Elise Britten
Sample of Work
Creative Non-Fiction
Take Me Home
(May 2016)
For my beautiful parents who gave me a love of John Denver and, more importantly, all of their love.
Country roads, take me home,
To the place I belong.
West Virginia, mountain mamma,
Take me home, country roads.
(John Denver, ‘Country Roads,’ 1971)
Windows down, I speed through the deserted roads and even emptier landscape. My hair whips my face as I belt out these well-worn lyrics at the top of my lungs. Exhilaration floods my veins. I’m heading home… Well, I’m not really. I’m heading to what was once my home, with my British fiancé in tow. It’s also not in West Virginia; we are on route to Tamworth NSW. I was just six years old when I left and yet somehow I feel the need to drag poor Jake hours into the middle of nowhere on a memory hunt. Listening to John Denver makes me feel like the country girl I could have been if we had stayed in Tamworth. One of the most important soundtracks for my identity as a coast-dwelling Australian is an American country singer who died when I was four. If Jake didn’t know he was marrying a mad woman, he does now.
We drive around a much bigger Tamworth than the one I lived in. I search wildly through the unfamiliarity for glimmers of recognition and squeal with delight with each one. There is the bridge with the loose panels that wobbled beneath my feet. I remember watching the flooded river roar beneath it, fiercely attacking its bloated banks. Here is the wide high street framed by tall palm trees, with all that space for the night to come alive during the country music season. Finally, there is my pre-school with the sails above the playground to fend off the worst of the harsh summer sun. I stood so proud and grown-up when I ‘graduated.’ Yet still I can’t find my house and the daylight is rapidly slipping away. I tap my fingers anxiously on the steering wheel, scanning the vast empty streets desperately, begging my thin web of memories to guide the way.
“We will find it in the morning Elise, I know we will… Let’s go find somewhere to stay.”
Jake was right as always. We sit opposite the house, observing the still scene in the gentle morning light. I take in the ornate columns over the veranda and the long driveway that felt endless to a little girl. I let out a sigh of relief. Yes, that’s it.
*****
You fill up my senses like a night in the forest,
Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain.
(Denver, ‘Annie’s Song,’ 1974)
She is early; she knows she isn’t meant to be. They drive around the block wasting time until it is acceptable to arrive. Sunlight flickers through the windows, warming her face. It is a perfect autumn day. Yet her dad is still quiet and nervous. It will be years before she realises just how hard it was for him to let his ‘special helper’ go. Of course he does not cry, he is a tough man of his time. They arrive at her church; not that many would recognise the old picture theatre as a church. The deep red and gold of the cavernous interior still possesses the grandness of a bygone era. Standing at the top of the red carpet as the music begins, she is overwhelmed with emotion. You fill up my senses… That is exactly how she feels.
“This is it Jewel,” her dad says as they begin to float down the aisle.
Mum perches on her chair in exercise tracks, with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. This is her permanent look, so she is ready at any moment to rush about. Yet now she is allowing herself a rare moment of indulgent reminiscence about a day where she glowed in white lace.
“I walked down the aisle to ‘Annie’s Song,’ so it has always been our song, not Annie’s,” she explains.
“She was looking ab-sol-ute-ly splendid,” Dad adds, drawing out his syllables so I can’t miss his emphasis. “Although I’ve never been forgiven for not making enough of a comment.”
*****
But sometimes I just don't know you, there's a stranger in our home.
When I'm lying right beside you is when I'm most alone.
(Denver, ‘Seasons of the Heart,’ 1982)
Jet-lagged and sporting a crippling hangover, he stumbles out of his car and nudges the door shut. He is not anticipating the warm welcome he received in years gone by. If he is being honest with himself, he knows he had delayed his return from London as long as possible. His mouth gapes as he suddenly notices the scene about him. The damned woman has bloody gone and razed to the ground the whole group of lovely old oaks in front of the house. Rage pierces through the lethargy of his alcohol-induced daze, as he storms to his shed. Flinging open his front door he sees those clear blue eyes, which had once looked upon him so warmly, spring wide open; their coldness turning to terror. The chainsaw he clutches in his hands, splits his head as it roars to life.
“John!” Annie exclaims. A warning. A plea.
She stands frozen, watching wordlessly as he saws through the kitchen table, erasing the site of many happy candlelit dinners. He races through the house, throwing open the door of the bedroom they used to share. He rams the bucking chainsaw into the headboard of their marital bed until finally it splutters out; its blades trapped within the bedding. The smell of petrol lingers in the heavy silence as they face each other. No words are adequate.
Mum is really disappointed when John Denver divorces Annie. She feels cheated.
“It just doesn’t seem right that you could love someone so much and then not love them anymore.”
