blog 16: In which I speak out of school

Posted on June 26, 2011 by mgbauer

A previous blog concerning Infrequently Asked Questions included this one:

QUESTION 7. From a teacher as we make our way through a school playground narrowly avoiding riots and food fights.

Teacher: Michael do you ever miss full-time teaching?
Me: Would it be rude and insensitive if I just laughed hysterically about now?

———————————————————————-

I’d just like to make it clear that the above response was more about how happy and how blessed I feel now, for being given the chance to be a fulltime writer, rather than a criticism of the teaching profession.

I love teachers. They are probably my favourite people – along with librarians and children’s authors and illustrators. 

The vast majority of teachers are remarkable and inspiring. And they are paid less than half of what they are worth in my opinion. I have taught with amazing people who I can say without exaggeration were doing the equivalent of three normal fulltime jobs. I felt very proud the day I graduated and was able to say I was a high school teacher. It is a noble and important profession.

Teaching has also given me some of the best days of my life and many of my most treasured memories and dearest friends. But as the song says, ‘Some days are diamond. Some days are stone.’ And some days even make stone seem appealing. I guess like any teacher worth his or her salt, I had my fair share of ‘hard’ teaching days.

Many mornings I remember waking up and absolutely dreading the day ahead and having to fight to convince myself to face up to it. Sometimes I failed. 

These days, I don’t think I could survive a year of fulltime teaching. Maybe not even a Semester. I’m spoilt by the school visits I do as an author. I even have the hide to refer to them as ‘work’. I’ve gotten soft and I know it. I don’t have the stamina anymore to teach fulltime. Or the dedication. Or the courage.

I wouldn’t go back to it, but I wouldn’t have missed my teaching experience for the world. I may have found it a tough, hard slog at times, but magic happens in schools.

On top of Ayres Rock with girls from Mt St Michaels College Ashgrove

Here’s just one example of many from my experience:

Back when I was still trying to write my first novel I took a semester full-time teaching contract at an all girls’ school in Brisbane. Along with other classes I had two Grade 8 English groups. I loved them. At one point we were doing Oral Presentations.

There was a girl in one of the classes who hated speaking in front of people. It terrified her. Let’s call her Susan. She was very shy and sat by herself. She didn’t seem to have any close friends. I tried to help her as much as I could with the preparation for her speech and to build up her confidence but when the day came for her turn she was petrified.

Susan made her way to the front of the class with her notes trembling in her hands. She didn’t look up once. Any words she manged to squeeze out were so quiet and shaky you could hardly hear them. As she stumbled her way agonizingly through her speech she unconsciously shuffled back from the class until she had literally hidden part of herself behind a curtain.

Then, when she lost her place, it all got too much and she just broke down and cried.

It was heart-breaking to watch, particularly for someone like me who, like Susan, hated public speaking when I was at school.

Of course I did my best to comfort and reassure her. I told her to forget about it, that it didn’t matter and that she could have another go the next morning.

When I headed off to that English class the next day I was dreading a repeat performance and I was wracking my brain to come up with ways to help Susan get through her ordeal.

I needn’t have worried. There were others who had it all under control.

Before I got to the room I was ambushed by three girls from Susan’s class. They had bought one of those monster ‘Good Luck’ cards and they’d gone around before school and got everyone in the class to sign it and write Susan a message of encouragement and support. I was the last one. They wanted to present the card to Susan before she made her second attempt at speaking.

So that’s what they did and lots of the girls came up and gave Susan a hug as well. Susan cried. Happy tears this time.

How do kids get to be that beautiful? That’s a question I’ve asked myself many times as teacher and again these days as a regular visitor to schools.

Armed with the love and support of her classmates, Susan made it through her presentation.

I gave her a D+.

I know that sounds terribly cruel, but had I graded her honestly according to the criteria on the marking sheet, both that letter and the degree would have been even lower.

I don’t think it mattered anyway.

