Shane Howard's constancy in hard places

Reading a book of songs without the music is like watching a grand final with the crowd sound turned off. But even allowing for the absence of music, Shane Howard's book of poems and songs is a delight to read.

It is beautifully produced by One Day Hill publishers, and accompanies the lyrics with evocative paintings by Theresa O'Brien and Howard himself. The songs are colloquial, but their depth of feeling and grasp of imagery and rhythm engage the reader even without their musical setting. Martin Flanagan introduces the collection with an illuminating foreword.

The lyrics record Howard's preoccupations over almost 30 years. He came to public notice in the 1980s through his band, Goanna. He has continued to pursue his music and his commitment to the truth of Australia and its histories, living with Indigenous communities and visiting his ancestral Ireland and deriving the inspiration for his music from the places and people with whom his life is intertwined.

The themes of the lyrics are familiar in folk song — love, struggle, freedom, the beauty found in unexpected people and places, love of familiar land and the pain of absence.

The point of interest is the singer's individual perspective on these themes. Here, the focus is on constancy. Constancy is a particular kind of faithful and enduring love that must necessarily face and conquer all the intractable forces in yourself, in circumstances and in others that make you give up. Howard's commitment to justice and his companionship with Indigenous Australians has taken him into hard places. His songs form a dialogue in which constancy is sought, feared, loved and finally embodied.

In some of his early songs the invitation to constancy involves naked courage in the face of brutal force:

But when they're coming with daggers in their eyes Don't take that nowhere ride Stand yr' ground.

Other songs celebrate the inevitable and hard struggle to keep going despite our own failures, disappointments and brokenness:

So get out of your head and face the day No-one's goin' to take the pain away Got to find the strength within, to get up and start again Now you know you're not the only one.

But constancy demands more than endurance and the refusal to bend. If it is to be human, it also asks for the capacity to let go and find