where are we now?
where do we go from here?
note
Many years on, our project has had to adjust to our changing circumstances, states of health and geographies but is still very much alive, if still very much a work in progress. However, we have been faced with a difficult decision: how much of what we have accumulated so far could, or should, we share? Initially we wrote for an audience of one: that is, for each other and much of what we produced is intensely personal. But in the belief that our experiences will speak to many, especially our faith in the fact that there is someone else out there for all of us – an ‘other to his other’ - we are proud and privileged to share our personal narratives, in the confidence that they will be met with tolerance, respect and understanding.
divergence, convergence
For the first 25 years or so of our lives, we pursued our separate but overlapping journeys, each unaware of the proximity of the other. I often wonder how close we came to meeting at some point during our suburban childhoods – in Selfridges, perhaps, or brushing shoulders in a park or stepping off a bus? Or as fledgling adults, let loose to fend for ourselves in the capital, was there a moment when our increasingly chaotic lives hurtled towards each other before veering apart at the moment of impact, leaving us to move on, with no more thought for this almost-encounter than for any other near miss? Stranger still what drew us both, 30 years on and by very different routes, to the far north of the country, to that face-to-face meeting on a Carlisle pavement?
We both left London in the seventies, you to start a family in Suffolk. I had no such coherent plan and no real thought for what lay ahead beyond the immediate: the promise of a job in the purpose-built comp in Kirkby outside Liverpool, where my university friend Linda was already working. Both school and neighbourhood were a shock to my liberal London sensibilities, the area at first glance a kind of urban wasteland, created with little forethought and few facilities to house residents of slum clearances in Liverpool, the school regime brutal and repressive, the kids unruly. I struggled to keep my head above water as a teacher, a job I had sworn I would never do. Somehow, after the first year or so things became easier: Linda left John and we shared a flat in a tower block opposite the school with a number of cats and a handful of itinerant school students with whom we managed to subvert the system. I moved schools, inching closer to the area my mum worked so hard to leave behind, bought a house and a car and drifted through a series of unsatisfactory relationships. Eventually, desperate to escape, I began to apply for jobs in Latin America, narrowly missing one in at a school in Bogota. But I was going anyway, somehow, somewhere. I resigned, sold my house and car and went to stay with a friend in Ormskirk, where I received the phone call inviting me to head the English Department of a school in Mexico City, just days after I’d met Gordon on the street on his way home from an ‘early doors’ session in his local and fallen in love. I agonised but went, accepted his telegrammed proposal in the November. After many delays he followed me to Mexico and we were married there in June 1988. The marriage lasted long enough for us to choose an area of the UK in which to start a new life – we chose the Lakes but missed the mark and landed in Carlisle - and to see our son Jack into junior school in Brampton, where I’d ended up teaching again, of course. Which is where I met Nick and, through him, you.
notes: a work in progress!
where do we go from here? 2012
The image of being adrift: suggests that we are both lost, and also at the mercy of wind and sea.
We do not have to be entirely victims, though. Kathleen Jamie: ‘To some extent, you can be author of your own fate’ (Sightlines 71). But to go anywhere, first you have to find your bearings, know where you are.
So, to go, first we learn to stay – here, now.
Learn to be present; remember to breathe; feel the safety of the branches, notice the sun on the sea, allow yourself to be ‘thrilled because the world had thrown me a gift and said “Catch!”’ (Jamie 86). But also be ready to fall, and see where it takes you. If art proceeds without a map, to some extent perhaps the way forward, or survival even, lies in letting yourself inhabit the space in which you find yourself but also, when the time comes, letting go…’
The image of being adrift: suggests that we are both lost, and also at the mercy of wind and sea.
We do not have to be entirely victims, though. Kathleen Jamie: ‘To some extent, you can be author of your own fate’ (Sightlines 71). But to go anywhere, first you have to find your bearings, know where you are.
So, to go, first we learn to stay – here, now.
