ON THE PAST- WALES AND BEYOND

Who was it that said ‘you can’t relive the past’? That’s right, I remember. It was Nick Carraway talking to Jay Gatsby, telling him more or less that it would be foolish to try and reincarnate a situation from the past with Daisy Buchanan. Did Nick mean it only in a romantic sense? Or a more general one? Another reference. Van Morrison and Them sing a song called Don’t Look Back, also about how you cannot recall or relive the past- done, I think, originally by John Lee Hooker:

‘Don't look back to the days of yesteryear,
You cannot live on in the past,
Don't look back.

And I've known so many people
That still try to live on in the past,
Don't look back, oh no.’

So what does Van do when he’s older? Well, maybe a bit older, but not much more, he starts singing about the neighbourhood he grew up in, East Belfast. Writes songs like Cypress Avenue, for instance. And when he’s much, much older, songs like Memory Lane:

‘I stop a while and ask some strangers
Is this the place that was once called Memory Lane
I don't know where I am, don't know what I'm after
I'm stuck here back on Memory Lane’

And it gets me to thinking about the past, about childhood and a little beyond, and I think about whether or not it’s a good thing, and at what age do you have to be before it’s all ok to do this, like Van Morrison does all the time, and Paul McCartney probably does, and people like Justin Hayward, looking out of his boyhood bedroom window at the spirits in the sky that led him to the USA and his future dreams:

‘Out on the horizon

The west wind sighs

A beautiful adventure

Waiting there

In the western sky.’

So I get to thinking again, is it ok to think about the past somewhat, not to dwell in it, but to think about regrets and accomplishments, and good times and bad, and think less about the uncertain future, to see my father in that nursing home and the rest of the family growing old, and me changing as well, and trying to stay young, spirited, but preferring, at times, to think about the glorious and not so glorious past, to good times and missed opportunities, and times when you were bold and achieved something, and times when you were hesitant, or shy, or stumbled, or made a pretty bad error which even now doesn’t exactly haunt you but you think it might have turned out better.

All those relationships, and people you might have been better not hooking up with, and others where you might have but missed that chance, and times you look back when you were stumbling along with somebody and you think back ‘man, what was I doing?, and other times where relationships did occur and you got a lot of out of them and you remember they weren’t a waste of time.  Then there are those others, slightly regrettable, that went too long and you became stuck, or you took things way too seriously and you were naïve, or looking back, it wasn’t ever going to go anywhere.

And I guess looking back isn’t all about relationships. It’s also about other crossroads of a different type, like where you were living, and who with, and what you read or where you went out and how something did or didn’t work out.

There are many good things about the present but I still find myself thinking a lot about memory lane. About what things used to be like way back when and how it have turned out quite good in some ways but not so good, if I am going to be totally honest, in others. How much of life can be an adventure? I envy those people whose life is one long adventure, from when they were little and way into middle-age and beyond. In a way it can be like this for many of us. We can just take off if we feel we are up to a risk enough. There’s no need to leave everyone behind, but an adventure for me is a change in almost everything. Sometimes we need to feel rejuvenated. Otherwise we are marking time. Eventually we might have this epitaph on our tombstone:

‘ He was born in….

He died in….

In between he lived a mostly sedentary life.’

Perhaps the two places are a matter of a short amount of miles or kilometres apart. Perhaps the in between places took you to far away distant lands. Perhaps you might add, on the tombstone, he took this risk, or he took that risk, or this is where he stumbled and fell, because he was under confident, or too hesitant, or too shy, or he was trapped in some way, or those bricks and mortar were jammed way too solidly around him.

I’m wandering around those streets sometimes, searching for memory lane. I’m thinking about what I did when I left school and chose the safer, narrower option for what was available to me. I’m thinking about some of the risks I eventually did take and how the memories are mixed, but are all important ones, and then I’m thinking again about how I found safety and security, and how life became satisfying in lots of ways, but also sometimes predictable and cocooned in this web of security, sitting like a smug, self-satisfied spider, except dreaming rather than looking for adventurous options. Sometimes you can be ‘retired’ for years, creating this personal mosaic or knitted jumper where the pattern keeps repeating as you keep pulling along the wool.

