Travelling:
When I was fourteen, sitting in the back garden at my parents house in our little town of Tokoroa in New Zealand, I longed for the day when I would be able to travel, see the world, go places. One morning this year I packed my bag for my second European trip in a month, bemoaning the fact that the flight time to Athens was three and half hours, and that having been to Brescia in Northern Italy the month before, and after going to Thessaloniki, I still had an overnight in Milan, an event in Watford, and three days in Frontignan in the South of France before I got to spend another whole four weeks at home in London. Spoilt or what?
So I decided to try and look at this bunch of trips as that fourteen year old might have. Not tired of planes, not cynical about conferences, not even bored with airline food. True, this travelling was NOT getting the fifth Saz Martin book edited -- going to Brescia to perform with an Italian band, to Thessaloniki to speak about British women crime writers, to Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire for a day-long writing and readers event, Milan for a night for another crime panel, Watford for another library, and then Frontignan for the 7th Annual Noir Festival -- none of it was getting my book done. but hopefully it was selling some of the old ones, and maybe it was giving me fodder for other new ones, and when I finally do get to sit at my desk for an few uninterrupted days I'll certainly be keen to be a writer not a traveller for a while. I'm the girl who didn't stay in a hotel until she was 28, the books are the reason I get to go away, the books are the thing I need to get home to write. Thereby making more reasons to go away. It's not a bad circle...
So, to Brescia :
There is an Italian band. Fiamma Fumana. They made contact with me last year through my Italian publishers. They had the idea of me performing with them. In Italian. Apparently they loved Calendar Girl in Italian. Me, reading from Calendar Girl in Italian. Which is a great idea. Except that I didn't speak any Italian, didn't know any Italian. Well, cafe, latte, vino, si.
So ... I had some private lessons from an Italian friend who teaches in London, had a long (and no doubt very boring for him) session with an English-Italian friend who is also an actor and writer and was listening, not just for pronunciation, but also for acting style. And Lauren taped herself reading me the chapters in question. There is something very strange about sitting in your own office, listening and repeating (a la third form language classes) as Lauren Henderson reads your work back to you in Italian! And I worked really hard on this. An hour a day at least for about a month. I realised I was learning Italian as I read my own stuff. Again and again. I learned words I'm fairly sure they don't teach in night classes.
And then I flew to Brescia. To perform, with 'my' band, in a converted church that is the stage for the Brescia Festival di Giallo. I met the girls of the band, Fiamma, Jessica and Medhin (young! all of them too damn young!!) and immediately went to buy new clothes. I met Alberto, who had been my contact and who speaks gratifyingly good English -- the four of them an indie/Italian unrelated Corrs if you like (and I'm sure they wouldn't like!!) … I read through what I was going to read with them and panicked. I was reading for them in a small crowded hotel room. Me and some strangers. They got to save themselves for later. It's an odd status discrepancy when you work with a group of people who normally work together, no matter if they've asked you to join them for a project, you are always outside. Wanting to get it right, wanting to be right … wanting them to like you. To approve. Sigh.
And then there was the waiting to perform, all that teenage thing -- on stage with the band. Fiamma sings upfront, Alberto and Lady Jessica play behind, Medhin to the side with technical stuff that reminds me of nothing more forcefully than when I first learned to light theatre, and fiddling around with tiny old fashioned lighting boards, before all cues were computerised, back when lighting operators were as hands-on as the actors. (Yes, I am a theatrical luddite in some ways, happily so. Computerising lighting cues encourages operators not to feel part of the onstage action, encourages actors -- who truly don't need encouragement! -- to feel like the 'creatives' while other people are 'technical' -- it's not a good divide for anyone. But I digress…)
So then, after too much time of waiting and much too much time wanting to drink and pretend this wasn't happening, I got to perform. In a once-was-church, in Brescia, northern Italy. Reading to/with/around the songs. Upfront with Fiamma. Delighted when Jessica played Italian bagpipes and they sounded astonishing in that venue -- I'd heard the band on cd, liked what I heard, but -- as always -- live is a different thing. Usually a better thing. Fiamma is tiny, her voice is anything but. And they are all so accomplished, moving round their instruments like it's nothing to switch from one to another. Playing with me to play with them. And me trying to work out if I'm Christine McVie to Fiamma's Stevie Nicks or vice versa, when Jessica picks up her pink bass and then of course -- it's Josie and the Pussycats…
We had dinner, drank wine, Alberto talked about what to do next and how to make it better. I was in self-congratulation mode and the band were in improvement discussions. (The essential difference between actors and musicians perhaps??)
So anyway, it was cool. We're going to do some more. I need to learn Italian. This was their work, the band's. For me it was probably way more fun. Teenage dream of in-a-band, combined with what I actually do. I like it. (Doesn't stop my being-the-singer dreams though … perhaps there's a way with Peggy Lee's "Black Coffee" and Italian bagpipes?)
Coda 1: It was Palm Sunday the next day. I asked someone what the phrase is in Italian. She didn't understand me saying 'palm' … so I sang the Jesus Christ Superstar line : "heysanna hosanna sanna sanna hey …". Immediate comprehension. "Si, palme. Domenica della Palme." Andrew Lloyd Webber as translation tool.
Coda 2: I didn't go to church. I do sometimes, especially in good 'foreign' cathedrals, but I'd seen so little of the city, so I walked through and round and up the big hill to the castle. And on the way down I saw a blackbird. I talk to blackbirds. They are my dead Dad. All of them. (It's a long and different story. Another time.) Anyway, just as I'd said hello to this blackbird beside me, an old man walking down the hill in front of me turned and offered me an olive branch. The Italian version of the macrocarpa hedge leaves we had for palms when I was a kid. I figured he was giving me a gift from my Dad. I took it. Thanked him. In Italian.
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