Learn to be present; remember to breathe; feel the safety of the branches, notice the sun on the sea, allow yourself to be ‘thrilled because the world had thrown me a gift and said “Catch!”’ (Jamie 86). But also be ready to fall, and see where it takes you. If art proceeds without a map, to some extent perhaps the way forward, or survival even, lies in letting yourself inhabit the space in which you find yourself but also, when the time comes, letting go…’
di: transcripts from notebooks
Here now – 4th September 2012
More than ready for a coffee, Pontivy between Callune and Le Clerc, in the Grand Café where we were on Saturday, Kate. You wouldn't have waited so long, but my morning tea is stronger. Ah – that's better. Addicted once again – I've kicked this habit so many times. Now though – the prolonged 'now' – living in France – coffee – part of life. So, here, now, feels good. Friends and family don't feel so far away – your visit a short a flight – or a sea voyage if you come for longer, I guess, the 'writers retreat'... But that's future -
here now – a readiness then – autumn ahead
in this café, this town, these voices, looking through these windows, these come-with-the-package recorded sounds – but it's OK – feel like I'm finding ways through – our project, Kate, and the heap of waiting projects like the rubble in the garden – I believe it won't last forever...
So I'm taking a slightly different way of looking at things HERE NOW. To find creative ways of tackling things – process – connection – yes not project – process. Feels like a journey – there will be markers for this 'Wayseeker'.
Kings Cross waiting for Kate – 12th December 2012
Carluccio's of course – the 'meeting place' with Kate. Kings Cross – one of the entries to London, could be Euston (from Cumbria), Liverpool Street (from Suffolk), Paddington (from Devon). I've always loved the big stations – everything/one 'in transit' – transition always so exciting – going 'somewhere' – full of promise – away from the everyday – adventure – venturing – where/when will the next journey be? Now I must add Montparnasse – our Paris station from Brittany.
Here, though, I long to board Eurostar from this romantic St Pancras station , to Paris and beyond, including 'home'. Big stations – places of longing – comfortable for that very reason – possibilities – hope – romance – meetings and kisses and outstretched arms – are they always slightly better in the imagination?
Here and now – warm in cafe, freezing outside – but the city is waiting...
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 20th March 2013
For some reason, in this little café in Mur, listening to the language – such a comforting sense of home- - why? I don't understand all that is said, sometimes conversations seem quite loud but never seem to jar. The language itself has a lyricism – it seems to sing – therefore soothing – lullabies? It is good to be 'somewhere else' which is where this is – where I am now. I don't fit, I suppose. I must stand out as a bit strange, perhaps – sitting here alone with a coffee and writing in my notebook. It is quiet, calm. A glass of wine(?) for a man standing at the counter, a girl has just popped in to buy cigarettes, an elderly man is sitting at another table, fiddling with his wallet – what might his story be? Another man sits at the bar sipping his drink, chatting from time to time with the patron. A woman has entered – a smile and 'bonjour' more people entering, changing from almost silence to a buzz again. Being in a café. Proust shapes my senses, wanting to capture, imbibe, soak up. No-one pays me any attention – I feel comfortable – but anonymity is ebbing away. Unlike London, even Carlisle, where I might dare to approach the stranger – engage and disappear – not possible here – Mur is entering me as I abide in Mur.
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 3rd April 2013
It's Wednesday again, I'm back in the bar – a coffee and my notebook. Just a few at the bar – ageing men – a little drink to help the days go by? They all know each other – like a little club for the retired – farmers? What would their professions here be? Gentlemen 'en retrait' – the word for retired in French is even more difficult to come to terms with - ' in retreat' – so much more smacking of giving up in the sense of defeat – defeated by life? The life one has been forced to live? There is a defeated look in many of their postures, their eyes (ie when they actually look at you). The café's kitten – small cat really – has just considered my lap, but not to her liking. Do they wonder what I'm doing here, scribbling? Never for long, I'm sure. I ask myself why I like to do this – just a romantic notion of what living in France is about? The café culture – Parisian – writers and artists... I think this is a past phenomenon – can never be a dream for today's youth. (The cat's on my lap now – determined to make herself comfortable). Yes, I'm comfortable – I don't mind if it's only me that does this here in this bar – seeking at the same time as having found. While I'm reading Proust, I'm certainly not retreating – I feel I'm advancing – long journeys ahead, vistas of which have the potential to amaze me for the rest of my life...!
Now, I've got to disturb the cat, curled into a tight ball on my thighs – ah cat – just when you thought you could risk settling – I could stay – have another cup of coffee...
Trip out, Grand Café Pontivy – April 2013
Can Pontivy really begin to feel like a 'trip out' from Landroanec? - I'm aware of how I could be sucked into the place – absorbed into this little patch – this 'territory' with cows as neighbours. The roads that pass round us not far from any of our 'boundaries', I drive along more and more rarely. But today I've come to Pontivy – the temptation of shopping – the time the 'very French' little garments for babies!
