Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Ourself behind ourself
There are moments in my life I look back upon in awe and disbelief. Other times, new consciousness allows me to view dimly lit tracts previously incomprehensible and menacing with luminous epiphany. It seems to me that in those moments another woman or girl was acting in my place, withholding my motivations, protecting me from being an accomplice. This shadow actor, the extent of whose influence I am never fully aware, sometimes passes through my peripheral vision, filling me with unease. What ambush might she stage if I do not keep watch? What confession might she murmur while I am asleep?
Spectres of place
In September 1992, bushwalkers carrying out an orienteering activity in Belanglo discovered the remains of two mutilated female corpses covered in leaf litter. This led to a police investigation that was unsuccessful. When the investigation was closed leaving the victims still unidentified, Bruce began spending some of his time in the forest looking for evidence that might help solve the mystery. He knew the forest well from collecting firewood there to fuel his kiln and had an extensive collection of maps showing the fire and walking trails that covered the whole area.
Inside the dark tower
Thinking of what is gone, I pause on the bridge and look back. The windows and sleek curvature of Woodside Karlak now give the impression of smooth scales, sliding upwards towards the encroaching night. It is hard not to appreciate elements of the architecture, even when you know what is being sacrificed as a consequence of the decisions that take place behind the darkened glass of the great tower.
A discovery of witches
Unlike the patriarchal and monotheistic Abrahamic religions, paganism is structurally non-hierarchical – although covens (groups or meetings of witches) tend to be nominally led by a high priestess and high priest – and, in the words of influential English Wiccan Vivianne Crowley, pagans ‘worship the personification of the female and male principles, the Goddess and the God, recognising that all forms of the Goddess are aspects of the one Goddess and all Gods are aspects of the one God’. There is no holy book, messiah or central administration, and its ethos is fundamentally exultant – celebratory of the body, nature and the divine.
To clarify a common misconception: most pagans neither believe in nor worship Satan, a figure rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions rather than nature-based spiritual paths. The conflation of pagans with ‘devil-worshippers’ dates to the twelfth century and is a product of the Catholic Church’s campaign to quite literally demonise the horned, cloven-hoofed gods – Pan, Herne, Cernunnos and others – central to the pre-Christian spiritualities the Church was intent on suppressing.
The witch trials of the early modern period, where accusations of devil worship were frequently levelled against those, usually women, who practised folk magic, herbalism or traditional healing (or, in many cases, had simply drawn the ire of a relative or neighbour), reinforced the association between nature-based religion and Satanism. As the historian Ronald Hutton observes in The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (2017),the standard scholarly definition of ‘witch’ has come to denote, in the words of anthropologist Rodney Needham, ‘someone who causes harm to others by mystical means’.
Meatspace
IN THE EARLY stages of a relationship, I suppose there’s always a tension between how much to withhold and how much to disclose. An incremental filling in of history. I was in the unusual position of only having so much control over this process, namely because I’d published an account of my long history of mental illness, its contents accessible to anyone who knew my name. Laid out in granular detail: an account of my self-destructive compulsions; my regular descent into trance-like episodes that could keep me captive for hours on end; my capacity to keep secrets; my many-sided shame. All my monsters, so to speak, there on the page.
The whole idea of dating terrified me in part because of what my body, on closer inspection, revealed about me. You didn’t need to be that far along into getting to know someone before they held your hand, or stroked your hair, but I found both of these prospects terrifying. My fingernails were mutilated; my hair was meticulously arranged to hide the fact I’d torn most of it out.
How to begin to explain what I’d done?
Agony aunty
Michelle always stank of stale cigarettes because back then you could smoke inside the casino. She always looked tired and her skin was almost translucent from being indoors all night and sleeping most days, but I thought she was glamourous. Vampiric, even.
I was never properly introduced to her. I was only told to call her aunty, that she was a friend of my mother’s and to do what she said.
Maiden, mother, monster
My son worries that a monster will come at night. This is a new concern of his, and I try not to connect it to his father’s absence. As I tuck him in, I tell him not to worry because the truth is monsters are very scared of mothers and won’t come anywhere near me. I’m too terrifying, I tell him, making him laugh. And cats too, I add, as ours curls at the foot of the bed, watching us. My son closes his eyes.
Grave years and the undead woman
MANY A MOTHER has found herself at the mercy of this false opposition between her needs (which are cast as selfish wants) and the countless supposed needs of her child. And whenever she falls short – gives in to anger or frustration or impatience, or the more convenient but ‘wrong’ way of doing things – she undergoes a transformation: Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. Her fangs protrude, her nails lengthen. Clutched to her breast is a child she is harming, a child not rightfully hers.
Instructions for killing monsters
I do know this: Never in the history of the world has any monster been defeated with fear. (Literally, never. I checked.) Ultimately, the only shields against the powers of destruction, death and evil are the qualities that come under the banner of love, which is the bright day to fear’s night.
A half-century of hatchet jobs
Authors and publishers worry that bad reviews kill sales. I’ve seen no evidence that this is the case, but plenty that bad reviews distress and demoralise their subjects. Many people who care about literature endow criticism, and especially negative reviews, with magical powers. They hold dear the fantasy that if critics did a better job, if they were braver soldiers, the profound structural problems that bedevil Australian literature – books rushed to press, low pay, policy indifference, plummeting reading rates, crisis in higher education, not to mention the racism and the classism – might somehow disappear. A cracking review ennobles its subject with attention and consideration, but I’ve never seen one earn an author a higher advance on their next book or buy them more time for revision, let alone shift the federal arts budget.
Resisting the ‘Content Mindset’
Artists’ dedication to their practice has long been glamourised as the ‘struggling artist’ trope, trivialising the mental and physical labour of creative work. Their flexibility has been co-opted into the ‘portfolio career’, normalising all professional engagements that lack secure tenure, not just creative roles. Their agility in working cross-discipline and cross-platform has vindicated the expedience of a ‘content-first’ approach. Their precariousness has been hyped as the ‘gig economy’, standardising working conditions that lack basic entitlements. Their intellectual property has been stolen to feed or ‘train’ generative AI programs, making IP theft widely acceptable. (You’ve got to hand it to the Content Mindset’s PR guys: rebranding industrial-scale IP theft as ‘training’ for ‘artificial intelligence’ is right up there with rebranding creationism as ‘intelligent design’.) Artists’ venturous thinking is widely dismissed as ‘fringe’, depoliticising its impact. Time and again, artists’ commitments to their ethics and responsibility to their communities have been co-opted as ‘culture war’ tools, dumbing down the public debate to reinforce hegemonies. And of course, their works have been belittled as mere ‘content’, undermining their expertise.
Negotiating cultural heritage
Understanding how culture is integrated into a sense of self is challenging. What do we even inherit from the cultures of our ancestors? We may be able to accept, quite readily, that we are shaped by our cultures in all kinds of conscious and unconscious ways – that we inherit traits, practices, beliefs and stories – but it’s impossible to determine precisely how cultural heritage impacts not just any given person but also the stories they tell (assuming these are different things) in the past and in the present. In one sense, all stories, at the level of both form and content, are embedded within cultures – but since cultures are unstable and change over time, what is it that a writer might inherit?
