199 --> 00:52:31.599
Um and I said, you know, we'll keep it a small film with this Australian content.
00:52:31.760 --> 00:52:34.239
I've got some control over Aboriginal, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:36.559
So time moves on.
00:52:37.119 --> 00:52:41.679
I get a call from that company saying, guess what?
00:52:41.920 --> 00:52:47.840
We're getting a co-production with Hollywood, and Julia Roberts is going to play you.
00:52:49.039 --> 00:52:52.400
And it was just, oh my god, what have I done?
00:52:52.800 --> 00:52:57.039
Not that I don't love Julia Roberts, but it was just the wrong thing.
00:52:57.360 --> 00:53:00.320
And then I started getting these scripts.
00:53:02.960 --> 00:53:08.000
One of which I remember Robin Davidson heads off for the desert.
00:53:08.079 --> 00:53:10.159
She's a very troubled girl.
00:53:10.559 --> 00:53:14.800
Um she's a New Yorker.
00:53:15.119 --> 00:53:21.199
She heads off for the desert, she gets lost in the desert, and some Aborigines find her and they teach her the dreaming.
00:53:23.519 --> 00:53:33.280
And there's a scene where these Aboriginal men sort of carry her around a campfire as she learns the snake dreaming of something utterly unspeakable.
00:53:33.519 --> 00:53:35.679
Anyway, so that's how that was.
00:53:36.639 --> 00:53:40.719
Um, and eventually all of that fell through, thank God.
00:53:41.440 --> 00:53:46.880
And finally, then years and years later, I sold it to Emile Sherman here in Australia.
00:53:47.199 --> 00:53:50.800
Um, again, because I really did trust them.
00:53:52.320 --> 00:54:02.079
And the only thing I said was, I think Mia Wasikowska should play me because she's just such a lovely little actress, really good actor.
00:54:02.719 --> 00:54:06.000
And we got her, so that was great.
00:54:06.400 --> 00:54:11.599
Um I think they were honourable.
00:54:12.079 --> 00:54:17.119
They tried to honour the the essence of the book.
00:54:17.360 --> 00:54:22.320
I'm not naive enough to think that a film should be a representation of a book.
00:54:22.639 --> 00:54:25.199
A film has to solve different problems to a book.
00:54:25.440 --> 00:54:27.199
Of course it's going to be different.
00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:32.079
Um I'm still great friends with Mia, so that's lovely.
00:54:32.719 --> 00:54:36.000
So, all in all, it was quite a good experience.
00:54:36.880 --> 00:54:40.159
But, you know, it again, it doesn't have anything to do with me.
00:54:40.480 --> 00:54:43.199
How much money, if you remember, did Sydney offer you?
00:54:43.840 --> 00:54:51.360
Look, I think in my mind it's about 600,000 American.
00:54:51.760 --> 00:54:53.199
That would have gone in your pocket.
00:54:53.519 --> 00:54:55.280
I think so, but I could be wrong.
00:54:55.440 --> 00:54:55.679
Wow.
00:54:55.840 --> 00:54:58.000
But that's sort of what I remember.
00:54:58.639 --> 00:55:03.039
Um maybe that anyway, look, I really don't know.
00:55:03.119 --> 00:55:06.800
I shouldn't even answer the question because I don't, but that's sort of what I remember.
00:55:06.960 --> 00:55:08.079
A lot of money.
00:55:08.480 --> 00:55:15.119
And even though Sid was up front with him maybe bastardizing your story, is there any part of you that regrets?
00:55:15.599 --> 00:55:20.000
Oh, of course, because in the end, you you know, you can't control film.
00:55:20.239 --> 00:55:20.719
No, no, no.
00:55:21.039 --> 00:55:29.199
You as a writer, that you've got no control that you can they can write it into the contract, but you actually have to be a producer, director, and writer.
00:55:29.519 --> 00:55:29.760
That's right.
00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:30.639
Yeah.
00:55:31.760 --> 00:55:34.880
Did you uh maintain contact with Sidney Pollock after that?
00:55:35.119 --> 00:55:35.519
No, no.
00:55:35.760 --> 00:55:36.480
Is he still alive?
00:55:36.719 --> 00:55:38.800
No, he died a couple of years ago, I think.
00:55:38.960 --> 00:55:39.119
Okay.
00:55:39.599 --> 00:55:43.679
Did you ever get a sense uh for what he thought of tracks, how it ended up going?
00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:45.760
I have no idea.
00:55:46.000 --> 00:55:50.159
Um he must have liked it or he wouldn't have wanted to make a film.
00:55:50.480 --> 00:55:52.000
No, the film that was made.
00:55:52.320 --> 00:55:54.559
Oh, I think he died before it was made, I think.
00:55:54.960 --> 00:55:55.360
Not sure.
00:55:55.840 --> 00:56:05.199
So um the book is a huge bestseller and you're now plunged into literary fame, and you're living in London.
00:56:06.159 --> 00:56:18.000
Uh talk about the the sort of circles that you're now introduced to, kind of like the literary elite of London, at a very exciting time to be among the literary elite.
00:56:18.559 --> 00:56:22.320
Well, I sort of put London into two phases, if you like.
00:56:22.480 --> 00:56:29.360
The first phase was that phase, the early phase, where I'd been writing to Doris Lessing.
00:56:29.840 --> 00:56:35.440
We had a correspondence, she was a hero to me through her books.
00:56:36.159 --> 00:56:44.000
Um she had actually said, you know, when I asked her, should I or should I not write a book?
00:56:44.159 --> 00:56:46.559
And she said, if you can write a good letter, blah, blah, blah.
00:56:46.800 --> 00:56:49.039
And then she said, Well, why don't you come to England?
00:56:49.119 --> 00:56:51.840
If your publishers are here, come to England.
00:56:52.159 --> 00:56:54.480
And I thought, yeah, okay, why not?
00:56:55.199 --> 00:57:01.280
So indeed I went to England via India, which is how India fits into the picture.
00:57:01.840 --> 00:57:12.960
Um, and I lived in this crummy little flat for a while, writing tracks, um, and getting to know Doris.
00:57:13.920 --> 00:57:17.920
And eventually she said, Look, you shouldn't be living here.
00:57:18.000 --> 00:57:21.599
You come, I've bought a new house, there's a little apartment underneath it.
00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:23.119
Come and live with me.
00:57:23.360 --> 00:57:30.079
So for the next two or three years I lived in a little part of her house.
00:57:30.639 --> 00:57:36.639
And um I suppose you would say she was my mentor, my literary mother.
00:57:37.360 --> 00:57:39.840
I owe her so much.
00:57:40.239 --> 00:57:42.239
You quote her in the beginning of tracks.
00:57:43.360 --> 00:57:43.840
Do I?
00:57:44.079 --> 00:57:44.639
I believe so.
00:57:44.960 --> 00:57:45.599
Can't even remember.
00:57:46.159 --> 00:57:47.039
The opening quote.
00:57:47.519 --> 00:57:49.039
I really hope that's right.
00:57:49.679 --> 00:57:50.960
My gut tells me it is.
00:57:51.119 --> 00:57:53.119
Doris is a name that stands for.
00:57:53.440 --> 00:57:54.559
Yes, yes, of course, of course.
00:57:54.639 --> 00:57:56.079
Sorry, it slipped my mind.
00:57:56.239 --> 00:57:58.000
It is a long time ago.
00:57:58.239 --> 00:58:01.440
Um she didn't help me with writing at all.
00:58:01.840 --> 00:58:04.960
That was a and I didn't want her to.
00:58:05.199 --> 00:58:06.960
That's not what that was about.
00:58:07.599 --> 00:58:13.519
Um, and in fact, when the book was ready for publication, I gave it to her then.
00:58:14.719 --> 00:58:18.320
And my stomach was in my mouth, as you can imagine.
00:58:18.639 --> 00:58:29.440
And she came down the stairs, she read it in sort of a gulp, and she looked very severe, and I thought, oh, really, this is terrible.
00:58:29.679 --> 00:58:33.840
And she said, Well, Robbie, it seems you have written a classic.
00:58:35.039 --> 00:58:37.039
That must have felt amazing to hear.
00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:42.559
Did you did you did you enjoy because you've spoken a lot about how writing this memoir was extremely difficult.
00:58:43.119 --> 00:58:50.639
But did you enjoy that process of putting together these sentences and and and and creating this magnificent story of tracks?
00:58:50.960 --> 00:58:59.280
With tracks I did enjoy the writing because I was innocent of what, you know, I didn't have a sense of an audience out there.
00:58:59.920 --> 00:59:07.440
Um I didn't have a sense of any self uh censorship.
00:59:07.840 --> 00:59:18.639
I didn't have um, I mean, I'd loved literature, but I didn't have a sense of suddenly joining that gang.
00:59:18.719 --> 00:59:24.000
It wasn't, you know, I was just telling this story as best I could.
00:59:25.360 --> 00:59:27.519
So I did enjoy the work.
00:59:28.480 --> 00:59:32.000
Um and I worked very hard at it.
00:59:32.719 --> 00:59:36.079
And what I found fascinating, again, this is about memory.
00:59:38.880 --> 00:59:52.719
In that first phase of writing the first draft of tracks, in that weird little flat, not the Doris one, the one before, I remembered every single campsite of that eight-month journey.
00:59:52.960 --> 00:59:53.519
Every one.
00:59:53.840 --> 00:59:54.960
Yeah, that's kind of remarkable.
00:59:55.280 --> 00:59:55.920
Incredible.
00:59:56.159 --> 00:59:57.679
It was so deeply.
00:59:59.599 --> 01:00:00.639
So you could walk.
01:00:03.039 --> 01:00:04.000
Walk to the day, see it.
01:00:04.239 --> 01:00:04.480
Yes.
01:00:04.559 --> 01:00:04.960
Yeah, well.
01:00:05.280 --> 01:00:06.239
Amazing.
01:00:06.719 --> 01:00:11.119
But as I wrote the book, those memories seemed to sort of dissolve.
01:00:11.280 --> 01:00:14.559
And it was like the book cannibalized the memories.
01:00:16.800 --> 01:00:18.159
It's a very strange process.
01:00:18.400 --> 01:00:19.119
Yeah, that is strange.
01:00:19.280 --> 01:00:19.840
Yeah, really.
01:00:20.239 --> 01:00:22.159
Today, can you remember a lot of those campsites?