‘Take me back, take me way, way, way back
On Hyndford Street
Where you could feel the silence at half past eleven
On long summer nights…’

sings Van Morrison on another track.

So where do I want to be taken back to? I will choose this sunny one week holiday I had in Wales. Farm stays, meeting Welsh people, seeing lambs in green meadows, walking along old, ancient streets, marvelling at ancient rocky harbours and rows and rows of old Georgian townhouses, climbing Mt Snowdon in Snowdonia, seeing all the old little Welsh villages along the way, the Black Mountains, the Brecon Beacons, Abervagenny, and then further up to Gwynned, Conwy, even the place names make you shiver, and the little towns of Betws-y-Coed and Llandudno and the Conwy River flowing through the glorious towns of Trefriw and Llanrwst, and on and on and on…

In my dreams and imagination I go back there and regain the sense of freedom and beauty and an intoxicating sense of adventure and security at the same time… and healing. And the pattern changes. New colours for the mosaic thrown into the mix. New wool and new patterns and different outcomes.

‘And we walked the pagan streams
And searched for white horses on surrounding hills
We lived where dusk had meaning
And repaired to quiet sleep, where noise abated
In touch with the silence
On Honey Street, on Honey Street

What happened to a sense of wonder
On yonder hillside, getting dim
Why didn't they leave us, alone
Why couldn't we just be ourselves
We could dream, and keep bees
And live on Honey Street

And we walked the pagan streams
In meditation and contemplation
And we didn't need anybody, or anything
Then, no concepts, being free
And I want to climb that hillside again, with you
One more time

As the great, great, great, great, great, great, great
Being watches over
And we repair, repair, repair, shh, repair, shh, we repair
To Honey Street, to Honey Street.’

Van Morrison, Pagan Streams.

ON BEING IN ADELAIDE

WHEN D H Lawrence went to Florence to live in the late 1920’s, he found himself writing to friends about Florence and the Florentine people, within hours of first arriving. Rebecca West is witness to this, and I remember she was impressed that he could sum up a people and their character so quickly. Well, if he can accomplish this, then why shouldn’t I have a go? We have been in Adelaide about twelve hours.

Admittedly, I do have a past connection with Adelaide. I have been here before. Actually, I lived here once, albeit fairly briefly. Today, however, I am seeing it with fresh eyes, not having visited in quite a while.

Adelaide is filled with contradictions. My impression today is that it is getting better. People from the bigger cities, like Melbourne and Sydney, have always seen Adelaide as a sleeping cousin. Young people who grow up in Adelaide often want to leave when they are about 18 to find new, more fulfilling adventures, like Melbourne and Sydney people seeking London. It is true Adelaide is a bit country townish, but perhaps less so now than it was last time I was here.

Today I have walked around the commercial precincts. Nothing much has changed here. The shops are contemporary and sophisticated enough, but it was deathly quiet in David Jones and Myer. There were, conversely, a lot of people of both sexes walking up and down Rundle Street wearing shorts. I found a library that might be pretty new. I don’t remember seeing it before. It’s called the ‘City Library’ and it was busy and relaxing. There is lots going on roadworks-wise on North Terrace, which is where the State Library is. Could it be that it has popped up whilst the State Library is out of bounds?

Later on, we went to the other end of the city down Hindley Street (I always seem to go to the same places when I go to Adelaide). There are seemingly new lanes and little hubs of people eating and drinking quietly. We found the back entrance of the hotel where we are staying, called the ‘Ambassadors’. I was impressed by the life of the city at dinner-time on a Tuesday night. I think it’s a good sign, that a city is feeling good and prosperous, if so many people are out and about on a Tuesday night.

