Zooming Out: Australia’s Cultural Confidence

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Written by Noah Lawrence, February 2025

Sometimes when I’m locked away in a small room, practising my cello, I’ll find I have a
burst of inspiration. I feel energised and ready to work hard. At other times, it’s the complete
opposite: I’m lethargic; I sigh and flop into a terrible posture after every phrase I play. On the
whole, my level of motivation is… unreliable at best. For somebody else, replace the practice
room with the office, and the story is much the same. This is just the human condition. But if
there’s one thing that can lift me out of this state, it’s this whole idea of ‘zooming out.’
Asking myself what role I play in some of the greater stories taking place – in my circles, in
communities, nations and in the world – is one of the most refreshing things I have ever done.

What Deborah says here is empowering. It instils the best kind of confidence in a person – the
sense that what you do is important, and also that what you do exists in a larger ecosystem.
I’m no longer just acting for myself, I’m part of a more important narrative. I can contribute
to it and I can draw strength from it.

This is a particularly important idea in a place like Australia – a country with a complex
colonial history that, in many ways, defines its modern self through multiculturalism. We are
at the forefront of globalisation, a thing that some people call heaven and some call hell. It
can feel fractured, like there’s a sense of ‘…cultural amnesia, selective readings of history –
or no reading of history at all.’ You could say that the nationalism springing up in other parts
of the world is partly due to a fear of change and of the unknown, too. It’s all very confusing,
it’s anxiety-inducing, and it can be a really tricky place for an artist.

Australia is also, as Deborah points out (well, not also but rather fundamentally) the country
with the oldest continuing heritage on the planet and the oldest living musical practice too.
There is a knowledge here that existed before Beethoven, before Bach, before the early days
of medieval chant. We can draw strength from this. No musician from Central Europe would
underestimate their culture in this way – the awesome creations of Mahler, Sibelius, Dvořák
or Verdi – so why do we continually diminish ours? Deborah told us a story about a time
when she was singing one of her compositions in a beautiful Renaissance chapel in Italy. The
roof was painted by Tintoretto – probably a dramatic, biblical scene. She asked herself how
music like hers could possibly fit in a place like this. At first, it might seem like it came from
a totally different planet. But what Deborah found was that it fits perfectly – just as Tintoretto
was building his masterpiece, so too were the first people living their lives and making their
art here in Australia. Who knows what might have happened if they had the chance to meet,
in their time, as fellow artists.

There is no fundamental difference between the legacies of these cultures – they existed on
the same planet at the same time – through history, one has simply been placed on an altar,
and the other suppressed. There is no reason why we can’t have cultural confidence as strong
as the Germanic, Czech, or Finnish ones – we just need to realise that ours is of the same
vintage, the same richness, and we need to give the custodians of Australia’s Indigenous
culture the resources and autonomy to thrive.

Why is this relevant to all Australians? Deborah says: ‘Because then you are part of the
longest continuing music culture in the world. And everything you love about Western art fits
into that very neatly.’ Everything that we do as musicians is about diving into history and
reconnecting to a certain time and place, most importantly to a certain experience and
sentiment. This is about bringing to the table what Australia’s history has to offer – and it is
also the opportunity to empower a whole host of musical voices that have something to say
about our time and place. ‘There are certain things Australian composers are saying about the
lives you are living now, and that is of value … We don’t have to exclude anyone’s music – it
has to be good enough to be played, and you have to be good enough to play it.’

That’s why I’m going to head back to the practice room now – and next time you start to
daydream in there, I encourage you to think about how you could zoom out like this, too.