Encore: Meg Washington on the magic of music

0:00We all have those books. Dog-eared with their first few pages, still fanning even when you try to lie them straight. They still inspire awe after the seventh free read. Which Australian books are your timeless favourites? ABC Radio Nationals Top 100 Australian Books Countdown Head to ABC.net.au slash Top 100 Books and have your say. ABC Listen, Podcasts Radio, News, Music and more. Megawashington spent a happy childhood in Pop-Wingingini, surrounded by the local culture and by the songs of classic Hollywood musicals. But that wasn't the only reason that singing became a big part of Meg's life as a kid. She had a stutter and she discovered that using her voice in a melodic way allowed her to express herself with a whole new fluency.

1:02So she began singing more and more in choirs, church and steadfords. After a tough time at high school in Brisbane, followed by an expulsion, a meeting with God and then a life-changing music teacher. Meg realised that singing could be her life's work. A spoke with Megawashington about her story in 2025. Hi Meg. Hi Sarah. Tell me a little about your life in Pop-Wingingini. What had brought your parents to Port Morsby in the first place? Well, my dad moved to Port Morsby before independence in the 60s. My mum moved there in the 70s to be the manager of a freight forwarding branch in Port Morsby and they just met there and then had me and my sister. And what kind of place was Port Morsby for you as a kid? It was kind of amazing for me as a kid.

2:06We had boats, my dad really loves water skiing and we had a boat and an old steam ship that used to go up and down the river with cargo in it but my parents bought it and turned it into a going out on the harbour boat. We used to go out to Fisherman's Island a lot and we used to go water skiing a lot and I used to do dancing there that I loved so much and when I wasn't doing that stuff I was watching MGM movie musicals with my sister which provided I guess the seed for like so much of what's happened since then. For a lot of expats living in P&G now there can be a real isolation from the local community in terms of security and all of that stuff. What was it like back when you were growing up? Well, we didn't live in a compound. We lived in our own house, we had security measures and a guard dog and a person and there were a few things like that but my experience of it was actually just having a really awesome time and I went to an international school.

3:19There were kids from all different countries at my school and yeah we left because it got a bit too dangerous and I had to go to high school but as a young kid it was a bit of a paradise in a way. Yeah, I mean I loved it but I've never been back so it's become a beautiful watercolor like memory. What did your dad do for work in P&G? My dad went up to P&G because he got a job opportunity to be a baker's apprentice and then when he was living there he was there for over 30 years so he did a few things. He worked in the building industry but what he really did the most was that he was the DJ at the Port Mores B York Club every Friday and Saturday night for about 25 years. Wow. So would you go and see him play? Yeah, they had kids like Disco's which I loved of course.

4:24I don't have for that reason he had a massive music collection and you know a real passion and real interest for music. Both my parents do actually they take music really seriously. It's hard for me not to assume that given he was the DJ at the York Club it was York Rock but is it broader than that? It was broader he would play all kinds of things. I mean I remember dancing took quite a bit of ace of bass. But yeah he used to close every night with the same song which was Good Night Sweetheart. Tell me about these musicals, these movie musicals that you were watching at home. Why were they such a big part of your life? It's funny you know like looking back I mean I remember the first time I saw a musical it was Helodolly. And mom had got the VHS like sent from a catalog and I was five or so and I watched it and I was like I love this.

5:33I love everything about this. I want more of this. I want to watch this again. Are there more? Is there more movies like this? Like what is this? I need like what is this? And I remember like singing the song Helodolly at a club med as a child on the karaoke floor in front of a resort full of people. But yeah so and then of course you know I got the MGM collection which included a lot of Rodgers and Hammers dying musicals and I got pretty hooked. I now realize I got pretty hooked on Richard Rodgers like that's kind of he's probably the composer that I've spent the most you know time with. Yeah and just watched and watched and sang and watched and danced and sang. And if you think about the sort of legacy of that immersion in those musicals in your career how has it turned up that early marination in MGM musicals? Well I mean my story of my journey to become a songwriter did not happen through wanting to be a songwriter.

6:40I was as a kid I was most passionate about dancing and like twirling around in front of the mirror you know. I really thought I was going to be a dancer actually but sort of running along parallel to that was this started that like turned up when I was five or six and so. I was doing a lot of sync like music therapy and in various quiet and stuff and then I you know I eventually ended up doing jazz at the at the con and all of the repertoire is standards from those shows. So I ended up singing all those songs that I've known for you know my whole life as a as a job and as a career. You mentioned this starter that turned up about the time you started school. How do you remember feeling about it at that time like were you aware that something was happening with your speech or was it something that other people were pointing out to you? What was the experience right at the start?

