Beats

In my WIP, Preludes for an Ending, there is a motif threaded throughout that attends to the changing state of one of the manmade lakes adjacent to where I live in the Taungurung lands of the High Country, Lake Nillahcootie. We drive past it most Saturdays on our way to Benalla, and I have never stopped being enchanted by its mercurial landscapes. Every week, as a passenger, I would take my laptop and be ready to write a fragment on how the lake looked that day, so as not to lose it—making it an integral part of the fabric of my narrative. One of the main themes in Preludes for an Ending is concerned with the magical thinking inherent in people (politicians, mainstream media, and on social media) who act as though catastrophic climate change is not a real thing, or not something we need to worry about. I spent a year and a half noticing instances of global climate crisis as reported in my daily news reading, and noting them in the section of my MS marked ‘climate composition notes’. Then I wove these notes throughout the weft and weave of the fabric of my other grief writing, along with my notes on Roland Barthes’ meditations on his grief for his mother.