I’m very excited to read The Lost Mother, the new book by Anne Summers, which I discussed with her in its early stages of development. Anne worked furiously on the book throughout 2008 and it’s wonderful to see her receiving so much attention for this new work. Being in New York at the moment I am far from getting my hands on a copy, unfortunately. But from speaking with Anne when she was visiting recently, I learned that her publisher, Melbourne University Press, has done an outstanding job in terms of the book’s production values - colour plates and everything. I’m always delighted to share anecdotes of positive treatment by publishers of their authors, as an author who has been treated with kid gloves by UQP.

The Lost Mother is about Anne Summers’ relationship with her mother, told through her search for a lost painting of her mother as a child. After her mother’s death in 2005, Anne inherits a portrait of her mother as a child. Mesmerised by this image, she finds herself drawn into the story of how the portrait was painted and eventually found its way into her family. She soon learns the artist painted another portrait of her mother; this time as the Madonna. Anne’s search for the Madonna painting and the mysterious Russian émigré collector who bought both paintings takes her down unexpected paths. Her search soon turns into a parallel quest to rescue Constance Stokes, the artist, from obscurity, and to learn why the collector suddenly abandoned the paintings. Along the way Anne finds she must face the truth of the relationship she had with her mother.

Anne Summers is an important writer and commentator. She’s the author of several books including Damned Whores and God’s Police, Ducks on the Pond and The End of Equality. She has edited the landmark American feminist magazine Ms. and Good Weekend and these days writes for several publications. She has been an advisor to two Australian prime ministers and chaired the Board of Greenpeace International for many years. Her website is www.annesummers.com.au.

 

It’s years since I’ve seen a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, one of my favourite of his plays (you’d have to be a right curmudgeon to dislike it). So when a friend offered me a last-minute free ticket courtesy of a colleague who was the fight-scene choreographer, I jumped at the chance. Three days of an enforced “vow of silence” due to severe laryngitis were broken with a huge thermos of tea, some chocolate biscuits, and emergency throat lozenges. I had also brought with me a hat, a camera, a raincoat, all shoved into a large canvas bag.

My friend didn’t tell me it was opening night. There were actors I recognised, actors I didn’t recognise, TV presenters, a lot of women who looked in need of a good feed, and the two of us, underdressed for the occasion and lugging a bag the size of a small child. But it mattered not. Don’t you love iambic pentameter!

I don’t mean to gloat, but this was one of those defining and memorable nights in New York. The weather, for once this month, was dry and clear, with a slight breeze wafting over us with the occasional bird and, on one occasion, an NYPD helicopter. Belvedere Castle was lit like Notre Dame Cathedral and cast its own spell as the backdrop to the fictional troubles of Violet, Orsino, Olivia, Sir Toby, Malviolio et al. The set was a gorgeous expanse of green grass, dotted with trees and rolling hills used to great effect in the staging and blocking of every scene, characters running up and falling down, hiding and revealing themselves. And the cast, a true ensemble, was a delight to watch. My favorites were Hamish Linklater as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and David Pittu as Feste, the witty court jester non pareil. And Anne Hathaway, the ostensible star of the show, did a thoroughly convincing job as Violet/Cesario, standing out naturally among the cast without stealing the limelight.

Also noteworthy was the seemingly effortless use of music throughout the production, with a small group of musicians on and just off stage in almost every scene. With so many musicians among the cast (including Audra McDonald as Olivia) it would have been wasteful not to use them thus. The music itself was full of lovely folk-inflected melodies and simple harmonising, which was totally compelling.

At one point I looked up from the stage to the starry night sky, dazzled by the thought that here were hundreds of people gathered to watch a play written close to 400 years ago, in the most mellifluous language imaginable, which speaks to us from another time and place altogether, in a way that serves only to demonstrate how simple and unchanging human nature is.

If you can possibly get there, it will be worth the wait for tickets. Here’s the glowing New York Times review.