7:40I didn't I didn't really notice that it was happening really until people kids mostly sort of say say something. I got a lot of like to today junior at like Adam Sandler jokes. I mean the the time that I remember it being the hardest for me was as a teenager because I really wanted to kind of am quite friendly and I wanted to be friendly but you know it can be hard when you don't sound how you want to sound. What approach did your mum and dad take to it how do you remember them talking to you about it or acting around it? My parents are pretty amazing like mom mom had me in speech therapy I remember I would come to to Brisbane to do some therapy and I had a smooth speech therapy technique that I used which is kind of what I'm using right now I run everything together and it sounds very smooth and it's all just one breath and it's almost.

8:49Like singing but you know it's something that it's so unreliable as well you know because like some days you wake up and it's just much worse than yesterday and I don't know why maybe I didn't get enough sleep but my parents were we're always really supportive of me and yeah just you know tried to help me find a way through it. It's a smooth speech that you describe as being similar to singing in a way to me more about that relationship between singing and startering or what singing does to people can do for people who start. It's a it's a known phenomenon that it's very difficult to start a when you sing. Why is that people are looking into it but so far like nobody really knows I know that there are clinics in Europe where really really chronic stutterers live in a house together and all sing all day long to each other as a form of therapy yeah that would make a good musical.

9:58But it's it's it always just felt to me you know singing is always just been this absolutely magic thing it must have been liberating as a kid to have somewhere that you could be and communicate freely totally and the other thing that I love about singing is that when you're in the middle of a song or in you know a song. I'm a song is this like series of present moments all sort of curated for you by the songwriter and when you're inside the middle of that process you really are in different place and. I feel really in love with that place as well as a kid like being in the moment of a song feels very addictive to me and yeah I've always just loved how that feels. As you mentioned when you were eleven your family moved to Brisbane and you had that.

11:02You experience of mainstream pop culture here and then of course experience of a different kind of schooling and education system here what was school like few in this new place. I struggled I struggled I'm looking back I think that I was experiencing culture shock and grief. I actually think our whole family you know went through quite a bit of letting go when we left and moved to Australia and yeah it was you know I went to a new education system with all different stuff going on and I didn't like it. So yeah so I had a hard time you know I always did like extracurricular activities I was always doing dancing and that was the really big part of my life and as I became a teenager like performing in musical theatre

12:13and performing in a dead firds and that's you know talent quest that became really a big part of what I was into but yeah I found school kind of really tricky at the beginning. What led to you being expelled in year 10? It was a war of attrition between me and the teacher and nobody won but it ended up yeah I may or may not have. Throw in a chair across the classroom may or may not. Did you hit anybody? Thankfully I did not hit anybody except the wall but yeah it was a it was a it was a it was just strong time for me like becoming a teenager. So it sounds in a way make that at that time like for many teenagers you're kind of looking for direction or maybe identity maybe some kind of discipline. Where did you end up finding that?

13:14Well the thing about you know being a troublemaker at school is that once you create a brand for yourself as a troublemaker it's very difficult to change that narrative because everybody sort of has this expectation of you and then you sort of fulfill that expectation and so you know it was it was it was even though I felt sometimes like I wanted to no one wants to be in trouble all the time like it's not a good feeling. But my mom my parents they sent me on some scripture union caps in the school holidays and I loved them because it was just this week where you're a new person with a bunch of old new people and you can just be fresh and that was really you know really great for me and I had a very different experience on those caps and like my family is not overly you know religious or anything like that but my I guess you know they figured it was a pretty cool place to send a tricky day.

14:19And I ended up absolutely loving this one camp called Smad which stood for song music arts drama dance and it was just this performing arts camp where you went to and just made things for a week and I just I really loved it I loved those and it was on one of those camps that I had this sort of genuine like spiritual experience what did you experience well I was I was in a dormitory and I was with some other girls and that we were all praying and they were kind of praying for me and I just I felt like a genuine wash of what I can really only describe as like immense love like bliss but kind of on a visceral body level like I didn't hear a voice in my head or anything like I just felt something really amazing and I felt myself let go and cry and sort of just release a lot of something and I sort of lost the sense of time and everything felt a bit smoky and then the next morning I woke up and I sort of you know

15:46found myself on this Christian performing arts camp and I had this amazing experience and I before and I genuinely felt like a fresh person like I felt like I could be fresh and so I sort of decided that I was born again Christian and when I'm told my parents that I was born in Christian and how did things change for you sort of day to day after that well it was actually really amazing because suddenly I had this really clear reason to be different and to do it. To act better and to improve which you know I had sort of outsourced myself a steam to this idea that like I was immensely loved and I felt that I could love the world actually in a very different way to the way that I felt before I felt a lot of loving awareness towards everybody and everything and you know I also changed schools around that time to and ended up going to the world.

