I First Met Lydia in Byron Bay, at Folk, a café Wedged Between Wetlands and a Caravan Park on Very Sacred Indigenous land. at the time, She Was the co-CEO and Executive Producer of Ilbijerri Theatre Company, One of Australia’s Leading Comp

culturally and spiritually. And if that other way worked we would just keep doing that. But it hasn’t so far. This is where when I’m tempted to go down that path of, “There’s the problem, I need to x it, this is what we should be doing,” and like, well, you’ve spent so many years doing that and it hasn’t really shifted anything. So the big shifts for me personally have been when I really heavily focused with a great deal of clarity on the things that are strong and beautiful and bright and light. And they have expanded.

So you were saying you wake up in the morning and tend to your inner world and vibration, like, I’m interested in the pragmatics of that, how does Lydia do that? Because I know that music plays a huge part in your life. And I think that I’m even getting to a place where the non-intellectual, the non-verbal, like, we have to weave that in so much more. We’re trying to squish it out and press it out of culture by defunding the arts but I think the arts as vanity doesn’t work. But the deeply soulful is what we need, we were talking about music that metabolises the intangible.

Yeah. [Laughs]. There’s heaps of ways. My family, we move. We pack houses, we work railway lines, we’ve done all that. So we’re walkers. There’s this beautiful thing my uncle always used to say to me: “Walk to know.” And that’s one of the first things that I know each day that I can do to bring myself into alignment with the most highest, positive, strongest part of my own being. And then probably the deeper extension of that, well singing on the top of your lungs with a guitar in your hand isn’t always possible! At eight in the morning! But music is definitely the second option. And any chance that I can get to express that energy creatively brings me back to who I really am. That teacher that I was talking about, the second one that my mum took me to, his main piece of guidance was always, “You have to know who you are.” And I think that we over-identify with the human physical condition and experience too much. Whereas if we are more connected and identified with ourselves as spiritual beings, all of these conversations shift and can happen in a different way. So each of those activities, the walking, the singing, the writing music, playing music, just help me to remember who I really am.

We were talking yesterday about how there’s a lot of work that’s important being called forward right now that we can’t put on a CV or charge hourly for. And we value what we can measure and what we can pay for. That’s our social system at the moment.

Right, and some of the work that people like you and I do isn’t measured and valued in the same way. So how do you make sure that there’s still food on the table in that world, or how do you make sure that your business is being taken care of when you’re doing all this other stuff? I guess this last couple of years has been a rapid period of expansion for me personally and the more I go down the path the less tolerant I am of situations that don’t vibe with it. Even after our conversation yesterday I must have tuned in that little bit more because there’s a piece of work in my life that I’ve been growingly feeling is not happening. And I literally woke up this morning and was like, “I cannot take another step!” [Laughs]. In this context. ’Cause I just can’t find any energy for it, any inspiration. I don’t feel alive when I do it. I have to let it go. I can’t do it because of money, that’s ridiculous. I’m just going to have to trust that this will all be okay. But it’s funny how those tolerance levels shift. Like the more inner work I do and the more I do focus on feeling good, ’cause feeling good is important.

And you’re not talking about feeling good like Instagram and Netflix feeling good.

No. It’s feeling alive and connected. Like you are really in alignment with the absolute most soaring highest part of who you are. And the more that I’ve done that work and there’s a time where I had given up on feeling good. I was reading this thing the other day which is a bit of a tangent but it was about the use of drugs and alcohol. And I’ve had a lot of heartache in my life because of drug use and alcohol, both personally and in my community. It was interesting because this person who does drug repair therapy in a less clinical way was talking about how people who are using drugs and drinking, they haven’t given up on feeling good like the rest of the population has! And there was a time where I had just given up on feeling good. I just accepted that this was how it was and that you just got through your day. And did your best to, you know, not lose it. [Laughs]. I think the more that I’ve gone, “Actually, we’re here to feel good, we’re here to focus on the things that make us happy and peaceful,” the less tolerance I have for the other stuff.

But how did you get there Lydia? Like how did you get to a whole and wholesome and kind of integrated notion of wellbeing? Because people talk to me about the wellness industry and I want to shoot myself. I’m like what is the wellness industry? Like the commercialised notion of wholeness?

