Tuesday, 16 November 2010
chronic self judgementalism
David McAlmont - writing notes and bloghttp://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=74361081&blogId=512359877
David McAlmont - http://www.mcalmont.co.uk/
Listen and buy - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-coldest-place-on-earth/id357791275
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| two little calls of ... ©Disney - IGN.com |
It has been a few days since my last post and I'm now well over a quarter of the way through the story. So, what's been happening in the last few days? I don't want to bore you with the subsistence stuff, although, I am processing, who and what I am on a regular basis and, those of you who know the real me will be aware of my reluctance to call myself a writer - I'm just someone recording words at the moment which, may be the same thing, but I am not a published writer, so, I'll wait for that day to come along and then maybe enjoy the status then although, I doubt it. I have, however been going through the motions and aligning my own views about artists and their internal struggle and wondering about how pretentious this is really - sat in a huge house away from home and lover and subjecting myself to a luxurious purgatory. Friends have been concerned about my welfare and, until today, I have had a sort of routine until I realised it was 1.30pm and I had not had a single cup of tea. I had boiled two eggs for lunch (tuna salad) and I had the thought, would they keep me going until dinner - until the end of the week? I had a romantic image of someone like Javier Bardem in Before Night Falls, someone on the outside, someone excluded from an artistic movement, surviving on the simple and surreal nourishment of a humble hen's egg. Or was it croquettas? Spain and reality come so quickly back in to view.
I wanted to talk today about this in a way and, the effect words can have on someone - I remember during my counselling training the tutor trying to explain the types of personality disorder and the world of Gestalt Therapy and he eventually claimed, a tad too cockily, for my liking, that in fact, I was obviously Grandiose - which would explain a yearning I have for recognition but not the lack of empathy presented by narcissistic types. I am empathic aren't I? Coming from a big family where one (oops, there I go again) can become easily lost, I think I had the desire to perform but that was seen as wrong somehow and I was discouraged from showing off - maybe by the time five of us had flooded through the womb, they had had enough. No matter.
So, I hope that explains why I may embark on something in one mode and then have to explain why I am something else in another. I do feel that I am a writer, but upbringing has convinced me to keep my head down - what would I have been like if my folks had encouraged me as opposed to putting up with me.
After my father died, I found a press-cutting of a review of the time I played Amadeus at Spring Street in Hull, it felt so incredibly sad, and, I'm reduced to tears as I write this, to think that he must have secreted it in an album, unable to share his emotions about it with me - good or bad. I know its not uncommon for fathers to be supportive in a 'be there with you' sort of way and I have lots of other things to thank him for (maybe this is one, ultimately, who knows), but I had appeared in two Gilbert and Sullivans' at school and he never went to those either! The family didn't discriminate - none of the others went either! Maybe he was intuitive about my talents who knows - I still see the bitch who wrote the review for Amadeus; maybe she rang him and said; "Eric, just don't frigging bother!" He will have read the review though and I'm sure if there were any good points raised, he would hang on to the 'garbled and indistinct' bit to reinforce his self-embarrassment in me. See, I said words were powerful and, look, I'm blubbing again - a grandiose embarrassment!
Continuing the psychic theme, the last reading I had at home SJ (Jacquie Sanderson in the book) who had predicted the whole Spanish bolt-hole, came up with another shocker - that she had my passed relatives and they were all shouting, "Just go and do it!" which is sort of... no, it IS really nice to remember, that when I picked up that yellowed piece of newspaper and unfolded it, he was reading it with me over my shoulder like he did when I was a child ...
He was a real influence on me, I can remember watching him hit away at his typewriter in his office when I was young, I was actually allowed in to keep him company and it is a lingering memory of him in the attic room; the smells of stationery, ink and rubber. He enjoyed writing and being eloquent - maybe I got the grandiosity bit from him after all.