 

According to International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee, prominent dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, former President and Board member of Independent Chinese PEN Centre, is to stand trial on charges of ‘incitement to subversion of state power’. Liu Xiaobo was arrested on 8 December 2008 for his role in publishing Charter 08, a document calling for political reform and human rights. He has been held under ‘residential surveillance’, a form of pre-trial detention, at an undisclosed location in Beijing since his arrest. International PEN demands the immediate and unconditional release of Liu Xiaobo and all those detained in violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory. PEN also seeks assurances that he is granted access to his lawyer and family as a matter of urgency.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, Liu Xiaobo is accused of ‘spreading rumours and defaming the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years’. He is said to have confessed to the charges against him, which carry a maximum five-year prison sentence.

Charter 08, a declaration calling for political reforms and human rights, was published on 9 December 2008 as part of a campaign to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Initially signed by over 300 scholars, journalists, freelance writers and activists, the Charter now has more than 8000 signatories from throughout China.

Read the Guardian’s article on Liu Xiaobo’s arrest here.
American PEN Center’s page on Liu Xiaobo contains background information, press releases, and a video message from the writer.

Please consider becoming a member of PEN, which advocates on behalf of writers like Liu Xiaobo, and send your own letter to the Chinese president protesting the charge against Liu Xiaobo, and calling for his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory. You can send your appeal to:

His Excellency Hu Jintao
President of the People’s Republic of China
State Council
Beijing 100032
P.R. China

New York, like Sydney, has been experiencing a lot of rain. The improbably cheerful weather presenter on morning television today said that it had rained 21 out of the last 23 days. Certainly the weather has not helped me get over my May flu, as my regular exercise program has waned, and this past week has seen a resurgence of the symptoms I thought I’d beaten a month earlier. Only this time around I avoided the cold and went straight to laryngitis. Did not pass Go, did not collect $200. Can’t remember the last time I lost my voice. Which of course is ironic, given that I’m trying to write some dialogue at the moment, and usually speak out loud everything to test its rhythm and credibility.

Ah, the whistle blows. That would be the kettle, full of now-boiling water to pour into a bowl of chopped lemons, which I will inhale with an old pink handtowel over my head.

I just stumbled across this article from the LA Times about the declining sales of acoustic pianos, the rise in sales of electronic instruments and digital keyboards, and what it all might mean. According to the article, 105,000 acoustic upright and grand pianos were sold in the US in the year 2000, but only 54,000 in 2007. Sales of electronic pianos and keyboards soared over that same period. Most people reading the article might reasonably assume that piano sales have declined with the 21st century, but they would be wrong: piano manufacture and sales have been in serious decline since the 1920s, when the phonograph and wireless radio became the entertainments around which a family gathered in the living room, rather than the piano. After all, it takes time, and practice, and expensive lessons - in short, money and leisure - to learn to play. Compare 1910, when 360,000 pianos were made and sold in the US alone (according to the whimsical and exhaustive Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History by Arthur Loesser, a volume first published in 1954 and into which I have recently been delving at length). The digital revolution of the last two decades has made the decline particularly sharp.

The LA Times article trots out the usual reasons for the decline in the piano’s centrality to American living rooms: the increasing popularity of other forms of entertainment, the overly scheduled nature of children’s lives, and the general portability of music in contemporary life (iPods, MP3 players, CDs, even the ubiquitous piped music while shopping and eating). But while I think these reasons (particularly the latter) play their part, I think the real change that mirrors the piano’s rise and decline is the changing roles of women in daily life. For almost 200 years being able to play the piano was a critical ingredient in a young woman’s marriageability, in the days when women’s work was all conducted at home and in the socio-sexual playing field of the parlour room. Think of Jane Austen’s heroines, who were all able to play, albeit to varying degrees of competence; or that peculiarly French genre of “young girl at the piano” paintings of the second half of the 19th century. I don’t recall seeing any formal portraits of female musicians and their electronic keyboards in recent years, but perhaps that’s because they are too busy earning a living and writing their own music to sit still long enough.

Having recently been invited into the ranks of Brooklyn’s HAWG - or Horribly Awkward Writers’ Guild - as an associate member, I feel compelled to share with other writers the Guild’s speed-writing game that I’m finding very useful in my writing generally.

