What are the Attributes of God?: A Reading from The Meaning of Life and Other Fictions

Tom Cho

MCCA (School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts) Writer in Residence

Tuesday May 15, 1-2 pm

Curtin University
Humanities Boardroom, Building 208-214

RSVPs to: S.Perera@curtin.edu.au

Here are some pics of the published piece, which has actually been printed as a colour supplement or insert. I think it looks great:

I spent so many months working on this piece. In the end, I had to go all the way to Japan to bring the first draft to fruition.

I went to Japan last year for an Asialink residency. I’d already spent many months struggling with the writing of this piece. I felt so burdened by its central question. I was also intimidated by the sheer volume of what had already been written about this topic. Would I have anything original to contribute?

About a week before I was due to go to Japan, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami occurred. Spooked by news coverage of the events and the escalating problems at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, friends and colleagues were telling me to postpone my residency. As I read update after update on the Australian Government’s Smart Traveller website, I was starting to feel spooked myself.

And yet I felt that, in writing a piece about reconciling suffering with the premise of a good and almighty god, surely I needed to go to Japan at this time. Eventually, I decided to go and I set myself the residency writing goal of completing the first draft of the piece.

Throughout much of my residency, I stayed in my tiny studio apartment and tried to finish the draft. I had so many dispiriting times. I berated myself that I was wasting my residency because I wasn’t exploring Japan enough. I spent long days where I would simply get out of bed, walk a few steps to my computer, struggle with the piece for hours and forget about eating until about 10:30 at night, when I would finally go out to get something to eat. (Luckily Nagoya is a city that doesn’t sleep – one of the things I loved about it.)

Being in Japan during this point in Japanese history heightened the burden I was feeling in writing this piece. Could I do justice to its central question? Sometimes I spoke to Japanese citizens about the earthquake and tsunami. A few people teared up while talking to me. I am not someone who can cry very easily at all but, one day during my residency, I was in a newsagency and I saw a magazine that contained a photo essay of the earthquake and tsunami. I looked through the photo essay and I teared up too.

Then I discovered this Buddhist scripture, known in English as the Heart Sutra. It was so dense and mysterious. I felt that it could help progress my work on the draft and I really wanted to learn more about it, but soon found myself struggling to access good English-language analyses of the piece. One of my residency contacts recommended that I speak to someone she knew – a Buddhist priest and scholar at Nagoya University. She told me that his English was good. So I made contact with him and he agreed to speak with me about the Heart Sutra.

As it turned out, while his English was quite good, it wasn’t at a sufficient level for us to discuss the complexities of the Heart Sutra. As we tried to discuss the piece, I also felt guilty – and definitely not for the first time during my residency – that my Japanese was so poor.

When I realised that it was too difficult for us to discuss the Heart Sutra, I turned the conversation away from that text and simply asked him if he held any particular belief as to why Japan had experienced this earthquake and tsunami that had killed thousands of people. Knowing that he was a Buddhist, I asked him, “Do you attribute the events to karma?” No, he told me. The events didn’t occur because of any karmic debt that had accrued. I nodded and asked him, “What about the belief that attachment leads to suffering? Did attachment in any way catalyse the earthquake and tsunami?” No, he told me. That had nothing to do with it. I nodded again and asked: “So why did this earthquake and tsunami occur?”

He said to me: “It occurred because…”

…And I leaned closer, desperate to hear his answer…

It seemed that he was speaking so slowly and yet with the assurance of someone who had arrived at a satisfactory answer. “It occurred because of the movements…”

…And I leaned closer still…

“…of tectonic plates. You see, Japan is located at the intersection of some tectonic plates and this is why we have all these earthquakes.”

I stared at him for a bit, wondering if he was joking.

He looked back at me and said: “It’s true. You ask any Japanese person and they’ll tell you the same thing.”

He really did seem serious. In fact, I began to think: he is serious but, nonetheless, the joke is on me. I’ve been wound up so tightly about this piece. I’ve become so desperate for solutions to its central issue.

Not long afterwards, as he walked me back to the street, I asked him if he knew where I could find any English-language analyses of the Heart Sutra. He said to me, “You’d better come to my office.”