No it can’t be. And I think again this is where the suffering becomes so important because there’s been some key moments in my life where I’ve had these intense experiences of suffering. Where I’m at now, I wouldn’t take them back for anything. They have been the moments that have pushed me into a different way of thinking and being in the world. My beautiful teacher, Curtis Yates is his name. He was helping me work through childhood trauma. And he was really focusing on forgiveness. He would share his own story and how he had come to a place of forgiveness. It’s really heavy stuff. At that time in my life I was full of hatred, I was full of anger. I was actually on a bit of a revenge mission even. Like, “I’m going to hurt this person, they hurt me,” vibe. He said to me, “Think about where you were when this all happened.” And I was about four years old and I was on a very suburban street. He said, “Is there anybody that you think would have gone through it if you didn’t?” And I just remembered this little girl who lived next door. I don’t even know her. But I still feel so much dignity and honour in going through what I had to go through so that she didn’t have to. Each one of those moments of intense suffering has shown two paths that I could have gone down. There was one path that is just full of self destruction and hatred to the world, and I’ve gone down it a good bunch of times! But it didn’t help, it didn’t heal, it didn’t do anything. The other has been really important. Tending to wellness and feeling good has had to be the priority. There’s a lot of honour in what we call suffering. I think the aversion to it is worse than the suffering itself sometimes. It’s very Buddhist. But, you know. I’ve had another beautiful experience when I was at the height of a pretty awful drug addiction. I had a wholly substance problem. So a bit of everything. And this beautiful Buddhist nun came into my life. Again I was just going through the motions of trying to come to terms with the things that had happened to me. And she shared that story of the Dalai Lama’s 2-IC whose greatest fear when he was imprisoned was losing compassion for his perpetrator. There was something so beautiful in that forgiveness that just freed me and I stopped worrying and stopped focusing on the problems and trying to x them.

So what do you focus on instead?

The good stories. I’m still very active and engaged in the so-called problems but it’s how I look at that. That person has been through that struggle and look at how amazing they are doing. Look at this community that has had everything taken away in terms of natural resources and look at what they’re creating now. Just really trying to find those beautiful examples. And amplifying them as big and bright as I possibly can in my own mind and in my conversations. It’s not 100 percent of the time. It’s been a real habit for me to break actually. By shifting the narrative and the framing. But I really believe we are meant to feel loved, we’re meant to feel connected, we’re meant to feel like we belong together. And it’s a big part of that.

What do you do with anger? Because I really relate to the idea of your own vibration, your own field around you. My tolerance for wilfully unconscious people is very low. As my son would say, I’m a rage monster. And I know that I am love. I actually love humanity. I love and I’m a rage monster when there’s all these people walking around going, “I’m not going to be responsible for anything I do. And I don’t want to even have a thought.” And, “Geez you’re really deep. Oh that’s very deep.” I’m like, “What the !$%& is everyone talking about? I want to know what you really think. I want to know what you really feel. Show up to yourself. Show up to the world. Show up to this moment.” So I get this rage monster intolerance about it and I feel really juicy in there in that I’m justified, there’s a battle that I’m raging in the moment that I’m feeling the kind of, “!#$% you” rage of it. Like, ecosystems are collapsing and species are becoming extinct, like, how loud does the calling have to be for everybody to show up to what we can do, who we can be collectively? I know it takes work. I know you have to be able to tolerate the pain and the suffering. ’Cause you’re talking about an ability to lean into the pain like in labour, like in birth. My home-birthing midwife was like, “breathe into it,” like, “sit in that pain because if you try and run away you’ll just want drugs.”

It just gets worse. And the fear of it is sometimes worse than it itself.

Yeah. It is an information force that can take us into birthing life. So I’m struggling with my anger, makes me want to stay home and meditate until it goes away.

I was speaking to a beautiful Elder last night who is the epitome of the peacekeeper in this community in Melbourne. He said, “There are meetings where I just don’t show up. Because I’m cranky that day. And I do not go to anything cranky.” [Laughs]. I was like, Oh, that’s so beautiful! And this is a man who grew up in the most notorious boys home as he was stolen from his mum as a baby. Like he’s got every reason to be angry. Far more than what I do. But he’s like, “I will not bring that version of myself to any public conduct.” So he does stay home and meditate that day. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact it’s key for the kind of urgent work that’s needed now. Because it’s not like you can be in a car going 100 kilometres an hour and suddenly turn around and do a U-turn and not crash. So the slowing down and the stillness is needed. I feel the same way as you do, I completely understand those days where it’s all racing in one direction really fast and there’s so much momentum behind those thoughts and feelings. And they’re the days where it’s just like, you have to lay low today, you have to not try to stop this story but just slow it down a little bit. Because to try and stop it, you’d jackknife [laughs].