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 3rd May 2013
How can it be as I entered the bar this morning, for one spit second, I thought it was you sitting there, beside the window, head bowed over your reading, Pete? Your tousled grey hair, your movements slow and laboured reflecting your dishevelled appearance, seem embodied in this French man's presence. You would have loved it here, and it's the 'you' in me that brings me to this bar – I will hopefully keep alight that flickering flame of our youth, besotted with Paris – the cafés, the bookshops... our shared adolescent adventures dug deep furrows, and so easily I can find this rut that allows me this journey to be present.
And then, as 'you' were leaving, your companion turned, greeted someone at the door, her eyes met mine in recognition – she's the artist who has her studio here but she comes from Paris. There is something about today when connection happens.
Barricane Beach, North Devon – 16th May 2013
The memory I want to hold from this day (I would have taken a photo had I had my camera) is of Mj ambling across the beach, slowly with her eight-month burden so beautifully carried, her bouncing long curly hair blowing in the breeze on this blue-sky day, her navy and cream striped jumper against the sparkling sea and grey rock adds to the celebration, somehow, of her, and our shared, joy.
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 13th August 2013...
from July 2013
Here now – 4th September 2012
More than ready for a coffee, Pontivy between Callune and Le Clerc, in the Grand Café where we were on Saturday, Kate. You wouldn't have waited so long, but my morning tea is stronger. Ah – that's better. Addicted once again – I've kicked this habit so many times. Now though – the prolonged 'now' – living in France – coffee – part of life. So, here, now, feels good. Friends and family don't feel so far away – your visit a short a flight – or a sea voyage if you come for longer, I guess, the 'writers retreat'... But that's future -
here now – a readiness then – autumn ahead
in this café, this town, these voices, looking through these windows, these come-with-the-package recorded sounds – but it's OK – feel like I'm finding ways through – our project, Kate, and the heap of waiting projects like the rubble in the garden – I believe it won't last forever...
So I'm taking a slightly different way of looking at things HERE NOW. To find creative ways of tackling things – process – connection – yes not project – process. Feels like a journey – there will be markers for this 'Wayseeker'.
Kings Cross waiting for Kate – 12th December 2012
Carluccio's of course – the 'meeting place' with Kate. Kings Cross – one of the entries to London, could be Euston (from Cumbria), Liverpool Street (from Suffolk), Paddington (from Devon). I've always loved the big stations – everything/one 'in transit' – transition always so exciting – going 'somewhere' – full of promise – away from the everyday – adventure – venturing – where/when will the next journey be? Now I must add Montparnasse – our Paris station from Brittany.
Here, though, I long to board Eurostar from this romantic St Pancras station , to Paris and beyond, including 'home'. Big stations – places of longing – comfortable for that very reason – possibilities – hope – romance – meetings and kisses and outstretched arms – are they always slightly better in the imagination?
Here and now – warm in cafe, freezing outside – but the city is waiting...
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 20th March 2013
For some reason, in this little café in Mur, listening to the language – such a comforting sense of home- - why? I don't understand all that is said, sometimes conversations seem quite loud but never seem to jar. The language itself has a lyricism – it seems to sing – therefore soothing – lullabies? It is good to be 'somewhere else' which is where this is – where I am now. I don't fit, I suppose. I must stand out as a bit strange, perhaps – sitting here alone with a coffee and writing in my notebook. It is quiet, calm. A glass of wine(?) for a man standing at the counter, a girl has just popped in to buy cigarettes, an elderly man is sitting at another table, fiddling with his wallet – what might his story be? Another man sits at the bar sipping his drink, chatting from time to time with the patron. A woman has entered – a smile and 'bonjour' more people entering, changing from almost silence to a buzz again. Being in a café. Proust shapes my senses, wanting to capture, imbibe, soak up. No-one pays me any attention – I feel comfortable – but anonymity is ebbing away. Unlike London, even Carlisle, where I might dare to approach the stranger – engage and disappear – not possible here – Mur is entering me as I abide in Mur.