01:00:22.800 --> 01:00:25.360
I can if I really apply myself.
01:00:25.920 --> 01:00:30.320
But again, the photographs have interfered with that a lot.
01:00:30.480 --> 01:00:30.639
Right.
01:00:30.960 --> 01:00:42.000
And I realize that I might be remembering somewhere, but then somehow there'll be a photograph that's getting in the way, or it's a bit suspiciously similar.
01:00:42.800 --> 01:00:46.480
And again, you know, this mystery of memory, how the hell it works.
01:00:46.559 --> 01:00:52.320
It's a very slippery, complicated um phenomenon.
01:00:52.800 --> 01:00:57.679
And stylistically, did you take any inspiration, or was that all just original Robbie?
01:00:57.760 --> 01:01:00.079
This is totally, totally original.
01:01:00.400 --> 01:01:01.840
Do you think you write as you speak?
01:01:02.159 --> 01:01:03.920
Yes, I think I'm very audio.
01:01:04.159 --> 01:01:06.400
I think that's that's well spotted.
01:01:06.639 --> 01:01:17.199
And I also often will read it if I've written something, I'll read it aloud, and I can hear if it's overwritten or there's an adjective too many, it's that sort of thing.
01:01:17.519 --> 01:01:19.840
Well the same words appeared too many times in paragraphs.
01:01:20.239 --> 01:01:20.400
Yeah.
01:01:20.559 --> 01:01:22.880
And also it's about rhythm and flow.
01:01:23.199 --> 01:01:29.119
Yeah, you um This is again a cliche, but very lyrical in in the in the way you write.
01:01:29.599 --> 01:01:33.280
Um Well, I think music music had a lot to do with that, I think.
01:01:33.360 --> 01:01:41.440
Um music's been important in my life and in my family, so that's possibly connected to how I write.
01:01:42.079 --> 01:01:43.199
You were yourself a musician.
01:01:43.440 --> 01:01:44.480
And I was, yes.
01:01:44.960 --> 01:01:46.480
Do you still get on the keys?
01:01:46.800 --> 01:01:51.280
Look, I just recently decided I have a piano in there, I'll tell you later.
01:01:51.440 --> 01:01:55.920
Um I've just recently decided that no, I won't play anymore.
01:01:56.320 --> 01:01:57.360
Okay, why is that?
01:01:57.679 --> 01:02:00.639
Because I hear how bad I am.
01:02:00.719 --> 01:02:00.880
You know.
01:02:01.360 --> 01:02:02.159
Don't be like that.
01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:03.119
That's alright.
01:02:03.519 --> 01:02:10.079
It should be alright, but and I thought, well, if it doesn't give me a lot of pleasure, sure.
01:02:10.320 --> 01:02:17.920
You know, I'd rather put on a C D and listen to some other genius playing Chopin rather than me, you know.
01:02:18.719 --> 01:02:31.039
Uh and with your writing style, um, and forgive me if this is two in the weeds, but I just I it's one of the things I really want to extract, if possible, from writers I admire.
01:02:31.360 --> 01:02:35.280
You know, actually when they sit down at the kit at the keyboard, how do they construct their sentences?
01:02:35.519 --> 01:02:44.800
So are you sentence, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, next sentence, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, or are you dump, rewrite, dump, rewrite?
01:02:45.119 --> 01:02:49.039
Do you go in big bursts of energy, or do you have a routine?
01:02:50.239 --> 01:02:51.599
I certainly don't have a routine.
01:02:51.760 --> 01:02:52.880
I wish I did.
01:02:53.199 --> 01:02:59.440
I think it depends on with me, each book has been a bit different that way.
01:02:59.760 --> 01:03:05.840
Tracks, you know, I could work eight hours a day, absolute focus and concentration.
01:03:06.079 --> 01:03:07.440
Um that would have felt great.
01:03:07.679 --> 01:03:08.880
It was, it was terrific.
01:03:09.119 --> 01:03:12.719
Hard work, but it felt right.
01:03:13.360 --> 01:03:14.159
Fulfilling.
01:03:14.639 --> 01:03:15.840
That felt right.
01:03:17.599 --> 01:03:22.960
And I'd write often quite a bit in a day.
01:03:23.280 --> 01:03:26.320
My partner would read it at night, which was lovely.
01:03:26.719 --> 01:03:29.199
Um, and often he was quite astute.
01:03:29.840 --> 01:03:34.159
Um, but also it's just very nice for someone else to read it.
01:03:34.960 --> 01:03:41.039
Um, but I was pretty ruthless even then with editing.
01:03:41.679 --> 01:03:48.639
Although tracks, because of the nature of the innocence of the writing, it didn't actually need a lot of editing.
01:03:48.880 --> 01:03:58.079
And luckily, I had a very uh a terrific edit editor at Jonathan Cape who edited very lightly, and I think she was correct.
01:03:58.559 --> 01:04:02.000
So it's a bit raw, but it's kept all that energy.
01:04:03.280 --> 01:04:14.480
Um so that was tracks, but I guess as I got older and more self-conscious about writing, it became more difficult.
01:04:14.880 --> 01:04:19.599
Self-conscious because there is now an expectation for what a Robert Davidson book should be.
01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:21.920
There's a literary world that's looking at me.
01:04:22.079 --> 01:04:23.920
Woo! Very scary.
01:04:24.400 --> 01:04:34.480
Um and also I one realizes that it's actually a a responsibility writing what you put down on paper.
01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:50.719
Um maybe you can't just say anything or what you want to, you know, so suddenly all these strictures, internalized strictures, start to happen.
01:04:51.519 --> 01:04:56.880
Um when I wrote Desert Places, well, I was constantly on the move.
01:04:56.960 --> 01:05:00.079
I was living between London and India.
01:05:00.480 --> 01:05:02.880
It was a very complicated life.
01:05:03.199 --> 01:05:10.800
Um I'd write a little bit in India, and then two months later I might write a little bit in England.
01:05:11.199 --> 01:05:13.840
So a very different sort of process.
01:05:14.239 --> 01:05:23.199
Um again, more difficult than tracks.
01:05:23.679 --> 01:05:39.519
Um and then with the memoir, because of the nature of what it was, the internal critic was so loud.
01:05:40.800 --> 01:05:59.760
Um and my concern with the morality of it, with the kindness of it, with an awareness of how slippery memory is, all of those things made it very difficult.
01:06:00.159 --> 01:06:01.519
To get to the computer every day.
01:06:01.840 --> 01:06:02.400
Okay, really?
01:06:02.639 --> 01:06:03.119
Oh yeah.
01:06:03.360 --> 01:06:06.639
But once the word started flowing, did you find yourself deleting all the time?
01:06:07.119 --> 01:06:10.880
Um some days would flow, some days nothing.
01:06:11.039 --> 01:06:16.000
Um, with tremendous procrastination all the time, painful process.
01:06:16.559 --> 01:06:33.599
Um mostly I'd say I'd get stuff down and then edit, and then edit again, and then edit again, and then edit again, and then read it aloud and edit again, and then move on to some next bit, not necessarily in a linear way.
01:06:33.679 --> 01:06:34.960
It was sort of like a jigsaw.
01:06:35.199 --> 01:06:37.519
You're scrapping together different chapters.
01:06:38.239 --> 01:06:42.239
Yeah, like a sort of 3D jigsaw is what it felt like.
01:06:44.159 --> 01:06:55.920
Back to whatever the original question was, which is about this literary circle that you're now a part of as a you know, the new hot author on the market, um, this aspirational woman.
01:06:56.800 --> 01:06:59.039
Who were the circles that you're involved with?
01:06:59.519 --> 01:07:04.159
This is the first part of London, which was really centred around Doris.
01:07:04.320 --> 01:07:08.159
Now, Doris was an extraordinary and unusual person.
01:07:09.039 --> 01:07:11.840
She was highly individualistic.
01:07:12.079 --> 01:07:24.320
Um, she'd had a colonial background like me, so she was both part of and highly respected in a literary circle in London, but also sort of fundamentally an outsider.
01:07:25.519 --> 01:07:30.880
Um colonial background means she wasn't from the UK?
01:07:31.199 --> 01:07:32.400
She was from Africa.
01:07:32.639 --> 01:07:33.119
Oh, okay, right.
01:07:33.360 --> 01:07:38.000
And she had arrived in England with a baby under one arm and ten quid in the other.
01:07:38.880 --> 01:07:42.480
Um sort of in the 50s, I guess.
01:07:42.639 --> 01:07:43.280
Yeah.
01:07:44.159 --> 01:07:52.800
Um so she was both of that world and uh unusual in that world and not English.
01:07:55.119 --> 01:08:33.039
So the so I did meet um famous people through her, but characteristic of Doris's get-togethers, there'd be some poor person she'd found in the street and brought in, there'd be her son's school friends, there'd be some ultra hyper, ultra famous person, there'd be a social worker that she'd found doing good works, like she was egalitarian in that way, that was very unusual in England.
01:08:34.239 --> 01:08:49.760
Um and again this sort of quest for the genuine meant that I wasn't interested in people's fame or status.
01:08:49.920 --> 01:08:58.239
What I was interested in was knowledge and whether people were genuine or not.
01:08:59.600 --> 01:09:06.319
Did you did you find that typically the famous names which me in the audience might recognize didn't meet that standard?
01:09:06.720 --> 01:09:09.039
Often, because they're just people like anyone else.
01:09:09.680 --> 01:09:16.720
So some you know, sometimes you'd like them, sometimes you wouldn't like them, sometimes you thought they were twat, sometimes you thought they were fantastic.
01:09:17.199 --> 01:09:19.680
Um just like everyone else.
01:09:20.079 --> 01:09:22.399
Did Chris Vitchens meet the fantastic standard?
01:09:22.720 --> 01:09:23.359
I liked Chris.
01:09:23.600 --> 01:09:25.119
I but I met him in the second phase.
01:09:26.079 --> 01:09:26.399
Okay, sorry.
01:09:27.439 --> 01:09:32.479
So that was the first phase, and I was still very young and very, I think, very green, very um naive.
01:09:32.960 --> 01:09:34.079
You're 28-9?
01:09:35.600 --> 01:09:36.560
How old was I?
01:09:36.800 --> 01:09:37.680
So 81.
01:09:37.760 --> 01:09:40.399
I would have been 31 when TRACS was published.
01:09:42.319 --> 01:09:44.640
So then I went back to Australia.