It turned out that his office was also housed in the departmental library. His desk was surrounded by shelves of books. He kindly recommended some texts and I was able to photocopy some excerpts.

Yet, around a week before I was due to return to Australia, I still had not finished my draft of the piece. One of the excerpts that I had photocopied back at Nagoya University had helped me, but the draft was still missing a conclusion. I utterly regretted putting so much pressure on myself to finish the draft during my residency. I felt that I was going to return to Australia without a draft to show for my residency, and – despite all my work in Japan – feeling a sense of failure.

But there was one more thing I decided to do. I decided to travel to Sendai, to see if I could take a look, firsthand, at some of the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami. I reasoned that maybe this would help me finish the draft.

But on the day that I was due to go to Sendai, I had this stronger feeling that I should stay in my flat instead and work on the piece. Although this would be the last day that I would be available to travel to Sendai, I just had this sense that I shouldn’t go – that I should leave Sendai to its citizens and I should work on my piece.

So, once again, I stayed in my flat all day and for most of the night, and I finished the draft later that night.

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Just a few months after I came back to Australia, my mum was diagnosed with cancer. I stopped all work on my book. My mum died on 3 January 2012.

By the time February came, I was desperate to get away from all the obligations and pain that I was feeling in Melbourne. I decided to take my pain to San Francisco instead. It was the first time, as an adult, that I had ever taken an overseas holiday that didn’t involve a writers’ festival or residency. While I was there, someone asked me to give a talk to their creative writing class, but I turned them down.

By this time, my piece had already been accepted by Meanjin. I’d already re-drafted it and made corrections to the copy edit and an early set of proofs. While I was in San Francisco, I read over the last set of proofs and made my final corrections.

Now this piece has been published. It’s almost 9000 words long. I look at this piece and it is so steeped in pain.

I am so glad that I wrote it.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sfZ74IXjr4

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I’m participating in two events, both scheduled for the same day – a panel on humour and a reading. Details below:

Why so Serious?
29 Oct 2011
11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Featuring: Tom Cho, Neil Humphreys, Chuah Guat Eng
Venue: Transaction Pavilion, Campus Green, Singapore Management University
Moderator: Carolyn Camoens

What does it take to maintain a good sense of humour in your writing? And how do we ensure we don’t cross the border into slapstick territory? Let Australian artist-writer Tom Cho (Look Who’s Morphing), Chuah Guat Eng (Echoes of Silence, Days of Change) and British author Neil Humphreys (Notes from an Even Smaller Island, Premier Leech) share with you how they strike the right balance in their approaches towards humour.

Reading
29 Oct 2011
5:45 pm – 6:00 pm
Venue: Festival Pavilion, Campus Green, Singapore Management University
Free Admission

So why have I kept it quiet that I’m scheduled to appear at the Singapore Writers Festival? Well, there is a chance that I may not be going due to the health of someone in my family. Over the past couple of months, due to this family situation, progress on my second book has slowed considerably and various things have been put aside or postponed, including an interstate residency (that’s been postponed).

Years ago, I had to take time out from writing my first book because of personal reasons. As I put it to myself at the time, “Sometimes writing has to make way for living.” Well, it feels like living has well and truly intervened again. But then again, this reminds me of one of my long-standing arguments with myself about writing. Too often, in my moments of guilt about whether I am being a productive writer, my view of what constitutes writing narrows rather alarmingly. During those times, I have to remind myself that all those activities that seem to fall in between composing – thinking, berating myself for not composing and, well, probably even ‘living’ – are also part of my creative process. So often, I view these activities as gaps in my productivity, but let me commit it to writing here: gaps are from where things emerge.

The piece is called “What are the attributes of God?” and it appears in the latest issue (issue 11) of The Lifted Brow. It’s great to have the first piece from the book published – and it’s even better to have it featured alongside works by the many other excellent artists in the issue, including Alice Pung, Mandy Ord, Eric Yoshiaki Dando, Sarah Howell and more.

You can buy the issue for $10 – or why not subscribe for a whole year? 

