ESCAPE ARTISTS ANTHOLOGY
https://www.borderstreambooks.com.au/shop/
By Ruth Skilbeck, Escape Artists founder, publisher and editor
Where does the inspiration to write come
from? Whilst on the deepest most
profound level this would appear to be one of the mysterious philosophical
questions that have no answer, for those who identify as writers and artists,
such as the contributors to this anthology, Escape Artists, it may be said with
some common agreement, that this question is inextricably linked to the
individual’s writer’s journey.
Could the same be said for the inspiration
to create, make and publish an anthology, and – to take a larger leap into the
unknown and truly enter the realm of the questions without answers (except by
way of séance and Ouija board, perhaps) could it be said that such an
inspiration pertains as its object not to a person, the editor and publisher
and medium channel for the ‘inspiration’ idea, but to a place- namely a house,
specifically, a 19th century wooden cottage that for eighteen
glorious years was home base to the first telegraph and post office in a
developing mining suburb in a coastal port in New South Wales, on the east
coast of Australia?
Could the house itself be the object and
subject of the inspiration, and the journey- its own historical journey through
time from then 1877, when the post and telegraph office first opened to now?
More specifically to 1994 when the author,
editor and publisher first purchased the small weatherboard cottage/old post
office, without knowing anything of its history; to 2014 the year the anthology
project began, not long after founding a small independent author-publishing
house in the cottage to publish her books, novels and literary studies, and
then the books of others if this worked.
She was taking photographs of the full moon
on the road outside the house one warm summer’s night when the idea suddenly
came to her from- where? To publish an anthology, to call for works on social
media on themes that came to her at the same time beneath the light of the full
moon- on topics related to new satellite communications, UFOs, aliens,
spacecraft, fugue, and with a focus on sound and music. Why fugue? It had long been her field of research, and
she had found that in the transition to satellite media communications from the
analog into the digital era there had been a reported increase in dissociation
disorders and psychogenic fugue, which mirror the split self of real life and
virtual reality- how can one reconcile the self one is online with the self one
is in real life (was a question of this).
The momentousness of this transition echoes
the momentous transition to the most revolutionary long distance writing
technology after the printing press, namely the telegraph, and after it the
telephone though that was for voice, and sound based, they often used the same
telegraph lines, and ‘leaked’ in what was called induction, creating a vast
array of scarcely explained extraordinary and often musical, often deafening, eerie
and uncanny sounds and noises on the line, which people in the latter quarter
of the 19th century spent a long time listening to in amazement and
wonder on their telephone.
The telegraph and post office in her house
opened in 1877, with a telephone, it was a momentous year in new long distance
writing technologies in Australia and the world, and in long distance
communication of the telephone. It was the year the Bell telephone became
available for use, and on sale. So the old post and telegraph office was at the
forefront of the world in communication technologies of telephone and
telegraph. It had a telephone and telegraph for receiving and transmitting telegrams
which was done by Morse code. It also had a government savings bank.
The Overland Telegraph and The Red Line
1877 was also the year that Australia was
connected to Britain by telegraph line, via submarine cables that crossed the
oceans. The Overland telegraph lines were installed all the way from Adelaide
up to Darwin and then by submarine cable to Britain. From Adelaide the wires
were soon installed to Melbourne and Sydney, and Tasmania. Australia was part
of the network of telegraph lines that extended to and from Britain, the
British Empire, which was known as The Red Line. The
old post office was part of this global network known as the Red Line.
Yet along with all the opportunities their
uptake of the new technologies offered the postmaster William Lee and his wife
Marianne the postmistress faced many threats. William Lee was a ‘non official
postmaster’ it was still over a decade before the Postmaster general
reshaped and took over the postal and telegraphy services. According to
government records he was a non official post master who was being paid by the
government an annual salary for
running the post office and in
addition for Letter delivery service, a total of equivalent to $71,000 today (approx.).
But according to newspaper reports from the
times, the government was not making in charges and taxes nearly as much from
the post office as it was paying the postmaster. Or they were not making nearly as much as it
was costing to run it.
There had been lobbying to have a new
grander post office in the suburb and after much countering and delays, in 1895
this did happen, a new much larger and smarter post office made of the local
Waratah stone was opened with much ceremony, by the Postmaster General. It was reported in the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner's Advocate.
