Balancing Words And Images
David Herkt on why Covid-19 has made Lloyd Jones’ new book all the more timely
Sometimes, writers, artists and their publishers are the antennae of humanity. It is as if they have sensed the future, years or months in advance. Our best creative minds are often those who manage the longest lead-in time. Covid-19 has had a dramatic impact on publishing schedules. Many books were written for a totally different world; their relevance to the post-virus environment has become tenuous. Some have lost their audience and will never regain it. Startlingly, there are others, already scheduled, that find themselves with a new importance.
High Wire, by well-known Booker finalist Lloyd Jones and award-winning painter Euan Macleod, is just such a book, providing a means of comprehending the present situation and possible futures. It is the first of Massey University Press’ collaborations between writers and artists, the k rero series — “picture books written and made for grown-ups” and priced for the pocket.
“I am interested in artists’ books — not books on artists, not books on art — but artists’ books. Books that attempt to bridge art forms. And that is what is driving this venture,” says Jones, who conceptualised the series.
High Wire was written, illustrated and scheduled long before the advent of Covid-19. Yet the book’s themes are astonishing in their significance to a changed world.
It is not only immediately pertinent to pandemic life but it will undoubtedly become an enduring book of this era.
“Tonally, it’s meditative, slightly dreamy,” says Jones. “It is kind of digressive.”
High Wire is sometimes anecdotal, with impressions and stories from Jones’ childhood. Elsewhere it explores great achievements like that of Philippe Petit, “the most daring tightrope walker the world has known”, who walked and danced on a tightrope between theworld Trade Centre’s Twin Towers in New York in 1974.
It can also be read as a fable or a meditation on transtasman distances, especially relevant to a world where international travel has been curtailed for the foreseeable future.
There is another element in this collaborative process and that’s the reader. You read your own story into the text. Lloyd Jones
Jones is one of New Zealand’s most prominent authors. In 2007, his novel Mr Pip won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana Medal. Macleod is a New Zealand-born painter, permanently resident in Australia, where he has been awarded the prestigious Archibald Prize. High Wire is a true collaboration, where each of the parties are given equal roles.
“Euan would send me a drawing or a sketch — a back-of-the-envelope sketch,” Jones says, “and they would sometimes prompt me or give me a wee jolt. Giving me something to respond to, I suppose. Then I would send him some text and he would respond to that. Our initial point was ‘bridges’.”
In an era of compulsory isolation and lockdowns, where whole economies are in freefall, and where social cohesion is poised on an abyss-edge, no more hopeful metaphor than a bridge could be imagined.
“But then the idea shifted to ‘high wire’,” Jones continues. “High wire being that stage where artists actually execute their art and you have to take the risk … You have to risk failure, and it is a funny little balancing act.”
“On a more literal level, the book’s narrator is walking on a high wire from the south coast of Wellington to Sydney. And that is a means of thinking about all those people who migrated to Sydney, my generation, in the 1980s.”
High Wire is a book whose structure and content reflects the process of its creation. “They say that four people singing together creates a fifth voice,” says Jones, “and you are kind of hoping that you get it right … There is another element in this collaborative process and that’s the reader. You read your own story into the text.”
Initiating a such series of books for Massey University Press meant that Jones had to have “a proof of concept”.
“First of all,” he says, “I thought I’d better demonstrate what I mean by an artist’s book. And, quite independently of Euan, I had begun to think about bridges. The story about the bridge in my childhood, crossing that bridge to Naenae — that was the first sensation of leaving behind the detail of my life, the grounded detail of my life, the first step of transcending place.
“I wouldn’t have known how to explain it at the time. It just felt thrilling, without knowing why it was thrilling. And so that was the initial place of exploration. Then it shifted from the notion of ‘bridges’ to ‘high wire’.”
Macleod’s bold paintings and drawings, sometimes full double-page, are powerful graphic expressions of daring and vertigo. High wire walkers are suspended over dizzy space. Insubstantial rickety bridges swing above an abyss. A wire stretches between the Twin Towers.
Whereas Jones is a measured speaker, focusing on his words and trying to find the precise meaning he seeks, Macleod, talking from his studio near Sydney’s Parramatta Rd, is more ebullient. He was part of the generation that left New Zealand for overseas in the 1970s. Covid-19 has forced him to consider his relationship with his home country.
“I think people have been thinking about coming back lately — that return, and what New Zealand means to you. Where is home? And it is weird, what are you? Are you a New Zealander or are you an Australian?”
Macleod’s thoughts mirror the fundamental concerns of High Wire perfectly. The collaboration, however, was not a prescription. The process needed to be discovered in a handson way.
“I think the book would have been a failure if it seemed I had just illustrated Lloyd’s story, or he had written about my illustrations.” Macleod comments. “I think that is really what we both didn’t want to do.”
“Lloyd is a pretty determined guy and he knows what he wants. In a way it was hard for me because I had to pull back from that — but not deny it, because his help was critical.
“The nature of a lot of the sketches for instance,” he continues. “I had intended them to be little doodles to say this is what I am thinking. He said “Well, that’s all you need. We’ll keep the thought.” And he’s tried to do that with his writing too.
“It was a bit of a leap of faith for me, too, because I’d never shown those sorts of drawings before. No one ever really sees them. They are kind of my starting point for paintings and things.
“So, I had to think, what was I adding to those drawings. Was I just polishing the turd? ‘Are you just decorating the paint?’ It’s there! It’s done! It doesn’t need the elaboration. In fact, the elaboration just feels contrived.
“It was a really lovely thing that came out of it for me.”
High Wire will be followed by four other collaborations. Writer Paula Morris is to be matched with photographer Haru Sameshima. Poet Bill Manhire will be paired with painter Saskia Leek. The artist, John Reynolds and the poet Courtney Sina Meredith will share another volume.
“Some of the combinations, I am genuinely excited to see what they come up with,” says Jones. “They are all very different; the participants have all been chosen with an eye so we are not just rolling out some sort of sameness or some sort of repetitive technique here.”
In a world where all hopes have suddenly been pitted against a frequently overwhelming reality, High Wire is an experiential book for the times. It captures the moment in an uncanny and enduring way.