Sunday 31 March 2013

Dreams, aspirations and a plank bridge by the pool

Curiously, Romania went from absolutely nowhere up to the top spot in my stats yesterday. I am expecting an email from the 'lovely Elena' soon, complete with photograph! (Reference here)

I seldom, if ever, pontificate about, analyse, my own work. although it is ripe for some would-be PhD, all too keen to slap a twenty first century label on me as a degenerate, a reprobate; an emotionally damaged, intelllectually challenged, sad individual, eager to parade his inadequacies before the world. I have sought meaning, at other people's insistence, in some few, small artworks, the stilt (depression), the magpie (arrogance), the Canada geese (fidelity); however, never in a piece of lamentable prose. I seldom write that which others might question for a meaning; an underlying 'raison d'etre' to explain what I write.

However I feel constrained to do so with 'The univited guest' not because it has any worth but, firstly, because I am attempting to write a suitable coda to the story and, secondly, because a single 'path' led to so many related paths, confined in time, that as I sought a coda, that extension to the big note,* I found myself piecing together all of the different strands, both 'real' and conjectured that make up the final tale. (Although no doubt I will get around to revising it in time; I usually do.)

Most of what I write, and I suspect this is also true of many other writers, can broadly divided into three; the events of my own life and my reaction to them or desired reaction to them, we do not always react as we would wish; the events of my own life and other's reaction to them and the events of other people's lives and my reaction to them.  I suppose one could add other people's lives and other people's reaction to them but this is much more problematic and troublesome; it has a larger degree of fantasy or imagination inherent in it.

There are some things which happen to you that you avoid speaking about, writing about, because they are too painful to recollect, even allegorically or symbolically; the memories, although the tracks still exist, are too personal, too fraught with grief, without any saving grace, that to follow the path wherever it might lead, guides you to a place where you do not want to be, ever again. Writing, for example, about my father's death, both in the short week between death and funeral and subsequently, provides a ready path to grief (tears still well up in my eyes when I read the penguin's eulogy for Havelock) but that grief is tempered with the joy of the many years that I spent in his company. However, what can you do when the grief wipes out any trace of the joy; that you no longer remember that which was good but can only remember the hurt and the pain?

A couple of months ago, following a throwaway remark about life, the universe and everything**, I decided to confront one of my many personal demons by writing about it. It would have been too painful to confront this particular demon head on and so I decided to skirt around the issue by imagining a meeting between me and my little demon now, in the present.

I don't know about you but I write stories as the Penguin writes them; stitching together isolated snippets of a tale, or many tales, like a patchwork quilt and only later trying to form a coherent narrative out of the fragments. What was so surprising about this particular tale was the way I envisaged the 'fictional' Leo's current circumstances; they encapsulated all the dreams and aspirations that I had all those years ago.

When I first started painting seriously enough to actually sell my work to complete strangers, I dreamed of a cottage in the country, a place to be alone with my birds, a river or a small stream, visible from the patio where I could fish or watch the ducks and the geese and the occasional gliding swan; a spot so like the holidays of my adolescence before I acquired the 'Wanderlust'. I dreamed of Michaelson speakers, a snip at £10,000 per pair, and Kroll amplifiers, hot with the valves that powered them, a legacy from the only time that I have heard such awesome quality; a demo in a shop opposite Mornington Crescent tube station, with no intent to buy, but a copy of Sheffield Lab's direct cut disk of Prokoviev's 'Romeo and Juliet' firmly clutched in my hand. A garden full of rhododendrons; memories of the site of the old 'Crystal Palace' and stolen kisses, a park that still bears the name of the moniker that the media applied to it, although the building is forever gone, only the foundations remain.

I suspect that every city dweller goes through a phase of wishing they lived in more rural surroundings, although it is difficult to imagine the inconvenience of such a translocation; inconvenience that is much lessened by twenty-first century technology. Yet, I never did it. It wasn't for the lack of money nor the inconvenience of travelling up to town each day; something kept me in the city but I have no idea what.

Perhaps the best place for dreams is in sleep.




* A reference to the final movement of a piece by 'The Nice', the Keith Emerson led 'progressive' rock trio, from their 1968 album, 'Ars longa, vita brevis' (art is long, life is short - a better translation would be 'art endures, life is transient'). The piece's central theme is derived from the Allegro from Bach's 'Brandenburg Concerto no 3'. Yes, of course I have the vinyl!

** Has it ever occured to you that 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' only works on radio? I have read the books, I have seen the BBC TV serial, I have watched the film; they are all rubbish! Only the first six episodes on the radio work! And don't get me started on Rickman's lamentable performance as Marvin!

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