16:46I was going to a really amazing school that I love so much called Children College which sort of just sort of changed my life everything changed for the better for me from then. My guest on conversations today is the musician Meg Washington I'm Sarah Knozky in this sort of new born again Christian world that you were in at the time what kind of role did music play. The church that I went to was a church where worship was a huge part of the service and the worship that they did was incredibly cool because again you know being part of the performing arts camp and whatever it was very easy to be part of the worship team so the barrier between the audience and the stage is not there. It's very cool to make music for real in a space where it's not a lot of you know it's so normal it's so possible just like walk up here and here's the tambourine like good luck it's just a great.

17:55It's a great I guess it's sort of where I got my first experience of people singing together for a reason that is not about the person holding the microphone. It was like a sense of us all singing together and there's a worship leader but everyone else is singing to and the sensation of that and the feeling of that is so profoundly moving and it was also the first time that I went to a rock and roll show and saw like not a rock and roll show was like Christian now I know it's Christian rock but I was a teenager so like you know I saw. So dudes with you know guitars and like distortion under lights you know singing their hearts out like the whole thing was just so the whole scene was just so beautiful to me and so again like music equated to love in this really clear way that just has never really changed for me in a lot of ways.

19:04This new school that you went to that was sounds like it was a much better fit for you tell me about your music teacher and the sort of influence he had. Music music was always something that I just felt was quite far away from me I didn't you know I've played the piano in my whole life and I've had lessons but I still can't really I still do every good boy deserves fruit and all cows e grass like I still. I still don't really speak or read music fluently at all and so I get it but I don't get it so my when I was in grade 11 I had I had a music teacher called highly made and he said to me that I should be doing music extension for my singing and he said you should be in this class and I was like I can't do it I can't I don't know any music. I don't know any music theory I don't know about intervals I don't know any anything like that and he said I will teach you and he did we did like a million lessons in lunch hours and before and after school and he he single handily taught me music theory to catch me up to where the rest of the grade 11s were and I and I plugged in and I and I kept going.

20:26I still think of him when I'm trying to figure out music I still. He must have been pretty happy watching the trajectory of your career I'm fortunately he died a little while ago so I'm not sure of what he was able to to know about but yeah he's a really meaningful person to me. In this period as well me the experience of stuttering and singing they although you study said was was bad at high school singing was still a place that you were able to get a break from that yeah I mean even at that school my speech was so so bad that I actually failed my English oral. Because I just couldn't do it and they allowed my drama performance where I was playing Helena in a mid summer nights dream with an English accent so of course wasn't starting because you were doing an accent yeah yeah there's a lot of people who have started to use a affected voice like Marilyn Monroe spoke like that because she had a stutter.

21:43You know this if you do an accent it doesn't it's the same as singing it's like a different. I'm afraid so interest crazy it's totally crazy so when you are doing performing Shakespeare in English accent that was that worked and that got you through English yeah yeah and they were really cool about. Being really accommodating for me so high school you've got this part of you that's really into dance and a part of you that clearly was being drawn to music and to singing performing what did you imagine life might be like for you after school what were your dreams back then. I remember really seriously considering a job on a cruise ship I was working a little bit teaching singing to tiny tots at a studio in the redlands and I also got work through my dance school being a power path girl in the big heads you know the big foam can.

22:48Can I imagine what it was like inside that big head yeah South Bank here just outside the windows I was the black and red one. So so I mean I you know I really thought I was going to be in music theater I wanted to be hello Sally bowls or yeah you know dolly fanny bar I saw I wanted to do it so I kind of. Finish high school kind of thinking I would do something like that so how did you end up at the con well I just assumed that I wouldn't get into the con so I I do the year at creative industries at you know qt just sort of general arts degree. And I was in the meantime I was getting piano lessons from Steve Newcom because I was trying to you know get better at music and he said you should audition for the con I was like I don't think I'll get in and he was like I'm on the panel that watch as the auditions and I think you've got a good chance through do it so I did and then I ended up yeah at the con again in.

