Monthly Archive

There are medieval ones apparently, and classical ones. And they are not mazes, which are designed to tease you and get you lost etc. Exactly the opposite: labyrinths are one-way systems, that you walk. And walk. And before you know it, you’ve reached the centre. And you sit. And think. And then when you’re ready, you come back. 

My mother used to say that she was always afraid of waking up one morning and suddenly becoming born again. She felt she was the sort to whom that might just happen. Somehow.

Whereas my grandparents were devout Baptists. Not born-again, but sure.

I’ve never been much more than agnostic, and somewhat share my mother’s fear of losing my free will all of a sudden.

However. Today, courtesy of the University of Kent and their Unit for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching, I walked the labyrinth. It felt strange, walking into the Senate Chamber, this 36 foot pattern in cream and green laid out on the floor, calm music playing. I thought, oh dear (but in different words) what have I got myself into? Because, believing in creativity and imagination as abstract concepts, and as mysterious forces in themselves…I’d said that I’d be interested in working with the possibility of the labyrinth. Creatively, that is. But first I had to try it.

It’s the kind of experience to which words don’t come easily. Suffice it to say that I really wouldn’t have much of a problem being born-again in that context. Suffice it to say that it’ll probably turn up in my work somewhere.

Afterwards, I made the decision to see where this will go. Working with Jan S and we hope the Canterbury Festival. And some interested students. It isn’t wishy-washy earthy-crunchy namby-pamby — though it kind of looks like it might be, granted, when you peep in the door. It feels ancient. And a tool. And a kind of unassuming revelation.

It looked just like this. 

Stay tuned.

Right. Been tagged by Sarah Salway. Uh, to list six random things about myself. Love it. I wonder if the ‘random’ is of the real type (here) or of the slang type used by my nephew, my students, and now my son, as in ‘that’s so random man’.

***

1) I used to have a recurring nightmare when I was young which involved me riding in a tiny toy-like car away from people who were chasing me. All during this ride the world was in tunnel vision, with strange creatures and sometimes very ordinary life lining the sides of the road. Sometimes as I’m falling asleep I still get this tunnel vision, which makes me feel like I’m falling.

2) I absolutely adore frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts. Only available in the States. At a push the frosted strawberry ones available in the UK are okay.

3) One of my ideal situations is being driven down a highway with the windows open, road music on, and my bare feet hanging out.

4) I’ve never read Moby Dick. This may only mean something to Americans. But I have read Ulysses. And loved it. Does this mean anything to anyone?

5) I’d like to ride in a hot-air balloon again. A lot. The one and only time I went, I was a secretary in a real estate agency in London, going along for an early morning client-pleasing ride. It was completely thrilling. And silent. And hugely poetic. And I had to keep everything I felt about it to myself.

6) One of the most formative creative pursuits of my life has been translation. At Oberlin College I translated poetry from around 15 different languages (using trans-literations). My very first publication was a translation of a ‘creative non fiction’ essay by Miroslav Holub, Shed Blood, which was later collected into a book (The Dimension of the Present Moment, now out of print). Translation seems to speak directly to the intangible, the bit before words, beyond words…and I find that fascinating. It has made me acutely aware of the creative transformation of coming to the page: you may think you know what you want to write in your head, but the page, the process, changes all of that. The process of translation is like high-intensity editing of your own work: you wait for it to dawn on you, to talk to you in your own language. I love it, and everytime I think of it, I miss it.

***

Now it falls to me to pass the baton, along with the rules:

Link to the person that tagged you - i.e. me.

Post the rules on your blog.

Write six random things about you in a blog post.

Tag six people in your post.

Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Let the tagger know your entry is up.

So now I tag… Caroline, George, Danny and Alis.

The kitchen. Dig it. The rest of the house may be covered in molted white cat hairs and carpets that don’t fit and detritus from months of building work…but this — this is a little (well big) slice of heaven.

It’s like having a gigantic Rothko, Klee or Hepworth right in your very own house, to look at for hours and walk around and be in. That’s how pleasing it is to live with.