This was the end of the first post and
telegraph office. Its
history was largely forgotten in the local area. Further erasing its memory the
numbering of the street changed. Few if any could remember it had ever existed.
Exactly one hundred years later, in 1994,
and knowing nothing at all of this past history of the house, the author,
editor, book designer, and publisher bought the cottage and moved in with her
(now ex) husband and their two little children. She was a freelance art writer
and journalist and he was an artist and musician. Before long to make ends meet
she started teaching, for the first time, creative writing and freelance
journalism courses at the WEA, then Communications at technical and further
education colleges. The marriage was breaking down. She began a creative
writing MA in Sydney to write a novel she had wanted to, been trying to write
for years. The idea of how to do it using musical fugue “structure” on themes
of psychological fugue came to her when she was listening to radio in the
living room where the telephone still was and the telegraph used to be 100
years before. (A story told elsewhere).
Before long she moved to live and work in
Sydney as a writer with her children, and she rented out the house for years.
She rented an apartment (several in succession as they had to move every 2-3 years due to owners deciding to live in their flat, or flats being sold) for her and her children to live in for over twelve years whilst she
worked as an arts journalist, writer and university lecturer.
A series of misfortunes and specifically an
arson attack on the old post office had forced the author editor, book designer
and publisher to leave her life and work in Sydney (and her children who were
now grown up) and return to defend and save the old telegraph and post office
which was under threat and at great risk of being lost. It was her home the only one she had ever
owned and she knew how fortunate she and her children were to own it). There
had been problems with the insurance company that did not repair the cottage so
it could be rented out again, and had not paid her rent loss payments until over two
years later, and at the same time and from then on she had been forced to take
out large top up loans to her mortgage beyond her means, by the Commonwealth Bank.
This meant her mortgage almost doubled and
she was unable to make ends meet.
Developers were buying up old cottages
left, right and centre on the street and all around and real estate flyers
flooded the mailbox daily. There was a boom in property development in the
coastal port.
The builders hired by the Commonwealth Bank
insurance arm, Comminsure, had left the house in a terrible condition. Three times she had had to buy locks for the
back door; each time they were removed when the builders were in there. Her
house was vandalized. When she returned she brought with her a large bolt, and
a power drill.
She stood her ground. Painted, repaired,
scraped the paint splattered all over the polished boards by the painters hired
by the insurance company. Did what she could herself. Commuted for three years
back to Sydney to work.
But then, she damaged her back and legs
from carrying books and papers.
But then, her contract at the university
was not renewed.
There were many difficulties.
She decided to start up a publishing house in the cottage to publish first her own books, novels and
musico-literary studies, then if she as able to do that, those of others. She
knew how to write, now she learnt how to design, layout, format using
professional software and publish paperbacks, hardcover books and ebooks, and
distribute these globally.
And she published her books, the first
novel in the Australian Fugue series, The Antipode Room, and its mystery genre version Missing, and her book based on her PhD, The Writer’s Fugue.
The
Challenge
Yet she and PostMistress Press have faced
and face now a very similar challenge and threat, as that faced by the
postmistress who lived and worked here in the telegraph and post office 140
years ago. The business costs more to
run than it is making. The threats are real. The challenge is to keep going.
The Journey
Yet since the beginning the anthology
project has been a part of this journey into publishing. It has created a
community online as all the authors and artists have been contacted and
contributions solicited through social media (facebook) and email. They are
former colleagues from university, peers from the literary art world, and
former life as an art writer, friends and family.
The starting themes were those of satellite
communication which could be used a metaphors, UFOs, aliens, spacecraft,
telepathy and fugue, science fiction and speculative fiction. As all this was
done via social media that too became a theme.
Escape Artists emerged as a title, one
night, in the making. It has been taken to by the authors and artists and
resonates. It evokes escapology, reading, writing and publishing as a means to
escape the privations and constraints and challenges, to bring meaning to the noisy
hullaballoo of the world; the meaning bestowed by the individual writer, poet,
and artists in their journeys. E-scape also connotes the new fuguescapes of
electronic communication.
Altogether the journey of the anthology has been
that of a book adventure in the making that echoes in inspiration and a strange
parallel science fiction ghosting its origins in the place where there once was
a telegraph and post office run by a postmistress.
Ruth Skilbeck, May 2017-July 2018
