purple china diary - the novel two

9 January 2008

Café in Harbin – Second Seeds of the Novel

Memory can be drawn as in Palestinian trauma victims – in different parts of the world memory can be elicited / freed / returned by different methods – dance, music, song, art, film – so also could memory be stored by the ‘memory keeper’ who can perform all these feats – do a dance, perform a song, show a film, perform theatre, recite a poem – the memory keeper is giving back all those things that have been culturally lost – the shark song of fiji all these things could be researched – the memory keeper goes on a journey [this could all be a bit crass] – the memory keeper does not know why she knows these things – she does not not who she is – she has lost her own memories – the journey restores this memory gradually – with each gift she herself receives something back – karma – ying yang – where to start – where to end – it is hard to know who she is – maybe she is Nicole – she can start with first stories in Canberra – pink can run through the book as a colour of fear – when she sees the colour she disassociates and it is at this point that she with ‘cultural artefacts’ – the memory keeper is complex, intelligent – story cannot be paternalistic – has to be subtle – subtle as a Taoist poem but as tough as a zen master – the acts of memory keeping are intimate and private - - ‘cross the river feeling the stones’ – if the book follows the poem must be found first – also correlation with desolation row – character a nineteen year old – inside like Nicole – who disassociates – character like john who reconstructs memories from auction artefacts – bits of film in memory – dada / surrealism – she is an artist