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 3rd April 2013
It's Wednesday again, I'm back in the bar – a coffee and my notebook. Just a few at the bar – ageing men – a little drink to help the days go by? They all know each other – like a little club for the retired – farmers? What would their professions here be? Gentlemen 'en retrait' – the word for retired in French is even more difficult to come to terms with - ' in retreat' – so much more smacking of giving up in the sense of defeat – defeated by life? The life one has been forced to live? There is a defeated look in many of their postures, their eyes (ie when they actually look at you). The café's kitten – small cat really – has just considered my lap, but not to her liking. Do they wonder what I'm doing here, scribbling? Never for long, I'm sure. I ask myself why I like to do this – just a romantic notion of what living in France is about? The café culture – Parisian – writers and artists... I think this is a past phenomenon – can never be a dream for today's youth. (The cat's on my lap now – determined to make herself comfortable). Yes, I'm comfortable – I don't mind if it's only me that does this here in this bar – seeking at the same time as having found. While I'm reading Proust, I'm certainly not retreating – I feel I'm advancing – long journeys ahead, vistas of which have the potential to amaze me for the rest of my life...!
Now, I've got to disturb the cat, curled into a tight ball on my thighs – ah cat – just when you thought you could risk settling – I could stay – have another cup of coffee...
Trip out, Grand Café Pontivy – April 2013
Can Pontivy really begin to feel like a 'trip out' from Landroanec? - I'm aware of how I could be sucked into the place – absorbed into this little patch – this 'territory' with cows as neighbours. The roads that pass round us not far from any of our 'boundaries', I drive along more and more rarely. But today I've come to Pontivy – the temptation of shopping – the time the 'very French' little garments for babies!
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 3rd May 2013
How can it be as I entered the bar this morning, for one spit second, I thought it was you sitting there, beside the window, head bowed over your reading, Pete? Your tousled grey hair, your movements slow and laboured reflecting your dishevelled appearance, seem embodied in this French man's presence. You would have loved it here, and it's the 'you' in me that brings me to this bar – I will hopefully keep alight that flickering flame of our youth, besotted with Paris – the cafés, the bookshops... our shared adolescent adventures dug deep furrows, and so easily I can find this rut that allows me this journey to be present.
And then, as 'you' were leaving, your companion turned, greeted someone at the door, her eyes met mine in recognition – she's the artist who has her studio here but she comes from Paris. There is something about today when connection happens.
Barricane Beach, North Devon – 16th May 2013
The memory I want to hold from this day (I would have taken a photo had I had my camera) is of Mj ambling across the beach, slowly with her eight-month burden so beautifully carried, her bouncing long curly hair blowing in the breeze on this blue-sky day, her navy and cream striped jumper against the sparkling sea and grey rock adds to the celebration, somehow, of her, and our shared, joy.
The Rockwell, Mur de Bretagne – 13th August 2013...
from July 2013
from the bar, mur-de-bretagne, july 2014
may 2015: taking stock
Time and place – chronology and geography – common ground – initially a response to (shared) histories of place, a next stage to explore coincidences of place and time… (the possibility that we might have brushed shoulders on a street, 20 or 30 or 40 years ago…)
DI: and why is that exciting? Do we later recognise each other?
K/D: something about recognition/the possibility of recognition? Or a sense that we are not alone? Is that why we’re doing it? Or (K) the sense that I’m not journeying alone; that there is someone else stepping alongside me… ‘other to my other’. Or (D) is that somehow a validation of what we’re doing/recording memories..? – an exploration of our overlapping pasts, intersecting journeys = common ground (literally/metaphorically) – that the choices we’ve made individually are not madness – our project makes that ‘other to my other’ (Burnside) a tangible reality (are we both skaters?) – notion of redemption (from our ‘slithering’?)
OUR BUS JOURNEY (No. 18 towards Sudbury!) TODAY: a journey back in time – away from ‘68/Euston/Uni/adulthood – past avenues off (Regents Park – Great Portland Street) through childhood memories (Paddington Railway Offices, Marylebone Station, Planetarium) towards the boondocks – the dreary land of suburban pre-teens… We got as far as Willesden, and turned back! The sun came out as we neared Regents Park.
SO (D): is this purely therapeutic?
(K): if this were a purely personal endeavour, perhaps. But, given our initial excitement at the possibility of representing the patterns of our jigsaws (in a 3-D model), this has the potential for communicating to others the notion of shared paths – that there is always an ‘other for our other’ and always has been – as skaters, there is always the potential for brushing shoulders with another – that, despite the bird trap (which is always there and not to be overlooked/forgotten/ignored, otherwise would be merely sentimental) there is always that possibility… a universality – in response to the ‘art’, other people can find themselves and their experiences
a monday in october 2018: answers on a postcard?
