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June 2010
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At last the column is back – many of you have emailed me about this, and I am sorry it has taken so long to make a return.
I have to say that my previous fears made me lose heart – I just got fed up of this web column being a media bulletin board, where anything I said about my personal life was taken up elsewhere. And in the tone of ‘what does she expect??’
So, I shall have to write as much as I can without really saying too much… which is a bit odd.
Well, maybe I can say some things.
I hope that some of you will get to Paris mid-June for the Shakespeare and Company festival, right by Notre Dame. Check out the website for lots of entertainment from writers of all kinds, and of course the fabulous bookshop attached.
Everything about this bookshop is GOOD – and if you have never been, then you must go sometime. Started in 1913 by Sylvia Beach – an early American in Paris, - Shakespeare and Company is an English Language bookshop that sells everything. Sit outside, read, talk to your friends, the shop is open till 11pm, and in no hurry to close. This is bookselling at its best – and CLICK HERE to read my review of the Letters of Sylvia Beach. Edited by Keri Walsh
There is lots of stuff to look at under JOURNALISM this month. My contract with The Times is continuing and I am doing quite a lot of newspaper and magazine work at present. This has been very good in that I haven’t been ready to start a new book, but I feel that is changing, and that a new book wants to begin. The pressure has started.
I can’t really explain how this happens, except that I get an idea, usually rapidly, that then ducks away and I have to go and find it. Sometimes I can’t find it – but if I do, and if I can, then the thing starts to happen – at least the relationship starts to happen.
I am sure that everything is about relationship of one kind or another – to others, to the world, to ourselves, to our fears, to our dreams. The idea of solitariness isn’t quite right – even for a writer working alone, because the relationship with the idea, and later whatever characters join in – means that you are not as solitary as you seem.
I used to think this was as lonely a life as Lighthousekeeping. Now it seems noisier, busier. Certainly more crowded.
I know that I have changed over these last few years, and I have a sense that the change is still under way, though not exactly understood. Of course a new person changes us, and for the last year now I have had the amazing Susie, who has affected me enormously. She is such a keen thinker and also the sanest person I have ever met. Passionate about ideas, so hard-working, and not at all detached from life, but really sane. And that is a bit of shock close-up, not least because in company like hers, you have to get a bit saner yourself.
Writing, being a writer has huge advantages and possibilities, but it is quite easy to excuse all your failings and plead artistic licence. I don’t do that anymore – and I mean as much to myself as anyone else – now everything has to faced, and I am trying to improve – which sounds a bit sad and earnest, but is really about enlarging my sense of self and what I am.
I learned over these last three years how much is about fear and old patterns – what psychoanalysis calls ‘the old present’, which is a pretty wonderful term, especially if you were never sure that past present and future were anything but figures of speech.
The old present is very present in our patterns of behaviour, and usually useless to us – it wasn’t once, but it is now. Getting rid of the old present is hard work – and I don’t mean getting rid in some erasure-type way, as in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (do you like that movie? I do), I mean draining the thing of unhealthy power.
So much of what we do isn’t what we want to do – we are astonished at our behaviour – at our reactions – and when we feel like that, we can be sure that the old present has taken over and is running the show.
I have always been an emotional person – but I need my emotions to be in tune with what is actually happening, and not replaying some dead footage from the shape of my world when it was very different, and much more threatening.
You know how it is when you start a row, and within about five minutes you are no longer rowing about whatever it was that seemed so important – not even rowing with the person in front of you – that person has become some other fearful or hated figure, and you are shouting about some pain you thought was long gone – I used to have a lot of those ‘old present’ rows, and emerge baffled and exhausted, mainly because it was a fight not worth having.
I am learning to fight only the fights worth having.
There seems to be far fewer of those… and so far fewer of the other kind.
I am doing my gardening, building my latest building, trying to write something worthwhile, trying to be a good friend and working at being a partner who is attentive and reliable as well as the flashier numbers.
Someone was saying to me how life seems to compress as you get older – I think as in narrowing or becoming less possible and yet more pressured.
I don’t find that – certainly not in the sense of possibility. Pressured yes, but all our lives are horribly pressured, and that is a lot to do with the fully wired world.
I have a Blackberry – I lost it for a week – it was wonderful – and yet, I am glad to have it back. I only recently got Broadband at home – yes, I was still dialling up on the breadboard, but now I have broadband, I find the intrusions horrible – and the intrusions are in my own mind. Why do I Google for NO REASON AT ALL?
That will have to stop…
I am seriously considering buying a typewriter again – if they still exist. I would like to write my next book on it. Then I can re-do it at the edit stage onto the Mac.
The wired world is both wonderful and terrible, and I am not at all sure that I have made the right choices with my Blackberry and Broadband
But then, why do I call it a choice? They are as necessary as a bank account or a credit card.
It bothers me that I have to play the conscious Luddite to avoid the wired world everywhere – but otherwise I feel intruded upon in a way that just isn’t helpful. I think my brain probably is being re-wired by this constant exposure to flashfloods of data.
I realise I quite like my brain as it is.
The plasticity of the brain makes it certain that it will rewire according to need – but what I want to know is, why would it be faster to turn me into a dummy than to re-wire me into a better person? Getting rid of the old past is bloody hard work – turning into a Broadband and Blackberry Babe could happen without me even noticing.
Yes, I am noticing, but that is because I can literally feel a bit of the spongy stuff under my hair turning into jam.
I’ll let you know how it goes…
There’s an interesting book just coming out called THE SHALLOWS by Nicholas Carr. It’s about what the Internet is doing to our brains. It is well worth a read, but don’t expect it to cheer you up – unless of course you want a GoogleBrain.
I know I am going to get loads of emails now from people telling how much better and more democratic is the wired-world. Maybe so, but I like my deep-diving highly concentrated uninterrupted brain.
According to Nicholas Carr, that is just the kind of brain we won’t be seeing much of… so I had better keep it while I can.
I was in Herefordshire just now, and I stayed in a wonderful house called Moccas Court. Set in acres of land, it is a Grade 1 Georgian house in private hands. It has only five rooms for public occupancy– all beautiful, and if you want to eat dinner there, you eat it all together at the table – which needless to say I didn’t, because I hate eating with strangers, but the rest of it I loved. You can hire bikes or horses, and the bookshop utopia of Hay on Wye is only 9 miles away. If you like beauty and seclusion, absolute quiet, and a chance to think about life and read a book – check it out.
Meanwhile, I shall be at home in the Cotswolds with my cats and my vegetable garden, growing beans and salad, eating my own potatoes and taking pleasure in simple things. It is a great antidote – pleasure in simple things – and it is good to get away from the idea of money buying pleasure. I think that planting potatoes and eating them is pleasure. Especially with olive oil and mint and chives. Served with a fresh salad and a poached egg and a glass of cold white wine – what could be easier or more satisfying? That to me is the good life, and a book to read and someone to call who you know wants to talk to you.
A bit of fine weather would help, but hey this is England.
Don’t let midsummer pass without a little fire festival of your own – even if it is just a candle at supper on the night of the Solstice. The sun is worth the effort…
I promise to be back in July…
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