| In February or March 1989 I moved to Brisbane from Toowoomba. I'd written and directed Tale of Two Men which had run at the Toowoomba Repertoy Theatre, and as soon as I hit Brisbane I wrote and then directed and performed in Some Obscure Comedy Show - a sketch comedy show that ran at the Metro Arts Theatre. After that I started writing a drama Just Passing Through, however I was also thinking alot about the future of the world and becoming more and more concerned about this - and ended up formulating a novel which I eventually came to call 2045 - after the year in which it was set. The novel was basically a love story set in the future, with a very strong environmental message. The novel became so important to me I finished up Just Passing Through reasonasbly quickly in order to concentrate on it. In July 89 I posted a letter to a literary agent about the book, hoping to get some support from them. I didn't know it at the time but the agency had changed addresses so the letter was returned to me. In the letter I describe the narrative structure and writing style of the book - although I'd writen very little of it at that stage. I call this the first or naive version of the book - and the description from that letter is reproduced below: |
| I
found as I was writing the book I had very little experience to base
the love story on, so I started to base that on a
relationship I had just started having with a girl who was a University
student in Brisbane. I quickly found that the more I based it on
something that was real to me - the more I had to base everything on
that - so it became very emotionally tight for me. By March 1990 I'd done a fair bit writing, and had the detail of the story alot further developed. I got back in touch with the agency - rang them to get their correct address - and wrote to them again describing the book as it was now. This version of the story is alot better developed and I call it the main version. The description in all of it's dot matrix printing glory is reproduced below. |
| I got an acknowledgement letter
from the agency, but I honestly don't recall the final decisions from
them, or even if I got one, but nothing ended up happening with them. By now my relationship with the girl was
over too and I was really starting to drift further and further into my own
little world. I produced and directed an adaption of George Orwell's 1984 at the Cement Box Theatre in June 1990, but was wanting to focus just on writing the book as my main aim in life. Without an income to support just doing that it created a constantly difficult relationship in me between life and what I really wanted to do! The other thing that was going on was that I had always been a spiritual person - believing in God but not really Jesus - and trying to get closer to my spiritual feelings and living a spiritual life was becoming really important to me - almost obsessively - I saw writing the book as what God wanted me to do - and everytihing was based around trying to achieve that. With what to me at the time was a profound romantic relationship now over (and being on the rebound!) ~ as well as the spiritual thing going on - the book changed shape significantly from here on in. It was charting the emotional/relationship course I'd been on - but now also the inner spiritual one as well. It was around here I think that I changed the title to The Kingdom is Within and eventually to just Salvation. I came to see the book's primary purpose as to show someone coming to God within them, and then living that kind of life. The message about the environment and plot elements to do with that were pushed to the back. In February 1992 (or there abouts) I applied for a writers grant through Arts Queensland to work on the book. The application captures really well the novel as I saw it then, in it's third version. I recovered this from an old letterperfect file - and here it is printed out and scanned: |
| The
application was unsuccesful. By that time I had also already booked three slots at
the Cement Box Theatre (where we were to be the company in residence)
to perform 3 plays during 1992. They were to be Play It Again Sam by Woody Allen, an adaption of Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Mark Medoff's Children of a Lesser God. The purpose of this was to earn money so that I could do what God wanted me to do. So we started rehearsing Sam and I soon found I was at cross purposes. I'd headed into it believing I was doing something for what it was, but I soon found I was doing it for what I could get out of it. It might sound like a small difference, but for me who was super focussed on being religiously centred, it was a huge difference. So I soon found my heart wasn't in the production - but I already had the company together and had booked alot of thearte space for the year and was stuck. Ultimately I found the situation untenable and by the second week of the run (it was going to be 5 weeks) I decided to close the production down - purely because I felt I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I felt I was making that decsion for the right reasons - but it was totally wrong. I was being selfish and not thinking of others and all the time and effort they'd put in (it was a profit-share production). The company themselves decided to run the show for a few more nights but closed it at the end of the week. The effect on myself and any inklings of a theatre career I had were devestating - people were quite rightly very angry at me and lost alot of faith in me. It was all compounded by the fact that I only explained my actions in terms of "God doesn't want me to do it". Yes by this stage I was a bit of a nutter! ~ well not really but just someone who didn't communicate, trust or share enough with others. Most people thought the God reasoning was an excuse as the production hadn't been going well, but to me it was the other way round - it hadn't been going well because my heart (and spritiual) disposition wasn't it. I couldn't see that doing something just for others was a valid enough reason. So I eventually moved back to Toowoomba with my tale between my legs, alot of lost friends and a pretty big bill to the UQ Union who ran the theatre and had a lot of booked space they couldn't sell on. The great irony is though it was through this that I found that part of myself that went beyond my religious concept of God ~ and that that was my true self - and from that point on I became an atheist. When I was doing the play I felt I was doing what God wanted me to do (in order to get the money to write the book) - but I realised it was wrong - I found a part of myself that was truer than the concept of God. I came to realise it's the way you are, not the results you achieve, that are more important. So with all of that to think about ( it took a while for the feelings to filter through into I guess a new philosophy or way of expressing things - and most of that I was doing through poetry) - I eventually started to look at the novel again. In order to get closer to the truth of what I was trying to uncover and express I felt it was now necessary to shed the future setting and character names and everything and just write it as an autobiography~ but in narrative prose or novel form. I wrote a huge amount of notes for the original versions of it and started writing notes for the autobiographical version as well - I think I only got as far as writing the first paragraph - which I still really like - this is sitting at Katoomba Point on the Toowoomba Range: |