01:09:45.199 --> 01:09:50.239
Um life moved on.
01:09:51.359 --> 01:09:54.159
Um I sort of had a life in Australia.
01:09:55.279 --> 01:10:24.159
I then left my partner, and that's when I met Solman, and um went back to London with him, and that was sort of the second phase where I met a whole different kind of literary world that was very concerned with literary status, um again, very impressive, many, many impressive people, but it was a different social milieu to the one I'd had with Doris.
01:10:25.520 --> 01:10:29.600
Speaking of Salman, yeah, uh in the book you don't even mention his name.
01:10:29.760 --> 01:10:38.159
No, and in interviews, and even now it's like hard to say the word, I I I sense that you want to move away from that as quickly as you can.
01:10:38.319 --> 01:10:42.880
So I just want to be sensitive as to not pick at a deep wound.
01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:51.359
It's not that so much as um fame is a very distorting thing.
01:10:51.920 --> 01:11:05.680
Um and it was a hugely important relationship for all sorts of reasons, but I don't mention him because it's not important who he was.
01:11:06.079 --> 01:11:14.479
What was important was the effect that that relationship had and its sort of relationship to the past and so on.
01:11:14.640 --> 01:11:17.600
And what his name was was utterly irrelevant.
01:11:19.039 --> 01:11:24.239
But but it at least for me, it stands out as as a name on the page.
01:11:24.399 --> 01:11:26.399
Oh wow, time with Salman Rashdie.
01:11:26.720 --> 01:11:30.079
This is after he's had a death sentence put on him.
01:11:30.399 --> 01:11:32.000
He's in the height of his fatwa.
01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:38.880
Um and Well, I was living with him through the writing of satanic verses, so yeah.
01:11:39.119 --> 01:11:49.840
So it was um quite a that was very much part of uh of the tumultuous tumultuousness of that time.
01:11:50.239 --> 01:11:53.600
Yeah, you write about the relationship.
01:11:54.479 --> 01:11:58.399
It was an excited infant love a gone and nuclear.
01:11:59.520 --> 01:12:02.079
Why did it why did it go nuclear?
01:12:03.279 --> 01:12:04.159
Who knows?
01:12:04.319 --> 01:12:08.079
I mean, we were both deeply neurotic people, I guess.
01:12:08.399 --> 01:12:16.000
Um very intense relationship, hugely intense.
01:12:17.920 --> 01:12:28.479
Um He was writing satanic verses, so it was sort of occupying a strange sort of headspace anyway.
01:12:29.439 --> 01:12:38.399
Um I was having to fit into this whole new London um quite insecure.
01:12:39.600 --> 01:12:54.000
Um also trying to write a book, which I had no idea how to do or why I should do it, but I'd, you know, sort of been told I should write a novel, so okay.
01:12:54.479 --> 01:13:00.720
Um so I think the a combination of things.
01:13:00.880 --> 01:13:05.119
It I saw it, I think, as us both being like children.
01:13:06.079 --> 01:13:09.359
Um emotionally like children.
01:13:09.600 --> 01:13:16.720
These two children got together and it was sort of explosive.
01:13:17.439 --> 01:13:28.239
Um and neither of us had the equipment really to emotional equipment or the the equipment of maturity to to make it work.
01:13:28.479 --> 01:13:29.760
It was just too hard.
01:13:30.159 --> 01:13:35.920
So so the highs were incredibly high, but the lows were as terrible, terrible terrible fights and things like this.
01:13:36.479 --> 01:13:46.079
Just terrible and um and never knowing when it was going to fall apart or why or you know what I'd done and Oh, that's horrible.
01:13:46.239 --> 01:13:50.319
Yeah, no, it was it it was um quite destructive to me anyway.
01:13:50.560 --> 01:13:50.880
Yeah.
01:13:51.600 --> 01:13:55.920
Um but fascinating.
01:13:56.800 --> 01:13:59.119
Even forty years after the events?
01:13:59.600 --> 01:14:01.199
Well, now I don't think about it really.
01:14:01.279 --> 01:14:06.319
I mean I think about it when you ask me about it, but otherwise it's not even not relevant to me anymore.
01:14:06.399 --> 01:14:09.840
I don't have any residue of it.
01:14:10.319 --> 01:14:27.039
But after his attack, did you feel like I want to see how he's going or well I felt very disturbed um of course, um, but in a sense not personally.
01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:36.640
It w it was almost like I was disturbed because it had happened to a fellow writer, and it that's a terrible, terrible thing.
01:14:36.960 --> 01:14:50.000
Um and it was Salman and but somehow that didn't that's not what it was about because I seem to have got rid of that connection, I suppose.
01:14:50.800 --> 01:14:55.840
Martin Amos once described him as a a falcon looking through a Venetian blind.
01:14:58.800 --> 01:15:00.720
He was always good with words, that boy.
01:15:01.199 --> 01:15:04.560
I suppose this is also a person you would have uh travelled with.
01:15:04.720 --> 01:15:06.720
Hitchens, Amos, Emaque.
01:15:07.359 --> 01:15:08.319
Yeah, somewhat.
01:15:08.560 --> 01:15:08.800
Yeah.
01:15:09.119 --> 01:15:17.279
Um well you know, in these difficult in the second phase, you know, there were Solman's world, and I had to fit into that world.
01:15:17.439 --> 01:15:18.399
I liked them all.
01:15:18.479 --> 01:15:19.760
I liked Chris a lot.
01:15:19.920 --> 01:15:24.239
Um, I liked Martin a lot, I liked his partner a lot.
01:15:24.720 --> 01:15:31.439
Um, but you know, I wasn't I didn't see myself as a literary figure.
01:15:31.600 --> 01:15:37.199
I suppose that's what was sort of w slightly weird for me in that world.
01:15:37.600 --> 01:15:40.479
Fish out of water, not interested in the status and the aura.
01:15:41.840 --> 01:15:42.319
Yeah.
01:15:43.359 --> 01:15:58.479
Um and sort of looking, I think, for people I could be with without having to be either Solman's partner or a writer, or you know, it was a strange time.
01:15:58.720 --> 01:16:13.119
But I did meet other people, so that's when I met um Julie Christie, and she became uh a very, very dear friend, and I started to have access to her world at that time.
01:16:13.520 --> 01:16:19.199
Very um um, you know, it was something of an alternate.
01:16:19.359 --> 01:16:25.279
I didn't know them well enough, but I liked them a lot, and that included Duncan Campbell and various other people.
01:16:25.760 --> 01:16:26.720
Who just passed away.
01:16:26.880 --> 01:16:27.680
Yeah, yeah.
01:16:28.239 --> 01:16:43.279
Um you mentioned in one of your interviews, this takes us all the way back to the the beginning about the style of autobiography, but some French author, I think you celebrated that she wrote it saying we always never I and then what's her name?
01:16:43.520 --> 01:16:43.920
I don't know.
01:16:44.000 --> 01:16:48.159
But she's a terrific writer, she won the Nobel really for that book.
01:16:48.319 --> 01:16:49.920
Um The Years.
01:16:50.479 --> 01:16:52.479
The Years, terrific book.
01:16:52.880 --> 01:17:05.279
But then um Salmon Rushdie wrote his autobiography under a pseudonymous name, which is also kind of another way of maybe um getting away with the the problems of memory.
01:17:05.680 --> 01:17:09.199
The problems of yes, he's a fictional character, sure, it's based on my life.
01:17:09.520 --> 01:17:10.399
Yeah, but it's yeah.
01:17:11.760 --> 01:17:14.159
Well, we're getting very used to this now.
01:17:14.319 --> 01:17:20.720
I mean, the you know, it used to be that writing that sort of memoir was gosh, so radical.
01:17:21.359 --> 01:17:23.439
Um now it's just sort of second nature.
01:17:23.520 --> 01:17:26.479
It's a postmod, post, post, post, post, post, postmodern.
01:17:26.880 --> 01:17:30.079
Um but that doesn't make it ungenuine.
01:17:30.159 --> 01:17:33.520
It is we're responding to something in the in the atmosphere.
01:17:33.920 --> 01:17:37.039
You're in your early thirties in Unfinished Woman.
01:17:37.199 --> 01:17:40.720
You talk about not even thinking about your mother until you were in your forties.
01:17:42.000 --> 01:17:56.880
But with all these friends that you have and these deep relationships that you you have in between then and 40, do you never people aren't asking you about your family and and you and you reveal to them, well, in fact, my mother committed suicide when I was eleven.
01:17:57.279 --> 01:18:01.039
Yes, I would all I wouldn't have hidden that fact.
01:18:01.199 --> 01:18:13.920
Um people probably knew if it came up in conversation, yes, you know, my mum suicided when I was a kid, you know, in some context of sharing our lives.
01:18:14.640 --> 01:18:26.239
Um but really thinking about her, really kind of thinking about, hey, what actually went on back there?
01:18:27.039 --> 01:18:35.359
Uh and I think this is what children do, it's a survival mechanism when some tragedy happens, you build a shell.
01:18:36.000 --> 01:18:38.640
And that is a very good protection.
01:18:38.800 --> 01:18:42.560
It it would it it was very good for me to do that.
01:18:42.720 --> 01:18:49.920
You know, all this sort of psycho babble about the I'm I'm being a bit.
01:18:50.319 --> 01:18:50.800
Oh, that's okay.
01:18:51.760 --> 01:18:52.239
Lean into it.
01:18:54.000 --> 01:19:12.960
I suppose there's the notion that you have to go and inspect everything and it's you know we're all traumatized and la la la la You know real traumatized people are you know what am I trying to say?
01:19:14.079 --> 01:19:16.079
One shouldn't over trauma.
01:19:16.319 --> 01:19:16.720
Yeah, exactly.
01:19:17.680 --> 01:19:22.000
And then as well degrees of different character and how they deal with trauma.
01:19:22.399 --> 01:19:23.520
Absolutely.
01:19:23.840 --> 01:19:30.000
And you know, I didn't I suppose I didn't see my trauma as a trauma, I wouldn't have you ever used that word.
01:19:30.399 --> 01:19:35.199
And it was just a part of what had happened to me, that's all.
01:19:36.079 --> 01:19:48.239
You know, um but then when I approached the age at which she died, which was 46, um, and I was sort of coming up to that time, it was a very I was under a lot of pressure.
01:19:48.399 --> 01:19:50.880
I was living between London and India.
