Welcome to the February 2010 edition of ‘Mixtape Monday‘ our last-Monday-of-the month burst of inspiration. This month Simmone Howell, by way of Justine at Mixtape Zine, brings us a great interview with Rachel Power, the author of highly acclaimed book The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood ($41.99).
This is the final in our series of 12 Mixtape Monday posts – stay tuned for a new column coming soon. You can read previous Mixtape Monday posts here.
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Melbourne author Rachel Power’s The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood is about art and motherood and all the weird spaces in between. The book features intefviews with twenty four mother/artists – writers, painters, actors, musicians, dancers – some ‘known’; some unknown, but all grappling twith the same thing – how to nuture your creativity and your children.
I bought The Divided Heart as soon as I heard about it. Motherhood and writing books happended at the same time for me, and since then I have been very occupied with this elusive thing called balance – writing isn’t always considered a job, a child isn’t always considered a job, but I have to have a handle on both if I’m to keep some semblance of sanity. The Divided Heart is a less of a how-to and more of a me-too. I found it engrossing reading and ideal for any parents – artists or not – who aspire to keep some sort of creative space inside them alive and thriving.
When did the idea first come to you – did you think of it as a book first off, or as an article? And then how on earth did you manage to scale it into something reasonable sized? If you could track the conception to production process (time between, any stumbling blocks, eureka moments, that’d be great…)
All I was thinking after I had my first baby was: Someone out there must have the answers! I think I was searching for the secret of how to be a good mother abnd still pursue this all-consuming thing that is writing, or making art of any kind. I started looking around for examples of women who seemed to be magaing to do and be both successfully and and asked if I could interview them. I was thinking perhaps it was an oral history project, maybe an article. It wasn’t until the women I approached for interviews kept saying to me: “Thank God someone is writing about this!” that I thought it might warrant a whole book. For many of them, no-one else had ever acknowledged what a huge dilemma this was for them – how to do justice to both your vocation and your kids – or how much being a mother had changed them as a person, and the impact of that on their work.
It took a good year or more to convince a publisher that there was a sizeable enough market for a book on the subject, though. I got a lot of good feedback on my manuscript – you know ‘important topic’, ‘well written’, but ‘not for us, sorry’. Some wanted me to rewrite it as a memoir. Others were interested in a book written thematically but not as interviews. I wanted the women’s stories to be presented whole and in their own voices. Also, I had already spent four years (in between caring for baby number one, having a second, endless housework, and doing casual work for money) on the book, and couldn’t bear the thought of having to completely rewrite it. ‘Eureka’ moments were scoring an interview with Rachel Griffiths (who responded to my request personally and almost immediately), getting some acknowledgement through an ArtsVic grant and a Varuna Fellowship – and, finally, having publisher Maryann Ballantyne (Black Dog Books) ring me on a Saturday morning, after having previously rejected the manuscript, to say she couldn’t stop thinking about my book and she wanted to publish it.
Who inspired you?
In my immediate life, my partner Alistair, who is defintely my muse. Our minds work very differently, so he constantly forces me to see things in a different way. That’s exciting to be around.
My kids make me want to be a be a better person. Every day they bring out the best and worse. A fellow blogger once wrote that being a parent seems to require superhuman effort on a daily basis, and I agree with that. It take superhuman effort everyday not to fall back on our most lazy and infantile reactions when dealing with children.
Among the many friends that inspire me, I try to emulate those that have created genuine parternships with their partners/ husbands when it comes to caring for their kids. I have never been good at establishing boundaries between me and my children. My dear friend, musician Clare Bowditch, is a great inspiration to me in this way – she is a hugely dedicated mother, but also knows when it’s important to hand over the bottles and walk out the door when the muse, or the gig, demands it.
What are you working on at the moment? Were do you work? (I have an office b/c if I say at home I procrastinate by doing the dishes and cleaning grout off tile etc… ridiculous!)
I have been writing short stories and building up material for a novel. I am also considering another non-fiction project on the ’stay-at-home versus working mother’ debate. Not because I have a strict viewpoint, but because I’m fascinated by where feminism has got us to, and the kind of battleground that motherhood has become (for us Western middle-classers, anyway).