| The valley spread out before him - soft and blue in it's depth and haze - gently coming to rest as the day let go into night - he could feel it's peace and his heart went out into it all, staring off into the distance.......... ~ what am I supposed to do? - just follow what everyone says? - be another part of this crap world? ~ and he looked away, shaking his head in anger ~ one day they'll understand - then they'll know ~ and he stared intensely off at the mountains in the distance, thoughts soon falling back to his parents again ~ of course I appreciate what they say, it's just.......ohr...... ~ and he sighed, letting out his anger, and catching a glimpse of two currawongs chasing each other over the edge of the mountain and darting through the branches - one called as it swerved to avoid the other and he paused on it for a moment, soon looking to the valley below, and the noise he'd just become aware of - there was a steady stream of traffic heading east towards Brisbane and he followed it till it disappeared into the grey of the horizon, smiling with hope and a suredness = this is where it lay = and he projected his thoughts into it - quickly becoming aware of all that surrounded him = so much had happened but now gone - like your whole life held in the palm of your hand............but that was alright = ~ - best time of my life ~ and he smiled and looked toward the horizon ~ ...........I love you Lord, I'm not going to fail - just all the way.............I love you Lord - no forgiveness, just result .......... ~ and he held in that for a while longer, with his senses slowly coming back to just the mountainside, and the valley before him |
| By bringing
it right down to writing directly about things I was experiencing (even
if just as notes) I eventually found that the more I wrote about these
things, the less I needed to and it all petered out probably around 93
or maybe even 94. The autobiographical version of the novel was nowhere near finished but the process
that made me want to write it had solved itself. By this stage I had
probably near to a thousand hand written foolscap pages - a few hundred
of which had been typed up by my Mum. And to be honest I'd burnt myself out in writing it. Which brings me up to now - April 2010 -- in the intervening years I eventually got back into theatre and then film, had repaired some friendships and had continued thinking about the future of the world - which led to One'n'All, the Brisbane Freecycle Group and ultimately the free-economy.org project. But most importantly I got married and had 4 kids - and have been lovingly brought back down to earth in a way that only 4 children can do to you! I always thought that the relationship a work of art has to it's creator is the most important thing, and how it's creation has helped the artist grow and what it tells us about the artist is more important than what the work of art is like by itself. However probably five years or so ago I came to like the idea of a work of art as a standalone thing in it's own right ~ and to be honest this probably kicked in as my self confidence picked up - I don't need art to validate myself - and the art doesn't need the artist either (even though the two are inseperable). So I've had this nagging thought about the novel coming up every few years in my brain - till it's finally grabbed me too much. So where to from here? As it is now I've got about 85,000 words typed up. The book is in 8 or 9 sections - sections 1 to 3 are typed up, as well as about 80% of section 4. There is the remainder of 4 to type - then there is also all of 5 and 6 - and what appears to be an end section from the third version as well ~ all hand written. Bearing in mind too there is the counter narrative - the little bits set in 1985 about the girl collecting butterflies, as well as the news flashes as well. The first question that springs too mind is - what version to complete it as? To me it's clearly the second as the idea was most well thought out there, and there is the real balance between the love story and the environmental message at that stage. In reading the descriptions of the book at various stages - I really get the third version - I can really understand the passion and feel of where it is about someone striving to live their religous beliefs - and as much as I can be moved by that - I can now see that that was a dangerous way to be back then - it was really out of balance. Now I understand clearly you can be practical but still moral/ethical/spiritual (whatever you want to call it) - but for whatever reason back then I couldn't. It's a position that's almost tantamount to committing suicide, such is the focus on the other world or life -- it really is unhealthy, and I can see that now but not then. So even if I wanted to write that version of it I wouldn't. I also knew back then that in that version the environmnetal bit seemed tacked on at the end, and it just wasn't good. The next question is - how do you write it - as if you were doing it back then, or with the benefit of hindsight? I think the hindsight is unavoidable - but I've got to make the novel consistent and the sections then indistinguishable from now. So apart from the odd new plot element or somethign that might be necessary - the rest of it will hopefully be just like it would have been just back then - cringe factor and all! Now the thing I don't know with all of these sections - even with the earlier typed sections 1-4 - is which is from the second version and which is from the third where it really started to change? I think it might even be a mix - so I've got to identify the point where it changes from one to the other and write on with the new work from there on. But then with the section that is from the existing material that I want - do I edit it? How far should I improve those sections? In some ways it seems rather trite to finish it and I don't think it could ever embody or communicate as much as what the journey of writing it has for me -- but I still feel the urge to do it. Perhaps part of it is ego - for those years where it dominated my life - everyone who knew always asked me how it was going - it was the dominant thing in my life - but you know I really don't feel that's it - it's the theme and story that make me want to do it - and just the beauty of it standing alone in it's own right - finished. So the first thing is reading what I have typed, and assessing where its at and then planning, and writing from there. |