Beautiful challenges: ‘Murriyang: song of time’ by Stan Grant

First up: a confession. This is one of the most difficult blog posts I have written about a book. Mostly because I have found it hard to put into words what I think – and more importantly, feel – about this particular book.

It is beautiful.

It is challenging.

It is in turn confronting, comforting, confusing.

I was very keen to read it because:
(1) it is the first publication by Bundyi, the brand-new imprint of Simon & Schuster Publishing. Bundyi is a Wiradjuri word meaning ‘to share with me’ and the imprint is curated by well-known author and Wiradjuri woman Anita Heiss, with the aim of publishing books written, edited and designed by First Nations people. (source: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/p/Bundyi), and

(2) I’d heard it described as ‘in part, Grant’s response to the Voice referendum‘ and ‘a book for our current moment, and something for the ages.’
Like many Australians, I’d been hurt and disheartened by the ‘no’ result, denying my fellow Australians of First Nation heritage both long-overdue recognition and a legitimate Voice about programs and policies that affect them. I hoped that Stan Grant’s book might offer some healing words.

It does, and it goes further.

The author reaches for his spiritual faith – a deeply Christian one – which he ties closely with his indigenous spirituality and deep family connections:

I come from a spiritual people – before anything else, we are a people of the unfathomable and inexplicable, and I love that about us. We have lived here in this Country for as long as human memory, in a state beyond the measurement of time, as close as possible to God. Baiyaame, that’s my people’s name for God: a creator spirit that commands the heavens, who gave us our place and our law…
Nothing of God was strange or unknown to us. We lived here in a thin space between Earth and Heaven – Murriyang – where the mystical realm was a breath or a touch away.

Murriyang, pp13-14

Grant seeks to replace his lifelong career of journalism where he covered international and domestic politics, wars, and all the tragedies that humans can bring upon ourselves – with love.

Just love? This is where I struggle. It is such an amorphous concept. What does that mean at an individual level, or for a family, a community, a nation, for nations at war? How do we apply this in today’s world where it is a quality in very short supply?

I won’t pretend to understand the answers to these questions. What I will say is that for me, where the book demonstrates these ideas most clearly is in the more personal parts, which are in the sections interwoven within the main narrative. Titled Babiin (meaning ‘father’ in Grant’s Wiradjuri language) these are short snippets about family, mostly to do with Stan and his father, a Wiradjuri elder and cultural leader with whom he had a sometimes troubled, yet loving relationship. It is here we understand what love can mean: not the gooey silly Hallmark card variety, but the warts-and-all, realistic kind that can endure in families through the hardest of times, as it did in Stan’s.

Within the main narrative the author canvasses a wide range of concepts and ideas, including philosophers ancient and modern, mathematics (‘a source of mystery beyond our supposedly known world’), music (‘the heartbeat of God’), forgiveness, ageing and illness, time, nature and being on Country, memory (‘the delicate aroma of all we have been and of those we have loved’), language.

If that sounds like a shopping list of concepts, it’s not: each of these ideas is beautifully expressed and left me wanting more, even if I sometimes felt as if I could not quite grasp the depth of what was being said.

For me, reading Murriyang felt a little like reading the personal diary of a man who has seen – and experienced – too much suffering. It is a lament, but also a song of joy, if such a thing were possible. He is seeking solace, not in the artificial constructions of politics or society, but in the beauty of ancient spiritual beliefs and in the simplicity of love. The final pages express this beautifully:

I won’t lie; it is confronting watching Dad and Mum enter their final years: I face my mortality. My parents have found peace and acceptance: they are happier now than at any time I can remember.
Their days have a glorious monotony; they grasp for nothing. Whenever I am there, it is the simple things that mean the most: a cup of tea becomes a ritual. Dad is showing me how to live and when my time comes to pass, this is what I will remember.
Murriyang p251

Murriyang was published by Bundyi, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2024.