24:01In in in voice just as a vocal student but over the course of of my degree I ended up moving into composition and piano because I that's really where I started songwriting I got really inspired by like world music and just understanding for like form I found very exciting so yeah so I started as as a voice major and finished in your composition of voice. What were your early songs like what kind of songs were you writing back then lots of songs about my feelings absolutely nothing has changed. There was some practice rooms at the con that are just so beautiful and like tiny and warm like and I would lock myself in there for I would skip lectures and just go in that there was actually something about knowing that everybody else was in the lecture and then I was sort of truly alone that was exciting to me somehow.

25:06I don't know I can't. They're not songs that are still in your set. They're not they're not on rotation. We were also working already as a professional musician. Well yeah I I love singing jazz and I really connected with that repertoire obviously because I knew it all so well so it just felt like second nature to me to sing all those tunes. So I kind of put myself through uni I had a little jazz combo and we did lots of weddings and lots of 50th and lots of birthday parties and I gigged a lot sort of out in the neighborhood. Who did you meet one night at a gig in a bar at the valley. I was doing a gig at Riksbar in the valley and Paul Grabowski came and saw me singing and he he waited and spoke to me and said I absolutely loved. You're singing and what you're doing and do you want to have a jam and play together and he's this incredibly talented and influential master of.

26:14Of course he's an absolute you know icon and so we he went into one of the tiny practice rooms and with me and we played a bunch of really holiday together you know he played a nice thing and we just you know did a bunch of tunes and. Just loved loved playing together and just loved we loved it. So Meg after graduating from the con in Brisbane you moved to Melbourne partly to continue collaborating with the pianist and composer Paul Grabowski. You're also working on your own music and after four years or so released your debut LP which was Big Hit and which won you two Arias. The award for best female artist and breakthrough artist you were still so young. What was it like to have that sudden level of public success? It's it's quite amazing to achieve your dream. I had been writing my own songs you know for a few years and I had released a few EPs leading up to that album and there had been a.

27:25The kind of crescendo of activity that I had been doing I remember one year I had done a hundred gigs by June. I June. Yeah it was something crazy like that like I had just you know I had really I really just went for it because you know things were starting to you know bubble and. And it culminated I guess with that with with that area that are a year and I was doing a performance of the Arias which was the first time I'd ever done you know the first time first time. And I won some I won you know I thought I always wondered and then I you know and then you wake up the next day and you still feel just the same as you do the day before. Of course everybody feels that and you know now I know that that's just what life is like but you know I think I had sacrificed quite a lot to I think you know nowadays especially artists are so much more literate about mental health and what sort of structures are most conducive to long term.

28:39Artistic stability and all these lessons that I now know I hadn't learnt any of those lessons yet so it was a very wild and sort of chaotic time for me. What sort of idea did you have in your head about what an artist's life should look like should be well I think that as young people in this culture we're kind of sold. A myth about like the suffering artist and deeply passionate self sacrificing emotional chaotic and positive. Selfhood that is required to live and artistic life because that's kind of the myth late night slots of booze or peric was it right it's kind of a nighttime world so nothing really. Starts happening until 5pm like and yeah I think I was really living that mythology I also felt as a songwriter.

29:44That I had to method live my storytelling so. The sense that my songs had to be truly about my immediate life as a singer songwriter you know and I had to live dramatically to generate the most dramatic. I had to live in New York City and live in the places and do all this stuff and I just did all that I just did it all and just did all of the things that I now recognize the opposite of what is. You know David Lynch I was just reading has a beautiful quote about his meditation practice where he talks about when your stable inside the art can be as crazy as you like but I didn't I didn't I wasn't aware that that was and that was a thought the inside had to be crazy as well yeah so how did that start to change for you.

30:53Well I think the coolest thing that ever happened to my art practice has been having my son because just just the overlay of that structure just what the day has to be like when you have a young person who then has to go to school you know you just sort of. It was amazing it was actually the best thing I mean I say I became an art machine because I went from a practice where I was second guessing myself and questioning my own choices and I was this good enough or always this the right sort of tonality for what I'm going for just you know you can spend five days tuning the kick drum if you want to like there's a million ways to to hesitate. But when you only have three hours because that's when that's when candy is over then that's what you're doing that's you're doing it in three hours. And what did that kind of stability and order mean for your creativity you know you'd thought that you needed a certain sort of night world and an emotional turmoil to be able to create what what did you discover once your life couldn't be like that because of your responsibilities.

