Note: Text below is from a live conversation and has been edited lightly for clarity.
Emma Rusher: We sat down with Stan Grant as he narrated his new audiobook, When Words Fail Us. While he finds joy in reading books, Stan says, “When an audiobook is good, an audiobook is phenomenal.” He shares the limits of language, the silence that connects us to one another, and what NAIDOC Week truly means to him as a Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi man.
You spent your life on camera and broadcasting in the field, at moments where your words shaped how audiences understand war, grief, politics, and identity. In When Words Fail Us, you explore the limits of language. What made you start questioning whether words are always enough?
Stan Grant: I think our words have become too infused with politics, too infused with morality and not decency. I think the words frame the human as an abstraction, as an idea without connecting to the human soul. Words, when they’re at their best, connect to something that translates beyond the words themselves. They’re carried in a look in the eye, they’re carried in a teardrop, they’re carried in a quivering hand, they’re carried in a smile. That’s how words convey themselves. When words are connected to our souls, to our humanity, they go beyond the words themselves. When words are framed by politics, there is a barrier between us and each other.
In When Words Fail Us, you share that silence and deep listening sometimes say more than argument ever could. In a world built on instant reactions and opinions, what does true listening actually look like to you now?
There’s a mistaken idea that silence is an absence, an absence of speech, even an absence of morality. We talk about silence as being complicit. What I’m talking about is a silence that allows us to truly hear another person. And more importantly, hear ourselves, as well, in the voice of the other person. We don’t have to fill the space with our words to communicate. And out of that silence, when we do speak, we speak from a different place, from a contemplative place, from a place of compassion and empathy, and ultimately a place of love.
"Yindyamarra is a Wiradjuri word, but it’s not a Wiradjuri idea. It is a fundamentally human idea. The problem is we no longer hear it."
You can find that anywhere. You can find that in the middle of a city, you can find it in the middle of a rock concert, you can find it sitting by a stream under a river. It’s the heartbeat that we hear in ourselves connecting us to the heartbeat we hear in another person and the words that are conveyed from that heartbeat. It’s not the noise; it is the silence that allows us to truly speak.
You draw on Plato, Simone Weil, and Radiohead in your book. What was it about philosophy, music, and spirituality that helped you make sense of things when journalism and public debate no longer could?
I think journalism is a failure of language in so many ways. It’s part of the noise and the machinery of politics. It is a distraction; it is artificial. It is, as Plato would have said, imitating speech. It is language used to convince, language used to persuade. And that’s not what language is for. Twenty-four-hour news means that we are drenched in information, but are we really able to hear what the other person is saying? Are we really able to respond to the crisis of our time when we are caught in this maelstrom? I don’t think so.
For me, to turn to the deeper ideas—the quiet of music, philosophy that takes us beyond the hot take, takes us beyond the news grab—and the idea of God that isn't something that we personify, it isn’t a God that we imagine as being beyond us, but a God that sits in the silence, a God that is part of the universe, a God that sits within us.
When we hear that voice, which we can only hear in the silence, we have no need of the mechanical noise around us. Radiohead were a great starting point for me because, as a band, they give us nothing to hold onto. It’s a band entirely shorn of any sense of nostalgia. There are no clichéd blues licks to lean back into. There is the crash of falling ramparts, as Albert Camus would have said. There is this mechanised noise. There is this absence of God at a mathematical world that reduces us to numbers. But the beauty of Radiohead is that they are able to take us into a place where we may be free of that. They’re giving us a glimpse of that world to say, “Hold on, do you really want that?”
"I think that’s the beauty of an audiobook: when you have that wonderful connection between the words and the human voice."
There's a deep thread of Yindyamarra through this audiobook, centred around quietness, respect, and empathy. How has that Wiradjuri philosophy shaped the way you move through the world, especially after some very public and challenging moments in recent years?
Yindyamarra was something I breathed in and I wasn’t even aware of it. It was in the air. It was in my family, it was in the land that I was brought up on. It’s what I missed when I was no longer a part of this. I’ve drifted so far from that world.
I've travelled the world. I have been in the midst of the noise of media and politics. As I grew disillusioned with that world, as that world bruised me, as it inevitably bruises all of us, I returned to that quiet voice that was there when I was a child in those quiet places. In the stillness, in family, in culture, in God, in the things that go beyond this world. Yindyamarra is a Wiradjuri word, but it’s not a Wiradjuri idea. It is a fundamentally human idea. The problem is we no longer hear it.
Are you an audiobook fan? Do you have any recommendations?
I’m not a huge audiobook fan. I love reading books. That’s my great joy. But when an audiobook is good, an audiobook is phenomenal.
There’s a wonderful reading of Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary read by Meryl Streep that is just out of this world. It’s an astonishing piece of work. I loved Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, more than I loved reading it. When I read it, I felt distant from it. When I heard him reading it, I was there in his breath. I could be in the room with him. He was so generous and so intimate. That’s what an audiobook really should be.
“This place was here long before humans. It has no need of us, but we have a need of it. NAIDOC Week is an invitation, I think, for everybody to be a part of that. It doesn’t just belong to me as an Aboriginal person.”
David Suchet, the great actor, does a wonderful reading of the Bible where you can just drop in and out at any time you like. Just go to a section and listen to that beautiful voice working with this poetic, ancient text. That really does change the way you receive it. I think that’s the beauty of an audiobook: when you have that wonderful connection between the words and the human voice. When I find that, that’s golden.
NAIDOC Week means many different things to many different people across Australia. For you personally, what does NAIDOC Week represent now as a Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi man, but also as someone who’s spent a lifetime helping Australia listen more deeply to itself?
I think in many ways the idea of a week is sort of the opposite of what we need. In some ways, rather than setting aside a week, and I understand the historical significance of it and the need for it, but rather than setting aside a week, I would rather that we embody these things in our every day, in every part of our lives.
NAIDOC Week is a week to acknowledge, celebrate, remember, commemorate Aboriginal people: sacrifice, struggle, survival, beauty, joy, art, love. But more than that, I think it’s a chance for other Australians, too, to say that world can be yours. That it’s not something that’s celebrating an Aboriginal experience, but it is a way of celebrating a being, a place on this land, which is open to everybody, which is what Yindyamarra is about. And I’d love to see us go beyond just having it for a day or a week and be able to have that be something we carry in us all the time.
This place is more important than who we are. This place was here long before humans. It has no need of us, but we have a need of it. NAIDOC Week is an invitation, I think, for everybody to be a part of that. It doesn’t just belong to me as an Aboriginal person. It is a gift from us to everybody, so that we all can be a part of the place.
We hope you enjoyed hearing from Stan. When Words Fail Us is available now on Audible.