Perhaps she finds it hard to accept that a song that reflects her long happy marriage, was written for one that was not. For her, marriage is forever.
*****
For you, for the rest of my life.
For you, all the best of my life.
(Denver, ‘For You,’ 1988)
My breathing is shallow and my heart feels trapped within the bodice of my dress. My veil forms a wafer thin barrier to the world, but I am acutely aware of its light touch on my face. We are here. Dad gently helps me and the many layers of my skirts out of the claustrophobic confines of the car. The little white chapel, with its moss-green roof and windows hedged in red, stands waiting for me, as I know my fiancé does. I am ready. My bridesmaids set off before me and within a few short seconds it will be my turn. My Dad, so predictably, forgets his cue and steps forward, I pull him back. We need to wait for the crescendo that signals my pledge: For You, for the rest of my life… I slowly make my way towards my love; my eyes glued to the shine in his. I take a trip down a short aisle in the hope of a long future.
I watch my parents dance to their song at my reception, 27 years after their own wedding. They sway quietly on the very edge of the dancefloor; invisible to those revelling about them. It is another one of those rare moments where Mum is wearing a dress. She looks gorgeous. In the bright colours of her outfit, with the waves of her hair flowing freely in a mirage of my own, it is not difficult to see a much younger woman starting out in her own marriage.
*****
Well I love my Ma, I love my Pa, I love Granny and Grandpa too.
I been fishing with my uncle, I ras’led with my cousin, I even kissed Aunt Lou, ew!
(Denver, ‘Grandma’s Feather Bed,’ 1974)
Five giggling siblings roll about on a small sofa bed; a far cry from the giant feather bed they are singing about.
They drown out the music: “I even kissed Aunt Lou, ewwwwwwwwwwwww!”
The children pull their best grossed-out faces. One of the boys lets out a roar of a laugh and their Pop smiles. Only our Stephen can laugh like that.
Nanna recounts this story, smiling gently across the soft linen tablecloth at my Mum. I don’t remember being one of these children, but I can picture it as clearly as if I could. Sitting in her impeccably clean kitchen, with its modest cream and tan colours still as pure as they were when she first moved into her bridal home, Nanna is remembering the light and life of times gone by.
“‘Annie’s Song’ makes me feel like that is how a man should really love a woman,” she ventures, her eyes shining with emotion.
Mum sees the beautiful pattern as clearly as I do.
“I will always think of ‘For You’ as your song, just like Nanna thinks of ‘Annie’s Song’ for us. Three generations all thinking the same thing.”
The warmth of these stories is tinged with sadness. Nanna is teary as she remembers all the times at this table, and in the car, where she and Pop would listen to Denver cassettes together. She has recently lost him after 58 short years, side-by-side in Pop’s castle. Pop may not have cried at her wedding, but Mum is always emotional remembering the one time she did see him cry—my tough Pop could not bear the thought of leaving his wife alone.
*****
'Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane,
Don't know when I'll be back again.
(Denver, ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ 1969)
I am on the phone with Dad and my heart aches. I sit huddled against the evening chill of England, gazing out across the flat common, singing about certain sunny mountain climes which neither of us have ever seen. I can picture him clearly, wearing his chequered, country coat despite the mild weather. He is angled towards our glass doors, positioned as always to admire the coastal views.
“Hey, it's good to be back home again,” my Dad warbles.
“Sometimes this old farm feels like a long lost friend,” I continue. “That’s ‘Back Home Again,’ Dad.”
We are discussing Denver and Dad is struggling to remember the song names; a trait I must have inherited from him because I am normally on the other side—singing songs instead of naming them. I wish I was back home myself, but the horrible truth is that I don’t know when I will see home again. Nevertheless, for these precious moments, I am transported across oceans and I am once again singing and dancing around my childhood living room to Denver’s Greatest Hits.
*****
Well, a simple kind of life never did me no harm,
Raising me a family and working on the farm.
(Denver, ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy,’ 1974)
John Denver’s music paints a picture of serene country-living and a stable family life. The more I look, the more I find what I don’t want to see. Despite his most famous song, Denver was not born in West Virginia, but in Roswell, New Mexico. He was named Henry John Deutschendorf Jr, by a strict military father who he did not get along with. Denver was a great activist for human and environmental causes, but he also led a troubled life; he struggled with alcoholism and through two traumatic divorces. He sang about a quiet country life while travelling extensively, which strained at least his first marriage. It is easy to see his music as a reflection of what he wanted life to be, not the reality he lived.
Mum confides in me she has been looking into his life and found he was in trouble with the law a few times.
‘I certainly won’t spoil it for Nanna though!’ Mum chuckles cheekily. “She remembers him on a pedestal.”
