My study (again), early afternoon
A matter of form and material
Second day of the year and still, rain. For a moment, the light hits the tree in the middle of the garden so perfectly it bathes everything golden. Could be spring, could be early summer, and then it is gone and certainly it is winter, the hard part of winter, the bit with the stranglehold, the part without fairy lights or festivities, just the dark and the weather and the things it brings with it. This year, resolving to work through it as a means of denial. Fittingly, I am writing about denial.
Sitting now at my desk, at the wide window occupying much of the wall and I am thankful for this window, this room, even if the heater now is refraining from doing the work of heating the room, my hands so cold and sore typing is difficult. I used to think the cold made me sharper, now I am not so sure. A miracle perhaps is the only thing that could sharpen me now.
Wrestling with this manuscript. Hyperbole perhaps, likely certainly. It’s only writing after all, hardly a job, get behind me Satan. These inner critics, never far away, where there is prose, there is doubt. This manuscript that would not let me look at it without bolting in another direction now demands I work on it all the time. Still a horse for sure, but one I am on now, one that will slow its pace for nothing.
This happened by accident one day when Alexander asked what the stupidest war I’d ever heard of was. I don’t know much about wars, other than the ones taught in school, but my son has occupied himself with war for years. He tells me of one fought over a pig, another over a dog, and I think of the petty, domestic wars I have been fighting for too long and it is the thinking of this that unlocks something and suddenly I know what form parts of the manuscript need to take, and so I hug him and tell him he’s a genius and I’m not sure if you’re meant to tell your children this or not anymore, so hard to keep up with might and will damage them. Me, I’m the problem, I think, paraphrasing Swift. And now I find myself, on the second day of the year, back firmly among fable, in the land of experiments again, which is exactly how I like it and when people think there’s a difference between art and science, they are very wrong. Both are just ways of playing.
Thinking, as I switch form to explore the same subject, of Jonathan Freemantle. I’ve been increasingly fascinated with Jonathan’s work over the last year. Perhaps it is because in his paintings he tries to capture a sense of the fleeting sublime, or perhaps it’s because he’s taking part in a residency in the village next to where my grandmother lived, so I am aware of the landscape, the light, the colours he’s capturing, and believe him to be a doing a better job than I’ve seen anyone do. The border’s light is like nothing I’ve seen before or since I left. I sometimes dream of it. Scottish light in general has a unique quality, in the same way Swedish light has. The light of each country, not something you find elsewhere. English light is dull in comparison, although both far south and far north, there are pockets where it’s special. Jonathan captures light so deftly in his work, it becomes similar to Siemon Scamell-Katz’s work. But Freemantle often opts to paint on fabric, experimenting with the interplay between material and paint, something he took further when he painted on himself. I will, tomorrow, visit the Mapplethorpe: Subject Object Image, and am interested in how Freemantle becomes all three in using his body as canvas. Sometimes, I let myself imagine that one day I will work on something so successful I will buy a piece of each of theirs. Today isn’t one of those days. Recently Freemantle’s work has become even more interesting since he’s branched into experimenting with sculpture, sculpting wood blown over in recent storms. His new work is a marked departure and yet sits thematically and aesthetically alongside his paintings. He wrote ‘I think I have been carving all my life, but until recently it has only been a playful investigation of natural forms found on walks into the wilderness. A kind of sketching’. Only now, he’s taking that sketching further, and making the results public.
I like this idea. I often think of preliminary writing work as sketching. I never go back to first drafts, instead writing the draft acts as a kind of sketch I don’t return to. It’s only by about the third draft that I start thinking I have something workable at a prose level. I think this is perhaps what I’m doing now I’m working with fable, making my way towards something. Whether or not these make their way into a finished draft doesn’t matter, they are a way, I suspect, of getting under the story. There’s a necessary vitality to changing form and material, or at least experimenting with them, as if cheating on the other main material for a while. This cropped up in conversation at the ceramics studio last week, thinking about how sometimes working in different material reinvigorates the original material. Now I’m often found with my hands dirty in clay, I’m finding writing more enlivening than I have in a long time. Switching something off switches something else on.
This manuscript feels like something pre-existing I’m carving away at. I haven’t had that sense before, the first two books have felt like something I’ve made from scratch, whereas this is a thing I’m excavating. I was worried about this until I spoke to another author at a party recently, who had the same experience with his third book. Reassuring. Maybe it’s another way of trying to become freer, while also working within a discipline. I’m not sure.
I’ve decided I’m going to post these fables here but, in the spirit of a swift and chaotic turnaround, I’m going to put them behind a paywall. I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t do that, and only just a couple of days ago. The reason for this is, I’m not sure how much of these might make their way into future work, so I want to protect them by ensuring they aren’t largely in the public domain. Secondly, it’s quite personal work, and I want to protect myself too. I thought The Last Days was exposing, I think I hadn’t realised how much further there was still to go. On week days, the daily ten and Saturdays, HOW THE WAR BEGAN for subscribers (apologies to
). Obviously I have no idea how you upgrade your subscription if you want to read them. I’m excited about these, and really could do with the excitement right now I’m facing the cliff edged raw fear of publication in 14 days. Shit. Two weeks. Only thing to do is to write my way through it and pretend it’s not happening.