My oldest school-friend Roger, tunes in on Facebook most nights when my fingers are tired and my eyeballs are dropping out and asks how it has been going. Last night, I wanted to go to bed early as I had written nothing all day and got into some 'doingness' as Colin and I call it - meaningless objectivity to take away the thinking. Rog' knows I am referencing some characters from that period; I told him about Stephen giving me permission to write about our story when he came through at a psychic event. He then went on (he is a psychic fan and practitioner) to say that night times are when they probably do visit and it is not uncommon for them to sit on the side of the bed as you sleep. "You what?" I asked, "Who, what?"
"Oh, you'll probably wake up and find him sat there looking at you." he ended in a calm and matter of fact way.
To paint a picture; the house is the highest in the village next to the tower and close to the church and crypt and yesterday was a beautiful sunny day until this conversation when the weather changed completely, like in a movie. The wind howled all night and I could hear the furniture moving on the terrace above, thought about getting up and dealing with it - I decided to stay in bed with my visitor at my side... But I am still alone...
If you would like a clearer picture of how it feels for me at the moment, well most of the time actually, take a listen to the The Glare by Michael Nyman and David McAlmont. The original track entitled The Glare was written about Susan Boyle - check out David's writing blog for his notes (which are fantastic as are the lyrics throughout) - there you have it, I'm on the spectrum with SuBo and yes, my grandiosity would have preferred someone exotic, like, say, Yves St Laurent, Genet or Brel, but will have to make do with an unsuspecting purity.
David McAlmont - writing notes and bloghttp://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=74361081&blogId=512359877
David McAlmont - http://www.mcalmont.co.uk/
Listen and buy - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-coldest-place-on-earth/id357791275
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
A world from my window
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| two little pots of ... |
Back to the crime then - I already have a blueprint for the scene which is based on the child looking down on his soul as that one expires as that one looks down on the whole. I feel it will have to be this surreal to protect the integrity of the whole book. I remember when I was at college and we were on the street researching stuff and we came upon a bombsite which had miraculously escaped redevelopment - in one of the blasted out houses was a tiny kitten that had been dumped there - it looked so peaceful in its fatal setting. I am still attuned to that 'found object' surreal mentality, where the artist's purity is saved by the relentless objects that they encounter. I am also fuelled by that Artaudian idea that each of us have residing in us an unexploded, therefore unexplored set of violent actions and their counterparts - it's just society's rules and our adopted codes of morality that keep the simmering love and evil within us. I also hope not to be overly judgemental about the perpetrators because for one thing that would be so easy - being bereft of a birth child, I am fully aware of the powerful preciousness a child brings to the world. No, to condemn the perpetrators would free the reader from being aware of the responsibility to children that we all must shoulder if this fragile world has any possible chance of survival. So, as you can imagine, I will be expecting a torrent of comments about that.
On the one hand we have a seriously defined code around sexual abuse and how abhorrent it is and yet we do all we can to somehow keep the victims in a state of perpetual guilt and trauma. When cases are brought to trial, the process does all that it can to perpetuate the restigmatisation of the trauma and very few cases are found in favour of the victim - I find this more shocking than the terrible acts that are committed. On the other, I shall be exploring that in some cases, a child can be choiceful about entering into a serious relationship with an adult - this is really contentious, I know and, if readers are overwhelmingly shocked by my assertions, then we need to look at laws as they stand. Here in Spain, we have a low age of consent, to protect predatory males, one assumes. That does not always mean that a young girl of 12 or 13, say, could not fall in love with an elder. On the same-sex front I remember having difficulty appreciating the film of the book For a Lost Soldier - a young Dutch boy falls for a Canadan soldier during the German occupation in WWII. Here we have a new concept to appreciate; the child is fully in control at all stages - the environment is cold and brutal and the child merely wants to be close to his hero. The troops move on and the child is devastated and spends his life trying to find his 'lost soldier'. The film ends with the adult child creating a ballet about the relationship. There are many avenues to explore here and our attitudes to the adultification of children is the first to come to mind.