And if you’d like some bonus discussion about my piece, that’s coming very soon too, courtesy of The Rereaders:

rereaders

(The Rereaders)

Listen out for our first discussion of a piece of fiction on Monday, when we discuss @tom_cho's short story from the latest @theliftedbrow

On 13-8-2011 11:22:38 from Twitter for Android

[Update: You can listen to or download this podcast here.]

I’m really proud of the work of that I’ve been producing for my second book. I’m writing far too slowly for my liking but the work itself is really special. I remember the afternoon when I finished the first draft of “What are the attributes of God?”. I’d been really struggling with the ending of the piece, which was certainly stretching me intellectually. When I wrote my exegesis (the theoretical part of my PhD thesis), I incorporated some art theory right towards the end of the very last chapter. That section was one of my favourite parts of my exegesis. In writing “What are the attributes of God?”, I adapted some of the ideas from that section for use in the story. Doing this was very hard and I completed it over the course of, I think, a week or so. When I finally wrote that last sentence in the draft, I remember feeling a bit surreal and shaky (and I was already literally sweating from the exertion I had been putting into the piece that day). I thought: “I think I’ve done it. I’ve finished the draft. Have I? I think I have!”

PS And in some other good news… another piece from my second book was recently accepted by the magazine Meanjin. More about that piece in a later post!

First up, I’m giving a short reading as part of a benefit for Vignette Press’ Geek Mook. Here are the details, as taken from the page on Vignette Press’ website (and it’s also been listed as a Facebook event):

Geek Mook Fun-Razor — Dungeon Mook: Crawl to Mount Geek!

Will you be there? Or does the Fun-Razor have to come find you?

• Thursday 21 July 2011, doors from 7pm, starts at 8pm
• Bella Union, Level 1, Trades Hall, Corner of Victoria & Lygon Streets, Carlton South (enter off Lygon Street)
• Tickets: Pre-order online $12 + $2 booking fee or $15 on the door.

Tickets from the Bella Union website (http://www.bellaunion.com.au/program_guide/show_456)

A special, literary-themed Dungeon Crawl raising funds for Vignette Press‘ Geek Mook journal, to be published later this year.

Ben McKenzie and Richard McKenzie bring together the hottest comedy nerds to  fight, bluff, bribe and possibly dance their way through a magical adventure, helped by your decisions and hindered by the devious Dungeon Master. Featuring a cast of bizarre heroes, dysfunctional villains and crazy quests – and of course, killing monsters and stealing their stuff.

Basically, the “Dungeon Crawl” comedy show for this event will be followed by a few short literary readings (which is where I come in).

Not long after the Geek Mook benefit, I’m going to Sydney to do another reading. It’s for the monthly event Penguin Plays Rough. I’ll be reading a long excerpt from my story “What are the attributes of God?”, which will even include a short film. I read an earlier version of the excerpt at this year’s Midsumma Festival and I really enjoyed it. (The full story is also going to be published in The Lifted Brow next month.)

Here are the details of the event, as taken from the PPR website (and, again, this has also been listed as a Facebook event):

Penguin Plays Rough

Saturday July 23, 8-11 pm

Bring your own mug and cushion to 4 Lackey St, St Peters to witness

Tom Cho
Ryan O’Neil
Sam Twyford-Moore
and two special secret people

read out loud with your very own eyes

(the witnessing will be done with your eyes, not the reading out loud. Though if you can do that, you will probably upstage everyone, so all power to you).

Pip has been hassling TOM CHO to read at PPR for over a year. And now, what with Japanese residencies out of the way, it’s finally happening.

Tom published a collection of short stories a few years ago called Look Who’s Morphing, in which the central character undergoes a series of transformations, shape-shifting through figures drawn from film and television, music and books, porn flicks and comics. He is Godzilla, a Muppet, and Whitney Houston’s bodyguard; the Fonz, a robot, a Ford Bronco 4×4 – and, as a climax, a fifty-five metre tall guitar-wielding cock rock star, who performs for the people of Tokyo, and an adoring troupe of sexy fans.

Tom’s book was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (South East Asia and Pacific), 2009 Age Book of the Year (Fiction) and Melbourne Prize Trust’s 2009 Best Writing Award.

But for PPR, Tom tells us, he will be sharing a brand new story (which will even feature a short film!). So this is definitely a PPR not to miss.