How it works: First, there need to be at least three of you present in the same room/cafe. Tear up small pieces of paper and hand around four or five per participant. Each person writes one title for each piece of paper they’ve been given, then folds and places them in some receptacle (hat, used coffee cup, recyclable/biodegradable plastic bag). Pass the receptacle around, pick out one title each (if you pull out one of your own, put it back and pick another), then let your mind wander for several minutes as you write a few sentences, a few paragraphs, or a complete short story depending on your level of inspiration from that particular title. One person will usually finish a lot sooner than the others; do not let this distract you as it will be a different person next round who finishes first. Then take it in turns to read out your work to the others. Rinse and repeat.

Some of the titles I’ve either created or responded to recently include: ‘Gambling with your kids already’; ‘A termite with discretion’; ‘The modern sherpa’s keys to happiness’; ‘Taco crush fever’; ‘Death threats and other come-ons’; ‘The uneducated guesses of Phineas Wurlitzer’; and ‘The best elbow in the world’. Several years ago I would have been too paralysed with fear to even make a stab at a response to most of these. But there’s something honourable and satisfying about focusing your mind for a couple of hours in the company of other writers, producing words and ideas rather than moaning about how much you haven’t written lately.

Call to action: I would love to hear from anyone who takes a stab at any of the titles above - send me a piece of not more than 200 words and if it takes my fancy I’ll post it on this site. As a starting point I’ve included my response to one of the titles above.

Gambling with your kids already
It had been a long trip, and Suzy couldn’t tell which was more irritating, the neon flashing incessantly in her peripheral vision as she drove along Atlantic City’s main street, or her twin boys, full of sugar and mayhem in the back of her beat-up van. She won a brief respite from the kids with a promise of McDonalds, and tried to remember the name of the hotel where she had agreed to meet Ronaldo. Ronaldo! He had sounded so exotic, and tall, and rich. Then he had to go and ruin it by sending her a more recent photograph. On the upside, as a janitor for one of the big casino hotels, Ronaldo was going to get her and the boys free food and drinks, and even some gambling chips that the rich guests couldn’t be bothered with, like they were pennies dropped on the street. Oh, and free accommodation – but Suzy preferred not to think about what she’d have to give Ronaldo.
‘Twins? You didn’t tell me you got twins, madonna!’ he said, crestfallen.
‘Two, Ronaldo,’ Suzy said. ‘As in too bad. Two for the price of one. The one being me.’

Most surprised to report that I’ve just sneaked into the Top 50 Australian Writing Blogs, according to Johnathan Crossfield’s blog CopyWrite. This list tracks the most popular blogs written by Australian writers about writing, and is a movable feast depending on the preferences of readers, the content of the blog, and the rankings of blog trackers (Technorati, Google PageRank and something called Alexa, which I must confess I had never heard of before). So I can freely recommend Johnathan’s blog without a whiff of conflict of interest.

Of the other Australian writing blogs on the list, I am a regular reader of three: Angela Meyer’s LiteraryMinded (#2), Max Barry (#5 and Sydney PEN’s next ‘Voice’ in our Voices: 3 Writers Series in July), and the elegant City of Tongues by novelist James Bradley (#22 with a bullet). Inevitably the rankings will have shifted by the time I finish this post, including my own.

Back in New York and working on my next project, I have found renewed enthusiasm for my blog - and just in time, as there’s plenty of scope for its improvement. Fortunately I have been hanging out with a few people steeped in social media, so I’m learning a few things I will put into practice over posts to come. Even though I’ve been blogging regularly since early 2006 I have kept things very basic, technologically speaking. Time for this old blogger to learn some new, and not so new, tricks.

Twenty-year-old Nobuyuki Tsujii is the joint winner of this year’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held every four years in Fort Worth, Texas, over a gruelling 17 days. As is often the case with such competitions, the judges’ decision has been dissected and contested. The dissections were sharper about this year’s winner because Tsujii, blind since birth, is the first pianist with a visual impairment to win the competition.

Today’s Wall Street Journal’s piece on Tsujii couldn’t resist using his blindness as a departure point for roaming over a number of topics, some of which bear little if no relevance to Tsujii himself. For example, the article’s discussion of blindness and absolute pitch is not directly related to Tsujii in any way - whether he does or does not have absolute pitch is not clear - and overall the piece is focused on the mechanics and logistics of his technique rather than the artistic achievement of his musicianship. To me it reflects a sighted person’s disbelief that a blind person could play the piano at such an elite level.