Each time I enter this site I see the what now seems s heavy photo of the crypt. A good — but heavy — night. So light though too that it flies away….

So now to an antidote. Remember two posts back? A line from a country and western song made famous by Barbara Mandrell. I have a deep and endless soft spot for the poetry of old country and western and folk music, the black comedy and rhyme of it. If you are speechless with disbelief, oh well. When you get your voice back, we’ll have a conversation.

Here’s a version of one of my all-time favourite country and western songs, written by John Prine, sung here by him and Nanci Griffiths (oh Nanci! more from her later…). Enjoy. It’s laid back. Only a guitar.

I like this song so much its lyrics are in one of my short stories (Flying). Indeed they are.

The concert last night — given by the Ensemble Intercontemporain in the Canterbury Cathedral crypt –was…one of the most powerful musical experiences of my life.

Words can only gesture toward what happens when players at the top of their form engage with music sublimely suited to the place and time. People all around me were crying. I was crying. Nancy and Hamish were there. I saw Nancy at the interval and she said she had a struggle not to cry in the first bars of Debussy’s … — and that was only the first piece!

The silence in the Cathedral crypt  always crackles. It seems to hold everyone’s thoughts and emotions, somehow turning it all, like a big ship, back upon us. The silence washes over in waves.

This was music of course that privileges silence.  I’ve always found the contemporary/modern music of French composers such as Messiaen and Boulez resonant. It’s an aesthetic not far from R’s, and not far from my own, at heart. Lots of space, breath, and a sense of elevation, suspension. Where the quality of pure sound, the sound of sound, if you like, is valued. (Or so it seems to me. I realise I am quite the pleb when it comes to musical analysis…)

But I sort of digress. I suppose some of what I’m saying is that I was up for it. As was the whole audience it seemed. The clarinetist Alain Damiens and the cellist Pierre Strauch, well. It’s difficult to say without seeming mad, but I wanted to climb inside their instruments and live there. I wanted to be in that, all day every day. I thought, in another mad moment, keeping in mind that this was in a church — so I probably prayed it — just let me always hear this, be there, and I will never be without joy. I wanted it to last forever.

The final piece was Messiaen’s astonishing Quartet for the End of Time. After the last, almost inaudible strains of the music finished, the audience did not clap for perhaps 20 or 30 seconds. It was as if everything we knew had stopped in its tracks. And we were waiting for some sign, any indication of where to go next, what to do. Waiting to be reborn. Which never came. Because we had no choice but to return to our lives. And clap.

I feel particularly quiet today, like I’ve been through a crisis and must recover. I don’t know how we are to carry on after a night like that. The transience is almost too much to bear.

The programme:

Claude Debussy Sonata

Gerard Grisey Charme

Tristan Murail Les Ruines circulaires

Olivier Messiaen Quatour pour la fin du Temps

*

Thank you, Sounds New.

Sounds New week is underway — and what a week! Contemporary music from dawn til dusk. With some of the best, the VERY best players of contemporary music in the country. Right here in (River City) Canterbury. It really, really is such a top-drawer week. Check it out.

No, it doesn’t all sound like someone moving furniture around, as my mother used to say. Much of it is very, very beautiful. And intriguing. And makes you think. And moves you (not the furniture).

So check it out.

(nb: the Sounds New website is under construction, so doesn’t seem to have delineated pages I can point you to for info and programming — BUT if you go to the site, it’s all there nevertheless. Poke around.)

What this means for us is: R and E out every night (sniff!); M babysat three nights (lighter purse, gulp); me out for those three nights — tonight to Gulbenkian to hear LOTS of cellos and a piece by R, tomorrow night to Ensemble Intercontemporain (fabulous!) at the Cathedral, and Friday night…one of the best string quartets in the country. So there.

All a bit hectic.

More to the point, I have to go all shaggy-haired tonight, then show up tomorrow night with probably the very same people in attendance freshly shorn…gawd. That’s what I get for not thinking very far ahead. What do you wear to distract people from your hair? And don’t say a BAG.