*****
And I'm looking for space and to find out who I am,
And I'm looking to know and understand.
(Denver, ‘Looking for Space,’ 1975)
We are lolling about the kitchen, waiting to be told off by Mum for not being out seizing the day. I tease Dad that he came from a lower class of family than Mum. His shoulders tense and his face creases. What have I said?
“It was shameful for my Mum not to know who her father was, she had a tough, unsettled childhood.”
“But surely that is all so far in the past Dad? It doesn’t matter anymore.”
I am blind to the missing identity that can be passed across generations. I never saw the needy boy cowering under the exasperation of his mother.
“How can you feel this way? Haven’t I given you everything that I didn’t have?” she would have said.
Years later I ask Dad what Denver means to him. He sees in ‘For You,’ what I have always taken for granted.
“Security.”
Dad gets very anxious about forgetting songs that are important for him and Mum. Does it matter if we forget our music? Probably not, but we feel its loss because it links us with something greater. This is a truth that is not just being recognised within media studies, but within therapy. Since 2010, the charity Music & Memory has been using personalised playlists on iPods for elderly and dementia patients to invoke memories of happier times. They have found this has greatly increased the responsiveness and moods of their users. I know one of the key artists that I would need on an iPod for me… or Mum… or Nanna.
*****
Sweet, sweet surrender; live, live without care,
Like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air.
(Denver, ‘Sweet Surrender,’ 1974)
His heart lifts as he soars towards the ocean, surrendering himself to this simple joy of searching out its vastness. Flying low, he watches the ground racing past him, soon he will be free of it. The rocky outcrop of Point Pinos emerges before him. The white walls of the old lighthouse stand alone, gleaming in the late afternoon sun. At the back of his mind there is a niggling doubt about how much fuel he has remaining in the little plane’s left tank. He begins to imagine he is losing power. Reaching across his body and over his left shoulder he tugs hard on the fuel selector handle. The darn handle stubbornly refuses to budge. The early butterflies of panic begin to build in his stomach. He throws his weight against the handle, realising too late that he has hit the right rudder with the same force. His shock registers in an eerie moment of calm, where he no longer hears the hum of his engine. All he sees is the wall of water rising to meet him. He has no choice but to surrender himself to its embrace.
She waves her arms to silence her husband and turns the radio up, sinking into a kitchen chair in shock.
“It has been confirmed; country music legend John Denver has died in a plane accident at the age of 53.”
Nanna is devastated that such a special man was taken so soon. I am just four years old; too young to know. I keep playing with my toys, oblivious to the news that a man who would come to mean so much to me is gone. He died flying high, leaving us all below, with a legacy of music to map our lives, even if it was never really the soundtrack of his own.
*****
Country roads, take me home,
To the place I belong.
(Denver, ‘Country Roads,’ 1971)
Sitting outside my beautiful old house in Tamworth, I see a mother walking along the footpath. She is holding the hand of a bouncy, golden-haired little girl. She could easily have been me at five. They turn and enter the house and I get a sense that the universe has somehow aligned to show me a glimpse of the wonderful circle of life. She may play in the same room as I did, but she will have special music of her own no doubt. I have seen all I need to see. With a lingering bittersweet warmth, I leave Tamworth ready to start the next verse of my life.
Napalm Girl
July 2016
Nick Ut holding the iconic ‘Napalm Girl’ photograph, which he captured in Vietnam in 1972.
A noise louder than any she has ever heard before reverberates inside her head. The ground beneath her feet trembles. Pure, undiluted fear pulses through her veins. In a single moment the tranquil interior of the temple turns to chaos. Calm faces become reflections of the terror within her own mind. She is carried with the surge of people out of the temple and into the streets. With another great crash the air fills with smoke and flying debris. She runs blindly, wading through the black smoke, heading for the highway that will take her away. To where? She doesn’t know—just away. A bright flash of light erupts in her peripheral vision and suddenly she feels like this great fireball is inside her, piercing through her skin from the inside out. Her thoughts are consumed with her desire for water; anything to abate the raging heat. Tearing off her clothes brings her no relief. She is surrounded by people all just flowing along the road. 'Somebody… Anybody… Help me please.' A thin stream of water is poured over her; but it is just a droplet challenging the fiery pits of hell. Her head spins with the overwhelming smell of torched flesh. The truth seems unavoidable as she begins to drift into unconsciousness. 'I am going to die.'
It was the 8th of June 1972 and nine-year-old Kim Phuc was yet to know that she would survive against all odds and become ‘Napalm Girl;’ one of the most famous icons of the Vietnam War. Phuc was in the wrong place at the wrong time when misdirected bombs exploded outside the little Vietnamese village of Trang Bang. In one life-defining moment, she lost two of her infant brothers and sustained burns to 30% of her body. Her unbearable pain was captured on film for all to see.
