In these pieces I have a consistent aim, like a would-be acrobat endlessly repeating the same manoeuvre, aiming at perfect execution, to demonstrate something to the audience, using his entire body and soul in the demonstration, so that the slightest distraction such as a thought or an itch somewhere on his skin would affect the performance. It’s not enough to complete the trick: it must be done live in front of the audience.
It doesn’t seem a good analogy. Surely in writing, you can lay a new sentence beside one written weeks ago and gone cold. You can tinker with a sentence years after the ink has gone dry. Editing, indeed, is the polish added to the marble sculpture when the main shapes have been hacked out rough and refined in the magical process of discovering them in the blind rock, that uncovering so beloved of Michelangelo.
I’ve been thinking of sculpture lately whilst remodelling the wheel-arches of my “Gift-horse” motor-car, given by an almost-stranger who runs a repair and test workshop just down the road. When he first offered it to me for £100, “to tide you over and help you find a proper car: it should last for a month or two”, I took it for a test drive round the block, wondering if it would make it. There were serious flaws certainly, but none I’ve been unable to work on. When you have hours and days to spare, you can fix anything, and learn to apply rust-proofing and filler and metallic spray finish—I’ve had to make do with a slightly different shade, a richer gold on the existing “champagne”, so it looks like a trick of the light. As for sculpting, there is carving but also clay, which lets you go on modelling and correcting mistakes as you go along. That’s what they use to design car-bodies, apparently: clay. Computers are all very well but you need to see the light on the surfaces. With sculpting in marble, you need an inner vision to direct the hand-and-eye coordination. In painting and drawing it can’t be much different: the medium isn’t infinitely forgiving. You can’t scrape, erase, start afresh indefinitely. The one thing that must be fresh and at its peak is the inspiration: that combination of energy and vision that makes you ready to tackle the impossible—in this present moment before it’s lost forever.
My computer and notebooks are littered with unfinished word-sketches. My pocket digital thing records hours of dictated thoughts captured somewhere: on a remote path overgrown with July’s profusion of plant-life, or on a well-trodden street where I get to recognise individual pieces of litter in the gutter. Those recordings languish unused because they haven’t captured the essence of the moment, which has nothing to do with the persistent pieces of litter, the rank scent of the nettles and cow-parsley in July; or my thoughts endlessly tackling the questions of Life, such as “What is consciousness?”—that melodic line always accompanied by the bass and drums of unconscious impulses.
>Yes, a constant aim, not forgotten or made inconstant by the onrush of words which seem to overgrow their theme like July undergrowth in the English countryside. We tame that scene by approaching it with a purpose. The other day in a remote valley, with no sounds but the wind in the trees, the bleating of sheep and the calls of birds, I must have lost the Public Footpath without realizing it, so I boldly followed trails which seemed to have been made by human feet, though they kept branching and I had to keep choosing the least unpromising. Perhaps they were the trails of foxes, deer and rabbits for they led me badly astray. But I followed them with precise missionary zeal, to help wear them smooth and clear for others and if I’d had a walking-stick I’d have beaten down the undergrowth on either side as a public service: Vincent the trail-blazer. Unfortunately, they led me into the corner of a wood where the nettles were up to six foot high and getting denser with each step. I had to hack my way sideways with rotten sticks which kept breaking, till I reached a wobbly barbed-wire fence, which I had to climb up and jump over without tearing my clothes. Having done so, I was in the gentle meadow which, the map told me, I could have strolled in for the last mile; though that wasn’t part of the official footpath either.
And this all rather reminds me of an unpublished “how-to” book I recently had the privilege to read: a guide for the retired person. It was slightly entertaining, but tell me this: how can anyone write a “self-help” book? Even if you have been to the destination yourself—achieved Buddhist enlightenment, or accumulated your first million dollars—how can you teach anyone else to follow in your footsteps? If they were foolish enough to try, they could be misled, like anyone who optimistically followed the fresh trail I carefully blazed the other day, which ended in that desperate bed of nettles.
But still I have the urge to delineate this constant aim, this would-be theme of my writing which is so difficult as to cripple me in writer’s block till I take solace in car repair, or get pulled irresistibly into daytime naps, a kind of narcolepsy delicious in the yielding.
All I can do is tell you the circumstance and not the essence. For example, the other day I stepped out of the house for a stroll, in a long evening where the sun had reappeared after a day of heavy rain: a symbol of joy in itself, no doubt. How would a poet describe what I felt in that moment? Should he describe the scene? This is hardly a picturesque part of town, being the poorer district, developed around 1900 with factories and workers’ cottages, nothing much changed since, except for the evidence of successive immigrant “invasions”. Its run-down littered state, with loose bricks not cemented back into place, shows that sprucing-up with middle-class money has yet to occur.
My constant aim is to try and express these moments of ecstasy. Which is impossible. I went out without the digital recorder. The only words I brought back were those which entered my head as I stepped out of the front door into the sunset: “This is the Infinite.”
a wayfarer’s notes 
A voice does speak. So clear, so sharp, so true, I felt a pain in my chest as I read and reread.
