Scott Bywater blows a loud raspberry. “Don’t go writing about me being a beautiful soul! That would be extremely embarrassing…” This musician/writer/ nomadic spirit is nothing if not a trifle shy, especially when it comes to his poetic musings. “I had great parents. I still have great parents! Mum has lived in Cambodia for more than 20 years; they were both librarians. The house was always full of books and music and cinema. I was lucky enough to be brought up in an environment where these were the important things. We didn’t have a television while I was in high school; it broke and we didn’t get it fixed. I wasn’t too impressed at the time.”
Now sporting hair flecked with silver, the Tasmanian author of two recent volumes of poetry – A Certain Flow and One Sky, Many Skies – has since had a change of heart, spurred on by his first experience of poetry-as-performance – an experience about to be repeated. “There was a poetry evening organised at Java at very short notice and some friends of mine were playing music in the background. I said: ‘Look, I know we haven’t rehearsed this, but why don’t you just sort of play in behind what I’m doing? That could be interesting.’ And it was actually an epiphany for me, to be playing with live music being improvised behind me. There was a guitar, bass, tro (traditional bowed string instrument native to Cambodia). I thought: ‘Gee, I’d like to do some more of this.’ The original intention was to have Khmer instruments, but then I thought about more soundscapey stuff – big synth pads, things like that.”
And so it is that Bywater, with a little help from his friends Warren Daly, Alex Leonard and Hal FX, will be bringing his poetry to life against a backdrop of live music and visuals at Equinox for Triptych this week. “Three major themes have come out of the work I’ve done over the past couple of years: there’s Phnom Penh; there’s what I call ‘the art of travel’ and what I call ‘the art of living’, which is the more philosophical stuff. Triptych seeks to draw out these themes and images through sonic, harmonic, rhythmic and visual expression: collaboration at once structured and improvised.”
Here, Bywater shares a few of the poems that will feature on the night and what each of them means to him.
The last night at Snow’s
it was always worth crossing the bridge.
for the lights and the bells
and the mirrors and the masks
the pinks and the blues, the shimmering silver
on the balcony for the last time
what became a familiar view
of the riverside turning incandescent as the night falls
to the rhythm of the floating life, the ferries and barges and dredges.
They will continue
but unobserved from this railing
it will be different
they dance swing to the blues
pushing tired feet against these wooden boards
because they won’t get these boards dusty again
the ghost of gigs past
in a place where each and every gig was a good one
(which is hard to say of many places)
the white shirt resplendent
his body willing but fatigued, the smile still as wide
it’s been a long few days
and then the announcement, for the last time: out of beer
for the last time,
the lights and the bells
and the mirrors and the masks
the pinks and the blues, the shimmering silver
it was always worth crossing the bridge
“Snowy managed to find himself at the centre of these major events over the last ten years. One was the bar itself, which was actually called Maxine’s – named after his daughter. It was across on Chroy Changvar; an amazing building, really quite something. The poem seeks to bring the essence of what it was like to be in the place. There were lights and bells and mirrors and masks and art. Without being a pretentious arty kind of place, it just was an expression of him and that leads onto one of the other major things: when Dengue Fever first came to Cambodia, there was a famous gig played at Snowy’s and you can still see photos of them there from time to time. There’s some footage of that in the documentary Sleepwalking Through The Mekong, which was about that tour. He wasn’t an arty farty type. The place was just full of things he liked: the interior, what went on, who went there. It was the right place at the right time, for a number of reasons. On Sunday afternoons, they used to have swing dancing there, which was really nice. The gigs were always good there; the sound was always good there. You’d have crappy equipment, but there was something about the configuration of the room that would work. I played there a couple of times with the Cambodian Space Project. The place was always in danger of falling into the Tonle Sap, so people had to wait outside for other people to come out. I was there on the last night and that’s what this poem is about: Bayon Blues had played and the swing dancers had been there. Then there was an open mic and I think I played a few songs. I had a sense it was all going to disappear. It’s one thing for it not to be there any more, but there’s a certain sense that you got going there – everything I have to say about it is all wound up in the poem.”
Berlin in February
Andie McDowell in a public bubble,
David Beckham in his undies,
Whitney Houston in the news,
Cambodia in the cinemas,
Tobacco smoke and Sweet Home Alabama in the bars…
snow/snow and grit/wet grit/more snow and grit/more snow, with tough, flash, sensible automobiles,
and rampant bears and subzero joggers,
and sledding and skating on Sundays like Bruegel biscuit tins.
a metro with no gates;
a town with no hills;
a vertically flattened world that pushes for the sky.
“This is also a funny one because it has a Cambodian link in it. I was living in Montpellier at the time, in the south of France, and I got it in my head that I would go to Berlin for the film festival because Davy Chou’s film, Golden Slumbers, was playing there and I’d just been to see the premiere in Phnom Penh but I was extremely jetlagged and saw maybe a third of it. So I got on a bus and travelled for a day and a half and arrived in Berlin. This poem is an impression of what that moment was, not having been there before; not having been that cold for a very long time. Whitney Houston in the news: that was her death. It was this surreal experience of figures like Andie McDowell and David Beckham and Whitney Houston, but at the same time it’s freezing cold and I’m watching all these crazy, weird ‘60s Cambodian films late at night and then walking out into a snow shower. Very strange.”
and let us
and let us
allow each moment
to build on
each moment,
creating the next instant,
for an instant
(and repeat)
and let us
hold in our hearts
the places we could also be,
without wishing away where we are
in favour of where we were
(there are so many places to be,
and yet only one)
and let us
move, or drift,
with poetry in our soul,
the better to understand;
(and logic in our pockets,
for emergencies)
“This is about the food part, which is what I call the art of living; that thing that poetry is supposed to do: ‘Why don’t you think about this?’ This is also something that’s quite pertinent to the theme of travel and movement. There’s no great trick to unlocking this one: it’s talking about being in the moment, and particularly trying to enjoy what it is you have in front of you without thinking: ‘Oh, gee. I wish I was somewhere else.’ Living in this spirit, but also you’ve got to keep the logic in your pocket, just for emergencies – you can’t discount all that stuff. Yin and yang: fly, but take a map!”
A Certain Flow and One Sky, Many Skies are available from Monument Books or from under Scott’s arm on the night. Read more of his poetry at thesilverpepperofthestars.wordpress.com.
WHO: Scott Bywater, Warren Daly, Alex Leonard and Hal FX
WHAT: Performed poetry in soundscape
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278
WHEN: 9pm May 10
WHY: “Yin and yang: fly, but take a map!”