Tonight, I ran from here, 107 King William Street, to the Piccadilly Cinema on O’Connell Street in North Adelaide. So all along King William Street on a pleasant, warm night, over the bridge that crosses the Torrens, past the beautifully revamped Adelaide Oval, across a path that leads you directly into the mouth of St Peters Cathedral (which was chiming madly), and along O’Connell Street to the Picadilly Cinema where many years ago I had the pleasure of seeing Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’, via any number of busy restaurants and the iconic Oxford Hotel.

I said before that Adelaide is filled with contradictions. Today, as much as any other time I have visited, I have been aware of the genteel aspect of the city. Here it feels treacherous somehow to do something so simple as jaywalk. The people are so polite, that they always walk to the Grenfell Street corner, or the Currie Street corner, before they cross King William Street. It is the same when waiting a long time for the North Terrace lights or the Rundle Mall/ Pulteney Street corner. People also walk in a leisurely way, and chat amicably to the friend next to them. There is little sense of dog eat dog and rushing for the lights and crossing on any section of the road and frantic anxious pace. People actually queue orderly, for buses and the like, just as it would have been in the 1950’s. And yet, Adelaide is supposed to have this underbelly of danger and murder and broken glass and blood. It is true, apparently, that the murder rate per capita is quite high, or at least it used to be.  And amidst all this, you do have Hindley Street, which is one of the dodgiest streets around, especially at night. Even today when we walked about it, we saw a young woman, probably a teenage girl, in fact, being searched by police, her hands up against the wall. A casual glance, and you could see she had a bag of white powder extricated from her handbag, and a few sharp knives, of all things.

The other very noticeable thing for me this time is its Anglo-Celtic whiteness. Yes, there are Aboriginals, and tourists and other visitors, yet the vast majority of people seem to be very white, not many Asian, barely any Muslim, very few African, or it seems, Lebanese, Turkish or Greek.

It really reminds me of Kent, UK, in relation to the rest of England. Over there, you have this little early twentieth century bubble of whiteness in Kent, the England of yesteryear, villages, and village greens, and English fare for food and castles and oast houses and English heritage and old-fashioned cooking, the lark ascending, the gentle Medway, nothing really that resembles the rest of England. And it is like this here in Adelaide too. People here have their little cushion of comfort, and go out with their families on hot nights to have pizza and beer, and apart from some of these new buildings and new shops and restaurants, Adelaide might be the same as it was about 50 or 60 years ago. And good luck to them if that’s how they like it. But travel to the real world one day- perhaps with the exception of Kent- and your head might go into a little spin. 

ON FINISHING ANOTHER YEAR

THE year, 2017, has nearly ended. It’s a cliché to say that the year flew by quickly, and that you don’t know what happened. I think it’s true, that as you get older, the years fly by more quickly. I remember a little bit about my twenties and thirties. I’m pretty sure more happened, that I saw and interacted with a greater volume of people, and I went out more and filled the day more brightly. I reflected less back then. So it almost seems like a contradiction to say that time went more slowly then.

I think, sometimes, about time and how it changes people. We have no choice but to become less vain than we once were. People see an image of you when you were sixteen, or twenty-five, or even thirty-two, and remark on how youthful you looked, and how much you have changed. Of course, they’re not rude enough to say you have less hair, or that you have become a bit more pudgy, or round-shouldered, or that lines have appeared around your eyes. But perhaps you can feel a sense of moral victory over all those people of your age who appear on television, whose faces seem damaged somehow, they crease in a funny way when they try and smile, their forehead seems like cement, or they have eyes that are puffy or seem strained in some way, and have teeth that gleam like sunlight on freshly fallen snow.  You haven’t opted for these artificial changes.

