simultaneously...
In the aftermath of Di’s stroke and frustrated by the fact that we were no longer able to meet in person, in November 2018 we agreed to ‘meet’ instead at our computers, writing on a similar topic at the same time, much as we used to do when we met in Carluccio’s at St Pancras Station or the bar in Pontivy. Over the space of a year we revisited some of our memories and tackled some new ones in a spirit of synchronicity, mutual exploration and support.
Here are the results.
Here are the results.
|
19th November 2018
Dear Di Well, here we are, separated geographically by land and water – how many miles? – and politically, if the Brexiteers have their way, but united in our common endeavour and, this morning, trying out a new kind of simultaneity: writing to each other at the same time. It feels strange, doesn’t it?! – a contrivance, I suppose, but in the spirit of nurturing that precious closeness we seem to have found, in defiance of our dissimilar backgrounds and situations. I think often of that moment on the pavement in Carlisle, outside Monsoon, when we spoke about your trip to Tonga – was it? – and Jon. Perhaps I mentioned the Parkinson’s? At any rate, although the recollection is hazy, for me our friendship dates from that day… One shared strand has been our reading, Currently I’m immersed in Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. In fact, about three quarters of the way through I felt I was beginning to get the hang of it but hadn’t given it sufficient attention so started again! Here is what she says about people choosing to go back and visit the different places of their youth: What is it they have to have validation of – just the fact that they had been there? Or that they’d done the right thing in leaving? Or perhaps they were urged on by some hope that recollecting more precisely these lost places would work with the lightning speed of a zipper to unite the past and future… I think for me our Mapping Memory journey – journeys – stem from that hope, which we’ve spoken of many times: that the past, whilst it may be a ‘foreign country’ as L.P. Hartley suggests, is also in some real way not simply over, but a living part of our present… I decided at the start to limit myself to one hour/one page – so that’s it! It’s been wonderful talking to you, as always. Very much love: Kate xxx |
Hello Kate – I’m hoping you are well – and I like very much this moment knowing that you are at your laptop writing to me. I expect we’ll get to use this moment of ‘living simultaneously’ if we continue to plan them as we go on. Just whatever that comes to our minds – well for me I find my mind is very much ‘in the past’ in so often – as if the past is in the present. And even this is becoming tangent – last night John Lifton, (married to me in the middle of the 1960’s – short marriage but so much went on). He was ringing from Colorado – now married to Pam – they both spoke with me – quite a long conversation – hard for me because of aphasia and very tiring. But this way is coming like that too is joining the past to the present… Judith used the term of ‘family’ a few years ago – and now it’s as if those things we were doing – a ‘family’ of artists working together at projects, then all us going elsewhere as kids who are now returning to the ‘family’. And now the New Arts Lab in the 60’s has been re-visited through this recent exhibition in London where us – you and I Kate – show this NOW collaboration with us – Mapping Memory… I can’t just write quickly enough to keep up with my thoughts – or even to organise them – so much my mind about the way so much of the past and present is somehow a complete and connected map – if only I could describe this map then and now… Today – here I’m living in what feels like an isolated backwater of the world – I’ve just back from walking between the lake and crisp and sun-lit woods, walking through swishing leaves, beech mast, then chestnut shells and acorns. I do love autumn – my mind finds it a bit more creative at this time of the year… Now it feels to me that we are getting on with our project even though we are apart. I suppose the aphasia has a rather impediment in writing fluently – oh but so good, so good to write to you … We are going to Skype on Sunday – hooray – so ‘til then, Very much love, Di |
|
