S2E1: Diarymaking
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Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to the blank first page (for Tracy, terrifying; for Jen, not) of season 2 of Bad Diaries Podcast.
In our first episode of the podcast for 2024, we look back at the summer that’s passed since our xmas episode – a summer of busy-ness, bereavement, and a broken bone.
Then we make a schmear on the blank page of season 2, and leap right into it with a chat about diarymaking – whatever diarymaking means.
Usually on the pod we focus on the content, on the words in diaries. In this episode we shift our focus to the physical artefact – whether that’s “the ultimate in wankery” of Tracy’s current fancy notebook, or something more sensible.
We talk aesthetics and logistics, preferences and flexibility, the creative and the mundane. Jen asks whether a diary is really a place where you can be honest with yourself. And along the way we find ourselves wearing purple 80s mohair jumpers, drinking Midori and lemonade, having dalliances in smoky bars.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2024, join us for a new episode of the podcast each month, bringing you more guests, more chats, and more diaries (and diary-adjacent) content. Good to chat! Catch you next time!.
In this episode:
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome is a bit from the film/musical Cabaret (a Tracy fave) (as also featured in Schitt’s Creek)
Here’s a little about Tracy’s dad’s career in the early days of TV in Perth
We think back to our Xmas 2023 episode
Charles Dickens famously walked and walked and walked – see, for instance, Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Tracy loves the work and creative practice and workshops of India Flint – including folding paper to make notebooks, and making a schmear on a blank white page – and you can explore the work of India Flint at her website, her Substack, or on Instagram where she is prophet_of_bloom
Tracy made boots! Lou at Shoe School used to be in Wellington, but this year she has relocated to Melbourne – go to it, Naarm, go get shoe-y with Lou! Find Shoe School on Instagram shoe_school
Want to watch Tracy making and modelling her boots (January 2023)?
Jen talks about Lena Dunham’s memoir (or collection of personal essays) Not That Kind of Girl (2014)
Jen and I talk (again) about Helen Garner’s diaries – last year, we spent a good part of an episode (S1E3: Other people’s diaries) talking about HG’s diaries
Midori melon-flavoured liqueur! Midori and lemonade! Turns out Midori is still a thing and there is a terrifying RTD you can buy at Australian liquor stores that we are not going to link to …
Mmmmm, but drink this up – here’s the Midori Tracy prefers (no melons harmed in the making of MD paper notebook A5)
The card of Robin Hyde on the front cover of Tracy’s notebok is by Sarah Laing, from Verb Wellington’s Aotearoa Literary Coven Cards
Tracy mentions glassine paper
Tracy mentions Decomposition notebooks, which are widely available
Tracy’s preferred A4 notebooks for writing projects are Fabriano Ecoqua Original staple bound A4, quad-ruled (square-ruled) – they’re also widely available (including art supply stores)
Tracy loves Scrivener writing software; Jen not so much
Marmite: you either love it or hate it
We relish the schmear, or shmear
Katherine Mansfield’s notebooks have been digitised, and are now available online – here are excerpts, with links and images
Wiktionary is no bad place to start on the etymology of “diary” and “journal”
The earliest known diary is reportedly the Diary of Merer, ancient Egyptian papyrus logbooks describing the transportation of stone
One of the earliest personal journals, from 2nd century, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
We talked about the Pillowbooks of Japanese courtesans in our S1 episode on Other people’s diaries
Jen mentions Thomas Platter the Younger – traveller!
Jen talks about her experience in the 2000s writing anonymous blogs – she talks about this in detail in season 1, in her episode with Emily McCulloch Childs
Tracy’s old, un-updated, non-anonymous hissingswan blogspot still exists!! Here it is in all its (lack of) glory (be warned that not all the links work, soz!)
Tracy talked about writing on herbarium specimens in pencil, and the writing being part of the specimen in collection – here’s an example (from the collections of Te Papa) of a seaweed collected by Tracy, with her pencil handwriting in the bottom right hand corner
You can write with pencils in space and underwater
NYT’s Wirecutter gave their reckons on The Best Notebooks and Notepads in October 2023
“How in the heck” do you pronounce Leuchtturm? I’m glad she asked
You’ll find the lovely stationery store Fitzgerald Taylor (kia ora Kim!) on Auckland’s North Shore, within spittin’ distance of Michael King Writers Centre
OMG there really is a Midori 5 Year Diary, Tracy did not dream it (spendy, but)
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Bad Diaries Podcast is recorded and produced in Naarm Melbourne, Australia, on the lands of the Kulin Nation; and in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the iwi lands of Taranaki Whānui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. We pay our respects to Mana Whenua, and to Elders past, present and emerging, of these lands.
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