1. “It’s not about me.”
On July 1 in South Australia, new laws come into force which will allow the attorney-general to declare any group of people a criminal gang and prohibit them from associating with each other. If they communicate more than six times within a year, they face 5 years imprisonment. I presented this information to my housemate today, who said, “So? Since when do ordinary people get affected by stuff like this?”
Her nonchalance surprised me. She’d previously become quite heated about other issues in the media – the Bill Henson thing, for instance. I followed up by explaining that the police would also be able to ban the wearing of an insignia in public if they thought it compromised public safety – not beyond reasonable doubt, but on the ‘balance of probability.’
“Yeah, but this is all for bikie gangs who make drugs and stuff,” she said. “Nothing to do with the rest of the population.”
In 1972, ASIO put tabs on Helen Garner. Not for the influence of her writing – Monkey Grip, her first novel, wasn’t published until 1978 – but because she put her name on a phone list for a feminist group. I can’t help but wonder what the implications might have been for the feminist movement if the SA laws had been enacted then.
2. Vertigo.
When I was in Year 11, the first English assignment for first semester was ‘personal’ non-fiction. When asked what she expected from us, Mrs G suggested we write about our family, our friends, our social lives, our plans for the future – that sort of ‘personal’. We had a couple of weeks to complete the essay, but I waited until the last minute to do it. The redundancy of it repelled me. The way I saw it, Mrs G was just trying to get an idea of what she might expect from us without having to go through the rigmarole of actually talking to us. When I finally put words on the page, it was a minor act of rebellion. “I don’t know what you expect me to say,” I wrote. “I could tell you about my family and my friends and what I do on the weekends, but that won’t tell you anything about how I see the world or what I think it means.”
I tried to explain that it wasn’t that these things didn’t have a significance in my life; they just didn’t fit in the category of what I considered ‘personal’, and regardless of what my teacher might have wanted, making those things the focus would be skirting the point. If my teacher had wanted a truly personal piece, I thought, she would ask me to write about the ripples I get up my spine when I hear a major-minor chord cadence, or the colour of C#, or why I read in the dark, or how and when I had my first orgasm, or what I think about on the train, or why I can stomach fingernails down a blackboard but the sound of hot water being poured makes me want to scream. But these subjects aren’t the expected focus of a Year 11 assessment task, nor are you supposed to conclude a VCE English essay with a triumphant “So there.”
There’s this feeling I get when I’ve decided to break the rules a little. I’ve come to identify it as the intersection between frustration, fear, conviction and euphoria. The fear usually manifests itself after the fact: I had strong pangs of doubt after I submitted the aforementioned assignment. The wave of rebellion I rode the previous night in front of my computer seemed tacky in retrospect. I felt like I’d exposed too much of myself and that my arguments were ill-considered.
A couple of days later, as I was waiting for the final bell to ring, Mrs G pulled me aside with a pressed forehead and handed me my essay. There were no comments on it, no marks – no teacher scribble of any kind. “I read this last night,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”
My belly did a backflip.
“I was blown away. There’s nothing I would change in it. It’s wonderful.”
3. The political is personal.
The first writing prize I won came from a story that quite bluntly attacked the pro-life campaign, organised religion, traditional concepts of femininity and, depending on your interpretation, bordered on sympathising with infanticide. The fiction component of my Honours thesis nearly lost me a couple of friends, but won me a scholarship. The ‘personal’ essay wasn’t the first time I’d issued an open challenge to the reader, but it was the first time I can remember where the provoked reaction was solely one of praise. Since then, it seems that the times I’ve walked that line have been the times I’ve produced my best work.
But there is a danger to it. While I think that every piece of art should be considered in isolation from the artist, it is also true that every time I write, I write a piece of myself. My most successful work is also the work I have felt the closest to. As someone who intends to make a living out of the creative arts, I need to walk on edge of what is socially acceptable: to challenge what people think, to push the boundaries, to dive head-first into those grey areas and reflect them back in vivid colour. Those grey areas are parts of me, just as much as they are parts of everyone else. One of hardest things for me to confront lately is that at some point, I might push it too far. At some point it may be my turn to stand up and get thrown around by the storm.
I wonder what people will think of me then.
To point 1. Good lord.
To point 2. I must say I’m jealous. Of your rebellion and of your teacher. Perhaps if I’d had a smattering of both I’d have gone a different path. One that I longed for.
To point 3. Have you ever read Alice Sebold? If not, do so. That is who I imagine your future magnum opus to be written like. Pushing things, pushing personal things, so close to the uncomfortable edge that parts of you will shine through. The true ones will stick around.
1. eh, i’m of much the same mindset as your roommate. perhaps with a touch more indignance.
2. i’m not surprised by either your rebellion or the reaction. envious, but not surprised.
3. you’re on a path to something epic, and leading far beyond the rest of us little people. one day i’ll look back and say “i knew her when” and then likely mention i once made you sing karaoke
yPoint 1 – One can challenge that law as counter to the implied right to political communication as long as the group targeted has some fairly oblique connection to a political cause.
It’s not as if the South Australian government can defend themselves by claiming that if they do not do this it will damage their capacity to function as a government. Well, they can but they’d have to prove that the ‘gang’ provides a not insubstantial threat.
While they have the power to put that through, I doubt that they could target any group other than a a terrorist or criminal group and the terrorist group would have to be a proven danger to the state. If the group is criminal they may yet survive if they can prove that the majority of their activities are political.
Unfortunately as a law at the moment it can’t be challenged as SA have plenary power, I can’t imagine that the law won’t go unchallenged in the courts once its used.
BTW as long as you have any connection to a criticism of the government or some kind of political platform you can challenge the application of that law to your group.
However, I will need get back to you on the rest of the possible challenges to this law.
Point 3 – That’s what makes you better than the average hack and also more likely to be overlooked by those with prejudices.
Organised religion and deep evangelical Christianity are fundamental to my person. I however have and will continue to challenge myself with new ideas. Others will fail to do so.
1. That scares the shit out of me, and not just because it’s a blatant violation of personal rights (or something), but because of what you said about what the authorities might perceive as a “gang.” When I was in middle school a friend of mine told me about how a bunch of her friends got kicked out of the mall for being a “gang.” Note that they weren’t gun-toting, sign-throwing, ho-slinging gang members. Just a group of six or more. At the time it was funny, and it was the mall. But it was also Southern Maine and I sort of wonder what constitutes a “gang” at malls in more urban areas.
2/3. Frig. I wish I was as rebellious as you in high school. The edgiest thing I wrote then was a pair of horror stories that were in retrospect pretty shitty. I’d be interested in reaing this essay. And you know what? Your writing is always ace, so I hope you are submitting manuscripts at least every now and then. It’s impossible to write without exposing ourselves, even unknowingly. And to befriend a writer is to risk becoming a part of their self-exposure. It can piss people off, but it is perhaps worth it.
God broke them all when he made you dear…
Sort of.
Your writing talent is like no other,when i read it,it always makes me wonder..
An ponder…
An then wonder for a little while longer..