Hi All
Most of my blogs are prompted by something that's recently happened, a new person I have met, an old friend, a rehearsal, a chance conversation, a celebration, very often a book I'm reading, a new project, a film or a piece of music.... a moment when two or more ideas, conversations or events collide - life I guess.
The last couple of years have seen root and branch changes in my life and with these a demanding period of review and reflection as well as reinvention, both personally and creatively. I guess the ubiquitous middle-age crisis is essentially imbued with a need to make sense of one's own history and narrative - a place that most of us come to at one time or another, especially in the face of change and when the time that lies ahead is likely less than what has been before. (No moroseness intended).The big questions. These or simple indulgent naval gazing?
Today's blog is prompted by a few things that initially appeared to have no relationship to each other, but turn out as so often they do to be intrinsically linked. Firstly - my writing work in progress The woman who stepped through the screen- is still in its infancy, but fills my thinking a lot of the time. Enough to get a bit lost on a bus in Shepherd's Bush last week on my way to meet Ria Knowles, actor and good friend. I took some initial scribblings to share over lunch with her. We met at Ria's kind invitation at an excellent Thai restaurant at the Ladbroke Grove end of Portobello where we sat outside in the sunshine enjoying a light lunch and glass of wine.http://www.thairicelondon.com/.
I was nervous about sharing - I think its because this type of writing feels somehow more exposing, in spite of its fiction and my relationship with it - a kind of love affair.It was good to talk about the story - the narrative shape and style. Ria brings an uncompromising insight which I welcome - in spite of the darkness of the subject matter, the piece will be funny, ironic and ultimately hopeful.
In searching for and collecting personal stories about depression I have come rather late to the work of writer and Guardian columnist Tim Lott - in particular The Scent of Dried Roses (1996) http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Scent-Dried-Roses-Suburbia/dp/0141191481 which is a raw and authentic memoir of depression and an unsentimental social history of the changing landscape of postwar suburban England. 'It is a story of grief, loss and dislocation' yet also of the power of memory and the complexity of living on the inside and outside of the 'tribe' into which we are born. I am struck by Lott's ability to conjur up the time, the physical and sensual world of my own childhood and adolescence with such accuracy that I am momentarily transported there. So transported I must say that I forgot to get off the bus at the right stop to meet Ria.
This is a good read for anyone interested in the fault lines between society and identity - indeed Lott who talks frankly about his own depression in this book calls it 'The illness of identity'. He suggests it intersects with changes in society and personal meaning which can lead to a feeling of disconnection and loss of belonging, which he believes ultimately gave rise to his own mother's depression and eventual suicide. In spite of its subject matter the book is surprisingly uplifting, honest and hopeful.
And so to the third connected thing - and too long to write about in one post. But I'll start a little bit with more to follow. I drove down to visit my mum and dad in Kent on Good Friday. Met with warm hugs and a cold meat salad lunch with buttered triangles of bread, I found the resonance and coincidences of Lott's recently read book echoing through my head. Indeed I could see evidence of that black and white memory right in front of me - of my own history, the photos, the ornaments - each with their own remembered moment in time. But Friday was different to other visits. After the plates and Branston pickle had been tidied away (Branston Pickle was first made in 1922 - some things have inborn longevity!) my mum - nicknamed Nan, wants to share some of her own writing, a series of captured moments from her own childhood in county Mayo in Ireland. She reads for about 40 minutes from her own memoir - although she doesn't call it that.
I turn Andy's ring on my finger again, and I suddenly realise once again that its Easter and I think about the Easter Rising of 1916 - which my granddad supported, and then the start of the war of independence in 1919 - the year of his marriage to Mary. And then his ring which travelled with him until his death in 1950 just two years after Ireland seceded from the United KIngdom and declared itself a republic.
Jung would have called all of this synchronicity - an experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. Its clearly a matter of where my attention has been drawn - and this is my attempt at making sense of that which has no intrinsic sense! Ah the power of making stories or in my case a life of making drama - on and off stage!
Have a good week.
Most of my blogs are prompted by something that's recently happened, a new person I have met, an old friend, a rehearsal, a chance conversation, a celebration, very often a book I'm reading, a new project, a film or a piece of music.... a moment when two or more ideas, conversations or events collide - life I guess.