We can’t make time stand still but sometimes I would like to try. It’s not really an age thing, but about experiences. You are somewhere that feels really good but it has to end, and you have to move on to something else, like an end of a holiday, and return to responsibility and ordinary life. It’s ordinary life that can be the killer, that can extinguish not only some sense of fun, but more importantly a sense of freedom.  

‘Freedom’ is the operative word. No wonder so many singers and writers express feelings about it.

In his beautiful song, ‘So Quiet In Here’, Van Morrison sings:

‘Big ships out in the night
And we're floating across the waves
Sailing for some other shore
Where we can be what we want to be
Oh this must be what paradise is like
This must be what paradise is like
Baby it's so quiet in here, so peaceful in here
So quiet in here, so peaceful in here
So quiet in here, so peaceful in here
So quiet in here, you can hear, it's so quiet…’

I have spent this year, and every other year, wanting to be on that boat ‘sailing for some other shore/ where we can be what we want to be…’ This boat is sometimes heading for the northern hemisphere, to England, or Wales, or lately even Iceland. It is a place without too much responsibility, that is steeped in history, full of freedom and creativity, and romanticism. I want to set up camp there after this beautiful journey on the ship, through the darkness, and buy the history of wherever it is that we land in a big, fat book. I want to read this book from cover to cover- say it is ‘The History of Northumberland’, for example- a great leather bound book rich with words and images.  I want to live and breathe in my locale and discover and ponder over every twig and branch, and patch of soil, and river and mountain and castle and harbour and village green and village square. I want to discover the places where the boats were shipwrecked and the grisly murders took place, and bloody battles fought and won, and where great celebrations were held, and estuaries and caves were formed. In the winter, I could have a great open fire and sit at night, trembling with the rest of the family at the storms that shake the foundations of the house, our house, on the edge of the Northumberland coast, all coming from the Farne Islands. There will be seals practically on our doorstep in the morning and all the debris washed away, or pecked at by the glorious puffin birds. But you cannot make time stand still. Time drifts. Sometimes it almost seems to stop, when things are painful.

I get freedom from a lush green valley or the surging sea. Soon, the light alters and you have to be on your way again. Recently I was in a place in NSW called ‘Boomerang Beach’. It was night time and the beach was deserted and it was around twilight time. Everything light and clear, but you knew it would be dark in about an hour. The weather had the lovely cool night feel to it, that freshness you get after a warm day. I was walking with my daughter and we had a plan. To walk as far as the distant bend, and then turn around. There were sea birds surrounding us but nothing else of any life, save for the little fish probably in the shallows. The sea was roaring, as I am sure it is right now. We sang, loudly, because there was no-one around to hear us. The sky featured a faint pink, like a pink flag in the sky. And the colours in the water. Aqua, and mauve, and pink as well. It all, of course, ended and we were closer to closure, and departure, and regret.

Tonight time has passed in another sense. It is December 21, my birthday. We have been to St Kilda- Leo’s spaghetti bar on Fitzroy St, Readings bookstore on Acland St and the beach foreshore, too, too briefly. There were joggers and cyclists and people with dogs. Others were couples holding hands. I felt quite free tonight. Then the radio bulletin. Someone has driven down Flinders St in the city and mowed people down. 

ON AGEING: a tattered coat upon a stick

The film LUCKY (Harry Dean Stanton), held few surprises. That’s not to say it wasn’t any good. It was pretty good.  But there were things in it, in terms of what LUCKY did, and how Lucky felt, that did not surprise me. I’ve seen some very good films about getting old- the French one by Haneke- AMOUR- comes to mind. And the Paul Cox film, A WOMAN’S TALE. Also something by Sarah Polley- AWAY FROM HER- and older people in some of Mike Leigh’s films as well. LUCKY is as good as most of these.

What wasn’t a surprise was the way in which Lucky did the same thing every day. Got out of bed in his white underwear and did exercises. Then took his crossword to his local coffee shop. Shuffled home again and watched TV even though what was on the screen was crap. Fell asleep. Stared at the alarm clock. Noticed that time was passing. Became irascible with other people and became a bit nasty and anti-social. Began thinking there might not be a good reason for living. Felt very lonely, and after an inexplicable fall, felt more mortal than ever.