Nowhere did the Journal mention what was most important to Tsujii about his win, namely the fact that it was the first time Asian musicians took out the top spots of the competition. Japan’s Yomiyuri Shimbun quotes him as saying: “The first and second places were shared by pianists from Japan, China and South Korea, which is very meaningful.” In fact, the emergence of Asian musicians on the world’s concert stages over the past two decades has been a significant development in the history of music performance that has gone largely unremarked, except by the likes of Edward Said and Alex Ross.

Take a deep breath and check out the new Air Piano, a German invention showcased this week at the Berlin Design Festival. Fashion Week Daily nails it as “a piano that Purell addicts will love”. Standing in front of the “keyboard” (welcome to another technology-induced crisis of vocabulary), waving your arms around slightly in front of you, the “performer” looks as though he’s doing the washing up. While the Design Blog valiantly attempts to describe how the technology works - sorry, how to actually play the Air Piano - at the end of scrolling through endless pictures and this YouTube video, I’m still stumped as to why anyone would want to play the instrument. There’s also that pesky pre-requisite of having to understand notated music in order to know where exactly to swing one’s arms above this technological marvel. Unless I’m missing something, which in the realm of new technology is more than likely. Suggestions?

Here’s a great summary on the Associated Press wires of what’s so appealing to so many readers at the moment about romance novels. While the rest of the publishing industry stares at the headlights racing towards it, the sales of romance novels are on the rise. The AP article claims that the novels offer strong heroines overcoming obstacles and finding happiness, which accounts for their current blossoming in sales. Overall sales of fiction (not just romance novels) are up 1%, while travel is down 16% (the economy, stupid) and - somewhat surprisingly, to me at least - mystery/detective fiction has slumped 17%. Self-help has also fallen by 17%. Does that mean that people who bought self-help books also read a lot of crime novels? The demographic profile gets curiouser and curiouser. Maybe it has something to do with an interest in solving puzzles, whether they are shocking crimes or the mystifying complexities of daily life.

Given that more people are buying alcohol and going to the movies at the moment, the spike in buying romance novels is consistent consumer behaviour in a rather cold economic climate. The President of Romance Writers of America, Diane Pershing, says that romance novels offer

rich, complex stories about good people overcoming obstacles to achieve intimacy and an eventual joining of their lives. … Along the way, they have great sex. What’s not to like?

Hard to argue with that. Only, I would prefer it to be non-fiction, at least in my own life.

The amusing and occasionally hilarious Joe Queenan published this essay last week in the New York Times about his fascination with books containing the word “piano” in their title. He finds them almost guaranteed to lift him out of whatever low mood he finds himself in. The essay is a catalogue-in-miniature of recent works in fiction, memoir and non-fiction about the abiding intrigue of the piano. As someone working towards a book in which the piano will figure prominently, this was an encouraging sign - especially in the week leading up to Book Expo America, one of the largest publishing industry gatherings on the planet, which I attended on Friday.

I’m pleased to announce I have a new essay appearing in the latest issue of The Drawbridge, an equally challenging and irreverent “magazine” (presented in a broadsheet newspaper format but with much better stock), whose marvelous cover appears above.

“Horror” is the theme of this issue - previous issues have had themes like “Home” and “Ego” - and my essay is about looking at photographs of bodies; bodies that are misshapen or distorted by injury or disease. I was first prompted to respond to the embarrassing furore over Bill Henson’s photographs of a young girl in Sydney last year, but found I had no valid or differentiating point of entry to that “debate”. Instead I recalled a much more directly personal series of photographs I took of my late husband John, with his permission, and related that experience to how our viewing of other types of disabled bodies is mediated in various ways.

I will post a link as soon as one becomes available, or create a PDF of the piece and publish it on my website when my copy arrives by snail mail.

My latest jazz review: Chris Potter’s Underground at the Jazz Standard - rather late in being published here due to my blog presenting some degree of tech-resistance to my efforts to use it.