Kathleen
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I find much to feel in your words as I always have, much to feel in your comments section as well. Much to relate to as well. For me, I am practicing “letting go”, letting go of my masks and need to direct, and when it comes to writing, surrendering to that voice and feeling okay with what it wants to say. It is less about writing right now and more about life I think, and as I dip my toe back in the water I find it like a practice, to be submitted to the will of “it”, rather than the will of me. In the past I have found the late night to be more conducive to my surrender, and I have returned to writing during the late hours again.
Timing is everything, and happening on this particular post and comments this particular night has felt nothing like coincidence to me.
Thank you for your kind words offered to me.
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Day to Day, Hour upon Hour, I experience things that I want to share with someone. Anyone. Often this is not possible. The words, or images I can conjure up to express what I have experienced fail me.
The accumulation of my life experiences that provide a perspective that is unique to me, only add difficulty to the task.
Lately, I have started to think more about generations of experience. Within my family, our ancestors, and so on. I spent a considerable amount of time recently speaking with my Mother about our family tree, looking at old photos and so on.
I was struck by the richness of our history and the impact that so many in my family had on the people around them.
On the other hand, my Daughter is 16. She is going through a very selfish phase. Her complete lack of interest, or concern for her immediate family, much less her ancestors, is very disconcerting to me.
Of course, I know this will change in time. However, it pains me to see her disrespect us, and her family in so blatant a fashion.
The urge to communicate with my Daughter, to explain some of these larger concepts to her is very strong. And yet, she is unreceptive right now. I must be patient and wait for the right moment. I can only hope that I will not forget, and that I can manage to find a way to express these thoughts in a way she will comprehend and appreciate.
I'm not sure this is directly applicable to your post, but it is what I was thinking when I read it.
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Always say less than necessary. Law 4. To impress.
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Vincent, writing – to me – is a curious exercise. Am, by nature and nurture, laconic. Have recently been trying to convince a female friend of mine to write, put her thoughts in print .. but only because i think that the way she thinks, writes; is peculiar, unique, and therefore valuable – to me.
We had a long conversation about it last weekend, but had to tell her to take no notice of me .. since i have the tendency to say very little .. or if I do, try to make one sentence do the work of a paragraph. Have to admit that I frequently fail, in that exercise.
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Kathleen, I am rather disturbed to be blamed for a pain in your chest!!
But I hope it means your were moved to find some significance of your own in the reading of the piece. I'll write privately!
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Serenity, we have quite a bit in common, then. I find myself temperamentally quite unwilling to sit writing these days, & don't do much reading either. Physical action is the big draw, & the solving of physical problems! & my writing is often confined to the hours between 4 & 6 am while the sun rises over the hill. I'm so glad you returned to blogging & commenting.
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Charles, I have great sympathy with you and your daughter. It sounds most typical. Growing up and making the transition from child to adult is extraordinarily difficult. It seems to require the phase you describe, at least in our two countries. I have seen it different in Malaysia. And I think it was different too in earlier decades, when young men and women would be apprenticed or at boarding-school or fully earning their living; and there was no such word as teenager.
Childhood seems to be extending ever longer, with persons not taking on adult responsibilities sometimes till 30 or later. But then, they can expect a longer life …
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Siegfried, true. Thank
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Davo, you make few words do the work of many and though you remain a mystery to me, so does everyone else! Language is great, we each can express ourselves in our own way.
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you definitely have the gift of words and i respect your adventurous spirit. but why disturb the other innocent lives? what's the business to make available the path trodden by other creatures to the stupid human race? try to hide them with more weeds as you can, you never know people might follow the path tread by you and kill a rabbit just for fun.
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that was about the physical aspect of it. now coming to the abstract — are you trying to be a philosopher?
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I thought the trails were human at first.
As for trying to be a philosopher, yes. I am trying. Like many other things, it requires a great deal of practice, and I'm stumbling around ready to make a fool of myself.
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ha ha. salute to your effort!
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Considering, Vincent, that normally I, as us all, think that what I thought and said stem from the physical and depend on it, am I not made weak?
Considering, as I do, that my power as a human being, first and foremost enabling, is to think and say and do and encompass the realities of physical life and the inhabitants of it at each and every level, am I not all powerful?
Should I think, as I am wont, to do what I do from one side or another, am I not empowered thereby?
Do I have real power over the physical only because the physical exists within my encompassing intellect and congruent actions and behaviour, and if I do encompass nature with my words and their essence, (forget God), am I not responsible?
If I turn myself outside-in, do I not oppress myself if I am not in harmony with my true nature?
Who is my enemy, am I not my own worst enemy?
The future, in my estimation, preceeds the past, and therefore, each of us is truly ahead of our time, and again, therefore, each of us makes our present.
What is it in that that is most significant and can deliver us unto heaven or hell.
Just some thoughts from reading about. Maybe I will say more later, lol, maybe I will. Here is hoping you, Vincent, will!
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