Of the two items – my assessment sheet and that Good Luck card – I’m fairly certain I know which one Susan has kept and treasured more than gold to this day and which one she would have tossed aside and forgotten long ago.

Magic happens in schools.

Cheers
Michael

ps In a future blog I’ll give an another example of magic in schools just to show that boys can be equally as beautiful.

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blog 15: In which I talk about the things we say

Posted on June 21, 2011 by mgbauer

When we were young if ever my brother and sisters and I asked for something that our mother Elsie considered ‘over the top’ she would chastise us by saying, “You want portholes in your coffin!”

For example:

“Mum can I have a some stale crust to go with my bowl of steam?”
“You want portholes in your coffin!”

“Mum will you buy me a piece of string for my birthday?”
“You want portholes in your coffin!”

My mother had quite a few of these stock responses.

If she was finding us particularly galling and annoying she would hit us with one or other of these two dire warnings, “You’ll be laughing on the other side of your faces soon!” or “Someday the shoe will be on the other foot!”

At least she did, until the glorious day arrived when she got so angry and flustered that she came out with, “You’ll be laughing on the other side of your foot one day!” This of course resulted in much hilarity and Mum was never able to use either expression again without someone quoting her mistake back at her.

For me, mum’s most irritating stock response was the one she often gave when you asked her a question.

“Mum why can’t I stay up and watch The Twilight Zone?”
“Because Y is a crooked letter and you can never make it straight.”

“Mum in a triangle, why is the square on the hypotenuse equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides?”
“Because Y is a crooked letter and you can never make it straight.”

“Mum why do bad things happen to good people?”
“Because Y is a crooked letter and you can never make it straight.”

Thanks Mum. I just knew there had to be a perfectly logical explanation for all those mysteries!

Sadly I tried to apply my Mother’s wisdom in a Science exam at school one day.

QUESTION 12. Why do different liquids have different boiling points?
ANSWER: Well I’m not sure on all the specific scientific theory behind it but according to my mother it’s because Y is a crooked letter and you can never make it straight.

(Here’s a tip to any students out there – you get no reward for attempting to be funny in a Science exam.)

My mother actually had quite an arsenal of responses especially designed for deflecting questions.

“Mum what are you making?”
“A wig-wam for a goose’s bridle.”
“Really? Looks just like a cake.”

“Mum why do girls have different bits to boys?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”

Of course with my mother being such a tremendous font of information and my father only being around at Christmas, it’s little wonder I grew up knowing next to nothing.

These days Adrie and I also have our own stock responses.

For example if one of us has been away – perhaps at work or down to the shop or maybe even just in the next room – and we return, the other one will invariably say, “So, you came crawling back then?”

I don’t know how or why this started, but there is some strange satisfaction to be derived from  sneering at your partner when they return from the toilet and declaring self-righteously, “Hah! So you came crawling back then!” Try it. I highly recommend it.

Some of our stock responses come from movies and TV.

For example if I were to tell Adrie that I love her, then 9 times out of 10 her reply would be, “And I tolerate you.” This is just one of dozens of lines that are often repeated at our house from the hilarious Lano and Woodley TV series.

Oh and just in case you’re interested Adrie’s 10th response to my declaration of love usually is, “Of course you do. I’m adorable! (And Dimity if you’re reading this, she is not funny and she should not be encouraged.)

I get my own back by quoting a Lloyd Bridges line from Flying High.

Ard: Mike, don’t you think you should give the lawn a mow?
Me: No. That just what they’d expect me to do!

But there was one particular line Ard and I always used to look forward to quoting.

It came from a children’s picture book called Bruno’s Band. The book was a family favourite. (Which is really saying something because the main character is a cat and Ard and I aren’t exactly cat people. Sorry cat people.)