Then Lucky was able to tell a kind, female visitor that he felt lonely- or was it scared? Then he accepted an unexpected invitation to a Spanish boy’s birthday. Here he felt moved enough to sing, beautifully, and received genuine, warm applause that touched him. Suddenly life had improved and he felt like he was worth something after all. He looked directly into the camera and smiled for almost the first time- a radiant, beautiful smile, very different to the scowl given by Harriet Anderson in SUMMER WITH MONIKA. And Lucky didn’t die in the end, but walked off into the Arizona distance, possibly even shuffling a little less as well.

I know someone a bit like Lucky.

He stays up very late and becomes very lethargic in the mornings. He shuffles around the unit each day, propped up in his favourite armchair. He sits in that armchair until evening, having short little breaks. These might be regular toilet breaks, or standing up to look out the window at the car that has driven past. He also checks the letterbox at regular intervals. Accompanying him in the armchair is the daily newspaper, the one put out by the Murdoch press, the one he says he loathes.

At the south end of the unit there is the back glass sliding door, and a neat little courtyard, garden table, and garage. It is here that various birds seem to gather during the day. He has always liked birds; always favoured them over cats, for instance. These days’ birds have become more important to him. Something he can talk or whistle to. He also enjoys proffering gifts, such as water, and nibbles and the like.

Memories, the past. These things sometimes invade his thoughts. The issue is, however, that sometimes he is fuzzy on detail. The things that occurred in boyhood, with his parents, are shadowy and far from blunt or acute. Details of the early years of his marriage are easier. But even here he can’t remember the bridal car, the church where the events took place, the details about the honeymoon…except it must have been close. He remembers there wasn’t a lot of money. Like a bright flash in his mind he is suddenly conscious of the money issue again…now. However it wasn’t always like this.

He had money sifting through his leaky hands when he was younger and stronger. He worked more than one job. Sometimes three- well, two at any rate. They were the best of times. The times when he could saunter into a TAB and unleash a whole heap of notes and coins onto the women behind the grill, and take piles of those thin white betting papers into his sweaty palms. He felt like a rich man on these occasions. Money no object. And no matter if he lost. He would work hard and there would be more to play with, and other places to play…poker machines. He deserved it. He worked hard. It was his money. And it was a private matter- that made it more thrilling. He could hide it from his wife.

………………………………………………………

I have had plenty of experience with nursing homes over the years. It may have been visiting relatives, or more commonly, arranged visits associated with my line of work. I have often enjoyed these times. I like talking about different experiences, other people’s families, and memories. Memories are so important. When you’re old I imagine it is very difficult not to look back.

I enjoy associating things with film and literature. When I think about old people and film, I can’t help remembering some awful things, like the young getting onto the old in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (can you spare some cutter, me brothers?’). In ‘Amour’, Georges has difficulty accepting the state of things when his long time marriage companion, Anne, suffers a debilitating stroke. I can think of at least three films that involve suffocation using a pillow, and this is easily the most moving of them. Old age throws up incredible challenges for the sanest and fittest of the partners. He is grief stricken by his wife’s illness and can’t bear to let go of her, and she simply wants to die.

In Colm Toibin’s beautiful novel, ‘The Heather Blazing’, we are presented with a similar situation. Eamon, the retired judge living in Enniscorthy, has to manage his wife, Carmel, who has had a stroke, and on one terribly sad occasion, has to soap her body when she loses control of her bowels after a mountain walk. It is a difficult thing for him to do because their intimacy has always been uneasy. He is a reserved man who loves his wife but has difficulty reaching out to her. She, on the other hand, has always felt this gap painfully, and is able to reflect, after her illness, that she isn’t certain of his feelings. It becomes very important to her, this idea of just wanting to know, of the reinforcement or acknowledgement of his love for her.

