You’ve got to make peace

Musician, author and ‘handyman’ Ruth Carr. Photo: Paul Dodge.

FRONTPERSON for the band Minuit (Min-wee), Ruth Carr, has just released her first book, I felt like a fight, alright? The book is an assortment of song snippets, poems, musings and doodles, although she’s not sure about being called an author.
“That’s a bit of a grandiose term,” she says, “But OK. I’ll take it.”
Over her career she’s been described in grandiose terms like “unforgettable”, “enigmatic” and “powerful”, and already her writing has been compared to that of Leonard Cohen.
Her book began life as a box of scrap paper.
“[Fellow band members] Paul and Ryan did a side project last year so I thought maybe I could do one, too. All my scraps of serviette and airline tickets had gotten out of control, so the book is basically just filing,” she laughs.
The book is a peek inside Carr’s head - the blurb warns, “don’t make any sudden movements or stare directly at it for too long” – but it’s less dangerous than it could’ve been.
“Just before the book got printed I realised that other people were going to read it, so I culled quite a lot. I still wanted to be honest but I took back the stuff that’s just my own business. I’m not big on the, ‘Oh my God look what’s happened in my life’ talk - everyone’s got their shiz,” she says.
What remains is simultaneously dark, charming and laugh-out-loud funny. One page, entitled “Cancer ii”, reads, “You stupid, stupid thing/if you kill me, you die too”, another shows a doodle of a telephone receiver, the text below it reading, “There are few things more depressing than being on hold to WINZ applying for the dole (again), and their hold music is always the music of other NZ musicians who aren’t on the dole”.
Carr was on the dole for a month while putting the book together, and says she’s OK with the fact that music may never provide a regular income.
“You’ve got to make peace with that. Once you do, you get to do it for no reason other than just because you want to.”
Carr’s currently based in Wellington, working in ‘soft props’, or textiles, for The Hobbit. In the past she’s worked as a set builder: “I’m a handyman in every way”, she says.
“I like to know how to do things. [Partner] Paul stays home and makes sure stuff happens, and I come home from work covered in mud.”
Obviously a jack-of-all-trades, Carr is also a great example of big personality in a little package – she may be ‘petite’, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t kick someone if she wanted to. Just don’t catch her on a day where she feels like a fight, alright?