To some extent, one of my characters that makes in-roads in to having relationships with older men is similar and yet, the moral compass has to change the direction of his life. My doomed child is not as lucky or as determined as the Dutch boy in the film/book I mentioned before, so the reader can grasp something of my moral code with regards this topic.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Write down to it ...
We had a lovely stay in Bordeaux and enjoyed a fabulous meal at a hotel situated on an industrial estate; it was strange because there were a cluster of hotels in an industrialised setting presumably in close proximity to a conference centre. We had enjoyed the drive down and the partner had uttered a handful of classic comments about the host country - previously it had been "no wonder the Arabs hate ya!" and this time, I'm glad to say, his experience of the French was a little more polite and he noted rather philosophically, "they don't have any spatial awareness". This was in response to several drivers' behaviour when being passed - they would either speed up when we were alongside or wait until we had dropped back into the inside lane in front of them giving them the signal to overtake ... This infuriated the other half until we crossed the border and into Spain. I took it as a universal need to communicate, the French, I find, are no different to ourselves and are basically unaware of our intentions - perhaps we should have had a flashing sign stating "Cruise Control On, get out of the way!"
The Bordeaux Pulman was an upmarket (same price as the IBIS apparently) hotel, boutique in style and had a Casino in tow, not that we are ones for betting or chucking our hard earned cash away you understand. No, we were more concerned with the young waiter in the restaurant - there was definitely something about the Basque buttocks that inspired us to try his Coquilles St Jacques and, very nice they were too. The asymmetric squirts, above and below said coques in both red and green pepper jus on the white letterbox china plates continued the driving theme. No spatial awareness eh? My main course was a Blond Boeuf fillet with, I presume, sweetbread on the top. What they may lack in spatial awareness they certainly exude sexually in their cooking. We were brought back down to earth with a platter of non-pasteurised cheeses to close. The waiter, whom we named Stephane, kept stopping off at the bar to watch a local football game on the wall-mounted when he wasn't serving us with his pert and efficient manner. Of course he liked football ... and shopping with maman too we presumed. On the whole though, we both agreed that he had a few too many teeth for our liking and it was off to bed.
The idea of taking a sabbatical was made quite a long time ago when Colin and I were at the house in Spain last time around. We talked long and hard about the time being right for me to take time away from the business and have a prolonged spell away from the UK and hopefully complete the novel that I started earlier in the year.
After a lengthy drive through England and France with two overnight stops, we finally made it to our second home in Aragón. I am so glad that we made the trip this way and as usual, it is with thanks to His Master's Voice for arranging the trip and generally organising things in his usual calm way. We have a week together before he goes back on Sunday after staying with friends in Sitges.
We are both, I suppose a little anxious about being separated from each other - it will be the longest period apart in thirty two years (I'm hearing in the background "thirty four!") and he is concerned that I will not be able to cope on my own. He may have a point; I am a serial communicator and my thoughts have spiralled into convincing myself that I will become some sort of Howard Hughes character with toenails like eagle talons and hair all over the place, wrapped in a quilt at the computer with the heating switched off.
Friends, too, are convinced that I'm on dangerous ground, their responses to my news about leaving the belovèd for a month have provoked a few looks of horror and dismay ... The fact of the matter is, this work would never get done if I stayed at home - there are far too many distractions - we are always doing something and focusing on others rather than ourselves and, running a business these days is tedious beyond belief. I have spent so many hours reflecting and processing on this journey that I am aware that coping with feelings of guilt and selfishness is a huge part of who I am - do all large families do this to their youngest?
Of course I am going to miss him and who wouldn't? It is going to be so weird communicating via MSN and a web-cam, so I am already longing for the time that I collect him from Zaragoza airport in a few weeks time.
