Recently I have been spending some time reading a variety of old books of Australiana. It is amazing the sort of books one can find in second-hand book shops and at market stalls and I confess I spend hours trawling such places in the hope of finding something of interest if not of intrigue. The moment I do see anything remotely interesting, if only in the title, I snap it up and horde it for ages, until such time as I have the chance to pore over it. Of course, eventually I do get to read whatever the book is and more often than not I am not disappointed. In fact, there have been a few books, over the years, which have given me a lot of enjoyment as well as a wealth of information and ideas. Some have even been the genesis of a radio program or two.

Now that I am writing rather than broadcasting on radio, I find myself looking at these old books and articles in a very different way. I can no longer use sound, either in song or verse to amplify a story or give extra meaning to something that has been said and I can't really use a song or poem as the focal point of an article in the same way that I used to. So my perspective for reading is now quite different and very enjoyable. Actually, in some ways, this is also true for me in terms of listening to records again. It is really quite refreshing to go back and listen to an album I would have played in times past and to discover the songs all over again. Even revisiting old favourites often feels as if I am listening to them for the first time.

line drawing © Ron Edwards

It is the little things that one notices most. Sometimes, it is just a line in a poem or a sentence in a book. On other occasions it might just be the music arrangement that I had never quite noticed before or the song that I always meant to play but never did, perhaps because for some reason or other it didn't quite fit the show. Similarly, I find I am now actually reading books for the interest and the detail rather than searching for a quotation of a passage or text. It is a bit like the folk process, the idea of sharing and passing on to others, except this time round, it is me who is doing the absorbing of the knowledge and experience, just as I used to years ago.