Submarine bells

Waking up to storms and latest books

It’s 6am on 27 August 2024 and the sound of the storm outside woke me up through my ear plugs and slow release melatonin. I’ve never enjoyed August in Wellington, and September even less. I wish I could say something kinder and more poetic about the close of Winter and the start of Spring but I can’t. It’s a windy, erratic trial and I have no time for it. Though it is giving me time by waking me up, I suppose.

A lifetime since I last wrote and quite a few books. But before I write about those I wanted to talk briefly about Martin Phillipps from The Chills, who I never met, but who wrote one of my favourite songs, Submarine Bells. I say one of my favourite songs but I don’t think of Submarine Bells as a song so much as a voice, even a spell. Martin Phillipps’ very New Zealand accent always takes me by surprise. I first heard it on an album called Live at Helen’s. Back in the 90s and early 2000s in Tauranga, where I grew up, there was a music shop on the main street (Devonport road) called Tracks (or was it Tracs? I think it was Tracks). The guy that owned it was always curious and interested in what customers were looking for and listening to. It was that guy who gave me an Eartha Kitt album, Nina Simone, John Prine and my first Bob Dylan albums (as opposed to the compilations I’d listened to up til then). He also gave me Live at Helen’s. I can’t find the CD now which is devastating. I probably biffed it thinking I’d replace it digitally which is such a mistake now. I’m sick of digital things! (more on that later). But I remember the object of it so clearly. So plastic and neat. The album was a live recording at what I assume was the studio of a lady called Helen, and was released in 2001 (I was 16). There are 14 tracks including Julia Deans singing So Holy, Che Fu singing Waka, Greg Johnson singing Hold Tight. Martin Phillipps sings Submarine Bells.

6.30am looking out my kitchen window at the half moon and the scudding clouds. So windy.

I used to play Live at Helen’s over and over again. I took it with me to Dunedin, to University, in 2003 and played it over and over again there, too. I loved every single song and now if I hear those particular recordings I feel haunted or time-tripped. But it was Submarine Bells that moved me the most. I don’t really know why other than it’s an unusual song and it builds and submerges; it’s kind of painful to listen too because it’s so beautiful and plaintive while thudding at the depths. Hearing Submarine Bells was the first time I remember hearing The Chills and Phillipps’ way of using his voice and his accent. In fact that’s something I loved about the whole album: that it was New Zealand voices. Up until then, like most art I was into, my music tastes were mostly American, British, but Live at Helen’s changed that for me.

Since Martin Phillipps died (recently) I’ve been playing The Chills a lot. Too much probably because Heavenly Pop Hit is in my head at night and in the morning. I wrote about the lyrics to Rolling Moon on The Spinoff: not my favourite song but lyrics that remind me of dancing with barefeet and knowing that the euphoria would have to end and it would hurt.

Back to the books, here are some I have loved particularly:

Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw
My friend Rachael King has been talking about this book for a while, as has the podcast Backlisted (Shaw is a regular guest; this episode on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is smashing). This book has made my special bedside drawer of precious things. It’s a slim book, with woods on the cover, that transforms that way you think about what you’re doing when you set out to tell a story. It’s based on the idea that we all throw out aspects of ourselves — thanks to society, expectations, the very digital, tech-laden way that we now live — and we have to coax those wild parts of ourselves back, invite them back into our lives and make them part of our story. Shaw close reads two myths or fairytales to show how the casting out of the wild twin and the winning them back transforms lives and works upon the arc of a tale. It’s a book I’ll be reading over and over and for me sits alongside tarot cards as a way to think about character and troubles and triumphs; but also myself in relationship with the stories I’m trying to write. If you’re curious here is Dr Martin Shaw’s website.

Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend (and Wundersmith)
I’m so late to the party on this series but I’m a fully-fledged fan now. I slammed the first two books so fast I felt like a kid again. I don’t know why I didn’t think I’d love these books — foolish! They’re masterful: the worldbuilding is the writer’s imagination running as far and as wildly as she can and every moment works. Nevermoor is a four-dimensional place grounded by one of the great literary characters: Morrigan Crow. It’s Morrigan who carries the hi-jinks and the stakes and the comforts in this epic adventure. She’s wry, she’s smart and she’s funny. In book one she thinks she’s a cursed child doomed to die; when she’s rescued by a Willy Wonka-esque character who smuggles her across borders Morrigan’s fate shifts and the old story unravels. There’s a magical school, new friends, a charming hotel with as much food as you need, enemies and confusions. If you like Harry Potter then you’ll adore these books and they’ll soon make HP look thin and tacky. I'm saving book three (Hollowpox) for the Summer so I don’t have to wait so long for book four which, according to Townsend’s insta, is due in April 2025.

The Mermaid Chronicles by Megan Dunn
Megan Dunn, like Talia Marshall (who wrote Whaea Blue) is one of the most distinctive and interesting writers in New Zealand. The Mermaid Chronicles is the best of her three books so far: it does hard and complex work while remaining funny, surprising, expansive and idiosyncratic. The book traces Dunn’s obsession with mermaids — or more specifically with people who work as professional mermaids — alongside her life as a mother, child and partner. How do these things reconcile? They do through Dunn. It’s the story of an individual who is aggressively curious and in search of intellectual freedom and that person is also a mother and a daughter and a partner who has to maintain and feed those relationships as well as maintain herself. The mermaids talk about enchantment and entertainment and performance. The writer talks about feeling disenchanted and struggling to perform. There are waves and waves of love for the close people in Dunn’s life; but there are wrecks and snags and hooks all the way. The Mermaid Chronicles is hard to define by traditional categories: Dunn calls it a midlife mer-moir. I think it’s a masterpiece: I can sense how difficult it was to arrange the shoals of ideas and experiences into one fluid quest but Dunn as done it.

I’ll leave the books here and be back next month with more. My month of discontent (September) requires me to hermit even harder than I have been so I’ll read it out until Summer. And cold swim. I feel like a tit saying that but I’ve been throwing myself into the sea at Island Bay (down the road from where I live) and I get it. Like a shake to the nerves; a hit of the expanse. It’s also an antidote to being very online. Lately I’ve been repelled by the sensation of staring into the internet: all the ads, and skincare products, and food reels, and endless, endless content. (Aware that I am writing these words into the sludge). Throw me into the woods; let me meet my wild twin. The aversion is helping my current project: a new novel, short, a little wild.