Anyway in the story Bruno the cat lives with a family who run a cafe. But Bruno longs to see the world and experience another kind of life. So he heads off and has adventures and meets fellow travellers and fellow musicians along the way (if I remember rightly Bruno plays the fiddle) and they form a band  out on the road. Then, when Bruno eventually tires of travelling he returns home with his new friends only to realise that this is where he should be. The final image is of Bruno and his band playing in the cafe with people laughing and sharing good food and good cheer around him.

The story ends with: “This is the life,” said Bruno. “There is no better life than this.”

Back when Ard and I were both teachers, and it was finally December and the stress and busy-ness of another hectic school year was over at last, we would smile and quote those lines to each other. Often at the time, we would be lazing with the kids  in a resort pool somewhere on the Gold or Sunshine Coast with the Christmas holidays stretching out before us.

Sometimes like Bruno, it pays to sit back and think about what you’ve got and the good things in your life. I know that whenever I do, I feel very fortunate indeed.

Of course if I could have portholes in my coffin, then everything would be perfect!

Cheers
Michael

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blog 14: In which I try to prove that a thousand words is worth a picture.

Posted on June 17, 2011 by mgbauer

Do you enjoy having your photo taken? You know, I don’t much care for it myself.

For example, here’s what happened the day a photographer came to my house to take my first ever ‘author photo’.

It all came about because The Running Man had just been shortlisted for an award and a photographer was sent to take a picture to accompany an article about it for the weekend paper.

I thought a lot about what I should wear. I still felt like a teacher, but I wanted to look more like a writer. But what do writers look like? Eventually I just decided to wear jeans and then I tried on every shirt I owned to go with them, before settling on one that I thought had a certain ‘writerly’ quality to it.

When the photographer arrived, we introduced ourselves – I was Michael, he was Gordan but, ‘Hey, call me Gordy’.

Gordy took one look at me and said,’ “Have you got another shirt you can wear, mate. You’re up for a big award thing aren’t you? I think we should make you look more like a writer.”

‘I thought I was a writer,’ I mumbled to myself as I changed into a plain black t-shirt.

“How about this?” I asked, showing him my new attire.

“Yeah … that’s a bit more like it,’ Gordy said still not sounding entirely convinced. “But it would be good if you looked more ‘arty’ if you know what I mean?” 

I wasn’t sure I did. And anyway, maybe my idea of arty and Gordy’s was entirely different?

“I know,” he said, “have you got a leather jacket you could throw over the top of that t-shirt?”

“Sorry,” I said feeling like I’d just flunked Introduction to Arty 101. Then I noticed that Gordy himself was in fact wearing a leather jacket and looking slightly arty in a Hell’s Angels sort of a way.

“Can I borrow yours?”

Problem solved.

I slipped on Gordy’s jacket (which was way too big for me but good enough) and we set out on our quest to find an ‘arty’ location for the sitting. As we passed by a big mirror in the dining room I caught a glimpse of myself bedecked in jeans, black t-shirt and leather jacket. I half expected to hear the theme from Happy Days start to play. I fantasized briefly about clicking my fingers and being surrounding by a bevy of girls in bobby-socks. Heeeeeeeeey!

“What’s that?”

“Oh … nothing …”

Our first photo session took place in the lounge room.

The advent of Digital cameras has dramatically improved the life of the photographer – but it has its downsides as far as I’m concerned. In the past they’d take their precious roll or two of photos, then they’d go away and develop them in order to discover how they turned out.

Not any more. Gordy could fire off as many shots as he wanted with reckless abandon and he could check them, there and then, on the spot, right in front of me. I watched him do this a number of times. On each occasion a wave of disappointment washed across his face.

“Something wrong?” I finally asked.

“No,” Gordy replied without taking his disappointed eyes off the images that clicked across the viewfinder. “It’s just … ummm … the light.’

I took Gordy’s word for it that day, but having been through this same thing a number of times since, I now know that the expression, “It’s the light,” is just photographer-speak for, “How am I expected to take a decent photo when you look like that!” or something similar involving the expressions “silk purse” and “sow’s ear”.