This powerful image rapidly added fuel to the growing mass of anti-Vietnam War protests around the world. Many perceive ‘Napalm Girl’ to be one of the turning points in public opinion forcing an end to the war. However, the anti-war movement was not a new phenomenon; it was strong from 1965 and particularly pervasive in 1968 when the success of the Tet Offensive launched by the North Vietnamese proved to America that the war was not going to be won any time soon. Vietnam was the first televised war, which meant that the western world was faced with an unprecedented level of exposure to the horrors of war straight from the third world into their living rooms.
‘Napalm Girl’ was certainly not unique in the extent of its evil; we had already seen slaughtered babies and the point-blank shooting of prisoners of war, by what was supposed to be the ‘good side.’ Yet there is something particularly striking about ‘Napalm Girl.’ The girl’s nakedness is shocking in itself as it violates the media’s usual standards of propriety. I remember the first time I saw this image on the front cover of a book in my school library. The girl was running straight at me with unimaginable horror etched into her face. I buried the image back onto the shelf, but it remained imprinted behind my eyelids. I didn’t know what the photo was of, but I understood it to be something so very dark; a world away from the brightly-lit, sanitised order of the library. Six months after the world first witnessed ‘Napalm Girl,’ in January 1973, a cease-fire was signed, effectively ending the conflict.
When a photograph is so powerful, we think it speaks for itself. It is easy to forget the hand that took it. The world remembers ‘Napalm Girl’ in monochrome, but when photographer Nick Ut closes his eyes he can still see the kaleidoscope of colour. Searing red and orange flares against a backdrop of stark black. We see the silent scream of a nameless little girl. He hears the howls of mothers running towards him with dead babes in their arms. We see a single moment, he sees the rolling story of destruction.
“Help me, I’m dying. I’m dying.”
Nick shakes off his cameras and desperately pours water over the burning girl. It is nowhere near enough. He can see the skin floating off her arm and back. Oh my God, we need to get her to the hospital—fast. They race along the pitted road. Every minute feels like an hour.
A nurse shakes her head in resignation: “Normal medicine cannot help with napalm. We can’t do anything.”
Nick flashes his media pass, demanding that the children are treated. I don’t know what I’ll do if they don’t help her. How will I live with myself?
A photographer is rarely an external witness; they are part of the scene that they are trying to capture. A photographer can reproduce a scene, but they can also change it. Ut altered his by making sure Phuc received medical attention rapidly—saving her life and forging a life-long friendship. Yet the traumatic experiences of his scenes surely also changed him. Ut’s career itself was birthed out of trauma, when he filled his brother’s place as a photojournalist at Associated Press after he was killed on deployment. Ut took up his brother’s mandate of trying to end the war by capturing its terrible effects. By the time he took ‘Napalm Girl’ at just 21, he was already an experienced war photographer. Yet he would never take another image as powerful as this one, which won him a Pulitzer Prize. Nick Ut came of age on the battlefield and carries its horrors with him every day and every night.
Heart pounding, Kim jolts awake from another nightmare where again she runs along a never-ending highway; forever just ahead of faceless soldiers hunting her down. She slides out of the clammy sheets, slips over to the window and tenderly shifts the curtain to peer out onto the street below. She can detect no movement in the stillness of the night, but the impenetrable shadows taunt her. Absent-mindedly she runs her fingers along the deep pocks on her shoulder. She looks over at her husband sleeping peacefully on his side of the bed and tries to focus on the love they share and the joy of their new little family. 'You are safe Kim,' she repeats trying to calm her racing pulse.
Like Ut, Kim Phuc has carried her pain all her life; both the physical trauma of severe burns and her inability to escape that one moment of horror defining her life. Communist leaders forced her to quit medical school where she was pursuing her dream of becoming a doctor to save lives—an ambition stemming from when her own life was miraculously saved. Instead she was forced to become a propaganda symbol; spouting scripted speeches for foreign journalists. Eventually she escaped to Canada with her new husband in 1992. Yet even there she was not safe. She was ‘re-discovered’ in 1995, leading to paparazzi stake-outs that made her feel afraid to leave her house. Phuc now largely lives a life of peace, but she will still always be ‘the girl in the photo.’
For the wider world this haunting photograph is a symbol of the indiscriminate destruction of war, while for Nick Ut it is an encapsulation of a career-defining moment. Yet the often nameless ‘Napalm Girl’ has a story too. For Kim Phuc the image is "my photograph, of my own war"; of her life-long battle to overcome the past.
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