Monday 26 November 2018 11 a.m. UK time Good morning Di! – although for you of course the clock is spilling over into afternoon… Responding to your piece from last week: it felt so immediate and of – or in? – the moment, even though you began with echoes of your past in recent calls and emails. You wrote also of the idea of family, the network of like minds working together, separating and then returning to that family so that past and present become ‘somehow a complete and connected map’. This for me is the essence of our Mapping Memory project: that the paths of our lives (yours and mine and to some extent our separate connections) knit together past and present in a real and tangible way. More than a sentimental attachment to the past, more than a personal indulgence, the map of these pathways, their overlaps, coincidences and divergences, can be an important statement in a time of widespread uncertainty … I’m struggling towards a sense that the old moralities, the certainties of a religious faith, the promise of a better life to come have failed us – have they? – but there is a way in which our common experiences bind us, unite us; that if we can nurture our cross-channel separateness, this can become a map for others and for the future… I love the idea that you write to me from your ‘isolated backwater of the world’! I can hear the swish of the leaves in those sunlit woods. I love the autumn too… Later I hope to wobble across the river for a taste of freedom – the modest journey to the shops involves a lot of getting off to push these days but I still feel a delicious sense of liberation when I push down on the pedals of my lovely old ‘New Hudson’ at the start of Midsummer Common. I do hope that at some point in the future I’ll be able to share a Landroanec autumn with you. Uppermost in my mind, as so often these days, are thoughts about the future. John (my lovely tango friend John) says the future doesn’t exist – and he’s right in a way of course: what we have is the now, which comprises all our realities to this point. But it’s difficult not to fall prey to anxieties about care, encroaching infirmity and so on… Very much love xxx |
Hi Kate – apologies – I’m a few minutes behind – just in a bit of diz this morning – no train to catch! I’m imagining rushing into Carluccio’s saying ‘sorry – late – bus late’ or something like that. But this brings to my first thing to say – yes – this is a contrivance, writing at the same time. But then it occurs to me that any arranged meeting in the flesh is a sort of contrivance… Sharing our reading, the ideas/concepts that inspire us. I find both the quotations from Flights interesting, hmm – you say you started the book again on account of your ‘poor old brain struggles’, I do love the image of the magician pulling the handkerchiefs from his pocket! Compared to Kate, my brain is still struggling a lot and the pace of reading is frustratingly slow – still on the Elizabeth Cambridge (Barbara nee Webber), but it’s what I can manage – an easy read – a simple story… L.P. Hartley asks why people want to visit places of their youth. We’d I think bumped into each other by chance (was it 2005?) yes, I was probably excitedly telling you about having swum with a whale – and we went in to Costa and here I think you told me about Parkinson’s. I remember that moment. You seemed ‘normal’ and it was to forget for a while. We there we decided to meet for a coffee again … It was later in that year my mother died. I think it was my original desire was to give my children my ‘stories’ for when I’m gone. I always wanted more of my own mother’s life in her past and always she’d managed to write them down. I made a visual action (All the wool my mother never knitted) – a journey and an exhibition including a drawn time-line of different places I have lived. You… saw that so many of the locations were the same as yours – we made a plan – to compare our time-lines and… our stories – and so and so… You came up with the title Mapping Memory and found the wonderful concept in the poem by John Burnside of the ‘other to our other’ - and this idea is now one of the foundations of Mapping Memory – have we brushed shoulders in one of our pasts – unknowingly … And now we are exploring how our past is in our present – the possibility that time is not linear, but experience past and present is simultaneous … |
|
Tuesday 4 December Hello Di As you say, lovely to be writing together again on what is a beautiful morning here – hoping the same is true for you. I love the idea that we are actually meeting in a bar or a café somewhere and writing there together, as we have done in Pontivy and at that abbey/market whose name I don’t recall, & elsewhere. I was in London on Sunday and thought of you although I didn’t make it into Carluccio’s… . I get such a buzz or a boost or something still when I visit London – somehow I often feel more alive there. Partly I suspect it’s simply the effect of a change of scene; partly putting me in touch with the person/persons I have been. We spoke in our last video chat about the role of our past selves in our presents… Perhaps one way in which memory works is to distil the essence of a time or place or event, pushing aside the junk and holding onto what is significant or – well, memorable! For instance, from childbirth the hours of waiting and the pain are no longer available to me: what I recall are the wonderful surprise of a boy, smears of cheesy vernix, long rubbery limbs, a tiny wet head smeared with black hair, and Gordon’s tears. So too it’s (hopefully) the significant parts of our past selves which survive and contribute to our present selves… Anyway, I sent you an email this morning with the invite to the launch of the ALL shop window. I very much hope to get there although I am working against the clock at the moment, partly as I ought to be stuffing the freezer full of cakes & mince pies for the end-of-funding celebration a week on Sunday (gulp!) and partly as I am in the process of transforming my kitchen into a Mexican kitchen (an alternative to long-distance travel!) and I have walls half-painted… An hour seems to race by… I do hope you are well and feel you are continuing to make good progress. You certainly seem better each time I see & hear you although I’m slightly worried as I say that in case it creates a sort of pressure to keep improving…The end of the page/the hour… So until Sunday at 11/12 – with very much love Kxx |