Any consideration of old age and the confused and traumatic worlds it conjures up must include a reference to ‘King Lear’. Here it is at least two-fold. Firstly, the moving and deep love for Lear by the wounded and dutiful daughter, Cordelia. Near the end, when he partially regains his senses, and realises the folly in his earlier abandonment of his youngest and kindest child, Lear cannot fathom her undying love. He knows he doesn’t deserve it. And yet, due to her unblinking devotion, he is able to imagine, even if it is futile, a world beyond the crushing defeat of his reign:

‘Come, let’s away to prison.

We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down

And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—

Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—

And take upon’s the mystery of things

As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out

In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones

That ebb and flow by the moon.’

The other side of the coin is the attitude to the twin monsters, Goneril and Regan, Lear’s other daughters. Lear is expendable. He is no longer useful. He has become a foolish old man. And this is what happens sometimes to the elderly. They become foolish old people. I sometimes wonder if quite young people ever fully realise that they, too, will become quite old. I guess it is something we think about as we get older. At the age of 10, or 15, or even 20 or 25, you don’t contemplate things that are so far away and seem somehow intangible.

W B Yeats wrote a poem called ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress…’

Here, the body has faded, it is beyond use, only scarecrow-like, yet the old man is not defeated. He is raging further along, expressed in his very vibrant and very alive soul that has not departed. He is not falling towards death but rather fighting it and refusing it. He is simply not ready.

………………………………………………………………………………

The man I know feels bereft. He is no longer able to drive. He feels hemmed in, somehow…helpless. Is there any need to dress? Will tomorrow be the same? What of my regrets? Did I work long enough? Do I care that I never went overseas?

The film, LUCKY, throws up new possibilities about getting old. Where routine can be broken and new things and places can be discovered. It doesn’t all have to be futile. For me? All I ask for is the crossword and a pen and a few books if I can still read, and I hope I will still like to talk to other people, but part of me suspects, probably not.

When I walk around shopping centres, in particular, I think about ageing. It’s because here I see teenagers, boys and girls, strutting around, looking for cool clothes and meeting up, maybe seeing a film. They are a world away from getting old, and they know it. Old people have zero significance in their life. The old, grey-haired woman with the walking frame and the slightly sour expression means absolutely nothing to them. They don’t even see her- or, for that matter, the old man in the grey cardigan with balding hair who has allowed his eyebrows to grow wild, as well as the hair in his ears. They are invisible, unless they accidentally stumble and fall, in which they would become a spectacle. Old age, like this, is a world away for them, and they don’t think about it. Like the young Simon and Garfunkel singing OLD FRIENDS- ‘how terribly strange to be seventy’. They surmised that at seventy you would become a ‘bookend’- now, though, they probably see it as not being as old as they once thought (Garfunkel was born in 1941, Simon a month earlier) which makes them both 76. Now, are they both bookends, on park benches?

These teenagers at the shopping centre have a grandfather or grandmother, or Nonno, or Nonna, etc. Living in Rome as a teenager in the 30’s or 40’s, Nonna probably sat on the Spanish Steps in her short skirt, exhibiting almost the exact behaviour as her future granddaughter in Melbourne, or Sydney, etc seventy or eighty years hence.

Someone said the other day- it might have been Barry Humphries- that this is the era of ageism. And I think he is probably right.

The Unfortunate Trout

I fished for the first time in about 30 years the other day, by the banks of the Goulburn River, near Eildon. I felt completely relaxed. I did not expect to catch anything. Inexplicably, however, I somehow landed a good-sized rainbow trout. I didn’t realise this would happen. This is the sorrowful story of the fish I landed.

I skim the surface of the Goulburn River. I am closest to the northern end, a short distance from the small town of Eildon. This has been my home from the time when I was spawned, some eight months ago. I like the way that the currents play with my body, teasing it, encouraging it to go left, then right, then left again, depending, it seems, on the whim of the winds.