01:19:51.439 --> 01:19:58.000
Um a lot of uh difficulties in life really.
01:19:58.239 --> 01:20:03.119
But I started to she started to come back is how I think of it.
01:20:03.920 --> 01:20:06.560
And also music was starting to come back.
01:20:07.520 --> 01:20:18.560
Um so I bought a piano um in this complex that I shared with Julie Christie and Sally Potter, a group of us.
01:20:19.279 --> 01:20:28.319
Um and I started playing again, and that music started to trigger off memories.
01:20:29.119 --> 01:20:39.039
Um and prior to that I would have said I have very few memories of my past, but then I realized there was a whole stack of them, I just hadn't bothered to look.
01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:42.640
Um they did the the musical passcode.
01:20:43.840 --> 01:20:44.560
Exactly.
01:20:45.039 --> 01:21:14.800
Um and songs, you know, songs from when I was a kid, and um I remember sitting in the bath in Blackbird Yard and suddenly this singing to myself Alice Blue Gown, which I'd sung when I was about eight at a at a concert, and just things like that, really quite weird, these memories surfacing, keyed initially by music, but then sort of coming of their own accord because I was looking at them.
01:21:16.479 --> 01:21:27.439
And that's when I first started writing stuff down, not necessarily with an idea to writing a book, but just writing it down because it was so odd.
01:21:27.840 --> 01:21:28.960
Somewhere to organize it.
01:21:29.439 --> 01:21:31.920
A way of organizing it, perhaps, yes.
01:21:32.560 --> 01:21:43.439
Um then I tried to write about it, and I wrote all these beginnings, and I just knew they were all wrong.
01:21:44.159 --> 01:21:48.800
And then I decided, okay, I will never write a book about this, it's impossible.
01:21:49.039 --> 01:22:09.840
And I wrote a piece, I wrote a little article, um, I think it was for Grant or I can't remember, um talking about memoir, and and saying why this particular memoir could not be written, and sent it off to my agent, and he said, You're mad, this is the first chapter.
01:22:10.560 --> 01:22:13.760
Um, and indeed that did become the introduction.
01:22:15.680 --> 01:22:19.199
Um yes, where were we?
01:22:20.159 --> 01:22:33.119
I I initially asked you why, not why, but rather it's kind of perplexing, I'm imagining you you have a lot of friends and and a friendship you sort of learn about the other person.
01:22:33.439 --> 01:22:40.640
And for instance, if we had just met and we were comfortable with each other and and you revealed that your mother committees, I might have asked you like why.
01:22:40.960 --> 01:22:41.199
Why?
01:22:41.680 --> 01:22:43.680
I I probably would have had an answer back then.
01:22:43.760 --> 01:22:54.159
I would have said something like, Oh well, she was depressed and you know, we lived in the country, and but I wouldn't have You can kind of keep picking at that, like, oh, why was she depressed?
01:22:54.399 --> 01:22:55.680
Like, what was your father like?
01:22:56.000 --> 01:22:56.960
What about your sister?
01:22:57.039 --> 01:22:58.800
I've never really heard you speak about her much.
01:22:59.039 --> 01:23:10.640
You know, and then maybe you I'm just imagining that it seems inconceivable these conversations wouldn't have happened and therefore triggered for you, oh my god, I haven't dealt with this, I haven't thought about this.
01:23:11.199 --> 01:23:22.960
I think I just that was part of who I was of not thinking about that unconscious unconscious, but part of the protection, part of the shell, perhaps.
01:23:23.199 --> 01:23:29.840
Um, so you can have sort of basic memories without actually having gone there and looked.
01:23:30.319 --> 01:23:30.720
Right.
01:23:31.039 --> 01:23:32.239
Really investigating.
01:23:32.319 --> 01:23:32.479
Yeah.
01:23:32.880 --> 01:23:33.520
Yeah.
01:23:33.920 --> 01:23:36.720
And also it didn't particularly interest me.
01:23:36.800 --> 01:23:38.399
I wasn't interested in the past.
01:23:38.560 --> 01:23:40.560
I hadn't given that mother a thought.
01:23:40.720 --> 01:23:45.039
From the day she died till then, I honestly hadn't thought about her at all.
01:23:45.520 --> 01:23:51.520
Do you have do you have a a rational explanation for that that you've been able to conjure?
01:23:53.520 --> 01:23:57.920
Well, I think because I wasn't interested in the past.
01:23:58.399 --> 01:24:03.359
Um I wasn't interested in scrabbling around in all that muck.
01:24:04.239 --> 01:24:10.479
Um I was very key to going ahead and um making a life.
01:24:10.720 --> 01:24:16.079
You know, making a life, making a life work, um, finding out about life.
01:24:16.319 --> 01:24:16.560
Yeah.
01:24:16.720 --> 01:24:18.319
And um experiencing the world.
01:24:18.560 --> 01:24:18.960
Yes.
01:24:19.199 --> 01:24:23.840
And the past was there, but not not important.
01:24:25.359 --> 01:24:28.079
And of course then it did become important.
01:24:28.399 --> 01:24:29.039
Yeah.
01:24:29.600 --> 01:24:38.159
Do you have because a part of how you've dealt with your depression, at least from my understanding of the book, I don't want to, you know, put words in your mouth.
01:24:38.560 --> 01:24:47.520
But is that you know, really started looking into the neuroscience of it all, chemical imbalances in the brain and environmental factors that might make us feel certain ways.
01:24:48.159 --> 01:24:59.600
Is is there any neuroscientific explanation for why you fall very depressed at a very similar age to your mother, even though environmentally you have completely different circumstances?
01:25:01.520 --> 01:25:05.840
Well, you know, school's still out on all of this.
01:25:06.000 --> 01:25:10.159
We're just beginning to understand how the brain might work.
01:25:11.039 --> 01:25:13.920
We have no idea what consciousness is.
01:25:14.800 --> 01:25:21.680
Um, and any scientist who says that they do is just silly, I think.
01:25:21.920 --> 01:25:27.760
And maybe one day we will have a materialist explanation, I don't know, but we sure as hell don't now.
01:25:28.399 --> 01:25:40.880
Um so why are some brains susceptible to depression or any of these uh uncomfortable states?
01:25:41.840 --> 01:25:42.960
Extreme emotion?
01:25:44.000 --> 01:25:45.119
Extreme something.
01:25:46.079 --> 01:25:47.600
They're just extreme.
01:25:47.920 --> 01:25:49.439
Um, extreme pain.
01:25:49.680 --> 01:25:51.119
They're actually painful.
01:25:51.199 --> 01:25:58.880
And it's a weird kind of pain because it hovers somewhere between the physical body and the mental body.
01:25:59.520 --> 01:26:05.600
Um but it is a terrible pain, and I it is a truly terrible disease.
01:26:06.079 --> 01:26:13.039
Um but even then it teaches you a lot.
01:26:13.680 --> 01:26:17.760
Do you still have bouts of of very low times?
01:26:18.079 --> 01:26:24.880
Um I'm certainly have a mutable and melancholic temperament.
01:26:25.199 --> 01:26:25.279
Okay.
01:26:26.159 --> 01:26:28.000
Like to wallow sometimes.
01:26:28.640 --> 01:26:29.920
No, I wouldn't say that.
01:26:30.079 --> 01:26:31.039
I try to deal with it.
01:26:31.119 --> 01:26:34.560
I don't like um being engulfed by it.
01:26:34.640 --> 01:26:44.000
And I don't I've learned how to manage my mental states quite well.
01:26:44.960 --> 01:26:53.199
Um and again, uh they're not I mean they're painful, but they are not without value.
01:26:54.239 --> 01:26:56.880
Um, because they've taken me lots of places.
01:26:58.319 --> 01:27:04.880
There was uh two things that stood out to me regarding the depression and yourself having suicidal ideation.
01:27:05.600 --> 01:27:08.319
And I knew I knew I would never suicide.
01:27:08.720 --> 01:27:22.560
Okay, so because at least I want to make sure I get the right quotes, but there were two there was one time in tracks and then one time in Unfinished Woman where you did explicitly plan like this is Oh no, I've never planned suicide.
01:27:22.640 --> 01:27:23.680
No, no, no, you're quite wrong.
01:27:23.920 --> 01:27:33.600
You talk about in tracks about um I could just walk out into the desert and I could take a gun with me and I'd be a mess to nobody, no one would need to know.
01:27:34.079 --> 01:27:37.359
And then the Kurt's wife sort of snapped you out of it.
01:27:37.600 --> 01:27:41.680
Not not because you were talking about it, but she said something to you which snapped you out of it.
01:27:42.159 --> 01:27:47.760
And then in Unfinished Woman you're having a um you're with your sister.
01:27:48.000 --> 01:27:53.439
Um I think yeah, this is long after you spread your father's ashes.
01:27:54.640 --> 01:27:55.600
Was it with your sister?
01:27:55.680 --> 01:27:59.840
I think it was with your sister, and and you were pretty pretty much saying, like, I'm gonna end it all.
01:28:01.439 --> 01:28:06.319
And then she takes a knife, your father's old knife out of the drawer and says, Well go and help do it then.
01:28:06.560 --> 01:28:08.159
And that sort of snapped you out of it again.
01:28:08.560 --> 01:28:10.800
Look, no, it's not like that.
01:28:12.640 --> 01:28:25.520
In a sense, for me, the key to the memoir is that section towards the end where I had this sort of um insight.
01:28:26.560 --> 01:28:32.800
And I would have been twelve-ish, probably a year after mum's death.
01:28:33.520 --> 01:28:47.359
Um and I was out walking, and I had this nihilistic insight into the how reality really is, what it is.
01:28:47.920 --> 01:29:03.039
And it's this utterly mechanical, unloving, purposeless, utterly meaningless chaos of matter and We're just bags and meat and burger.
01:29:03.279 --> 01:29:03.920
We're just bags.
01:29:04.000 --> 01:29:09.359
We're just exactly and it it completely unraveled my world.
01:29:09.760 --> 01:29:17.199
And um and I was too young to know what the hell to do with it.
01:29:17.600 --> 01:29:20.319
But I it felled me, literally felled me.
01:29:20.479 --> 01:29:42.880
I had to lie on the grass and and that has been the most formative moment of my life, I think, to to deal with, to learn how to deal with a a profoundly nihilistic view and to counter that view.