Tom is coming all the way from Melbourne to read to you – and just in case that didn’t make you feel special enough, RYAN O’NEIL is going to press pause on his very own house-building and schlep all the way from Newcastle to read to you too.

We’re also going to hear SAM TWYFORD-MOORE’s very nearly prize-winning story, Everything We Did in a Different Order.

Oh, and there are two ladies waiting in the facebook shadows I’m yet to surprise you with, and the finest of mulled wines, and the cosiest of heaters to toast you up all the way to your very toes.

See you on the 23rd,

Pip & Lucy

I’ve only given one reading from my 2nd book so far, so this will be really exciting for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEN_nqsbPB0

(Did you watch the full video? I did – but that’s because I’m hardcore. My housemate got about halfway.)

If you’d like to suggest any other vocalists who turn one syllable into many notes, please do. Some singers I have in mind are Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce. (However, I will also be exploring further afield than contemporary US female vocalists. Note: Oops. Just remembered that Celine’s Canadian.) Specific song suggestions are welcome too.

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Monumentalism is a theme of my current book project, hence my visit to this monumental Buddha. And if you’ve read my first book, you’ll know that I like to play with being a size queen.

PS See the three vertical slits in the chest of the Buddha? They are actually windows. This daibutsu has 4 sets of windows facing north, south, east, and west. You can go inside and look out through each set. There are five floors inside this daibutsu (accessible via an elevator).

Writers on Rafts is an initiative of Queensland Writers Centre and author Rebecca Sparrow to raise money for the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal. More than 150 Australian authors have pledged prizes. The 4 prize categories are pretty cool:

(a) Author Visit: Your chance to have a local author drop-in to your book club, have coffee with your writer’s group, or give a talk at your school.

(b) Writer Support: An opportunity to have your own work professionally developed, either through workshops, manuscript critique, or a place in the Queensland Writers Centre’s Year of the Writer series.

(c) Character Name: Be tuckerised and live immortally in your favourite author’s new work.

d) Book Pack: A selection of signed books by genre or author.

Participating authors include Brian Castro, Anita Heiss, Anne Summers, Tara Moss, Linda Jaivin, Markus Zusak, Melina Marchetta, Morris Gleitzman, Benjamin Law, Nick Earls, Mem Fox, Kathy Lette, Toni Jordan, and many more.

I’ve chosen the character name category. So if you enter Writers on Rafts, you might just win a prize of being a character in the book I’m writing. And I’m writing about some very cool things in this new book. Here are some of the character types you could end up as:

• a robot
• a god
• someone who has awesome sex with a tentacled beast
• a tentacled beast who is an awesome lover
• …and much more.

To enter, go to http://www.writersonrafts.com and purchase as many tickets as you like in as many categories as you want!

Every ticket is one chance to win for a lucky person in every state and territory, and every dollar goes directly to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal to help victims of the Queensland floods.

QWC’s goal is to raise $10,000 through Writers On Rafts and they’ll be conducting the draw on Friday 25 February.

Update: Congratulations to Tseen Khoo, Victoria’s winner of Writers on Rafts! Tseen chose to have her name featured in my book in progress. Happy to oblige, Tseen – in fact, I’ve already written you into the piece I’m currently writing!

I’ve never been published in The Lifted Brow before and I’m really looking forward to it. This is also my first publication of new work in a literary magazine for a little while. It is great that the piece is being published (and in such a fresh and interesting journal) and even the very process of submitting this piece to journals has been good for me. I’ve been submitting pieces to litmags since I was 18. I miss submitting work when I go for long stretches without doing it.

—

Recently, Sophie Cunningham stepped down from her role as editor of one of my favourite litmags, Meanjin. Sophie did a great job with Meanjin – not only via the print journal, but through in-person events and across various online channels. You will be missed, Sophie.

And, coming up soon, another one of my favourite litmags, HEAT, is going to be finishing up. The final issue is coming out soon. HEAT might return in online form at some stage but, at any rate, its current closing is sad news. HEAT has been really important for me in my career, particularly since it led to the publication of my first book. Farewell, HEAT. I hope to see you on my iPhone eventually.