I see my body in the morning reflection upon the water. I am silky and colourful. My scales shine brightly. Sometimes there is a silver sheen like a rainbow when I catch the reflection off the sun. I am of the trout family. We are one of the more beautiful fish in the Goulburn. And one of the most rare.

Sometimes I see myself heading straight towards other, less noble fish, and I do my best to steer my silky body away from them, for fear of contamination. These are ugly, more common fish like Murray cod, redfin, carp. In case you haven’t guessed, I am a rainbow trout, no less.

The rainbow trouts of this world, like me, tend to stick together. We come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, all of us with the distinctive body sheen and rainbow gills and elegant, slender shape. We are a kind of fish that know its family. I am one of many and I see my fish family every day, gliding the currents as I do, looking for food, tearing along the river’s surface, watching the particles of sand rise as leeches, insects and worms naively explore the seabed. Our mouths rise in anticipation and with our little sharp teeth, we rip the heads off the bigger prey, and swallow in one gulp the smaller ones.

Today the sky is cloudy above, but there is no hint of rain. I have just spent some time nestled beside a log with my younger friends and family. We have been joyously flinging ourselves into the air. We get a glimpse of another world when we do this. Air rushes into our gills momentarily and we feel a curious mixture of pleasure and pain. It is as if we want to be land animals for a second or two, before we plunge again into the icy waters that keep us alive.

 I can hear chatter from the nearby bank. Sometimes humans come to explore the creek too, and even wade into the water. This puzzles me because I know how handicapped they are. They are unable to properly swim. Their heaving, clumsy bodies stir up the sand and create a cacophony of noise where only the bravest fish stick around.

I am not particularly hungry this late afternoon. My day has drifted blissfully by. I have eaten when I can be bothered. I have seen plenty of mayflies and midges and consumed any number of them. I am not looking for anything in particular, just planning to head downstream to Thornton and to float across some wild, fun rapids under the bridge. Then I see it. The laziest worm I have ever seen. Thick, and juicy, and virtually impossible to ignore. Its cocky long body is resting on the river floor and it won’t let anything disturb it. It even looks like it might be dead. There is a slender piece of hooked metal next to it, which does not look so appetizing. But the worm? Delicious.

I snap my elegant jaws into the slippery worm and receive the shock of my short life. The curved metal piece hammers into my mouth and I feel it crush painfully across the inside of my mouth near the pharynx. Somehow it is hooked into me. I shake my head in a panic and the pain becomes sharper. I feel as though I am more hooked than ever. I am full of regret for what I have done, but there is little time for regrets. Through an indefinable source I am being dragged across the river by my mouth. My eyes are dazzled by bright light. I am being lifted out of the warm cocoon of the water.

There are humans, people on the bank, and I am inexplicably being hurled towards them. Their faces are shining. Three men. I glide in a dangerous arc towards their feet and smack flat onto a rocky bank. One of the men has grabbed my once proud body in his hands and he is trying to wrench the sharp hook from my gullet. The pain is roaring through me. I want this hook out too, but instead of an unclasping, this awful wrenching continues. My life flashes before me. Blood, my blood, is dripping onto the rocks and I am losing focus, and consciousness. Just when I feel free of the hook at last, and blink to regain my senses, heaving my asphyxiating body across rock, screaming in pain for water- the man lowers a curved blade towards my head, and begins his cutting motion…

Because I Could Not Stop For Death: Terence Davies' Emily Dickinson

I WAS a bit reluctant at first to choose to see A QUIET PASSION. It might be Terence Davies but it is still essentially a biographical film. How many biographical disaster films have there been? You get put off by all the trite. SBS recently screened the one by Oliver Stone about The Doors. OK, lesson learnt. Terence Davies is not Oliver Stone. But that film was an obscene disaster. It made somebody, who was quite interesting in real life, look like a complete idiot. What is the point of making something that is so disrespectful? If the subject matter, according to Stone, is a complete fool, then he is not worthy of biographical treatment. The same goes for the one they did about Sylvia Plath, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Gossipy, scandalous, sensationalist, controversial, shallow, etc, etc.

