So many strangers are telling me right now that I\u2019m not Australian and that none of my relatives are Australian and\u2026 my mind keeps returning to what this means for the Arts in Australia. Certainly it\u2019s much more difficult for anyone Jewish to earn money in the Arts here: there are some places I won\u2019t even fill in the forms until I see that things have changed. I don\u2019t have much physical capacity and when something is obviously a waste of my time, I do something else with that precious time. However\u2026 it struck me that I see the world through my upbringing. I talk about books from non-Jewish Australia a great deal, but my own view of the world is shaped by my family and their friends and the stories I was told as a child.<\/p>\n
We all see the world from our own eyes. If someone were to ask me how I see the arts in Jewish Australia, I\u2019d only give a partial answer, because there is so much stuff I forget. The first thing I think of, in fact, is what has impacted me and when and why. I thought, this week, then, I\u2019d give you a little list. The list is little but it contains many words, because I annotated it. Welcome to the Arts in Australia seen Jewishly, through my life.<\/p>\n
Let me begin with family and friends.<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s family arrived in Australia before World War II or died in that war (save one person, who is not part of today\u2019s story because he was not an artist, musician or writer). Mum\u2019s immediate family was all here by 1918. It was a big family in Europe and is not the smallest family in Australia. Of all my mother\u2019s cousins there are two who were well-known as writers. Very well-known, in fact.<\/p>\n
Morris Lurie was Naomi\u2019s brother. Naomi was so much a forever part of my life that even now she\u2019s gone, I still think of one of Australia\u2019s better known writers of plays through the fact that his sister was Naomi. Every time Naomi was in Melbourne, she\u2019d shout \u201cSonya,\u201d across the street to my mother, because they were very close. Mum hates loud voices and Naomi thought that Mum hating the noise and the laughter was hilarious.<\/p>\n
I know about Morrie, and I collected his plays when I was a teenager. One of the lesser known facts of Gillian\u2019s life is that, for twenty years, she collected plays. I still have my collection, but most of it needs a new home. I never met Morrie. He wasn\u2019t much into meeting our side of the family. Even if we had met, I suspect we wouldn\u2019t have had a lot in common. Naomi, on the other hand, was someone I would spend any amount of time with. She was my bridge to the Yiddish-speaking side of the family, and is the main reason why I don\u2019t use that in my fiction: it\u2019s her culture, not mine. My cultural self is from my father\u2019s family. Loving Naomi, though, sent me to understand klezmer and Sholom Aleichem and so much else. I need to re-read Morrie\u2019s plays. Maybe now I\u2019m no longer a teenager I\u2019ll like them more. Maybe not. I\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n
Arnold Zable is, as my mother explains, a family connection. His refugee cousin married Mum\u2019s refugee cousin. Arnold is Victoria\u2019s great storyteller. He also wrote an amazing book about the family left behind: Jewels and Ashes.<\/i><\/p>\n
My father\u2019s side of the family is so very musical. One of my father\u2019s best friends was an extraordinarily well-known performer\u2026 but that\u2019s another story. This is one of the days when stories lead to stories and those stories lead to more stories. Between family and friends, I grew up with music the way I grew up with rocks. Science and music and Doctor Who kept our family together for a very long while.<\/p>\n
The most famous musician\/composer\/music critic in the family (she was never just one thing, nor was she a simple person) influenced me a great deal in my youth. Linda was my father\u2019s first cousin, and spent time with me when I was very uncertain of where I fitted and who I was. She accompanied my sister on the piano when that sister was doing more advanced music. She told me some of the stories of her life, but never the really private ones.<\/p>\n
Linda was Linda Phillips She described her own music as \u201clight classics.\u201d We played them on the piano at home\u2026 but never well. Her music was a lot more than \u2018light classics\u2019 as was Linda herself. Her daughter, Bettine, also wore her talents lightly. I knew that she had acted on stage with Barry Humphreys as an undergraduate, but I had no idea that she was a famous radio actor back when radio was the centre of so many people\u2019s entertainment. They were both quiet about their achievements.<\/p>\n
Here I need to explain that, not only were they modest and exceptionally fun to be with, but they were nothing close to my age. Linda was my father\u2019s first cousin, to be sure, but she was born in the nineteenth century: she was sixty years older than me. Linda lived until the twenty-first century, and we lost Bettine to COVID. They were part of an enormous change in the Arts in Australia, beginning with Linda\u2019s early career as a pianist over a century ago. I grew up with this, taking it for granted that there was a life in the Arts and a world and so much enjoyment\u2026 but seldom enough money to live on.<\/p>\n
There is a third family musician, my own first cousin, Jon Snyder. His life is another story. He was in a very popular band (Captain Matchbox) and became a music teacher. His professional life began in the sixties, so the age differences are still there, but not as great. So many of the friends of my schooldays also became musicians, and three of them play in the same band, in Melbourne. That\u2019s another story, however. I am no musician. I had some talent, but words were always more fun and, to be honest, I used to be tone deaf. I love music and the artists who create and perform it, though, because until I left home, it was part of my everyday. In fact, even when I left home, music crept up on me. I kept running into friends of Linda\u2019s. They would send messages to Linda through me. Stories breed stories\u2026<\/p>\n
Also, this stopped being a list almost as early as it began being a list. I\u2019ve only talked about a third of the writing side of the family. But this post is long enough. The rest can wait.<\/p>\n
PS I have not at all forgotten the questions I promised to answer. There are only two questions, but the answers require a lot of thought. My everyday is a bit over the top at the moment. When things calm down, I will answer those questions. I promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So many strangers are telling me right now that I\u2019m not Australian and that none of my relatives are Australian and\u2026 my mind keeps returning to what this means for the Arts in Australia. Certainly it\u2019s much more difficult for anyone Jewish to earn money in the Arts here: there are some places I won\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[626,16,636,56,15,17],"tags":[656,1018,112,70,580,615],"class_list":["post-3882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-essays","category-life","category-life-experiences","category-memoir","category-rants","tag-antisemitism","tag-arts","tag-australia","tag-history","tag-jewish","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3883,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions\/3883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}