While spending hours at a library has always been a slightly romantic idea for this bookish girl, recent excursions to the Brooklyn Public Library have started to tarnish my rose-coloured notion. BPL is a true community that brings together so many different readers, from the little ones on the ground floor opening their first books, to the recently unemployed filling the Job Resource room, to more serious scholars of all ages expanding their horizons and finishing assignments. What the library also seems to attract, however, is a range of hackers, coughers, splutterers, snufflers, throat-clearers and conversationalists - including two high-volume policemen who for some reason were on duty on my floor last week. The other day I had to pack up all my stuff and move to another floor to get away from a young man who didn’t know there was anything other to do with all the phlegm he was creating but to channel it back through the nose and throat whence it came, turning the stomachs of all within hearing range. All except the young man, of course; he was oblivious due to the headphones he was wearing.

Yesterday we were treated to a different sort of throat-clearing over the PA system, an unintentional on-air warm-up by a clearly nervous announcer inviting us to join her at the BPL’s regular reading group, which would be starting in just ten minutes. In a deep voice with a heavy European accent she intoned slowly, “We will be discussing the book Three Cups of Tea.” At which point all the people on my floor looked up from our communal wooden desks and burst out laughing.

Today I stumbled upon this lovely essay in a great aggregator blog called 3QuarksDaily. In The Literature of the Piano, Bryant Urstadt details his current reading tour - what he terms ‘another time-wasting obsession’ - of literature about the piano, prompted by his daughter recently taking up piano lessons. He wanders through some of the piano memoirs that have appeared in recent years, wondering why it is this instrument of all musical instruments that inspires so many literary responses. After reading Perri Knize’s Grand Obsession, “essentially a book about going crazy”, Urstadt notes: “As an author, I am frankly curious to know how she managed to sell a proposal for a book about getting a piano properly tuned.”

My own work on women and piano music creeps forward slowly. I’m currently researching the first piano music concerts in Europe, featuring women and children, which were marketed as freak shows. 

Some days it takes forever to leave the house. I left it about as late as possible on Sunday to get to the last day of Pierre Bonard’s late paintings and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum. And for no good reason either. I felt guilty for racing around the enormous exhibition - representing years of devoted work in the life of an artist - because I had another appointment later in the afternoon. Although I moved through the works with more haste than I would have liked, the strange beauty of Bonnard’s domestic interiors was affecting; they appealed to me much more than his still lives of fruit. As I was leaving, I spotted playwright Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange squeezing into the crowd to catch the show before it closed.

Last week I saw Australian pianist/composer Barney McAll and his band - featuring the fabulous saxophonist Billy Harper - at the Jazz Standard in Gramercy, which is possibly my favourite jazz club in Manhattan. The space is respectful of the musicians, both from the perspective of acoustics and from its “quiet policy” throughout the performance. My review of the gig, which was a CD launch for McAll’s latest release, Flashbacks, appears on this Australian jazz website, home to the Sydney Improvised Music Association.

As of yesterday I am an official card-carrying member of the Brooklyn Public Library. Having lived in the vicinity of the library on and off for the past three years, all I can say is that it’s about time. The sweet woman who prepared my card - my identification was based on my greencard photo ID and the address panel of my latest subscriber’s copy of the New Yorker - told me she was retiring in September. I told her she seemed too youthful to be retiring. That’s when she dropped the news that she was a great-grandmother.

With the last book - the first book - my research requirements were minimal, as I wrote primarily from memory. Memoir is by definition intensely personal. This time, my project is still very personal, but has a broader scope and context, hence the natural and pressing need for research. Women musicians, the history of the piano, the philosophy of music, Jane Austen’s piano-playing heroines, music teachers and the history of the piano lesson. Among a myriad of related topics, these are some of the clusters forming on my sheet of butcher’s paper as I collate the fruit of previous research and focus on a few months of dedicated writing, thinking and reading time.

Last night I caught up with friends for a night out at the Public Theater on Lafayette Street to see Christopher Durang’s new play, Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. The Public contains more than one theater, so we giggled to hear a staff member directing confused audience members to their correct destination: “‘Torture’ this way,” he kept repeating. Between that and the play’s title, I felt I was backstage at a Stephen Colbert rehearsal.