I have been trying to remember if I have ever visited you in Landroanec in October, searching in vain for a memory of the cycle track and the beech woods bathed in golden light, the stove lit. Perhaps my visits to Brittany have always been in the summer? Of course we have coincided in the UK in all seasons, I’m sure. And now, in the aftermath of your stroke, we have a ‘new normal’, our cross-Channel video chats at 10-day intervals both impeded and sometimes lightened by your aphasic moments! I’m very much aware of the resonances of Jeanette Winterson’s Why be happy when you could be normal? in particular her comments on simultaneity in the chapter headed ‘Intermission’. I am sure she has it right: that creative work ‘bridges time’ and that ‘life has an inside as well as an outside… that events separated by years lie side by side imaginatively and emotionally’. Although we (you and I) have been separated geographically and to some extent as regards communication recently, I am feeling somehow closer to you. Naturally I’m grateful for this but I feel the closeness needs nurturing and protecting. Instinct suggests that adding a note to our Mapping Memory file might be a way of doing this.
I have had an unusual morning wandering what has seemed very much like the territory of memory, courtesy of this year’s Cambridge Film Festival. I often think of you both in the moment when the lights go down and the screen widens (or sometimes, as this morning, narrows) and evenings we shared films in the sitting room at Landronaec, an essential part of my education in the world of film – Pina Bausch, Herzog’s Aguirre the Wrath of God, The Godfather(s)… This morning I saw a strange Austrian film called Departure in which trains coincidentally figured large both literally and as symbol. As well as memories of my father generated by railway references, I’m reminded as always of our meetings at St Pancras and the possibility, never yet realised, that we might actually set off from there for Paris, one autumn morning… The Austrian film was followed by a programme of shorts which included Geoffrey Jones’s wonderful 1963 film ‘Snow’, made for British Transport Films. I have a copy on DVD, given to me out of the blue by Ali Smith on the verge of our becoming friends – a friendship which never really materialised. Somehow my writing, or my person (or both?!) didn’t quite live up to Ali’s expectations, so that reminders like this morning’s are coloured with regret, as well as with relief, or thankfulness, or something along those lines, that our friendship (yours and mine) has followed a direction counter to that all-too-common cooling after a briefly promising flame and instead burns on, growing in warmth and light.
I have been somewhat preoccupied of late with end of life reflections: conversations that have a way of hijacking preoccupations; reminders of the way my mum’s deteriorations were sudden and quite precipitous; and those mornings when I’m sure I’m actually turning into my mum! She is certainly more present with me than she ever was in life, My dad, too, so vividly reconstituted in the sounds and smells and all that energy and machinery so strongly evoked in ‘Snow’. I wish – I had been more present for him when he was alive. I have Joni Mitchell’s voice echoing on repeat in my head – ‘you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone’ and a line which I’ve read somewhere recently and have been completely unable to track down since: something about life seeming sometimes endless, but sometimes like a shirt on a line, whisked away by the wind, gone in an instant. Any clues? Answers on a postcard, please! Much love xxx
the sorting hat: july 2019
what do we have?
I think we have the makings of our next work-in-progress show right here! All that remains is to find a place to show? What do you think? Kx
- Several/various attempts at tackling our ‘geographies’: scanned country outlines, Di’s composite map. I have some tracing paper outlines and some (very ham-fisted!) cardboard cut-outs designed to be hung. How to overlap these remains unresolved!
- Lists of objects (& the objects themselves – e.g. teddy, doll, face powder, china bowl of flowers etc); also the prototype boxes (Di)
- All the wool…
- Photographs, some scanned
- A new folder which I’ll send with this, of 22 photos from the Spitalfields exhibition, 6 of them of our Mapping Memory work, plus the video I made and sent live to you on the day (all somehow reclaimed from the ether!)
- A couple of sound recordings (in the folder ‘CHILDHOOD’)
- A lot of writing! – organised into around 20 folders. Some contain just lists or notes (our ‘original timelines’ for instance); some tackle overlapping topics, place or time (e.g. Summer of 61); some are metatexts (writing about our writing); some are plans/to-do lists/proposals/variations on the ‘Where now?’ theme)… The latest folder contains 25 simultaneous writings dating back to November 2018, plus my afterthoughts on our responses to the big book of maps. One folder (‘CUMBRIA’) is empty
- Perhaps most useful might be the folder called ALL (let me know if you don’t have this & I’ll send). Rather than ‘ALL’, it actually contains our proposals for the Art Language Location Event in 2014/2015. The word document ‘Artists’ Statements’ seems to be the most comprehensive…
- The tiny tracing paper books (I don’t have any record of those)
I think we have the makings of our next work-in-progress show right here! All that remains is to find a place to show? What do you think? Kx