There are countless others, probably lesser disasters, just misses. Chaplin, Gandhi, Kahlo, Mozart, Monroe, et al.  I’ve seen all of these and been more or less unimpressed about how, in their ‘commercialism’, they have let their subject down.

Terence Davies, though, is a different kettle of fish, as I was reminded of today. A difficult subject, Emily Dickinson. What did she actually do in her life, except for, introspectively, write great, unheralded poetry?

Well, I guess it is worth looking at the New England of its day, the Amherst of the Victorian era. There was the scepticism about God that was the feature of its time. The look at contemporaries, or near contemporaries, the Bronte’s, Elizabeth Gaskell. No mention of Jane Austen. The limited role of women in society, the great questions about the place of women, as writers, but also about wives and being members of society, mothers. The deep unhappiness of Dickinson’s mother and her lack of fulfilment, her own restlessness, and the restlessness of her friends and other members of her family. The impact of the Civil War on America and her consciousness.  These are all the things worthy of consideration, and Davies considers things. It gives him the opportunity to ensure that things don’t become obsessively internal and cloying, that, through Dickinson, we get offered a glimpse of society as well. I don’t, for instance, remember the Plath film doing these things, although Plath was equally preoccupied about the role of women.

Davies wrote the screenplay and directed the film. The film owes its strength to him- and the actress- Cynthia Nixon- a great, great portrayal. She does everything she can. Smiles convincingly, suffers convincingly, shudders convincingly in her fits and becomes convincingly morose but never dull. Davies makes the film glide and engage with beautiful, slow camera movements. It is the music, the spoken poetry that never obtrudes, the slow camera pans, the subtlety of cinematographic composition, the subdued blues and greys, all these things respect their subject matter and offer it a complex recognition. It is all about respect and love, but not really adoration. Davies is not afraid to sugar coat his subject and make her all nobility and grandeur. Yes she suffers, but only as a flawed human being who becomes bloody-minded and depressingly morose, and in a terrible funk. The film implies that she resents being ‘left on the shelf’, resents her lack of beauty and appeal, suffers because of agnostic point of view, resents the lack of recognition as a writer she feels she deserves. In short, that the world owes her something and that she is too maudlin and introspective. This is all great, though. The balance between utmost respect for his subject, but willing to explore her deficiencies as well.

Also the psychic exploration of the need for recognition. The cost of shutting yourself off from society like that. The need to have what little that is yours, validated, by somebody. Emily anxiously peering over towards a critic in her garden setting. Do you like it? Is there something valuable in my world. Is the sacrifice I am making worthwhile? Or is my reason for living generally not worthwhile. I can't help but think of the sisterhood that could have existed here, across the Atlantic, between Emily D and Emily B, and the other Bronte sisters. After all, a reasonable chunk of their lives were lived at the same time.

So, a flawed Emily Dickinson is what we get, which is what was needed- what is absent is the lack of respect and recognition that some of these other films sometimes conjure. Deeply felt respect- where, perhaps, if it was ever possible Dickinson could view herself on film, she might quietly applaud and write an idiosyncratically punctuated poem about it, saying thank you for creating something that is respectful but in its characterisation, flawed and honest at the same time.

The film reminds me, as in the case of the beautiful films that Paul Cox made about Vincent van Gogh and Vaslav Nijinsky- it is best that a poet or a painter make the tribute to another poet or painter if you want something respectful, meaningful, sincere.

Emily Dickinson in unconventional white, which was her practice. Dying in paroxysms of pain like those before her, but with the added grandeur of a noble funeral shown with the moving ‘Because I Could Not Stop For Death…’ over the soundtrack.