Rebel Heart: behind the scenes with Angie McMahon

Known for her unflinchingly intimate lyrics and transformative live performances, Angie McMahon has always written songs that speak to some essential truth: from the joy of falling in love, to the crushing pain of heartbreak, to what it means to live authentically in the world.

As part of Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations, McMahon has written an original song inspired by two brave hearts who lived entwined lives and whose artefacts are on display as part of this stirring, archivally rich exhibition. They were Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb, two pastoralist women who made a home together in Victoria in the 1840s, whose bond was so strong that they were buried together when they died.  

‘I was interested in Anne and Caroline’s story because they were two religious women who lived outside of societal norms,’ explains McMahon. ‘I’m also a woman who is queer, was raised religious, and has a family history of farming and pastoralism, so there are a lot of things about their story that made me want to look deeper into what they might have felt.’ 

To write her composition, McMahon immersed herself in the journal that Drysdale and Newcomb shared, researching the kind of house they would have lived in and the landscape they would have seen every day. One of the most intimate objects related to the couple is a mourning brooch crafted from the blended hair of the couple and worn by Newcomb after Drysdale’s death in 1853. The brooch is currently on display in the exhibition. 

‘I really enjoyed how sacred those things felt,’ says McMahon of being able to closely examine the historical artefacts left behind by the two women. It was important to her to ground her writing in historical truth, to evoke their environment as realistically as possible. ‘Because I’m inserting my own artistic license into the emotion of the piece, I wanted it to feel at least somewhat historically accurate,’ she explains. 

McMahon’s song is written from the perspective of Newcomb and depicts her riding her horse home after a church service with a hymn stuck in her head. ‘I imagined her humming along to the hymn and then writing her own lyrics to the melody of the hymn,’ says McMahon. ‘What happens to me as a songwriter is that subconscious things often come up through the lyrics of a song. That was how I looked at [Newcomb’s] feelings that might have been deeply repressed or not openly spoken about at the time.’

While McMahon was fascinated with this unique love story, she admits it was sometimes a challenge to inhabit their world and write from their perspective. Partly, this was because of the resonances with her own lived experience: ‘It’s been complicated working with the source material, because I have my own emotional ties to the story of queerness and a religious environment,’ she says. ‘I could relate to what their experience might have been. There's this deep shame and guilt that can live in your body even if it’s really quiet or repressed.’

She was also mindful of the fact that the two women lived in the colonial era and their story is part of a broader history of settler colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous people from the land. ‘It was really important to me to look deeper at this element of the story,’ says McMahon. ‘I couldn’t ignore the colonial violence that would have been going on around these women, whether or not they were violent settlers themselves. They’re part of the colony being formed and we know that there was so much murder and violence happening at that time, which also would have been a source of shame and guilt – even if that’s not something that they were openly expressing.’

‘If you were living in this time and trying to make a new life for yourself and protect your own happiness, while also watching the violence play out around you, there would be a lot of confusion and conflict internally,’ she continues. ‘I tried to touch on those things in the song rather than ignore them.’

Ultimately, though, McMahon finds the story of Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb to be an inspiring one. ‘It would have taken a lot of courage to live the way they did,’ she says. ‘They loved each other and found happiness together, when to do so would have taken a lot of bravery and conviction. They were completely devoted to the life that they had chosen to build together.’

Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations is on now at State Library Victoria