I love the idea of an office away from the house (though currently my writing income doesn’t justify it), but writing for me is all about snatched time. I’m at work (for the Australian Education Union) three days a week, or otherwise home with my four-year-old, so I only write at night, usually after 10 pm. I work in a very cramped study with my back to my partner, who composes music on his computer. I have a constant soundtrack-usually endless repeats of whatever he’s working on, with occasional interruptions of “what do you think of this?” Even if I ask him to put headphones on, I still have to put up with the tap-tap of his fingers on keyboards and his squeaky chair (he’s constantly grooving away in his seat). Bu I like the companionship of having him there/he keeps the room warm.
What do you think about Edna O’Brien’s comment: “I think women who write should not have children, because I think they do their children an injustice.
I think the child would like a happy mother, you know, an extrovert mother and to be a writer it’s necessary to be a brooding person and to be an introvert… I have a favourite story about Grace Metalious author of Peyton Place who was so fired up when she was writing the novel that her kids ate spagetti every night, and never had clean clothes.
There’s another great quote from Nancy Huston on this subject, which I think I mention in the Divided Heart. She says Mothers have to cultivate an optimistic worldview to protect their children and foster home (and as defence for themselves, I would add), while novelists must be prepared to “face ugliness; describe horror; comprehend betrayal and loss”. Mothers are “moral creatures”, she ways, while writers have to suspend moral judgement.
Hmmm, I find this such a huge and compelling subject. Of course I think mothers can be artists. I think it would be a tragic situation if no children were raised by artists – both for the individuals involved and for the art would as a whole. It’s ridiculous to say that all artists are inherently brooding introvers, even if many of us are predisposed this way. And, in fact, having kids can be one of the best ways to get over yourself – and to realise that art does not in fact require you to be as dark of self-obsessed as you might have thought. Besides, who better than mothers to comprehend betrayal and loss-they, perhaps more than anyone, know its true meaning. To become a mother is to learn to live with risk in a way you could never have imagined. That’s a pretty powerful starting point for any work of art.
I support my general feeling is that kids get the parents they get. We all do the best with what we’ve got. If kids are well loved, it’s not going to kill them to live on spaghetti for a few weeks, or even a few months. We are all human – kids and parents. We are all in this together and have a life to lead alongside one another, with as much care for one aother as we can manage. I can tear myself up about the fact that I am often distracted by some creative project, but the fact that I love my kids profoundly, and show them as much. And I talk to them constantly, about what I’m thinking about, about what they’re thinking about … That, to me , is the most important thing.
When you were writing the Divided Heart you took on the role as confessor and confessed to – was that hard to live with?
I have never thought of it that way. Let’s face it, my audience is not that large. But I wanted to write something that other parents could see themselves reflected in. All I did was write honestly about my experience, really. I tend to be like that, anyway – -someone who talks openly ot others – so it didn’t feel like any grand confession. That said, I know there were some readers who found it too heavy-going. The best think about having published the book, though, is the letters I get. I am very happy to hear about other people’s situations and I always write back. I get some wonderful, heartfelt messages from women for whom the book has been a real lifeline – and I couldn’t have hoped for more than that.
What’s your reponse to people who feel there should be a Divided Heart for father/artists? Do you think it’s the same for men – I tend to think that men can close themselves off a lot more – that’s a big-ass generalisation, but I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking it…Any comment??
I’d say “Go for it.” If there is a need, then surely they’ll be a man out there compelled to fill that gap. When men complain about women’s committees and the like, I always think, ‘Well, if you feel the need for a men’s committee, go and organise one.’ Women make these things happen – they aren’t just bestowed.
But I agree with you that women, on the whole, do not compartmentalise their lives as easily as men. Women struggle to remove themselves from their family in a way few men do, I think. Whether that’s biological or cultural I’m not sure – I suspect a bit of both. But, unfortunately, the words mother and guilt just seem to go together. We feel so responsible for our children’s wellbeing. Motherhood is such a state of contradiction – there are days when I feel that motherhood has simultaneously made and destroyed my live. It is a unique burden, but one I am profoundly grateful for.
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This article can be found in issue 11 of Mixtape Zine. You can buy current and back-catalogue issues of Mixtape here (the current issue is limited-edition hard-copy; back-catalogue issues are available in PDF only.)