The play is hilarious, although you would not suspect it from a brief plot summary: The central character wakes up to find that overnight she married a complete stranger whose name is Zamir and who is prone to outbursts of mysogynist rage. Then, within minutes of introducing her new husband to her father, the men are threatening to kill each other, while her mother exists in a dazed reverie of what might have been had she pursued a career in the theater. Ben Brantley’s New York Times review celebrates the accelerating absurdity of the humour in the play, which tackles head-on the paranoia and violence of our time. Durang skewers the fears and frustrations of contemporary Western life, while also providing a tribute to the theatre’s ability to represent and console us.

I have to confess I found the last quarter of the play a bit flat - the young Felicity tears down the play’s “fourth wall” and demands that all the characters return to an earlier moment in the play so that all the terrible events that unfold can be prevented. Perhaps this was the best way to dramatise our need to “make nice” all the ghastly events that US foreign policy since 9/11 unleashed; unfortunately it felt more like a cop-out to me.

It’s less than 48 hours since I’ve been back in Brooklyn, so my head is still waiting for my body to catch up. Wait, I think I mean my body is waiting for my head to catch up. My computer tells me it’s five-ish on Monday afternoon, but to me it’s actually tomorrow morning in Sydney. Tonight is my first fiction workshop class, and my main achievement will be to get there on time. Anything more than that I will have to regard as a bonus.

This afternoon I wandered around the homewares department of Target at the vast Atlantic Avenue mall, looking for a few specific items to make my cell - sorry, room - more livable. A desk, I thought, would be a good idea. And something to sit on. As my trolley began to pile up, it occurred to me that home delivery might be a good idea for these bulky items. Delivery would be free, and my only expense would be a tip for the unlucky guy whose job it would be to lug it all to my place. On inquiry, however, I learned that I could only have my goods delivered free - or delivered at all, in fact - if I had purchased them online. Old-fashioned shopping in the old-fashioned shop disqualified me for the service. And so it was that, during an intense mid-afternoon downpour, I found myself in hurried league with a taxi driver from Sierra Leone, who knew the trick of getting the Target trolley out of the store (mere mortals’ trollies get no further than the storefront’s sliding doors), and then my stuff into the enormous trunk of his car. I was so ecstatic about the achievement of securing a taxi in this weather that I didn’t understand what the driver was asking me as we set off in the car. After a few polite attempts I realised he hadn’t a clue where to take me and my stuff.

I’m getting excited about being back in Brooklyn, concentrating on working towards another book. At the moment the book is about women and music, with the piano as its recurring motif. Having been honoured with a New Work grant for this project from the Literature Board of the Australia Council late last year, I’ve been planning a getaway for some dedicated writing time, for some time. I can’t seem to muster the necessary focus in Sydney, although I’ve completed a fair amount of research and have lots of thoughts about possible structure. But an idea is only as good as its implementation, so my main concern is with developing a strong storyline. I’ll be attending a fiction workshop at The Writer’s Studio during the Spring term in the hope that weekly classes will help me with the craft of storytelling, with discipline in a life suddenly free of its usual commitments, and with the professional networking that’s part and parcel of the contemporary world of writing.

Last night Paris-based US expatriate pianist Kirk Lightsey asked his audience at the Sound Lounge when exactly he had last been in Australia. “I don’t know why it’s been so long,” he said. “I LOVE this place!”

Lightsey is currently in Australia on a rare national jazz tour with the wonderful Bernie McGann (tenor saxophone), Brendan Clarke (bass) and Andrew Dickeson (drums). The Australian jazz community hasn’t always been known for its cross-border alliances, so the Artistic Director of the Sydney Improvised Music Association, Peter Rechniewski, must be congratulated on bringing this tour to fruition.

It’s to be expected that such a blended band will stick to the classics; in Lightsey’s case his standards repertoire contains a lot of Bill Evans tunes, but they are always music to my ears. On this occasion I must confess I felt the collective playing got much stronger towards the end of the night, with an extended treatment of Skylark and then a rocking Blue in Green to finish.

