For more than three decades, Diane Coetzer has made a living telling other people’s stories, from reporting on apartheid to writing about music for Billboard and Rolling Stone South Africa. Her latest book, however, is painfully personal. The Life and Death of a Rock ’n Roll Sailor (Jonathan Ball) tells the story of her brother-in-law, Anthony Murray, who disappeared at sea with two crew members during a cyclone in 2015. Part mystery, part love letter, it’s a story about grief, unanswered questions and a man who loved the ocean. Coetzer also turned the tragedy into Requiem for the Impossible, an interactive musical performance featuring South African and Dutch artists. Now based in the Netherlands, she talks books, music, family history and the joys of public transport.
What’s the best book you’ve read in the last year, and why?
I am hard-pressed to choose between Bread of Angels: A Memoir by Patti Smith and Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. Both are written by women who have carved singular paths in the world, and both see the authors retrace their lives as artists through breathtaking, intimate writing about their childhoods, and then moving out from there.
How do you keep fit?
I am a devoted walker. I have been a music journalist for decades and still write about artists and their songs on my Substack, so most early mornings, I carefully choose what I want to listen to, put my headphones on and head out into the streets.
What’s your go-to restaurant for a low-key weeknight meal?
Ciro Molinaro was a lifelong friend of my brother-in-law Anthony Murray — the Rock ’n Roll Sailor who is at the heart of my new book. The fresh food he serves and the relaxed ambience he has created at Ciro’s Mediterranean Cucina in Parktown North, Joburg, make it an easy choice for me when I am in town.
What artwork will you always love, and why?
La perruche et la sirène (The Parakeet and the Mermaid) by Henri Matisse. When I did my MA in creative writing at Wits, my literary work consisted of a creative nonfiction manuscript about three generations of paper restorers in my Dutch family, starting with my great-grandfather, who worked at the Rijksmuseum. The last of the three is André van Oort, who, while working at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, painstakingly restored Matisse’s monumental and iconic cut-out work made entirely of paper.
Do you have a hobby?
If I have a hobby, it is related to the answer above because it was in researching my MA that I really began exploring in detail what my Dutch grandparents left behind when they emigrated to South Africa, just before World War 2. Now that we both live in the Netherlands, my sister Catherine and I are often plotting our next visit to a train station that a relative possibly built or walking in the Utrecht neighbourhood where our grandmother went to school.
What’s the one unusual item you can’t live without?
My public transport travel card. This would be a common answer in the Netherlands, where I now live, but an unusual one in South Africa. We don’t own a car, so having one card that I can use to travel on buses, trams, metros and trains is indispensable.
Who was your high school celeb crush?
Seriously? I left Danville Park Girls’ High School in 1982, when the notion of celebrity did not exist!
Three songs you’d take to a desert island?
Au Pays du Cocaine by Geese (in my book, I detail what this song means to me); Thula by Bongeziwe Mabandla (I will need some comfort on a desert island, and this song provides it every time); and All Kinds of Everything by Sinéad O’Connor and Terry Hall. Two beloved artists from my formative music-listening years coming together on a song written in 1970. Pure and simple joy.