Even more to the point — none of R’s cooking! Bereft already! And the bright kitchen so newly in. I could weep. Forced to snack on Toblerone.

Despite freezing temperatures and occasional impressive hail storms, the sun shone. And shone. We walked. And walked. And cycled. And pedalled. And played Monopoly. And Scrabble. For hours.

Pedometer: over 10,000 steps per day, even when cycling! (Tells you something about the number of hills I had to walk up rather than ride, but never mind…)

We got the Saturday Guardian and The Observer. Dig it. We read them. Mostly. E read them. Mostly. M did the activity page. Mostly.

*

Some eye candy. I wish I could do justice to the place. But I always have to try, try to capture some element of something.

The ‘Purple Walk’ above Coniston Water. The wood about which I wrote the poem ‘Bluebell Wood’ in How to Be a Dragonfly. Only it’s not quite bluebell time. Obviously.

Taken by E along the flat walk from Skelwith Bridge to Elterwater.

Another taken by E: R and M on the way back to Skelwith Bridge in sudden snow.

From the top of Silver How, near Grasmere. After a rather winding, windy and steep way up, met with fast travelling clouds and a 360 view.

The staggeringly beautiful Buttermere, revisited after several years. A long, sunny relaxed walk around with lots of stone skipping and the odd nap.

Nearing the end of the day on Buttermere. The children scratched their names on stones and propped them against tree trunks. We longed for cans of warm gin & tonic!

1) The weather today! Startling blue sky.

2) M’s health. After a surprise ‘hurl’ as she calls it (bleh) this morning, nothing. We figure odd anxiety: protective of cats, she had worked herself into a froth about them going outside. We all need a break.

3) Step count: 3,000 and I’ve got six hours to go. Slowly but surely.

4) Sight in a swimsuit tried on today.

5) The forecast for The Lakes, where we head tomorrow. GONE FOR A WEEK! Yay. And only mixed rain/sun on those nice charts. May strike lucky and get lots of walks in (obssessive, moi?).

6) The picture and article in the Gazette about Word on the Street, which did appear today. Again, rather jolly. Unfortunately not online that I can find, so you’ll just have to take my word (on the street) for it.

7) Mindset before a journey. I’m usually imagining all sorts of things that might go wrong by this stage, and/or desperate to clean the house top to bottom. Neither of those things are occupying much head space at the moment thank goodness.

*

Two bits of unadulterated good news:

1) Saw Helena’s new baby today — stunning. At three weeks the size M was when she was born: 10lb 4oz. The familiar bleating like a lamb, feed me.

2) M got a Distinction on her violin exam. Hurray, M!

*

See you in a week. Have a good one.

Having blithely promised to keep you informed about the step by step world of not-writing-but-walking — I’m mortified to admit that even taking into account the first two hours of every day when I forget to put it on, and the fact that we’ve all been a bit ill and I’ve been more sedentary than usual…I’m still APPALLINGLY under my aim of 7,000 steps per day.

How about the fact that I haven’t even done that ALTOGETHER yet (two days in)?! Oh my lord.

I had thought that counting steps would be a relief from the insular world of ‘how’s the book coming on?’. I’m a fit person, after all, I get about, am full of life and energy…– but it seems that here too I am bound to under-achieve, my ambition outstretching reality. Etc etc.

Argh!

I am reminded of my grandparents’ mall-walking phase — you know, when you don sneakers and ‘walk the mall’, going around and around the perimeter for your daily exercise. Some malls even had (have?) lines to follow. Just so you know your way. Honestly. Of course you have to get in the car to go there….Oh dear. Last night, in a dark moment that went along the lines of I am rotting away, I actually tried to figure out where the nearest mall was. Seeing as it’s the palatial Bluewater, where if I went I would spend more money than could ever be justified, sanity — or lethargy — quickly took hold.

I live near the Crab & Winkle. I’m thinking about making that walk my mall. I’ve got to do something. Spring is springing. I’ve got to breathe deep. I’ve got two books to write.

First I need the right shoes though. Er..Bluewater?