01:29:44.479 --> 01:29:52.640
Um and that's when I went to my sister and I said, I d I I think I have to I I because I didn't know I didn't know what to do.
01:29:53.119 --> 01:29:53.840
Oh, I'm sorry.
01:29:54.000 --> 01:29:56.000
Was that memory when you were only twelve?
01:29:56.239 --> 01:29:56.720
Yeah.
01:29:57.359 --> 01:29:58.000
Forgive me.
01:29:58.159 --> 01:29:59.039
Then I've misunderstood.
01:29:59.359 --> 01:30:00.720
I thought this happened much later, but go on.
01:30:00.960 --> 01:30:02.960
No, no, I said you're just a kid.
01:30:03.199 --> 01:30:21.359
And she and that's when she um and she responded rather cruelly, but in a way it snapped me out of you know, it sort of snapped me back into reality, I suppose.
01:30:21.439 --> 01:30:22.399
That's what I would say.
01:30:22.560 --> 01:30:22.960
Yeah.
01:30:23.439 --> 01:30:38.960
Okay, so do you find still the the purposelessness in that worldview of if we are just evolutionary meat and bones, there's nothing for us after it, then what the hell is the point of it all?
01:30:39.119 --> 01:30:41.199
Why bother doing this or that or this?
01:30:41.359 --> 01:30:43.600
Do you still feel that, or have you come on the other side?
01:30:43.840 --> 01:30:44.000
Really?
01:30:44.479 --> 01:30:45.760
I struggle with it all the time.
01:30:46.000 --> 01:30:54.079
I I find it totally liberating that that um that realization that and obviously the jewelry's still out.
01:30:57.199 --> 01:31:05.600
The minute that we we end our uh we finish our lives here, maybe we'll ascend to some pearly gates and it'll be like, damn it, we got a lot of things wrong.
01:31:05.920 --> 01:31:11.359
But if it's not the case, and it is just lights out, return to the earth.
01:31:11.760 --> 01:31:18.720
I the reason I find that liberating is because it means there is a finite time here for you to do something.
01:31:19.039 --> 01:31:27.680
To be and it doesn't have to be great, it doesn't have to be anything, but it's here and it's up to you if you want to make it happen or not.
01:31:28.079 --> 01:31:37.199
Whether that's you know, falling in love with a person, potentially making another life, having an amazing career, writing an amazing book, you know, like all this sort of stuff.
01:31:37.359 --> 01:31:41.439
That's at least on on that same realization, yeah.
01:31:41.600 --> 01:31:42.880
That's more how I reacted to it.
01:31:42.960 --> 01:31:45.199
It's funny, my my wife's more similar to you.
01:31:45.600 --> 01:31:49.359
She finds it very difficult to deal with.
01:31:49.760 --> 01:32:00.159
What I would say is that I it's not it's not for me, it's not to do with whether this life continues or doesn't continue.
01:32:00.720 --> 01:32:02.319
I'm an atheist.
01:32:02.479 --> 01:32:06.560
Um I think it's highly unlikely that anything continues.
01:32:07.119 --> 01:32:15.279
Um but you know, anything's possible, let's say, the the great I don't know, but it just seems pretty unlikely to me.
01:32:15.840 --> 01:32:16.560
Show me some evidence.
01:32:16.880 --> 01:32:17.680
Yeah, right.
01:32:18.079 --> 01:32:21.359
Um it's deeper than that.
01:32:21.600 --> 01:32:28.560
It's that the whole thing is utterly pointless.
01:32:29.359 --> 01:32:36.159
It is a cosmic nihilism and it is hard to bear.
01:32:37.520 --> 01:32:45.840
Um so I do try to counter that.
01:32:46.319 --> 01:32:51.199
Um Buddhism has helped me a lot.
01:32:51.359 --> 01:33:03.039
I don't mean um the Buddhism was bells and whistles, I mean the way Buddhism Buddhist philosophy understands the human mind.
01:33:03.199 --> 01:33:07.279
I think there there's an immense sophistication of understanding there.
01:33:07.920 --> 01:33:24.000
Um and that has uh helped that has helped me with that nihilism um that we walk this sort of edge between nihilism and idealism.
01:33:25.600 --> 01:33:26.720
It is a knife's edge.
01:33:27.119 --> 01:33:28.399
It is a knife edge.
01:33:29.600 --> 01:33:33.920
Um But yes, it's uncomfortable.
01:33:34.159 --> 01:33:34.319
Okay.
01:33:34.720 --> 01:33:36.319
Often uncomfortable.
01:33:39.439 --> 01:33:42.880
You have a and again, I'm meditating it.
01:33:43.039 --> 01:33:45.359
If it's too sensitive, please just tell me.
01:33:45.760 --> 01:33:47.199
Because I might not know the the boundaries.
01:33:48.079 --> 01:33:48.640
Sure, sure.
01:33:49.039 --> 01:33:53.680
Uh but there is a there's a prickly feeling between you and your sister.
01:33:55.279 --> 01:33:57.039
Is is that an understatement?
01:33:58.159 --> 01:34:01.840
It is an understatement, but I don't want to go there because it's not fair.
01:34:02.079 --> 01:34:03.520
It's not fair to her.
01:34:04.159 --> 01:34:07.920
If she had her own podcast, that'd be fine, but she doesn't.
01:34:08.239 --> 01:34:18.560
And again, it's one of the problems with memoir, that writing a memoir, whether you like it or not, gives you the power of the word, and it isn't fair.
01:34:19.439 --> 01:34:37.840
Um I've included her in the book where it was absolutely essential to the structure of the story, but otherwise I haven't gone there and I don't want to go there when I talk about it for those reasons.
01:34:38.479 --> 01:34:38.880
Totally.
01:34:39.039 --> 01:34:39.199
Yeah.
01:34:39.439 --> 01:34:40.159
No problem at all.
01:34:40.399 --> 01:34:40.560
Yeah.
01:34:41.039 --> 01:34:45.680
After your mother did commit suicide, why did you not go to live with your father?
01:34:45.920 --> 01:34:47.680
You went to live with his brother, I believe.
01:34:48.079 --> 01:34:48.479
His sister.
01:34:48.560 --> 01:34:48.880
His sister.
01:34:49.119 --> 01:34:49.840
Twin sister.
01:34:50.399 --> 01:34:52.640
Because my dad was that sort of dad.
01:34:52.720 --> 01:34:56.479
He was an Edwardian man, he was a man's man.
01:34:56.720 --> 01:35:00.640
The idea that he would know how to raise a daughter was just a fact, really.
01:35:00.800 --> 01:35:01.199
Oh yeah.
01:35:01.359 --> 01:35:01.520
Okay.
01:35:01.760 --> 01:35:08.960
You know, you've got to think this is post-Second World War, 50s generation, um, an older dad as well.
01:35:09.359 --> 01:35:13.840
The idea that he would raise a daughter, oh, how would that work?
01:35:14.560 --> 01:35:23.600
Um so and he was adorable, I mean, adorable man, but inadequate in all sorts of ways.
01:35:24.159 --> 01:35:33.199
Um he of course was also traumatized, he had found her.
01:35:34.079 --> 01:35:37.760
Um and it was decided, I'm not quite sure how it was decided.
01:35:37.840 --> 01:35:55.119
I think between my dad and my sister, they decided that the best thing for me would be to go to live with his twin sister, Aunt Gillian, who was a right old Tartar, um, rather wonderful woman, but knew nothing about children.
01:35:56.960 --> 01:36:02.000
Um so yes, it was just considered that that was okay.
01:36:02.720 --> 01:36:06.000
These days, that wouldn't happen.
01:36:06.319 --> 01:36:10.079
Yeah, it'd be a social black mark, societal blackmark.
01:36:10.399 --> 01:36:10.560
Yeah.
01:36:10.800 --> 01:36:14.560
And also they didn't think of children in the same way that we think of children now.
01:36:14.800 --> 01:36:14.960
Right.
01:36:15.119 --> 01:36:19.119
No, they didn't understand what effects these things had on children.
01:36:19.520 --> 01:36:21.920
Like them not letting you keep the dog, for example.
01:36:22.159 --> 01:36:24.880
I know well that was pretty weird, I must say.
01:36:25.199 --> 01:36:31.119
To to send a motherless wave pet dog, just a little bit of empathy.
01:36:31.439 --> 01:36:34.479
Yeah, they they um destroyed the dog.
01:36:34.560 --> 01:36:35.760
That is pretty amazing.
01:36:36.000 --> 01:36:36.640
Yeah.
01:36:37.600 --> 01:36:38.239
But eh.
01:36:38.800 --> 01:36:39.279
Yeah.
01:36:40.880 --> 01:36:44.079
Your father had a stroke while reading tracks.
01:36:44.720 --> 01:36:46.399
Do you know how far into the book he got?
01:36:46.720 --> 01:36:47.520
I don't.
01:36:47.840 --> 01:36:59.760
Um the sad thing about all of that, I was living in London because in those days the book came out in England first and then Australia, and there was quite a time gap.
01:36:59.840 --> 01:37:01.520
I think it was six weeks.
01:37:02.720 --> 01:37:08.880
So I knew that I would be going to Australia in six weeks' time to do the publicity tour.
01:37:09.279 --> 01:37:14.960
Um, and I wrote to Dad and I said, Um, you know, I'll be in Australia.
01:37:15.279 --> 01:37:22.800
Um, and I had to make a decision whether to send him a an English copy of the book or take it to him when I went.
01:37:24.159 --> 01:37:24.880
Exactly.
01:37:25.119 --> 01:37:29.359
So I thought, well, no, I'll send him a copy.
01:37:29.920 --> 01:37:34.079
And um he started reading it apparently.
01:37:34.239 --> 01:37:41.279
I obviously I wasn't there, and he went to our neighbour, who had been quite involved with our family.
01:37:41.359 --> 01:37:44.079
She was a lovely woman, kind woman.
01:37:44.880 --> 01:37:47.520
Um, and he was in tears.
01:37:47.840 --> 01:37:54.479
And the reason that I'd hesitated to send it to him was that I didn't want to stir him up.
01:37:55.439 --> 01:38:01.920
Um, and I think there was one sentence in tracks that obliquely refers to our family history.
01:38:02.560 --> 01:38:08.239
Um, and I just thought, ooh, it might just stir him up too much.