32:11Well I discovered I discovered a well of ideas and I think the combination of having a young child and COVID happening you know allowed me to have three or four years I think of really just very intense work with no real interruptions just steady. Consistent boring work there's this there's a thing that people say which is you don't always know if the muse will turn up when you're sitting at the piano but you better hope you sitting at the piano when the muse turns up and I I found a lot of inspiration actually from my friends who were visual artists. I love the way that painters often talk about this studio as if it's separate to them like my friend Guita always says I don't know what's going on in this studio I'm just in their painting I don't know and it's so great you know because you there's like a disconnect between as opposed to being a songwriter where it's like I am the work like I'm making it this appearance in your life of your son and how that shifted the way of living you know step before that is not going to be a good thing.

33:32Step before that is meeting your husband Nick how did the two of you meet I'm at Nick at my degree I was living in an apartment on Crown Street and I was moving out of that apartment and I had book. Movers to come that day to move me out of my apartment not realizing that the whole street would be blocked off because it's my grass so I just call my friend birdie blackman and said let's hang out and she brought her housemate who was Nick. And how quickly did things happen between the two of you well the first time we just met as friends among friends and then I went back overseas where I was sort of half living and then I came back in. We we went out and we got married like 12 weeks after that 12 weeks yeah and I remember saying to him let's not rush this. Let's make it five weeks let's wait for 12 let's give it three months let's make sure if it feels like we're not having a manic episode together or something but yeah it's not eight and a half years later and I'm pretty confident it was the right decision.

34:39Why do you think you knew so quickly the two of you well when I'm at Nick I felt very overwhelming sense of familiarity like was more like recognition that I was. I was really just like recognition then introduction and I really just felt like oh there you are oh that there you are. And he felt sort of the same way so it just felt like a given we didn't even really talk about whether or not to get married we just only talked about when. I'm a dad think about this wedding happening after 12 weeks well as usual my parents were pretty cool about it and I mean I'm sure our families were. I mean I would be if my someone in my family you know but I figure my parents just put it on the long list of random acts of random acts of love that I've performed.

35:44So the decision to have a child come as naturally as the decision to be together with Nick again it was just something that we talked about and were open to and then happened quite quickly and we were very happy about that and yeah it was then it was like once I had our son Amos I yeah it was like a whole new universe. So I want to circle back to your start up me because this went from being something you struggled sort of privately with as a teenager in particular something that I'm guessing you felt ashamed of embarrassed about. Did something you became really celebrated for because of this talk this TEDx talk that you gave. That that come about that whole talk that talk came about in a kind of a it's a funny story. The context was that I had recently parted ways with some management that I had and I didn't have a lot of information about the things that were in my I call.

36:54And I and I saw that there was an event you know a TED event and because I had us because I have problems with my speech I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to do a talk or not because I also had the information that the topic of the event was language. So I I just sort of prepared this speech kind of not knowing if I would have to give it or not I just wasn't sure what to do and if I had to sing something that's fine because I don't need much notice to do that but it's kind of my worst nightmare to arrive at an event and then we let you go to talk already and I haven't written a talk like a nightmare like walking nightmare. And you know because I had split up with my management I was feeling pretty rough and I just wrote it just to uncoot just to a swage my anxieties about what might happen and so then I got there and to the the venue and there was a lady there like sort of with a clipboard like checking me in and I was sort of like are you the person that I was.

38:17I was sort of a weird I just now that I think about it sort of it wouldn't happen now but um so no one kind of vetoed what you were going to do. No vetoed it or said no don't do that or or do do that or anything but I kind of had been living in the media and doing stuff and trying to hide my sense of truth. I was like my daughter and there was just this part of me that was like look the topic is language you've got something to say like I think you're supposed to be doing this like no one's like saying no don't I guess that's what I'm supposed to be doing so just jump off this cliff. So I did and you know I gave the talk and which I do not remember at all it's just like bees in my memory when that was happening. Anyway years went by and a few years ago I ran into one of the the producers from that TED event and he told me that there were people in the audience on walkie talkies.

39:28I was like what's happening? Why is she talking? What they didn't think you they thought that you were just going to sing. Yeah that's all I was supposed to do. That's all I was supposed to do is just to sing some songs and I so I just built my own cliff and jumped off it. Well you call it a cliff but it was so well received that speech and it obviously has meant so much to so many people particularly people who've got stutters or other things happening with with their speech. Did it change the way you related to your stutter talking about it publicly in that way? Completely just completely because it became something that I it's it's not a bug it's a feature it just became something that I had no problems getting in front of and I think it improved my fluency by like 30% just instantly.