I was nervous about sharing - I think its because this type of writing feels somehow more exposing, in spite of its fiction and my relationship with it - a kind of love affair.It was good to talk about the story - the narrative shape and style. Ria brings an uncompromising insight which I welcome - in spite of the darkness of the subject matter, the piece will be funny, ironic and ultimately hopeful.
In searching for and collecting personal stories about depression I have come rather late to the work of writer and Guardian columnist Tim Lott - in particular The Scent of Dried Roses (1996) http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Scent-Dried-Roses-Suburbia/dp/0141191481 which is a raw and authentic memoir of depression and an unsentimental social history of the changing landscape of postwar suburban England. 'It is a story of grief, loss and dislocation' yet also of the power of memory and the complexity of living on the inside and outside of the 'tribe' into which we are born. I am struck by Lott's ability to conjur up the time, the physical and sensual world of my own childhood and adolescence with such accuracy that I am momentarily transported there. So transported I must say that I forgot to get off the bus at the right stop to meet Ria.This is a good read for anyone interested in the fault lines between society and identity - indeed Lott who talks frankly about his own depression in this book calls it 'The illness of identity'. He suggests it intersects with changes in society and personal meaning which can lead to a feeling of disconnection and loss of belonging, which he believes ultimately gave rise to his own mother's depression and eventual suicide. In spite of its subject matter the book is surprisingly uplifting, honest and hopeful.
And so to the third connected thing - and too long to write about in one post. But I'll start a little bit with more to follow. I drove down to visit my mum and dad in Kent on Good Friday. Met with warm hugs and a cold meat salad lunch with buttered triangles of bread, I found the resonance and coincidences of Lott's recently read book echoing through my head. Indeed I could see evidence of that black and white memory right in front of me - of my own history, the photos, the ornaments - each with their own remembered moment in time. But Friday was different to other visits. After the plates and Branston pickle had been tidied away (Branston Pickle was first made in 1922 - some things have inborn longevity!) my mum - nicknamed Nan, wants to share some of her own writing, a series of captured moments from her own childhood in county Mayo in Ireland. She reads for about 40 minutes from her own memoir - although she doesn't call it that.
Its compelling, emotional, dark, authentic - a story of a small bemused girl of 6 hurled around in the maelstrom of complex family life in the unsettled Ireland of the thirties. A young child subjected without understanding to the traumas from which her parents tried to shield her, but which resulted in her mother leaving home when Nan was 6. Nan was sent away to a catholic boarding school in Dublin with little explanation. Against this very personal experience the shifting political and social backdrop following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the ensuing Civil War between those in favour of and those against the Treaty of Independence signed with England in 1921. I haven't heard Nan's story for a long time - its painful, yet evocative and compelling. My dad supports her reading, especially in the moments of reliving. He does his bit by showing me a picture of her at 22, in Jersey on their honeymoon. I remark how beautiful and happy she looks.
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| Nan - Jersey 1954 |
A cup of tea later Nan goes upstairs and comes down with a box, she nods at my Dad, Edgar with a recognisable indication of an earlier decision. She takes out some gold jewellery, commenting that you can get a good price for melted gold. She passes me a gold wedding ring, 'It was your granddad's - I'd rather you had it now'. She carries on sorting out other pieces with Edgar - and I slip my granddad's ring onto my right hand ring finger. Its a bit big but it doesn't fall off. And I find myself unexpectedly in tears. And I can't stop. The idea of melting the ring for a good price seems the most absurd of ideas. My imagination is captured. I take the ring off and look at the hallmarks with a magnifying glass. Its dated with a 't' - Birmingham 1919 - my granddad was 29 and his bride Mary 18. I feel the ring and I think about the man I never met who died of a heart attack in 1950. A doctor, Andy was a fierce republican, involved actively in Eamon De Valeria's opposition to the Treaty with England and subsequently in his new party Fianna Fail which formed its first government in 1932, the year of Nan's birth.
I turn Andy's ring on my finger again, and I suddenly realise once again that its Easter and I think about the Easter Rising of 1916 - which my granddad supported, and then the start of the war of independence in 1919 - the year of his marriage to Mary. And then his ring which travelled with him until his death in 1950 just two years after Ireland seceded from the United KIngdom and declared itself a republic.
Jung would have called all of this synchronicity - an experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. Its clearly a matter of where my attention has been drawn - and this is my attempt at making sense of that which has no intrinsic sense! Ah the power of making stories or in my case a life of making drama - on and off stage!
Have a good week.
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