01:38:09.199 --> 01:38:20.880
Lo and behold, he reads the book, he goes next door in tears, because the first sentence of tracks was, I arrived in Alice Springs with six dollars and a dog or something like that.
01:38:21.119 --> 01:38:26.000
He goes next door in tears and says, Why didn't I ever give her any money?
01:38:27.039 --> 01:38:28.399
That's horrible.
01:38:28.720 --> 01:38:30.880
So you can't win, you know.
01:38:31.439 --> 01:38:34.319
Um poor chap.
01:38:34.960 --> 01:38:40.640
Um so I don't know how far he got into the book.
01:38:41.119 --> 01:38:46.159
Um I hope what he did read he enjoyed.
01:38:46.720 --> 01:38:49.680
I th he was tremendously proud of me.
01:38:50.000 --> 01:38:51.359
That's amazing, though.
01:38:52.079 --> 01:38:59.119
He obviously would have um been some type of fulfillment for you doing that journey in the first place.
01:38:59.439 --> 01:39:01.680
Because it sounds like he was quite an adventurer as well.
01:39:02.000 --> 01:39:18.800
He was, and it people have made the comment that obviously I was sort of doing something that like he had done, because he'd been in Africa living this the life of a big game hunter, you know, very much the man's man um Hemingway Exactly, oh exactly.
01:39:19.520 --> 01:39:26.239
Um so he would never have considered that I should that a girl should do such a thing.
01:39:26.560 --> 01:39:41.680
Um but the fact that I did, I think he was stunned by the fact that I did that trip, and then he became tremendously proud and sort of boring people with newspaper articles.
01:39:42.000 --> 01:39:43.279
Yeah, no, it was great.
01:39:43.439 --> 01:39:45.760
We were great friends towards the end.
01:39:45.920 --> 01:39:48.720
Um we liked each other a lot.
01:39:49.119 --> 01:39:55.279
And so you you you come out on the other end of this journey, he's he's a meant he's so overtly proud of you, you know.
01:39:55.359 --> 01:39:56.479
He couldn't be more happy.
01:39:56.560 --> 01:39:58.560
Look at my daughter, look what she's done.
01:39:58.800 --> 01:40:02.800
And I think in some way it sort of atoned for something for him.
01:40:02.880 --> 01:40:19.760
In he he wasn't a psychologically sophisticated person, but deep in his unconscious somewhere, the fact that I had done that somehow helped him with the idea perhaps of having been a bad father.
01:40:20.079 --> 01:40:20.399
Right, right.
01:40:20.479 --> 01:40:21.359
Like maybe I wasn't so bad.
01:40:21.840 --> 01:40:24.079
Maybe I wasn't such an idiot.
01:40:24.399 --> 01:40:27.279
And and then now he sees you more as an adult.
01:40:27.359 --> 01:40:29.279
He'd done this incredible feat.
01:40:30.079 --> 01:40:37.279
Is it just because of who he was and where he was from, just even talking about your mother was inconceivable?
01:40:37.600 --> 01:40:38.960
She's never mentioned again.
01:40:39.199 --> 01:40:39.520
Never.
01:40:39.760 --> 01:40:40.399
Never.
01:40:40.800 --> 01:40:41.920
Not a word.
01:40:42.880 --> 01:40:45.600
Yeah, it really is sign of changing times.
01:40:45.920 --> 01:40:46.239
Truly.
01:40:46.399 --> 01:40:46.640
Yeah.
01:40:46.960 --> 01:40:56.960
You make this observation of Australia, which is colonial circumstance made the idea of an upper class redundant.
01:40:57.119 --> 01:40:59.119
There weren't enough of them to go around.
01:40:59.279 --> 01:41:06.880
And this is on the other side of talking about who your father was and how he was and your mother was and how she was.
01:41:07.119 --> 01:41:13.279
And for me, having grown up in Australia, oh by the way, a suburb called Malabar, which is an ice synchronicity.
01:41:13.520 --> 01:41:13.760
Gosh.
01:41:14.079 --> 01:41:17.279
But I I can't recognise that at all, you know.
01:41:17.439 --> 01:41:20.239
And that could just be because I'm from Sydney, not the country.
01:41:20.880 --> 01:41:25.920
But at least it feels like it's a it's a it's a very different Australia, the one you grew up into the one I grew up in.
01:41:26.159 --> 01:41:28.159
It is it was a different Australia.
01:41:28.319 --> 01:41:32.319
And it we have to remember the effect of the Second World War.
01:41:34.640 --> 01:41:42.479
The men who came back, you know, w how how uh what they'd seen and been through.
01:41:42.800 --> 01:41:51.680
Um there wasn't the sort of understanding of uh post-what is it called?
01:41:51.920 --> 01:41:52.880
Post-traumatic stress.
01:41:53.039 --> 01:41:55.279
Yeah, post-traumatic stress.
01:41:55.920 --> 01:42:05.760
Um for women it was a difficult era because they'd got some freedom during the war, because they'd taken the jobs that the men had left open.
01:42:06.000 --> 01:42:08.720
And then as soon as the men came back, bang, that was it.
01:42:09.039 --> 01:42:10.800
Total domesticity is no other option.
01:42:11.119 --> 01:42:21.520
Absolutely, and you can see it in all the magazines, the women's magazines of that time, how suddenly the duty of a woman was to be a housewife and have children.
01:42:22.079 --> 01:42:30.960
Um, so if you were a complicated woman who wanted a life, it was very difficult.
01:42:31.119 --> 01:42:34.399
And it must have been difficult for the men as well.
01:42:35.119 --> 01:42:42.479
Um so that war we forget what wars do.
01:42:43.920 --> 01:42:50.399
Um so yeah, the 50s were marked by that.
01:42:51.520 --> 01:42:55.279
And then the 60s happened and sort of broke all of that apart.
01:42:55.600 --> 01:42:57.760
How things changed so quickly.
01:42:59.039 --> 01:43:00.560
So quickly.
01:43:01.119 --> 01:43:01.760
Yeah.
01:43:02.800 --> 01:43:06.000
I think young men now are just gorgeous.
01:43:07.920 --> 01:43:09.039
In what aspect?
01:43:09.359 --> 01:43:14.479
Well, there's a kind of awareness.
01:43:15.279 --> 01:43:21.600
They're softer, they seem to be more and this one shouldn't make these huge generalizations.
01:43:21.760 --> 01:43:22.000
Obviously.
01:43:22.479 --> 01:43:24.560
You can paint with a broad brush, there's exceptions everywhere.
01:43:24.880 --> 01:43:32.560
Um boy, and then you look at the incels and all that ghastly sort of manosphere and so on, which is pretty terrifying.
01:43:32.880 --> 01:43:36.880
But you know, the young men I meet, let's say, I find them kind.
01:43:37.600 --> 01:43:39.119
They're kind to me.
01:43:39.680 --> 01:43:46.560
Um, you know, this older woman in my era, we didn't we were horrible about older people.
01:43:47.439 --> 01:43:49.680
Um like just put them over there.
01:43:49.840 --> 01:44:06.159
Yeah, just um so yeah, a lot has changed, and they're more sensitive, more aware of their how complex life is and their, you know, how difficult it is to find a the right place in the world, you know?
01:44:06.319 --> 01:44:07.439
They have to think.
01:44:09.119 --> 01:44:13.119
You spoke um really candidly about the decision to not have children.
01:44:13.760 --> 01:44:16.319
I think you were in your thirties when you made that decision.
01:44:16.800 --> 01:44:17.680
Pretty much, yeah.
01:44:17.920 --> 01:44:24.159
And um have there you you have a close relationship with your nieces and presumably friends, kids, and so forth.
01:44:24.479 --> 01:44:31.920
Uh but but is there a part of you that regrets not having found maybe with Norendra or such as like create a new life?
01:44:32.720 --> 01:44:44.000
No, I I'm sort of not given to regret, you know, those choices, whether they're chance or whether you know, whether they were free will or not free will.
01:44:44.960 --> 01:44:46.239
They are they exist.
01:44:46.479 --> 01:44:48.159
You've made them already.
01:44:48.399 --> 01:44:52.000
Um so no, I don't regret it.
01:44:52.239 --> 01:45:02.960
And also, how do I, you know, part of that decision was understanding that I was still a child myself in many ways.
01:45:03.119 --> 01:45:19.680
I needed to, you know, if I was going to have a child, I would have to be so strong because the responsibility of bringing an entity into this universe, what could be more important than that?
01:45:20.159 --> 01:45:25.119
And people treat it so lightly, they just think, oh well, I'm bored today, I'll have a baby.
01:45:25.439 --> 01:45:29.119
You know, uh it just astonishes me.
01:45:29.359 --> 01:45:48.560
Um so I was very aware of that, the responsibility of being a good parent, of having the financial resources, of having the emotional resources, of having or not having a partner, what that would mean, having a family structure that you could where you could get help.
01:45:48.880 --> 01:45:56.880
Um so I was very aware that that would be a huge thing to do.
01:45:58.239 --> 01:46:10.239
But also all my friends were not having children at that particular era again, um, and the the the thought was can you be an artist and a mother?
01:46:11.840 --> 01:46:15.039
Is it possible to do those two things or not?
01:46:15.760 --> 01:46:19.039
Um, and many us many of us decided not.
01:46:19.760 --> 01:46:26.640
Um so I think it's those those decisions are still extremely difficult and probably always will be.
01:46:27.039 --> 01:46:33.520
Yeah, there's a quote Colin Thhubron said a few weeks ago when I interviewed him because he as well never had any children.
01:46:34.000 --> 01:46:38.399
And he said uh uh the enemy of creativity is the pram.
01:46:40.720 --> 01:46:41.359
Yeah.
01:46:41.920 --> 01:46:46.560
Well it's it it's a lot of hard work and devoted work.
01:46:46.880 --> 01:46:58.079
Um and I think sometimes if you want to be an artist you have to pay a kind of bill.
01:46:58.560 --> 01:47:08.399
Yeah, I'm I'm terrified at the at that the idea of taking on that huge responsibility.
01:47:08.880 --> 01:47:14.159
Um therefore am I selfish for thinking maybe I don't want to, you know?
01:47:14.640 --> 01:47:16.319
I don't think you're selfish at all.
01:47:16.720 --> 01:47:19.600
It's a deep, deep decision.
01:47:20.079 --> 01:47:26.319
Um the most important one you'll ever make because that creature is going to have to live a life.
01:47:27.840 --> 01:47:31.199
And you're pretty responsible for how it turns out.
