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The Invisible Thread series: Barbara Blackman

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The sun is out, it’s school holidays, and I’ve slowed down a little, which is to say that I’ve neglected these posts. But I’m back today with Barbara Blackman.

I interviewed Barbara in winter, heavy with a flu I couldn’t shift. At her home, I traipsed upstairs and down with Dylan, the camera man, looking for a spot to film. The light in her house was peach-coloured and the walls were full of art. It had the feel of a gallery. For 30 years Barbara was married to painter Charles Blackman, one of Australia’s finest artists, and spotting one of his Alice and Wonderland series hanging above a side table I felt a small thrill.

Barbara Blackman and Irma GoldIn the end we settled on a couch downstairs where Barbara often sits to listen to music. Indeed in our interview she spoke about the importance of music in her life and why she has been dubbed ‘the patron saint of audiences’. Her role as a philanthropist is well known and last year she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in recognition of her support for the arts.

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All about the process

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Filming The Invisible Thread trailerThere’s something deeply thrilling about being on a film set. Perhaps it’s because I’m a writer and used to solitary work, but being in the midst of a collaborative creative process, watching something take shape before you, is fascinating. Even more so, when the work in question is a trailer for a book you just happen to have spent three years labouring over. That’s right, I’m talking about James Hunter’s The Invisible Thread trailer.

I first came to James with some ideas that were deliberately broad in scope. I was looking for a filmmaker with a strong visual aesthetic who would bring a unique vision to the project. He came back to me with a two-page script. It was perfect, and we set about making it happen.

James, his Director of Photography, Michael O’Rourke, and the actor, Chris Delforce, set up in Paperchain after the store closed and worked through to midnight two nights in a row. I was there the first night and I brought along my artistically inclined nine-year-old thinking she’d find the whole experience interesting. She did, but not in the way I’d expected. Faced with unrestricted access to an empty bookshop she immersed herself in books (who wouldn’t, right?). At one point I suggested she come and watch the filming, which she dutifully did for a few minutes, before returning to all those books.

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The post-launch blues

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The Invisible Thread launch3It’s taken me a while to write about The Invisible Thread launch (others have already beaten me to it here and here). Why, you might ask? Well, launches are funny things. You build towards them — in this case for three years — with great anticipation. The event itself zips by, a blur of faces and book signings and congratulations. Usually you eat and drink nothing. You don’t spend more than five minutes with any one person and yet you don’t manage to talk to everyone. And then — suddenly — it’s all over. The End. Of course it’s just the beginning for the book, but the launch is like a line in the sand. It’s the end of a long and involved creative process, of bringing The Invisible Thread into being.

At the launch, artist Victoria Lees gave me a pep talk. ‘Now, you’re going to feel depressed,’ she said. ‘You’ve been working so hard. Just expect it, go with it.’ At least I think that’s what she said. In retrospect those two hours have taken on a dream-like quality. She was right, of course. I’d been madly planning and organising the launch while also doing publicity for the book and finalising the ACT Writers Showcase website. I’d been running on adrenalin for weeks; a crash was inevitable.

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The Invisible Thread series: Peter Stanley

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Quinn's PostOne of the wonderful things about editing The Invisible Thread was discovering writers that I had previously wanted to read but had somehow never got around to. Like historian Peter Stanley. Indeed, reading for this anthology made plain what an incredible bunch of historians Canberra has nurtured. Bill Gammage, Charles Bean, Ken Inglis, Manning Clark, Hank Nelson, Keith Hancock, Humphrey McQueen, Tom Griffiths and, of course, Peter Stanley. They are some of Australia’s best historians, and The Invisible Thread has gems of writing from them all, including an extract from Peter Stanley’s Quinn’s Post.

Quinn’s was the size of a school playground but it was the key to the Gallipoli campaign and hundreds of men died there. When Peter first visited Quinn’s it had a profound effect on him — he describes it as a ‘road to Damascus moment’ — and he immediately decided to abandon the book he was planning to write in favour of a book on Quinn’s. In this interview he told me that the process of writing Quinn’s Post was unlike any other book: ‘This was an extraordinarily easy process…This was a book that seemed to fly.’ He wrote Quinn’s Post very quickly, ‘in a trance’, and I read it in a similar way. I would have read it in one sitting if the necessities of life had not intruded, but the benefit of being forced to stop was that in the spaces between reading — while preparing dinner or doing the washing up — I found myself reflecting on the events and stories Peter reveals.

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