Is it possible to write without feeling? This came up in a discussion on Beth’s blog. It puts me in mind of Sundays at boarding school. Best clothes, Mattins at village church, long walk on country roads, and then before Evensong, a dreary task: the “letter to parents”. Letters had to achieve a page-and-a-half and were censored. “Dear Mother and Father. (long pause) I hope you are well. (longer pause) . . . ” Even the first line was difficult. I wanted to write “Dear Mother and Father” but honesty of feeling prevented that, so I wrote “Dear Mother and David”. A stepfather could be a father too, but mine wasn’t.
Our education did not involve feelings, unless it were to suppress them. It’’s true that you were allowed to be passionate about cricket. No, not “allowed”: “expected”. Expected is perhaps too mild a word. Passion for cricket was “required”. I was in the last cohort of boys whose entire education was conducted in the context of Empire, with its connotations of the stiff upper lip, and the White Man’s Burden. One must never show weakness in front of the natives. So much for that upbringing: I am now married to a Jamaican negress. (The spellchecker rejects this lovely word: let that remain its problem, not ours.)
So I received my rolled-up paper at a degree ceremony in July ’63, whilst the colonies were being handed back, and the contraceptive pill became available. I panicked not knowing what to do with my life, and went to train for VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) to teach English in French Guinea, and chickened out after two days. Then I met a girl. I have spent more time successfully trying to forget her and then reliving her memory, than ever I spent with her. When at 59 my second marriage failed, it suited me to think of looking her up.
At that point, in my mind’s eye, I was still 21 and she still 19. The passage of time didn’t count: it was merely the waste-land of our separation. Checking registers, I found she had been married in Oxford. Perhaps she was the wife of a professor. Now I saw myself traversing a leafy suburb of houses with large gardens like those on Rectory Avenue (mentioned in my previous posts). As soon as I reach the gate, I see her, with gloved hands cutting off the overblown rose blooms, skilfully avoiding the thorns. She doesn’t recognize me on sight, nor do I see much trace of that girl of 19. “I’ve come to apologize. You were the one for me, as I have only just realized.” She pours tea into delicate china cups and we sit warily, talking of what might have been and can never be now. She hopes I can stay for dinner and meet her husband the Professor.
I checked the Worcestershire County archives and found the address of the house where I’d briefly met her parents. I talked to the elderly neighbours who vaguely remembered the parents and the dog, but thought they had a son, not a daughter. Odd, but it figures: she had been a tomboy. I checked a West Midlands phone book and rang everyone with her unusual maiden name. Eventually I spoke to someone who knew who I was talking about, who told me she’d killed herself 19 years previously. This was in 1982, 19 years after we had met. My informant made it clear that her death had been a relief to the entire family. My immediate tears of grief seemed incongruous in the circumstances.
Being chronic sick and without employment at the time, I devoted myself to the penning of a cloying memoir which included every last detail of our relationship, whose reality was five or six brief encounters over several months. Like Pygmalion’s, my creation came back to life and I fell in love with it. I even got in touch with her ex-husband, sending him a version of the tale I’d written. To my surprise it inspired him to write his own, covering how they met, their marriage, the manner of her death. He found it cathartic, and sent me each instalment as it was completed.
I suppose that’s how I started writing. I’ve learned that it suits me best to follow spontaneous impulse; not tell everything; not be a slave to chronological narrative; and always be anchored in the present. It’s more bearable this way and leaves space for both of us—you and I—to explore life’s wider truth.
there were 7 comments:
DBA Lehane
The number of times I’ve thought about and actually undertaken to track down old girlfriends/flames (does anyone call them ‘flames’ anymore— or is it all “ho’s” and the like now?). It’s obviously not so strangely idiosyncratic to me. Coincidentally, my first attempts at *proper* writing (whatever that may mean or be) were in semi-literary letters I used to pen to a girl I had met on holiday when I was a mere sixteen year old. She used to write back telling me I was wasted in letters and should write a book instead (perhaps the sweetest brush off I ever received!) Hmmm…I wonder whatever became of Sally in Wickford? Maybe I should track her down after all these years…?!
ourladybeth♥
Lovely Vincent. I would eagerly read your ‘Train Diaries’ should you have opportunity to write them. Would you believe that I know where most of my old boyfriends are and that I communicate in some form with them from time to time. It comes from the small expatriate circles of which we lived in childhood … and going to boarding school together. They are friendships that will last when all others are gone. The ex could never grasp this concept – one of the reasons he is now the ex.
V
I had been very mean to a number of young women at the time I began flirting and dating several years ago, by falling in love with an older woman. Anyway, I got married to my ex-wife, who is a year younger. But I couldn’t forget all the young women.So when we separated I just started paying attention to very young women to make up for my past mistakes. Maybe it’s not too late.
V
Women are more interested in romance than men. Perhaps.If you give it to them, they feel flattered. So they play along. But after a while they become bored. And they start breaking your heart.
Sophia
I’m out of my league here, with all of these elegant writers who express themselves so well.I don’t know how much to reveal, but I can say that I almost escaped mental anguish from loving someone I wasn’t supposed to love. Notice I said, “almost”. I don’t know if it’s possible to successfully forget someone. I wish, though.You really touch on some intimate things in this post. I enjoyed it. Scribble away, friend.
Jim
Amazing work Vincent, you are really cooking, true art forms here, you remind me a little of Henry Miller, I loved Henry Miller’s books, read them all, they really had content, stuffed, you greatly approach that in the myriad of little things that touch, do touch, one with simple personal pleasures. I was much younger when I read Henry, and in the reading, I pre-recognized much of myself, knew he somehow knew some of me…..in reading yours now, it is the same but in reverse, you recap in many details much of my life, as if you knew me then, now. Little things Vincent, such as the difficulty of the first line in the letter home.
And again, the hope of making much out of what is apparently so little, knowing, as we do, that these little things are so truly full. And again, about writing and feeling, or painting and feeling, both art and feeling, and this is now different than it was in my early years as an artist/painter when I exploited every drop of romantic feeling and emotional feeling for a creations’ sake, now the nature of the feeling is different, but works the same, the feeling is less personal and tends more to be universal and abstract in a sense, but the desire to exploit it fully is the same and the power in the feeling is just as potent would that I could just as easily and quickly portray it. You seem to be doing this very well, you are obviously gathering inspiration and pouring out the fine wines. I remember reading some earlier pieces with these subjects more sketchy and explorational, I can see and hear the power now behind the content, driving home the content, I like it very much.
As to the re-experiencing of old loves, I can tell a tale that is almost like yours with more of a happy ending, but with the tragedy inside the lapsed time. And I definitely was knocked for a loop on meeting face to face and having days to spend with the old love of 20 years past, discovering myself, that for me, she and I hadn’t aged at all, hadn’t changed at all, when in real life that was absolutely not the case, from that reality, from that contrast, I did about 2 dozen small paintings, each telling an aspect of before and after in an abstract cubist realism, some even contained tear drops and tender scenes of realizing the change, some juxtaposed an event of our joint lives then, with the reality of us now in the same event. A most fruitful realization from a most universal theme. Keep working Vincent, you are commanding attention, hard to turn loose, you make me want more and I hope you continue to deliver. The comments here are wonderful too, I appreciate the reading back here in this section, you Vincent are drawing out some great revelations.
Vincent
Ah Jim, that is the greatest compliment you have paid me, to invoke Henry Miller, for he was long my hero. Through him I discovered some of his heroes too, like Laurence Durrell and John Cowper Powys. More recently I have discovered Charles Bukowski to whom my latest post Fevered Interlude pays homage.
a wayfarer’s notes 