Writer and artist Jo Randerson on her relationship with Janet Frame, who was born 100 years ago today.

I’m 15. We’re at school, reading ‘The Linesman’. In the story, the narrator (inside their house) is watching somebody repair telephone lines outside, “slung in his safety harness at the top of the telegraph pole”. It’s precarious for the linesman, but life seems precarious for the narrator too, they have “marauding despair”. Reading the story, you feel danger rubbing up against safety, and you’re not sure which one to side with. The final line of the story comes: “You see, I was hoping that he might fall.”

We sit in silence, then our teacher asks us: “Is this a story?” Our class argues wildly for 30 minutes.

A story needs a plotline, an event! 

But this IS an event, there’s a whole story in that final sentence!  

But nothing happens!

How do you define something happening? What about the moment something changes inside you? 

Anyway, how could they want him to fall!?

Have you seriously never wished for that? 

This is my first meeting with Janet Frame, the un-settler of the norm, the disruptor.

I’m 16. I realise Janet Frame has written the best title for a book ever: You Are Now Entering the Human Heart.

It contains the story of two sheep traveling to a slaughter-house in a truck. One of them knows where they are going, and the other does not. One of them finds the sky beautiful, and the other does not. The sheep look up at the clouds, wondering if there are hawks circling above, waiting to kill them. You know that feeling when you read something that makes that weird creature crouching inside you (who could be called Your Soul) sit bolt upright, and that creature grips your internal organs with their claws and says, “this is Our Story!?”

‘Two Sheep’ exactly captures my 16-year old philosophical confusion, between gratitude and outrage, compliance and complaint. I read this story over and over, sharing it with everyone, hoping desperately that someone will feel the urgency of the question in the same way I do.

I’m 17. Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table is released and I do not move during the 140-minute movie. That moment when Janet walks out on her classroom of students, when that young teacher just gaps it. You could always leave, this action shows us. That choice is available to you.

I’m 28. I live in the same city as Janet. I know where she lives because my friend Douglas visits her there, and also because she’s in the phone book (with a different last name). Sometimes when I’m low I drive past her house, and it makes me feel better. Or I park at the end of the street and write in my freezing car, trying to ease the marauding despair. Once, at an art gallery opening, Janet makes a rare appearance. I’m too shy to meet her, but afterwards I float around for days: I was alive, and she was alive, and we were both in the same room together.

I’m 31 when the news comes out that she has passed. I fall on the ground, it’s the only thing to do. I grab You Are Now Entering the Human Heart, I read ‘Two Sheep’ on repeat.

I’m 45. My friend Douglas dies, and he loved Janet. I tuck a little Janet Frame angel in his coffin because they should be near each other. Friends are everything, especially art friends. Even if you never met, or were only ever in a room together. Even if your weird creature souls only glimpsed each other, once. Friends can be living people, dead people, books, movies, songs, clouds, animals, rocks. Friends alleviate the pressure. A friend is someone you talk to and who helps you feel not alone. I don’t know why everyone is so into partners. Friends are everything, especially art friends.

I’m 50. It’s Janet Frame’s birthday. Claire asks me to write about my relationship with Janet Frame. In my head, it goes like this: I read her. I knew where she lived. I slept with her books under my pillow. I was in a room with her once. Her stories rip me awake. They plunge me into her heart, into the heart of a sheep, of a hawk; they plunge me into my own heart which I have tried to plug up so that the tears don’t come out.

A life is a series of events, though some may not seem like events at the time. They happen, they happen, and one day they stop. Sometimes you choose danger, and sometimes you choose safety. Hawks are always circling. Choose your friends carefully. Tuck them into bed with you at night, and remember that when you look at the sky, death could be coming, and it also could not be.

For more about Janet Frame visit the Janet Frame Literary Trust website. Frame will be honoured at WORD Christchurch festival this week in the opening event tonight, August 28 2024, in an event called In the Frame: Opening Words.