Lloyd Jones - Finding no peace in quiet

• by: Craig Sherborne
• From: The Australian - August 24, 2013

• 

Lloyd Jones went to Christchurch to write about the 2011 earthquake, only to realise he was there to write about himself. Picture: Welsh Nick Source: TheAustralian

OURS is the age of anti-silence. There are no secrets any more. Everyone is their own personal whistleblower. If something bad happens to you, if there's a burden afflicting your psyche, you can post it on your social media page. You can trumpet your grievances to the world.

If nothing happens to you, you can post that as well, a little quotidian memoir. There is no incentive to keep quiet. The old moral codes that forced people to be discreet about their personal lives - their peccadilloes, infidelities, children born out of wedlock - have mostly been dispensed with.
You're a hero if you publicly confess wrongdoing. There is no honour in bottling up emotions. There's no shame in being honest and open. That's because there is no longer any shame. Shame is an antique word, like sin. It belongs to bygone days.

A few generations ago silence was how you protected yourself from shame. Not just yourself but your family, your lineage. It was the virtue you pinned to your soul like a pennant of pride, even if it turned you against yourself and the world and made you crazy. Better to be a martyr to misery, create a private hell on earth and take your troubles to the grave than stir things up and besmirch your reputation.

Silence was all award-winning New Zealand author Lloyd Jones knew about his family history. His parents always hushed talk about themselves and their heritage. If talk did happen it revealed a small cast of mysterious ancestors who were lionised or bitterly demonised to a point that stretched credibility.
Jones lost interest in knowing anything about them. As far as he was concerned he was part of the "mongrel" breed of antipodeans for whom ancestry was irrelevant. The history of his own life was all that counted.

Until the Christchurch earthquake, February 22, 2011. Epiphanies come when you don't expect them. They are yoked somehow from mystical quarters. Jones, a Wellington resident, experienced the disaster on television. A removed witness of spastic seismology. The humanist in him felt pity, an urge to help victims, contribute to relief programs. The writer in him sensed a need to ply his trade.

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