Hello Kate – here we are again. We talked about how we think about ourselves as different people in the past. Starting at the beginning: The biddable little girl developing I suppose a becoming aware as a ‘self’. Going back to memories as 2yr old – I think I was happy but the memories I have are around fears – feathers, dead flowers, gone-down balloons, wild oat-like grasses… !? Weird. Then my brother arrived when I was three years old – I’m sure the common sibling jealously must have set in – I stealing some of his pocket money from his money box when quite a lot later. Confessed though – I had a strong sense of what was ‘right or wrong’ - oh yes, I didn’t tell lies – couldn’t. Weirdly, though, when I was a lot older in school, if the Head Mistress (!) during whole school assembly told that some money was being stolen from the cloakroom, I blushed although it wasn’t me… I remember many happy times too – home-based, though – Christmas with family gatherings at my Grandmother’s, walking down the Fens (my Grandmother lived in Ely at the end of the fens – really remote at those times – one high street for example despite the cathedral – deeply embedding a love for the country in contrast to the London suburb life), family summer holidays by the sea, playing in the garden with my brother … I think many of these things come back to me as I write connect – to the fact that it started this – from an anxious, fearful and tense little girl has developed into me as I am now – a worried, easily anxious adult… Five minutes left – I didn’t expect to all this, I’m just going to make a list of all those ‘people’ that I thought I was going to write about: rebellious teenager … promiscuous young adult … fashion designer and business director … risk-taker … art innovator … often anxious mother – ‘Earth Mother’ … temporary devout Christian … wife … mature student … artist … teacher…What am I now? Time out – 15mins late. Just to add, I didn’t turn this into a sort of self-therapeutic session at the beginning! Bye for now – lots to chat about next Friday – hug and kisses, lots of love, Di |
|
Tuesday 11 December
Hello Di So: our past selves… Although my behaviour became more obviously rebellious as I hit my teens – door-slamming, cigarette-smoking, lying to cover my traces – it feels as though it came from… a deep-seated malaise, of feeling unheard and misunderstood; a ‘secret self’ that longed for love and acceptance but rarely dared show this… Desperately insecure, I struggled for the approval of the strong – a red-haired beatnik called Deborah who took me, barefoot, to the Osterley Jazz Festival at the age of 12/13, a very grown-up and already promiscuous Rowena. These were brave girls, defiant, insolent, caring nothing for doing well at school and I attached myself to them… searching for an identity different from the churchy, academically ambitious mould my parents had in mind; in reality, I felt I belonged with the misfits, the Linda Mitchell-Hills and Margaret Adamses of the world... Moving, starting a new school at the age of 13/14, I was guaranteed to be a misfit again: a posh southerner, lacking the credibility of a Midlands accent… I demonstrated how much I didn’t care, found myself a boyfriend …. day-dreamed my way through physics lessons writing poems… when I was 17, I met a man in the library in Derby and had an out-of-the-blue sexual encounter … By this time I identified myself with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Juliette Greco, subverted the school uniform with a long black man’s cardigan and pinned my beret, folded in half on the back of my head, secretly joined the Peace Pledge Union and delivered leaflets in the dark, round the housing estates of middle England, read Lawrence and ‘Look Back in Anger’, got into trouble for bunking lessons and smoking at school, swore at my German teacher, led a mini-rebellion, drank gin-and-lime when out with my boyfriend and formed several passionate attachments to my female teachers I couldn’t wait to get away to London … I hated … my parents’ desperate desire to conform, felt stifled… I had to break out…. Extraordinary how the memories bubble up, and how easy it seems now to get in touch with that angry girl! With very much love, of course xxx |
