Minds Went Walking (curated by Jock Serong, Mark Smith & Neil A White, Fremantle Press)

Minds Went Walking is a collection of responses to the work of singer-songwriter Paul Kelly. Curated by Jock Serong, Mark Smith and Neil A White, this is a no-rules collection of memories, reactions and immersions. Both fiction and nonfiction, in the form of prose, poetry and images, the stories come from authors including Michelle Wright, Tim Rogers, Mirandi Riwoe, Robbie Arnott and many others. Throughout the collection one thing feels clear: responses to Kelly’s work might be individual, but they also feel universal. The pieces range in tone from the late John Clarke’s daughter, Lorin, remembering her father at a Kelly concert, to a fictional account of dangerous love by White that feels like film noir. Many of the images—such as a young boy holding his breath under the surf in Smith’s fictional piece—feel just like Kelly’s songs, but lengthened. The genius of writing about Kelly’s music is that it extends the experience of the work itself. Kelly’s songs are eternal, familiar and relatable; it often feels as if any of us could have written a song like ‘Before Too Long’. But Kelly’s genius only feels easy to discount precisely because it has this universal quality. We can’t recreate his body of work, but we can create our own responses in its living shadow. Readers who loved Kelly’s memoir How to Make Gravy will get a kick out of this book.

Rebecca Whitehead is a freelance writer from Melbourne.

Category: Reviews