So, what's all the fuss about? And, how is this piece going to be put together and, why do I need to be so isolated to get the prose down? Most of my friends and colleagues are aware of my passion for my charity, Survivors Hull and East Riding and our specialist topic around sexual abuse and trauma and the organisation remains an inspiration to me. I have an internal pact that my fiction is exactly that and no confidentiality is being broken with this work. In a 'method' way, it would be inauthentic to draw on modern therapese to write this book, after all, we did not have access to this language in the late sixties and early seventies.
What I have done is, if you will, created a jigsaw - all the shapes are cut and the writing process is to actually put the pictures on the face of each piece. The characters in the book are based on my own family experience and those of the sub characters - this has formed the foundation - the shape is the same, the personalities are created though. So, where the central protagonist has four brothers just like myself, the personalities are pure fiction. My real mother and sister too, are entirely different people. I have found this process illuminating because it is not wishful thinking - I had an amazing childhood and the only pain I can recall was a bee sting and the loss of two puppies - an elder brother had the task of drowning them because a rat had entered the kennel and gnawed at their tiny paws. I still don't understand why he allowed me to watch - perhaps he was trying to toughen me up. Weirdly enough, minutes later I was breezing up the street on my niece's powder blue trike with fabric wafting behind me like a silent movie screen star playing the part of Boadicea. I loved that bike! My childhood, I am sure was not as idyllic as I like to think it was - I was bullied at school and despite being allowed to express myself at home clomping about in high heels and make-up, my academic life was one of absolute fear.
This theme is central to the book; my nemesis, Kenny was a troubled character and basically missed his father who was never at home, he took his adopted role of being the 'man of the house' with him wherever he went - only he was angry and cruel with it. It wasn't until later in life that I realised he was as scared of the world as I was. In fact, he turned into a really nice person after school and he used to come into the local bar where I worked and he had lost all of that pent up intensity. He died in a motorcycle accident not long after his 18th birthday. The other 'friend' character died ahead of his time too, which was a great shame, because he was a huge influence on me, encouraging me to follow my artistic side. In a way this book is more of an exorcism - on two separate occasions these two central characters have given me permission to write this work. Kenny came through at a reading at a local Psychic Centre and informed me that he had felt no pain - I was still too raw about his power over me to fully understand why he would communicate this to me - I had wished him in hell so many times! My friend, Stephen reminded me that I had thought about writing the book years ago when I was on a well-known psychic television show and that it was, indeed, OK to go ahead. Actually, this book is not the original version; however, I have included him out of respect for our wonderful friendship and out of concern that, for those of us who suffer from lack of self esteem whilst in a relationship with someone with supreme and effortless confidence, that we never know when they are going to be taken from us.
The Bordeaux Pulman was an upmarket (same price as the IBIS apparently) hotel, boutique in style and had a Casino in tow, not that we are ones for betting or chucking our hard earned cash away you understand. No, we were more concerned with the young waiter in the restaurant - there was definitely something about the Basque buttocks that inspired us to try his Coquilles St Jacques and, very nice they were too. The asymmetric squirts, above and below said coques in both red and green pepper jus on the white letterbox china plates continued the driving theme. No spatial awareness eh? My main course was a Blond Boeuf fillet with, I presume, sweetbread on the top. What they may lack in spatial awareness they certainly exude sexually in their cooking. We were brought back down to earth with a platter of non-pasteurised cheeses to close. The waiter, whom we named Stephane, kept stopping off at the bar to watch a local football game on the wall-mounted when he wasn't serving us with his pert and efficient manner. Of course he liked football ... and shopping with maman too we presumed. On the whole though, we both agreed that he had a few too many teeth for our liking and it was off to bed.
The idea of taking a sabbatical was made quite a long time ago when Colin and I were at the house in Spain last time around. We talked long and hard about the time being right for me to take time away from the business and have a prolonged spell away from the UK and hopefully complete the novel that I started earlier in the year.