I’m not sure exactly how old Lightsey is, but I hope to have half his energy if and when I reach his age. He was up and down at the piano like a kid who’s swallowed too many sweets. Bernie’s undercooked facial expressions are always entertaining; how someone can play an ear-bending solo then shrug off our applause is beyond me. And with an all-too-rare clear line of sight from my seat to the keyboard, I enjoyed watching Lightsey’s fingers flash up and down the new Yamaha. His fingertips almost turn up at times, or so it seems, when he is playing at his most delicate; and then like one of those old Citroens his hands rise higher on the keyboard to power up some unexpected chord voicings or a flight of melodic fancy.

Along with the success of recent tours by Sonny Rollins and by Brad Mehldau and his trio, I am excited to see the resurgence of visits to Australian shores by improvising artists who are the real deal.

Being in-between homes at the moment, one thing I am particularly missing is my broadband internet connection. My laptop has become a pretty prison for all the information it contains, while I must use my hosts’ computer to access webmail using their connection. I could happily live without many of the emails and other notifications I receive, but online is where and how I do my work, so being connected is essential.

How much more global Sydney would be as a city if it had free wireless internet access in its central business district. If I can go into any cafe in my Brooklyn neighbourhood and instantly connect to the internet, but here I need to search Google just to find an out-of-date list of Sydney cafes with wireless access (for which I must pay, by the way), then this city is kidding itself about its sophistication.

I am sitting on a fold-out chair in front of a small rattan chest of drawers that’s doubling as my writing desk, on which my workhorse laptop wobbles. This is what happens when you denude your home of six years of its contents, put almost all of it into storage, and take yet another leap into the Great Unknown. After having lived, loved, lost and survived in this house - and let’s face it, having written an entire book about the process - I am moving on. It’s taken me years to reach this point, yet despite some tears yesterday at the sight of this beautiful shell suddenly empty, I am feeling rather sanguine at the change. After all the publicity for my book last year, I caught a horrible flu and suddenly realised I would eventually turn into Miss Havisham if I continued living under this roof, no matter how much “love and renovation” I had put into all it contained. Visions of dusty lace and darkened candlelit rooms, while melodramatic, swam in front of my eyes and prompted some thinking that led to making this irrevocable change.

The garden was eerily quiet of birds as my mother and I tidied up; the planes even stayed away, mocking my exasperation with them after so many six a.m. wake-up roars overhead.

Cover concepts for the paperback edition of The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement are underway for its release in the second half of 2009. Instead of a house, which so elegantly graced the hardback edition, the paper edition will feature a woman. Today, cleaning the empty house, this change of emphasis struck me as perfectly apt.

That Australian writer Harry Nicolaides is once again a free man is thanks in part to the efforts of many people he will never meet. Influential but largely invisible behind the work of his lawyer Mark Dean, his family in Melbourne, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, were a band of volunteer letter-writers armed with nothing more than the tools of their trade and a passionate belief in freedom of expression. Since Nicolaides’ arrest in August 2008, friends and members of the Melbourne and Sydney chapters of International PEN wrote many letters to Stephen Smith’s department protesting Nicolaides’ arrest, his conviction of lese majeste (defaming or insulting the Thai King, Queen or the heir-apparent) and his imprisonment. Consistently we called for his unconditional release until soon after his sentencing, when Nicolaides’ family instructed us to lobby instead for a royal pardon. There was precedent for a royal pardon for a foreign national, but none for the overturning of a conviction of lese majeste. The Thai King granted the pardon, and Nicolaides flew home to Melbourne to embrace his mother, who recently suffered a severe stroke resulting in a sadly ironic loss of speech.

While we welcome and celebrate Harry Nicolaides’ freedom, the fact remains that it is only because Nicolaides is an Australian citizen that his conviction made headlines in this country.

This sorry episode is a timely reminder of the precarious nature of free speech, and of our obligation as citizens who enjoy its privileges to protest its absence elsewhere. From reading Australian newspapers you would hardly believe it, but currently there are more than 600 writers – journalists, bloggers, poets, and novelists – suffering imprisonment, harassment and detention around the world for writing an opinion or report of which their respective government disapproves.

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