We marvelled at the similarities in our cultural upbringing. His parents were Liverpudlian Labour Party stalwarts, while mine were conservative, middle-class, suburban Australians, yet we found that our tastes were formed by uncannily similar introductions to art and culture, even down to our both being sung to sleep as children with the somewhat novel choice of lullaby: "The day I faced/the barren waste/without a taste/of water".
With Andy being a composer who loves literature, and me a creative writer who loves music, it was probably inevitable that we would toy with the idea of collaborating. Our first project began as our marriage ended. It was a commission by the Australian Chamber Orchestra for a song cycle for Gerald English. I was running late in delivering the text, which was still bubbling on the backburner of my unconscious mind. We travelled to the USA on a long planned trip, and in the two days prior to a cataclysmic conversation in Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, I wrote the words in a flurry of energy and diverted emotion. On our return, as the marriage liquefied, Andy wrote the music, fast and furious. Harbour was revised in subsequent weeks, but its turbulent birth still shows, at least to my ears, in the raw, impressionistic poetry and its powerfully observant musical setting. Music is a curious voice. It takes its time to speak. The emotions that Andy felt at that time are not, I think, to be found in Harbour, but in a later work, In somnia, a piece I still find hard to listen to.
Although our marriage ended in 1992, our friendship and collaborative relationship continued to thrive. Neither of us cared to abandon our creative connection or shared aesthetic concerns. We understood each other's work; we knew it more intimately than anyone else did. But more importantly, we liked it.
The process of creating Harbour was repeated in our next work, Casanova Confined, a solo music theatre work for Lyndon Terracini, commissioned by Music Theatre Sydney-then Sydney Metropolitan Opera. Andy and I worked jointly on the overall shape, discussing in broad terms both the musical and dramatic structure, before I retired to wrestle with the words. It was indeed a struggle, because although I recognised the inherently dramatic narrative in Casanova's incarceration and escape from the Leads prison of the Doge's Palace in Venice, I strove hard to define the fundamental thematic conflict at its core. It's said of a feature film screenplay that if you can't reduce the meaning of the film to a single sentence, you don't know what you're writing about, and it cannot ultimately succeed dramatically. This rule, I find, applies to any work of drama. Finally it came, finding its centre in the dichotomy of science and mysticism, a theme I am finding recurring in my work. (Poor Andy. Always waiting for words. He loves to remind me of Richard Rodgers locking Lorenz Hart in a bathroom and refusing to let him out till he finished the lyrics. Rodgers would stuff food under the door, but wouldn't unlock it till Hart pushed out little pieces of paper, covered in the long-awaited lyrics. And I love the anecdote, but it doesn't hasten the gestation. Nothing can. It happens when it is ready. Note to self: Must get over that. Must learn the art of induction.)
Our most recent work together, Night and Dreams: the death of Sigmund Freud, which was recently premiered by Gerald English at the Telstra Adelaide Festival was our most collaborative yet. It began, as did our other works, with long conversations about form and structure. Building the work's shape was a lengthy process, as was my research into Freud's life and writings. Then, once again, it was my job to find the dramatic pivot of the piece. As with Casanova Confined, it related to reason and unreason, but in this case, dealing as Night and Dreams does with Freud's death, the focus was on death as an intellectual question (Freud wrote extensively on the "death instinct") as opposed to the visceral experience of one's own demise. The clash of these two competing constructs forms the dramatic crisis of the work, which in turn locates the musical climax. From this point, the writing became a manageable process, although gruelling and intense. We had decided that Freud would recount his dreams in songs, Schubert-like lieder, so this libretto required formal rhythms and rhyming lyrics, a new experience for me. There is a particularly satisfying aspect to the challenge of writing freely within structural constraints, which is perhaps one of the reasons libretto writing appeals to me so much.
In Night and Dreams, Freud speaks of his collaboration with Carl Jung before their famous and profound split: We worked together so well, the connection was electric, the ideas sparked between us. It is a sentiment that I identify with strongly. Andy and I have experienced a lot together, good and bad, profound and permanently affecting. It has given us a shared language, a verbal shorthand, an honesty and an ability to criticise without damaging artistic egos. Collaboration is a process that makes one uniquely vulnerable to one's creative partner. It cannot prosper without fundamental trust in the other's instincts, sensibilities and methods.
So after their years of gestation, I anxiously placed my wrinkled, newborn words in Andy's hands. They are hands I am right to trust.