Hi Kate – sorry to be late! I know you are already in the moment – brilliant – in our teens? I’m not sure where my rebellious self exactly began. I’d until very recently been happy to be a dutiful daughter to my loving parents enjoying so much our family holidays and visits to my grandmother despite not enjoying school very much. I’ve been on a school trip to Strasbourg – my first taste of independence, especially we were not have had any supervision so we could please ourselves – so four of us stopped attending the university lectures, walked in the town looking for two boys and found them so we spent the days and evenings, having my first cigarettes (Gauloise), Helen my best school friend wasn’t with one of the boys, but we all stayed together. So I suppose rebellion began then – 16yrs old. Oh of course I have crushes before that… Before France, I’m with Adrian for about a year… – dances etc – he’s nineteen so my father had a serious talk with him in his study – what was his intention with me – a man four older than me!! how times change! But I felt I really did ‘fall in love’ with David when I was seventeen. Later I listened to Bob Dylan – my eyes opened to how rebellion was needed. We (my brother and I) tried to get our father – no good – he couldn’t hear the words – I know he tried – he really wanted to understand our points of views I’m at college with plenty of other ‘men’ …. Yes – I’m influenced from them – consider myself to be a beatnik – living out fantasies – the London ‘scene’ and all it offers – jazz clubs, Indian restaurants, Jimmy’s Soho underground restaurant. I’m slipping into my eighteenth year – to my parents to horror – sleep with one of the boys I’d been ‘dating’ (opportunities at all-night parties). I’m dressing myself in black with dark glasses without sun, smoking, drinking Guinness and beers mixed in the pub with sawdust on the floor, learning bar billiards. I love Fellini, Antonioni and Goddard films – … my rebellion is directed to the post-war middle-class bourgeois society that my parents embody… I expect you’ve said cheerio by now – I’ve been lingering writing at the café – looking forward seeing you on Monday. Kisses for now, Di |
|
20th December 2018
THE REALITY OF NOW (IN SIX LINES)! Hi Kate – I’m sure you’re here - Here we go: The Reality of Now Just feeling good we’re in contact. The reality for me didn’t feeling so different any day – I’ll have to fit into exercises, walking, resting, reading, even a tinkle on the piano at least a small task nothing to do with stroke/epilepsy. I’m trying to be positive – not anxious… The couple of cows are in the field behind the kitchen window – they are beginning to feel like pets – eat an apple sometimes, there’s a very young donkey – fluffy and inquisitive with it’s mother, there are new-comers – fat hens, dark grey making that lovely soft sound as I pass. Domestic animals - I do like having them around as much as the wild one – sometimes only heard rather than see, but there are a crowd of mallards on the lake – the other day I spotted the couple of egrets – hope they’re back again for breeding. But sometimes being in this backwater of the world – I’m not so sure it’s not good for me all the time… This is catching me on a down, I think, and it’s 20mins…Sorry, not all days like this … Love you and appreciate you as much as ever Di with love *** Hello Di A grey, damp day, echoing my low spirits. Many distractions this morning: an early swim, a shortlisting due, a guest blog done & sent & John here (actually downstairs) to get my beloved New Hudson bike ready to sell – it’s only a thing but I’m feeling a sense of loss which feeds the misery around the potential loss of tango: cutting myself off (my nose to spite my face?) from something so central & life-affirming, madness or self-protection? Saving graces: John’s presence here – & yours there! Xx |
3rd January 2019
THIS DIFFERENT LIFE Di to Kate: It even feels like a different place – not sure about the language, or having to revise a language that I once knew very well. It’d never foreseen having to make as many adjustments to life now – pushed from behind into a trap. Where is my independence? My energy? My clear thinking? My powers of attention for long? Nevertheless, perhaps I observe more than I had – even noticing the edges of life more than before – the how way the trees along the cycle path had been planted alternating between the chestnuts and oak, the changing light across the landscape even on a dull day – the colours of the fields within a small space. I’m getting more used to this life – to feel present, and still seeing beyond and getting ‘home’. *** Kate to Di: The precariousness of it: ‘not hearing who, not knowing when’ (Larkin) – not quite right. But that sense of being between states, neither fluid water nor frozen ice (Campbell) at the mercy of a body which, having served you well enough all these years without fuss, suddenly seems to have a will of its own. What you thought you knew now unknown, safety unsafe. Though it doesn’t start with you, insecurity seems to spread outwards: through your family, the uncaring country, the warming world. |