01:47:31.359 --> 01:47:31.520
Yeah.
01:47:31.760 --> 01:47:32.960
Oh, that's that's great.
01:47:33.119 --> 01:47:34.960
That leads us to nature versus nurture.
01:47:35.279 --> 01:47:35.600
Oh, yeah.
01:47:35.840 --> 01:47:43.520
Uh which I know is a one of your favourite topics, but I I couldn't I couldn't definitively find actually where do you come down on it.
01:47:43.920 --> 01:47:45.359
Absolutely in the middle.
01:47:47.039 --> 01:47:48.079
That's no good.
01:47:48.560 --> 01:47:52.399
Well, I think you know, genetics obviously plays some part.
01:47:53.039 --> 01:47:55.199
We don't know how big a part.
01:47:55.920 --> 01:47:59.920
Um nurture obviously plays a big part.
01:48:00.399 --> 01:48:12.640
How those two things interrelate we still don't know really, but obviously they're both terribly important into how a person turns out.
01:48:13.119 --> 01:48:29.760
I do think um people are born with different sorts of brains, um, different sorts of um sort of inherited characteristics of character, all those things.
01:48:30.000 --> 01:48:34.880
But then the world impinges on that and moulds that.
01:48:35.359 --> 01:48:45.920
Um so when I say I'm in the middle, it is that relationship between nature and nurture that creates and chance, you know, just chance.
01:48:46.880 --> 01:48:49.359
And but chance is the nature, the nurture side of it.
01:48:49.439 --> 01:48:49.760
Yeah, yeah.
01:48:50.239 --> 01:48:51.920
Well, I suppose it's also the nature, of course it is.
01:48:54.079 --> 01:48:58.560
You're born with a specific inclination, fragilities and strengths.
01:48:58.800 --> 01:48:59.039
Yeah.
01:48:59.279 --> 01:49:06.560
But I'm sure you've observed even between you and your sister, but I can observe between me and my brothers or my wife's siblings, very similar environments.
01:49:06.960 --> 01:49:08.640
Friends is a big one that differs.
01:49:08.720 --> 01:49:09.119
Yeah.
01:49:09.359 --> 01:49:17.760
But the home and the values, yeah, and how you spend most nights and most weekends, yeah, yet dramatically different outcomes.
01:49:18.000 --> 01:49:18.800
Very much so.
01:49:19.119 --> 01:49:24.800
And makes me think that it's maybe like a 90-10 split or something.
01:49:25.039 --> 01:49:28.079
You can't dismiss nurture, obviously.
01:49:28.319 --> 01:49:35.039
No, but then maybe I don't know, am I just trying to take full credit for how I become?
01:49:35.119 --> 01:49:37.279
You know, because uh that's yeah.
01:49:37.359 --> 01:49:40.960
Well, if it's a wobbly uh stage to to sort of stand up.
01:49:41.359 --> 01:49:41.920
It is.
01:49:42.239 --> 01:49:47.199
I tend to think we're less self-constructed than we want to believe, you know.
01:49:47.520 --> 01:49:47.760
Yeah.
01:49:48.159 --> 01:49:56.000
But in specifically from a neuroscientific perspective, since this is a great interest of yours and you've done as much as you can to understand how does that all work.
01:49:56.560 --> 01:49:58.319
Well, it keeps changing too, of course.
01:49:58.399 --> 01:49:59.680
I mean, new as new research comes.
01:50:00.239 --> 01:50:00.960
comes in.
01:50:03.039 --> 01:50:06.319
And I do try to follow it as much as I can.
01:50:06.479 --> 01:50:08.640
I love science and I read a hell of a lot.
01:50:09.039 --> 01:50:11.840
So I'm fairly literate for an amateur.
01:50:13.680 --> 01:50:17.680
But really school's still very much out on all this stuff.
01:50:17.760 --> 01:50:21.359
It's new, it's um a dramatic field.
01:50:24.399 --> 01:50:31.600
You know the study of consciousness, it's extraordinary and how it's changed over the last just even the last decade.
01:50:32.479 --> 01:50:39.039
There's a lot of new ways of thinking about it and looking at it and yeah, fascinating.
01:50:39.439 --> 01:50:42.560
Narendra, the the great love of your life.
01:50:43.439 --> 01:50:45.279
Twenty, thirty years you were together?
01:50:45.680 --> 01:50:47.760
Pretty much, twenty-five, something like that, yeah.
01:50:48.079 --> 01:50:54.479
And and he was from some type of aristocracy would you call it feudal feudal.
01:50:54.720 --> 01:50:56.079
Feudal aristocracy.
01:50:56.640 --> 01:50:58.159
They were called Rajputs.
01:50:58.319 --> 01:51:03.119
They were the ruling um they were the rulers of Rajasthan.
01:51:04.960 --> 01:51:09.840
He was raised in a huge cake like castle.
01:51:13.760 --> 01:51:52.239
But he was a most unusual man because he escaped in many ways that context, that world, and became well he was always noble a noble but he in many ways was also self-made and he became a politician a Congress politician sort of liberal leftish although India is such a different context you can't really label it like that.
01:51:54.479 --> 01:52:06.640
He was quite a successful politician but a bit of a maverick um an immensely astute person.
01:52:07.199 --> 01:52:10.159
He was infallible in his judgments of people.
01:52:10.399 --> 01:52:10.720
Right.
01:52:10.880 --> 01:52:12.000
Just infallible.
01:52:12.479 --> 01:52:14.079
Can you give any examples of that?
01:52:14.399 --> 01:52:16.399
Honestly it he he was never wrong.
01:52:16.479 --> 01:53:09.439
Well I alright I'll I will tell you one he uh he met one of my friends very very close friend and afterwards he was very quiet so I knew something was going on and I said so what what and he said you be careful there and it was the only real sort of argument fight we'd ever had um I said you don't know what you're talking about blah blah and he said you are vulnerable because you don't have a jealous heart but that woman has a jealous heart and she wants what you have you be careful a decade later absolutely correct.
01:53:09.840 --> 01:53:32.159
Yeah well what is it that he would see in people I don't know I think it was the sort of he'd had quite a difficult childhood so he'd had he'd had to watch people and duck and weave um and he was a damn good politician and you have to be a good judge of character there.
01:53:32.960 --> 01:53:35.920
Or how to judge what people are really after.
01:53:37.680 --> 01:53:39.199
He was infallible.
01:53:39.600 --> 01:54:55.600
And he was uh Hinduist Hindu yes he uh well yes Hindu born Hindu um but part of his politics was taking the side of uh minority Muslims who were having a hard time um by Hindu fundamentalists uh sort of fascists Hindu fascists um so his constituency he sort of was looking after in many ways uh his Muslim constituents so he was visiting a lot of Sufi shrines and talking to the old Sufis and he at the end of his life when he was he himself was quite vulnerable and quite ill he converted converted to Islam and or to Sufism I guess you'd say um and that became very important to him it's part of him that I never could share or understand his religiosity because it all looked the same to me but it obviously it was very important to him.
01:54:59.199 --> 01:55:02.399
Whether it helped him or hindered him I've really no idea.
01:55:02.880 --> 01:55:06.319
You write that he ended up becoming quite fundamentalist in the new faith.
01:55:06.640 --> 01:55:17.680
No no he wasn't ever fundamentalist not at all and the Sufis are generally speaking not not um hard line like that but it was important to him.
01:55:17.920 --> 01:55:35.920
Okay okay and it meant that he was in a territory where I couldn't follow him uh I simply didn't get it but I knew it but you know it was important to him so that was fine with me.
01:55:36.640 --> 01:55:45.119
And he ended up rubbing up against the BJP which is the Hindu Nationalist Party that Narendra Modi's in charge of currently in charge in India.
01:55:45.439 --> 01:55:45.760
Correct.
01:55:46.319 --> 01:56:07.520
And it got violent uh with them at some stage oh it's always been you know they're card carrying fascists the RSS which is what the BJP grew out of were literally fascists you know they thought Hitler was pretty terrific um it's a I think a tragedy for India but there you are.
01:56:08.000 --> 01:56:20.479
How do you make sense of that now considering India is if not the certainly among the future global economies and their four populations and their four cultural influences globally?
01:56:20.960 --> 01:57:37.680
Yeah well we will see um he's still immensely popular um from my point of view what he's done is not just uh um augment um communalism the the um uh friction between Hindus and Muslims but he's uh sort of taken away a particular kind of Indian sweetness that was so generous to the outsider that was so incorporating of otherness um it was one of the lovely things about India that embracing and incorporating and respect for otherness um and I see that sort of eroding towards more of a national well nationalism a hind Hindu specific Hindu nationalism um where the Hindus are on top and everyone you know Christians and Isla and Muslims and all you other mob can get lost.
01:57:38.079 --> 01:57:41.760
Get lost yeah when was the last time you were in India?
01:57:42.000 --> 01:57:51.840
I was there when COVID started okay and um uh I haven't been back but I'll go back next year and see my friends and my old staff who I love.
01:57:52.159 --> 01:58:18.960
Mm-hmm so you still are welcome back there like family this is the house in the Hilamate no I don't go back there because when Narendra died the family sort of went into this it was a feudal family so they wanted property and I backed out I don't want to be part of that but I did want to protect my staff and I still keep in contact with them.
01:58:19.680 --> 01:58:22.720
So not the family but I keep in touch with the staff.
01:58:23.199 --> 01:58:26.000
And did you and Narendra ever discuss getting married?
01:58:26.479 --> 01:58:45.920
We did but it didn't seem my era didn't sort of think marriage was necessary um but also we sort of never got around to it I suppose it was kind of that because our lives were very complicated.
01:58:46.239 --> 01:58:54.159
You know it was our lives existed between two countries and and about five different properties so we were very busy people.
01:58:54.800 --> 01:59:01.359
And um so yeah we spoke about it but never just sort of didn't happen.
01:59:01.760 --> 01:59:34.159
Did you ever participate in his politics I did in front of people offer ideas no absolutely not he protected me from all of that really and um protected me from family politics um in a way in a way I was separated out from a lot of his territory let's say for my own good um and that made life a lot easier.
01:59:34.479 --> 01:59:54.880
Yeah and it was 30 years or something your relationship yeah yeah it it is really hard for me to imagine like what is a 30 year relationship across five properties in two countries you you said you spoke on the phone every day but am I constantly on a plane?