Anyway, Gordy decided that inside the house wasn’t working and what we really needed was another location.

“Better light outside,” I suggested cheerfully.

“What? Light? … Oh yeah … better light … yeah sure.”

I regarded Gordy suspiciously.

Outside we tried everywhere (in front of the lattice work, down in our jungle of a backyard, in the carport, on the steps) because now Gordy reckoned we needed something ‘earthy’ as well as ‘arty’.

And then, just when all seemed lost, we found it. The perfect location – beside our two big wheelie bins next to the old broken down section of asbestos fence.

“Just don’t breathe in too much,” Gordy joked.

I forced a smile, but I obediently sat down on the cement path with the corrugated pattern of the arty toxic fence at my back and the decidedly earthy garbage bins beside me. Gordy squatted down in front of me. He was uncomfortably close.

“All right, now just relax and be natural,” Gordy said before adding, “And look like a writer.”

I relaxed and smiled.

“Don’t smile,” he said as he peered over the top of his camera.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I thought, “What would a writer do in this situation?” I desperately thought of all the photos of writers I’d seen. Then I had it. Of course! ‘The look’! I’ll give him ‘The literary genius look’!

And so I did. I fixed Gordy with an author’s gaze and a look that said unequivocally, “I am a writer and none of you out there could possibly comprehend the incredibly deep and meaningful things I have lurking in my brain.”

Surprisingly it seemed to work. Gordy started clicking away furiously as he sat on his backside on the path in front of me. Then he started bottoming his way even closer.

Eventually he was so close that our legs were overlapping. One of his legs was perched with dangerous intimacy between mine. And it was precisely at this point, that my wife came out the side-door to put some rubbish in the bins.

She stopped in her tracks. A garbage bag hung from her hand. She looked at me. She looked at Gordy. She noted our legs entwined together. She spoke.

“You promised you’d never cheat on me,” she said.

She considered this mightily hilarious.

While Gordy and I smiled a little sheepishly, my wife leant over both of us and emptied the bag into the garbage, managing at the same time to drop an onion ring on me. A prophet is never known in his own country.

When my wife had left, Gordy didn’t even bother to check the last batch of photos. He just looked at me and said, “Well I’d say that’d just about do it. I reckon we’ve got the shot we want in there somewhere!”

And then he was off.

When the weekend came I searched eagerly through the Arts section of Saturday’s paper. And there it was – my article. It wasn’t bad. It said some nice things about me and the book and the award.

Oh, and the photo? The photo that Gordy had put all his heart and soul and creativity into? The photo that we both risked asbestos poisoning and public humiliation to capture? That photo?

Well that photo was literally the size of a postage stamp. Not only that, but it had been cropped so severely that you couldn’t see any of the arty fence or any of the earthy garbage bins, and little or nothing of my extremely writerly black t-shirt or borrowed leather jacket.

In fact all you could basically see, was my face … my face which had ‘the look’ plastered all over it. The look that said unequivocally :

“I’m a writer and none of you out there could possibly comprehend how incredibly constipated I am right now.”

Do you enjoy having your photograph taken?

I don’t much care for it myself.

Cheers
Michael

If you see this man, approach with extreme caution.

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blog 13: In which I trace the highlights of my stellar musical career

Posted on June 10, 2011 by mgbauer

Shintaro - The Samurai

 

After my childhood dreams of being a Samurai like Shintaro or a Ninja like Tombie the Mist faded, my next dream was to become a singer-songwriter – just someone like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Paul Simon or James Taylor would have been great. 

My chances were slim however as I was unfairly handicapped by a lack of confidence and an even greater lack of talent. 

Over the years though I’ve enjoyed playing songs with various guitar buddies  starting with my older brother Rob, then my cousin and best friend Steve, then my friend Greg (who took over from Steve in the best friend department at Uni) and his younger brother Bernie, and finally my son Joe (who is a much better guitar player and singer than I will ever be). 

