Author shares journey of philosophy and travel

Author Lyn Drummond will share her journey through Europe, Asia, South America and America at the Bribie Island Community Arts Centre on Friday evening.

Visiting to talk about her latest book, Painters, Philosophers and Poets Sustain a Seven-year Cycle, Drummond says her travels gave her the opportunity to explore the notion of a sense of home and also to learn more about the famous and notable people who lived in the places she visited.

She’s incorporated their stories and legacies into her writing about the places themselves.

“These people in the book are not only from the past, they are contemporary,” Drummond explains.

“They lived in some of the places I lived in, hundreds of years apart and in some I cases I didn’t know these people lived there until I had left.”

Step back in time

Among those whose lives Drummond delves into are Hungarian Dr Katalin Kariko, the biochemist who pioneered COVID vaccines, and 17^th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who lived near her home in The Hague.

Her research into Spinoza’s life and views resulted in scrutiny of her own beliefs about religion, nature and spirituality.

“He died aged 44 and came up with the theory of God and nature being intertwined,” she says.

“He was excommunicated by the Jewish community because of that.”

Living in Aix-en-Provence in the south east of France, Drummond was fascinated by artist Paul Cezanne’s obsession with nearby Mont Sainte-Victoire, which he painted more than 60 times.

Force of nature

She says compelling landscapes trigger strong emotional connections.

“I draw an analogy with Uluru, where I lived for a time and where the ranger who was there kept cutting his holidays short to come back because of its pull.”

The themes in Painters, Philosophers and Poets Sustain a Seven-year Cycle are strongly linked to Drummond’s earlier book, Where To Go For a Seven-year Cycle, which focused on her travels from 2003 to 2010 in Central and Eastern Europe.

“I had left Australia after a long time to work in the Federated States of Micronesia for three months and that led to three years in Hungary (working with the Australian Foreign Service),” she says of the beginning of her two-decade long adventures.

“The first book was mostly a tourist book about the places I had been and I wanted to tell people about.

“I also raised a lot of questions about the search for home and what constitutes home.”

Philosophical connection

The titles of both Drummond’s books incorporate the notion of our lives being divided into seven-year cycles – and reflect the span of time each volume covers.

“The latest one is again a seven-year cycle and goes from 2011 to 2018, with an epilogue that brings it up to date for 2022,” she says.

“This is something that is referred to in philosophy – the seven ages of man and Shakespeare refers to it in As You Like It.

“It’s part memoir, but it’s also observation, biography, travel and my own journalism.”

How to book

Drummond and her late husband and migrated to Brisbane from England and lived at Wynnum before she began her journeys.

“I’ve been to Bribie quite a lot of times because I have family and friends there,” she says.

“I really like its sense of a lot of writers and artists.”

To buy a copy of Painters, Philosophers and Poets Sustain a Seven-year Cycle click here.

Lyn Drummond is at the Bribie Island Community Arts Centre this Friday, September 30 from 6-8pm.

Tickets are $11 and include drinks and nibbles.

To book, click here.