They shoot horses, don’t they?
What begins as an impulsive horse purchase becomes a profound journey of reinvention in Elvis and Me, the deeply moving and newly revised memoir by one of Australia’s most respected classical music voices.
All of us at one time or another have made an impulsive purchase – a garish jacket, an expensive pair of impractical shoes, maybe a boat or an unsuitable car.
I bought a skeletal, bedraggled ex-racehorse on a hillside at Green Pidgeon on the north coast of NSW. When I saw Elvis for the first time, his eyes screamed, “Get me out of here”. So, I did.
My life changed overnight. I had to find somewhere to agist him and, having never owned a horse, I had to learn how to care for him. He’d been sold to me as a beginner’s horse, barely able to transition from a walk into a trot, but the truth was very different.
I employed an army of equine professionals – dentists, farriers, massage therapists and vets – only to find that once this thoroughbred’s condition picked up he was unpredictable, hot-headed and “girthy” (code for saddle-phobic).
I entered a strange world of intriguing, taciturn equestrians who were judgy about my unsuitable, scrawny mount and even more horrified by my ignorance.
“You mean you don’t even know how to pick out a hoof?” said one eyerolling, dressage rider.
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Unlikely as my choice of steed was for an inexperienced woman in her 50s who had never learned to speak “horse”, Elvis and I formed a deep bond. He trusted me.
When a former racing trainer checked him out to see if he could be ridden, Elvis went berserk, pigrooting and charging around an Olympian-size menage (an enclosed riding arena) at terrifying speed.
“Send that one to the knackery,” the trainer advised.
Instead, I found Christine Phelps, a gifted “horse whisperer”, who used gentle techniques and psychology to rehabilitate him. And she also encouraged me.
My memoir, Elvis and Me: How a Musician and a Broken Racehorse Rescued Each Other, isn’t just another horse rescue story. I was enthralled by the rural characters I met in South-East Queensland. I was an outsider. No-one asked me about my former life in Melbourne. I’d resigned from the demanding role of Dean of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts and had moved to Brisbane.
When horse owners dismissed Elvis as much as they did me, I researched his history through the NSW Racing Board and discovered he’d won gold star races. I spoke to jockeys who had ridden him to victory.
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Soon, I realised the double life I led. Wearing black cocktail dresses at night to frequent arts events and exercising a horse in frayed jeans and muddy boots by day intrigued people. I scribbled notes about the countryside, the colourful characters I met and Elvis’s behavioural improvements.
I saw synergies between music performance and the movements of a horse. The rhythmical shifts between a walk, trot and canter inspired a soundtrack. When Elvis’s wild behaviours in the round yard drove concerned onlookers away, I found it cathartic.
Elvis’s anxieties often mirrored my own. Soon I learned to be calm around him, just as it is necessary to be calm when about to perform
He reminded me of the classical composer Robert Schumann who had at least two personalities, one dreamy, the other fiery and mercurial. Thrilling piano pieces such as Chopin’s B Minor Sonata and Franck’s Prelude, Chorale et Fugue blazed in my head as I watched.
Elvis’s anxieties often mirrored my own. Soon I learned to be calm around him, just as it is necessary to be calm when about to perform. Music performance is about channelling feelings, rather than living them, and the equine training I observed and participated in required patience, resilience and courage.
Elvis and Me was first published in 2014 in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America and the UK. My revised edition adds more backstory and content about my larger-than-than life Dad to contextualise why I could take on such a daunting challenge. I’m pleased a sepia-toned Elvis portrait has claimed the cover.
People say to me, “I’m not keen on horses. Would I like your book?”
Yes, I say, because it’s about picking up a passion abandoned earlier in life and it’s about second chances, a triumph-over-adversity story and the empowering rapport that can develop between an animal and a human.
When I stopped trying to ride Elvis and loved him, anyway, I accepted who I was too.
Elvis and Me: How a Musician and a Broken Racehorse Rescued Each Other by Gillian Wills, Hawkeye Publishing, $33.99, will be launched at Books@Stones, Stones Corner, on August 13 at 6pm.
hawkeyebooks.com.au/collections/new-release/products/elvis-and-me
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