When you get deported on your first honeymoon, but then your second honeymoon goes really well.

 

Hi. It’s been a while. Yep this is me. I’m pregnant! Honeymoon baby. Interesting circumstances but joyous. Sorry for my absence. People mention morning sickness but no one really talks about it until it happens to you. Then mothers ask you meaningfully in hushed voices: How are you feeling? As though they knew, all this time, what it would be like, but never told you. A mass cover-up.

But I’m feeling ok now. And what a year. My intended honeymoon that I wrote about so enthusiastically in my last note just before I left didn’t go to plan. If you want to find out more, I dunno- Google me. Between the distress and disappointment, there were moments of absurdity: like my wedding photos being splashed all over the Daily Mail— a dubious honour usually reserved for B-list celebrities and the Royal Family.

Early pregnancy has slowed me down in being able to address the situation, but I hope to soon.

BARRENJOEY ROAD

I’ve loved working on Barrenjoey Road — the latest podcast from ABC Unravel about the death of an 18-year old girl from Avalon, north of Sydney.

I have felt quite cynical in the past about the ‘young woman dies’ true crime genre of podcasts. Don’t mistake this series for that. It’s a real Sydney story, set in the 70s Northern Beaches surf scene, and draws you into the politics and corruption of the era. All the while, the wonderful host Ruby Jones never loses sight of the humanity of the woman at the centre of the story. It’s been great getting a front seat to the making of this podcast and giving feedback.

SPANISH LOVE STORIES

Just watched movies last weekend at one of the many Australian Spanish-language film festivals and I can’t help noticing how my fellow Aussie Hispanics are revelling in love stories lately.

SBS Spanish just released ‘Caras del Amor‘, a four-part podcast series (in Spanish) all about Spanish-speakers’ experiences of love, migration and more. It manages to weave in a really wide range of people, history and places.

And I was excited to hear about a Spanish-language soap opera (known as telenovelas) set in Western Sydney. It’s called Las Rosas and directed by young Australian- El Salvadorian director Daisy Montalvo. It’s total Spanglish— English and Spanish with subtitles. I’m working my way through it in guilty snatches between work. Watch it here.

I find telenovelas hilarious and wonderful and forgive them things I’d never accept on English-language TV. I need to investigate why. I was looking for a thinkpiece on telenovelas for you but could only find this. If you know of an essay that can fulfil my thinkpiece needs on this topic, please send through.

JESSE COX

Next month it will be a year since we lost Jesse Cox to a rare cancer. He was a brilliant audio maker and builder of storytelling communities. In a essay just published by Sydney Review of Books, writer Sam Twyford Moore asks a question I’ve also often wondered:

“It has more recently been a preoccupation of mine to figure out how ‘creative audio’ fits within literary traditions and genres, and what ‘radio’ or ‘podcasting’ or ‘creative audio’, the kind of work Jesse Cox had excelled at making, means to the literary community.”

I’ve always seen audio documentaries and writing (for the page) as different tools to achieve the same aim. I often sided with radio because I felt the medium of sound illuminated the story in a stronger way— in hearing voice, the story became more truthful somehow, even though we cut up and edit the sentences of others far more than is permissible in text. Writing for radio is also its own art- see this old but wonderful manifesto by founding This American Life producer Nancy Updike on the perils and power of writing to be heard.

Sam’s essay is a generous, thoughtful exploration of Jesse’s work. And in other news on spreading the Jesse love, his wife Que Minh Luu recently donated a beautiful microphone of his to All the Best, the audio storytelling show/community he co-founded years ago. I had a little tag made up to remember the microphone’s origins. Hoping emerging audio producers will be inspired knowing they’re using the equipment of one of the greats!

BLAKWORK, GENESIS, POETRY

Just won Alison Whittaker’s Blakwork in a competition by the Feminist Writers Festival and Magabala Books. (I’m really good at winning books. It’s my only skill). At the tail end of my PhD when all I do is spend time writing and reviewing, the only extracurricular reading I can manage at night is poetry. Novels are an investment in another world— no emotional space left, sorry. Essays give me thinky-pain. But poetry is a quick burst, a shot in the arm. It’s breaking into a short run to wake yourself up. I could go on.

I love Blakwork for its gorgeous, straight up storytelling and the rhythms that jump off the page. You can get it here.

Last month I also performed poetry, at Story-Fest in Sydney. I’d curated an event called Leaving Home, Coming Home, with poems on language, love, history and more. With the help of the Story-Fest team, I found Singaporean poet Deborah Emmanuel, and Alice Springs-based Laurie May to perform alongside me.

Deborah shared a poem called ‘Unidentifiable Object’. It’s about Singapore but reminded me a lot of Sydney. Maybe I’m projecting. Here’s a little sliver of it:

I come from an island of immigrants
came sailing towards an iridescent future,
came beating wings into a sunrise sky,
in Singapore the streets are so shiny
it’s hard to look people in the eyes

That from her latest poetry collection Genesis. It’s a visual poetry collection- images drawn by Deborah herself. It’s quite beautiful.

REPLY NOTES

Dr Morgan Harrington, anthropologist, writes:

“Dear (almost) Dr. Lopez [Ed note: Too kind. Feels a long way off being a doctor],

I thought the following articles might interest you, perhaps even for the next edition of your ‘Notes’. I found the second one particularly provocative.

Hoaxers Slip Breastaurants and Dog-Park Sex Into Journals

Meet the renegades of the intellectual dark web ”

Thank you Morgan! They were both really interesting, and I also found the second article provocative. The photos of these so-called intellectual renegades in moody lighting set amongst leaves and trees were a bit silly though.

Well that was a long note. Making up for lost time. Love to hear your thoughts and reading tips. Write to me at [email protected]. Share this with a friend: they can sign up to receive notes here.