01:59:55.039 --> 01:59:56.399
Like is that how it works?
01:59:56.800 --> 02:00:10.319
Well it was um I think of it think of it as quite an aristocratic marriage in the sense that I don't think we ever spent longer than three consecutive weeks together in all that time.
02:00:11.279 --> 02:01:10.640
There was a lot of travelling obviously there was a lot of um interference a lot of pressure he was under tremendous pressure you know life threatening pressure um I was constantly going back to London having to go back to London um so it was complicated and um both of us under a lot of stress really because of that structure but yeah pretty much every morning we were on the phone and we didn't particularly say anything much it was more like birds talking to each other you know I'm here yes you're there yes that's it yeah it's a really beautiful way to describe it just checking in yeah we're both still here all right take it easy yeah this is getting towards the end okay and definitely sappy so forgive me if it is but I feel you're doing fine so far.
02:01:10.800 --> 02:01:12.159
I feel like I want to ask it anyway.
02:01:12.319 --> 02:01:19.119
Yeah the title is Unfinished Woman can you ever really be a finished person?
02:01:19.760 --> 02:01:33.279
There's there's Jung's idea of individuation where and also Nietzsche's idea of becoming who you are and the central point of both of those you know philosophical ideas is that you never actually do reach the end.
02:01:33.439 --> 02:01:50.079
No the the peak is always out of view the horizon is always over the next hill but it's simply just getting as close to it as possible is is the life well lived to a degree are you leaning into anything like that with a title like unfinished woman?
02:01:50.399 --> 02:01:50.640
Yes.
02:01:51.039 --> 02:01:52.079
Was that very sappy?
02:01:52.399 --> 02:02:23.600
No it's not sappy at all it's um yes I mean the title's ambiguous and it's meant to be I am unfinished and I believe we're not finished till we're dead um and of course my mother was unfinished um being female in the world is a sort of unfinished project um so yes we're we are I think of us as gerunds rather than nouns.
02:02:24.000 --> 02:02:31.920
Geronds what's a gerund a gerund is okay running sitting thinking we is is movement.
02:02:32.159 --> 02:02:32.479
Okay.
02:02:32.880 --> 02:02:37.840
Um so instead of um motion not static.
02:02:38.079 --> 02:02:43.039
Yes yes we're not a thing we're we're more a process than a thing.
02:02:43.279 --> 02:02:51.520
Right oh nice we are processes not things they're allowing for all the change of that motion.
02:02:51.840 --> 02:03:07.600
Yeah you you've lived all over the map this kind of leans it leans leads into it a little bit and tell me whether you think this is the case or not but I think one of the great maybe unsung details behind being able to just go somewhere new when no one knows you.
02:03:07.840 --> 02:03:08.640
You have no friends there?
02:03:08.720 --> 02:03:14.479
Yeah is that not in a psychopathic way but you can in a sense reinvent yourself.
02:03:15.119 --> 02:03:27.359
Definitely it's not like your personality changes but at least there is zero baggage of all the people who knew you from where you just came and and it's very sort of exciting and very confronting.
02:03:27.600 --> 02:03:46.239
Yeah but but also maybe liberating too because you realize there are these parts of myself which will always remain under a rock because all the behavior I've done accumulated with all these people who know me that have this idea for who Ryan is and there's maybe Ryan wouldn't do something Ryan isn't that type of person.
02:03:46.319 --> 02:03:46.560
Yeah.
02:03:46.800 --> 02:04:07.199
And if you think about actually from an evolutionary perspective it it's actually really rare to get that opportunity to immerse in a different totally different when no one knows it because it'd be extremely dangerous at most points in history and there are so many other barriers hanging at you know anyway so having relocated do do you agree with that?
02:04:09.680 --> 02:05:26.880
Yes I think in my case the reason for travelling the way I have in that sort of complete immersion sort of letting go of everything behind and just immersing in in another culture is to is to test my biases the sort of bias that you automatically have from your background from your culture from everything around you and if you're in some place that's completely different has different values different ways of perceiving the world all of that all of those assumptions that you've carried as being normal or correct or right are put to the test and that's a very good reason for traveling but I think the way we travel now that part of it is kind of gone it's less about that and more about making elsewhere a place where you can take everything with you.
02:05:27.680 --> 02:05:36.319
That observation you make at the end like how we travel now but but even if you travel back then it's more the fact that you're doing it totally alone and you're doing it with no bridges.
02:05:36.560 --> 02:05:37.039
No bridges.
02:05:37.439 --> 02:05:47.439
You're there who knows how long who knows where I'll be yeah like that type of total immersion I I think is historically uncommon.
02:05:48.319 --> 02:06:41.039
Probably probably yes probably but then I've always done that you know whether it was being in the criminal club or it's that investigation of otherness and possibly because I didn't have so a particularly strong sense of myself that I was able to do that maybe I don't know but it certainly is how I can see that it has been a pattern of this immersion in otherness um out of a profound curiosity sort of curiosity that's that has saved me really um and this wish to get further and further and further to something true.
02:06:42.319 --> 02:06:45.279
Did you ever come close to that answer?
02:06:45.600 --> 02:06:50.640
No still still heading in that direction.
02:06:51.119 --> 02:07:08.399
Did it make you more empathetic and maybe less judgmental just across the board seeing how different people definitely but did it then harden your own idea for what a life well lived is I don't know what a life well lived is it depends on the person.
02:07:08.560 --> 02:07:20.800
Right you know you can have someone who's never shifted out of out of a village and but and has raised children and and dug in the dirt and and it could have been a magnificent life.
02:07:21.119 --> 02:07:35.840
Totally totally if science allowed you to live say a hundred years more and you have all the physical vigour that you could hope for where would you want to go certainly not Mars.
02:07:36.239 --> 02:07:48.079
No okay well of course in a hundred years it'll all be different so I'd simply be in another place it would be another place.
02:07:48.399 --> 02:08:00.560
No but I mean right now you're guaranteed a hundred more years well there's where would I like to go?
02:08:01.119 --> 02:08:09.760
I'd certainly go back to India um I'm very interested in Greenland and not just because Trump wants to buy it.
02:08:10.479 --> 02:08:12.800
Yeah there's a lot going on that's a different strike.
02:08:13.199 --> 02:08:21.760
Yeah really um there's so much sort of global stuff going on there.
02:08:22.000 --> 02:08:39.199
And of course I have great sympathy for the Inuit um I'd like to get to know the Samis um I'd definitely go back to Tibet.
02:08:39.600 --> 02:08:39.840
Right.
02:08:40.000 --> 02:09:06.800
Yeah you said that was the most beautiful place I think it's the most beautiful place I've ever been just stunning and the people stunningly beautiful God um probably a very sad place now but um you know things change where else I don't know sort of anywhere everywhere but as I say in a hundred years if I sit still in this house everything will be different.
02:09:06.960 --> 02:09:08.800
So in a sense I will have travelled anyway.
02:09:09.119 --> 02:10:49.760
Yeah the Melbourne sprawl would have made it out exactly yeah exactly I really tried figuring out whether you'd ever done anything with the Berber people or with the Bedouin no it just strikes me as not too brand you because obviously that's and in the antithesis to everything we've been saying but camels, nomadic people desert camels are completely um secondary it's the nomadism that I'm interested in the way that move moving that kind of moving through the world makes for different qualities so for example nomads tend to value knowledge above material possessions they can't carry many material possessions but they have to know a lot if they're going to survive they have to know their environment very well they have to be good diplomats because they're constantly dealing with otherness they have to hang together and look after each other all of those sorts of values and from my experience small experience really of being with those sorts of cultures it is like that their values tend to be centered around knowledge systems but tend to be less materialistic or less consumer driven.
02:10:50.640 --> 02:11:04.239
So their values are different if you start building big edifices do you inevitably become consumering?
02:11:05.520 --> 02:11:16.239
How do you mean not quite sure the the opposite of that observation that the nomadic people will value knowledge value knowledge above consuming because they just simply can't carry it.
02:11:16.479 --> 02:11:57.439
Exactly but then if we you know get off a ship and start building in Sydney harbour and are rooted there you know sleep there every night start putting things around our house like it it it does consumerism become inevitable at that stage it's too complicated a question because consumer is consumerism has gone through so many phases so you know if you want to begin with agriculture suddenly there's this change where uh grain has to be stored and protected.
02:12:00.159 --> 02:12:02.079
have to have a standing army.
02:12:05.520 --> 02:12:11.760
You have to set up a system of a mercantile system.
02:12:12.239 --> 02:12:16.000
So there's these huge fundamental changes.
02:12:17.840 --> 02:12:20.640
Does materialism or consumerism begin there?
02:12:20.800 --> 02:12:22.479
Well sort of, yeah.
02:12:23.119 --> 02:12:33.600
It's more complicated than that, but um certainly the sort of storage of things and being sedentary does make a big difference.
02:12:34.000 --> 02:12:59.920
And then you know you come through these periods of countries forming and nation building and technology changing and industrial revolution and now the digital revolution these and the rise of capitalism and you know these are huge factors in how we're all controlled and manipulated.
02:13:00.399 --> 02:13:07.920
And these systems are built that we don't seem to be able to get out of.
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And obviously they're very destructive systems.
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And how we'll survive that well we just don't know.
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Robin almost every interview I've done I've asked some variation of what the role of serendipity has been in their lives.
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So two quotes from you one from Trax there are some moments in your life that are like pivots and then from Unfinished woman I seem to have an unusually fateful life.
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Coincidences have produced enormous effects.
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And so the theme has run throughout this interview but nonetheless I want to ask you directly how you make sense of the role that serendipity has played in your life sort of everything.
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Chance has thrown me extraordinary opportunities and because I have a particular temperament and character I've tended to leap into those opportunities fairly blindly and just trusted that I'll make my way.
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I think we have much less free will than we give ourselves credit for.
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And how we react to that is where there may be some free will maybe not.
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And if we think of great moments of serendipity Rick's photos taking off you meeting Narendra you know it's all of it the uh life can be understood backwards right but but it must be lived forwards there's no telling actually of the infinite possibilities you know which route we're going to end up in truly truly well look Robin I've been you've been rather way too generous with your time with me.
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Thank you for inviting me down here.
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It's been a pleasure Ryan really thank you and it's cool to see Diggity number two has been napping this entire time behaved.
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But really thank you so much.
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Thank you.