My guitar buddies and I mainly played and sang by ourselves or to small gatherings of family and friends. 

To the best of my recollection (there might be some moments during the 70s that escape me) I’ve only performed more publicly on three occasions during my entire life. 

A good tip for the would-be performer is to restrict your audiences to people who are incapable of heckling you.

 

Number one was when I was a young Teacher at my very first school – Mount St Michael’s College at Ashgrove. It was a girls’ school and a few times I played and sang for the year 12s. I usually played alongside one of the senior students. She was much better than me. My most requested song as I recall was Hurricane by Bob Dylan. The senior girl did a great version of Needle and the Damage Done by Neil Young. I always thought she was something special. This is part of what I wrote about her in my diary at the time. 

Amid the plastic faces,
cardboard lives and paper dreams
There are still jewels,
it seems. 

I was right. Her name was Mary-Rose MacColl. You might know of her. She went on to be a journalist and writer. Her first novel, No Safe Place, was the 1995 runner-up in the Australian/Vogel Literary Award and was published 1996. Her other books are Angels in the Architecture, Killing Superman, No Safe Place and recently Birth Wars. 

On the final day of school for that Year 12 group Mary-Rose recorded me doing a version of Dylan’s It’s All Over Now Baby Blue. It was played at the farewell ceremony. Can’t vouch for the quality of the singing and guitar playing but you couldn’t say it wasn’t appropriate. The girls’ school days were all over and the colour of their uniform was blue. 

My Year 11`Homeroom class. I have the distinction of being the first male Homeroom teacher in the history of Mt St Michael's College. The girls printed me a t-shirt proclaiming just that to mark the occasion.

 

 

My second ever public performance occurred many years later in 2008. It was in Bali at the Bali Jazz Cafe. I had somehow managed to get invited to the wonderful Ubud Literary Festival and had also somehow agreed to be part of an authors’ cabaret. I just didn’t realise it would be held at such a public venue! 

On the night the place was packed. There were people associated with the Festival, as well as lots of others who were just there to eat and drink and had no idea (and cared even less) about performing authors. Then I found out that some of the authors on before me were real musicians. Some had actually recorded songs professionally!   

Luckily I had a couple of things going for me. Firstly, there was time to drink copiously before I was on and secondly, I had writing legend and all round lovely person Melina Marchetta and some of her friends there for moral support.  

The song I sang that night was Dylan’s The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. Yes, in hindsight perhaps I could have chosen something cheerier and more upbeat than a song about a poor black woman being killed by a wealthy, cane wielding, white tobacco farmer!  

 

Somehow I survived the ordeal, but as the above photo taken by Melina shows, I don’t think I opened my eyes until it was over! When I finished I got a generous round of sympathetic and drunken applause (at least from those who were listening). But what made the night for me was when the leader of the Bali Blues Band, who could have been mistaken for Bob Marley’s much taller twin, came up and shook my hand and said, ‘Weeeell don Maaaykuul. Thaart waz cool mon.’ I’ll take that over an Aria award any day! 

My third and final public performance was in Munich last year at the White Raven’s Children’s Literature Festival. It was one of the highlights  of my life. I always wanted to be in a rock band and at the festival I got my wish, playing and singing with the German Band Gone Fishin’. They were the band who had recorded the nine songs I’d written for the German audio version of my novel Ishmael and the Return of the Dugongs. I travelled all the way to Bavaria, the land of my great, great grandparents and found these six brothers. 

  

Ich bin ein rockstar!

 

So I guess I finally did achieve my dream of being a singer-songwriter even if only very briefly and maybe not quite to the same degree as His Bobness. And I also got to play in a rock band. I’m on a roll. Maybe anything really is possible. 

I can almost hear Shintaro and Tombei calling my name! 

Cheers
Michael
ps To see author John Green’s video of Munich and the White Raven’s Festival which includes some (thankfully brief) footage of me playing with Gone Fishin’ go here.

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