After a lengthy drive through England and France with two overnight stops, we finally made it to our second home in Aragón. I am so glad that we made the trip this way and as usual, it is with thanks to His Master's Voice for arranging the trip and generally organising things in his usual calm way. We have a week together before he goes back on Sunday after staying with friends in Sitges.
We are both, I suppose a little anxious about being separated from each other - it will be the longest period apart in thirty two years (I'm hearing in the background "thirty four!") and he is concerned that I will not be able to cope on my own. He may have a point; I am a serial communicator and my thoughts have spiralled into convincing myself that I will become some sort of Howard Hughes character with toenails like eagle talons and hair all over the place, wrapped in a quilt at the computer with the heating switched off.
Friends, too, are convinced that I'm on dangerous ground, their responses to my news about leaving the belovèd for a month have provoked a few looks of horror and dismay ... The fact of the matter is, this work would never get done if I stayed at home - there are far too many distractions - we are always doing something and focusing on others rather than ourselves and, running a business these days is tedious beyond belief. I have spent so many hours reflecting and processing on this journey that I am aware that coping with feelings of guilt and selfishness is a huge part of who I am - do all large families do this to their youngest?
Of course I am going to miss him and who wouldn't? It is going to be so weird communicating via MSN and a web-cam, so I am already longing for the time that I collect him from Zaragoza airport in a few weeks time.
So, what's all the fuss about? And, how is this piece going to be put together and, why do I need to be so isolated to get the prose down? Most of my friends and colleagues are aware of my passion for my charity, Survivors Hull and East Riding and our specialist topic around sexual abuse and trauma and the organisation remains an inspiration to me. I have an internal pact that my fiction is exactly that and no confidentiality is being broken with this work. In a 'method' way, it would be inauthentic to draw on modern therapese to write this book, after all, we did not have access to this language in the late sixties and early seventies.
What I have done is, if you will, created a jigsaw - all the shapes are cut and the writing process is to actually put the pictures on the face of each piece. The characters in the book are based on my own family experience and those of the sub characters - this has formed the foundation - the shape is the same, the personalities are created though. So, where the central protagonist has four brothers just like myself, the personalities are pure fiction. My real mother and sister too, are entirely different people. I have found this process illuminating because it is not wishful thinking - I had an amazing childhood and the only pain I can recall was a bee sting and the loss of two puppies - an elder brother had the task of drowning them because a rat had entered the kennel and gnawed at their tiny paws. I still don't understand why he allowed me to watch - perhaps he was trying to toughen me up. Weirdly enough, minutes later I was breezing up the street on my niece's powder blue trike with fabric wafting behind me like a silent movie screen star playing the part of Boadicea. I loved that bike! My childhood, I am sure was not as idyllic as I like to think it was - I was bullied at school and despite being allowed to express myself at home clomping about in high heels and make-up, my academic life was one of absolute fear.
This theme is central to the book; my nemesis, Kenny was a troubled character and basically missed his father who was never at home, he took his adopted role of being the 'man of the house' with him wherever he went - only he was angry and cruel with it. It wasn't until later in life that I realised he was as scared of the world as I was. In fact, he turned into a really nice person after school and he used to come into the local bar where I worked and he had lost all of that pent up intensity. He died in a motorcycle accident not long after his 18th birthday. The other 'friend' character died ahead of his time too, which was a great shame, because he was a huge influence on me, encouraging me to follow my artistic side. In a way this book is more of an exorcism - on two separate occasions these two central characters have given me permission to write this work. Kenny came through at a reading at a local Psychic Centre and informed me that he had felt no pain - I was still too raw about his power over me to fully understand why he would communicate this to me - I had wished him in hell so many times! My friend, Stephen reminded me that I had thought about writing the book years ago when I was on a well-known psychic television show and that it was, indeed, OK to go ahead. Actually, this book is not the original version; however, I have included him out of respect for our wonderful friendship and out of concern that, for those of us who suffer from lack of self esteem whilst in a relationship with someone with supreme and effortless confidence, that we never know when they are going to be taken from us.
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