I really love that. I went to my osteopath yesterday. And I hadn’t seen him in months and he’s a really gifted guy. He’s called Choppy. And he’s divine. I went to him and I was like, “bleh-leh-l-leh-leh-leh-leh! All the things! And I’ve got to do all this stu ! Ah-dit- dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-deh!” And he goes, “You’re very adrenalised.” [Laughs].

Yeah. Because we’re doers. And sometimes the doing undoes us.

Amen sister. And then I got on his tableand what felt like two minutes later he had shut my nervous system down—it went to like a reboot place. I slept last night like I haven’t slept in months.

Totally. It’s the most ridiculous thing that we do. Why do we do that?

Because the urgency has its own quality. The urgency rides us. I’m a hobby horse for the urgency.

[Laughs]. My partner and I were talking the other night. We were driving. I think our daughter had fallen asleep and we were like, “let’s just keep driving and let her have a bit of a snooze.” And we are brought up talking about culture in a really contemporary way. His family’s from the Torres Strait but they were the first wave of climate change refugees in the ’50s. And his mum grew up on the mainland up in Bamaga and he grew up in Roma, Western Queensland. As far away from a salt water island as you could possibly be. So there’s a lot of reclaiming and re-finding knowledge and culture that we engage in together and through creative practice. And we were talking about this thing ’cause he’s also spent a lot of time out bush in a remote community. And we’re talking about how out there the Lore and the Dreaming, is actually very focused on the fact that time is not linear. So there isn’t the past, the present and the future in the way that we think about it. Then we got to parallel universes and quantum physics and how does quantum physics and that understanding of the world sit in the context of Aboriginal Lore? ’Cause they’re saying very similar things. And we were having a joke and were like, what if the climate change agenda and the things that are going on at the moment, we’re looking at it like it’s a future problem. What if it’s not? What if it’s something that actually happened in the past? And what if what we call our Old People and our old ways is actually in front of us? And so this is some of the ways that Aboriginal Lore and different concepts of time and space helps me think about the problems that we’re going through. Because I do believe that this is all in the plan. Even the invasion. And I know there are certain parts of the community that could never have that conversation, and it’s a scary thing to say out loud.

For anyone who’s reading this around the world, what do you mean by the invasion?

The British invasion of Australia. The colonisation of Australia. My mum is a very spiritual woman. And she has a good laugh about things too. We’re laughers. But she’s like, “What if we called Cook in?” And I was like, “Mum, what do you mean?” [Laughs]. And she’s like, “Well we’re deliberate creators, we’re conscious beings, we’re the ultimate manifesters of everything. We created the earth. That’s our dreaming, that’s our Lore. What if we called this other energy in ’cause we’ve actually gone as far as we possibly could in terms of our own advancement and we needed this massive intense hit of contrast and suffering to be able to expand even further?” And this period that we think is so permanent and real right now is really only a 250-year period and what we know is, you know, 120,000-plus years, so it’s just a blip. I think having those conversations and leaning into the Lore of it, and how we can think about time and space differently, it really helps me feel less guilty about taking time out when I need to.

I love that. I’ve been talking to some quantum physicists, and that’s deep science that they’re really understanding now that consciousness comes before matter.

Yes. Absolutely. We know that in a cultural Lore sense, so what if we take those two things, those two Dreamings and approach something like climate change with that thought. Then how we think about the earth and its wellness is critically important. Only focusing on the bits that are broken will lead to more broken bits. I know that sounds really, really intense. And radical. But it’s also like, we do have an obligation to shine a light on the things that are working.

I think you’re 100 percent right because if there isn’t a restoration narrative, if we can’t find it now, well there’s nothing but destruction to lean into. There’s nothing but watching the world go down. And that’s not creative. That’s not generative. That’s not what life is.

No. And you know we might be having that conversation as the ship sinks, who knows. But at least in that moment we are giving it everything that we’ve got in terms of belief and hope and positivity.