40:30And then over time like obviously my stutter's not gone but I don't care really I just don't really mind anymore. Yeah. What sort of other work opportunities arose out of you giving that speech? So after I gave that speech I was approached by some producers who asked me to narrate 10 episodes of an ABC show called the recording studio which was just as a voice over artists just doing that. And I you know was sort of like are you sure that the person that you want to do it and they said yeah we think you would be great and numb. And so I did that and the experience of doing that was so was so amazing because I started and of course it was excruciating the painful and slow.

41:32But because it was 10 hours of talking I just eventually found a rhythm and was able to complete it and having completed it it felt like I was on this new level of being able to do things and so then when I was asked if I would like to read for. This you know cartoon that my friend daily was making about dogs I was like sure and then he told me that they wanted the teacher to have like a sing song kind of vibe going and I was like well that's even better because I can do that too so it really yeah it sort of opened up the door for me to just get in front of to get in front of that. And I think a combination of all of those things and for me reading to my son every night since he was little has helped me to find this new gear that I have now where I just talk when it's mostly cool and from time to time things go weird and that's cool too.

42:37This little cartoon show about dogs that your friend was making turns out to be this global juggernaut blue e was there a moment when it clicked few just how big this show had become how beloved it was. There was a few moments where I realized that it was bigger than I guess I had perceived you know bigger than my perception when it went on to Disney and they. The Nielsen numbers began like showing up and we could sort of see like I can see how just how many people in America were watching the show and then the balloon at the Macy's day parade was like there are like wow that's a that's you know that's that's that's the culture that's that's people as a kid who grew up on the outside of the mainstream popular culture you couldn't get more central. The blue is the center of the of the scene and then you know I mean I I've also been so inspired by watching what's happened to that show because I find that it's punk soul is just so so much about what's inspiring about that and what's and what's all peeling about the show is how.

43:57I mean I say authentic and it's so but it's so how idiosyncratic and how very personal it is and just how it's self it is and how Brisbane it is and the Ibus and the city cats and the even the Australian accents all of it is just so I find it so badass how how Joe and the team have been able to just. Just you know keep it really what it is despite how well loved it is the kids have a recognize your voice from that show from being clips so please teacher. No sometimes my friends who have kids will say to their little kids you know this is the voice of clips but they I don't they're looking for a. A dog healer with a kachee for around an air like it doesn't you know it doesn't compute yeah I haven't I haven't been I haven't been mobbed no one's heard me a lot to the bank and staff are you.

45:03Sing the no I'm sorry clip so. Singing you know music really first came alive for you mega's a teenager church you describe that spiritual experience that you had is music still like that for you does it still have that even if it's not that same Christian framework at once was does it still have that kind of depth for you when you're singing and making music. Totally actually just more and more the order I get the more special I realize it is to. Sing for pleasure I love this line by Adrian Marie Brown she says that pleasure is a measure of freedom and. I you know I really feel like for me especially now working so much in film and. You know the time that I have to. Sing is it will it's it's like a sonic meditation you know i'm i'm just experiencing a series of present moments.

46:10And I think living in a capitalistic framework. It can be very easy to sort of categorize. All forms of artistic expression as things that should not be pursued if they're not going to earn you living you know jokes like don't quit your day job like. I hate that joke because I think that music really does belong to everybody and singing really does belong to everybody and. In most cultures they're just naturally forms these opportunities where people come together and make sound together for various reasons and sometimes it's at the football even you know there are songs that people sing because it feels. Good to sing with other people not because you're all getting paid and you're a fancy choir but because you. Just our human and you're alive and it feels good to make sound and.

47:10For me like just like seeing the world. Looking around with the heartbreak of being alive right now and just. Looking at what we will have to do to go forwards. I think it's really important that we kind of make space and make time for. Art without. A financial. Outcome in. In you know mind just to say makes your soul grow to sing what to dance or even to be silly makes your soul grow and. Yeah for me like now my songwriting practice and my my music practice is really something. It's like a cathedral where I go to. Remember what it is to be just human and yeah it means a lot to me. Thank you so much for sharing some of your story on conversations Meg.

48:12It's been a pleasure. The film that Meg co-created with her husband called How to Make Gravy based of course on the poor Kelly song is available to watch on binge. This conversation was made on the lands of the Gadigal, Tarrable and Jaguar peoples. The producer was Megimoros and the executive producer was Kamal Rooney. I'm Sarah Kanozki thanks for listening. You've been listening to a podcast of conversations with Sarah Kanozki. For more conversations episodes head to ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.