Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that sometimes the lyrical voice comes to find me. Back in the day I wrote a couple of short stories for the radio, and the eagle eared producer said that the pieces of mine she liked best were the lyrical ones- we’d worked together on some religious and World Service programmes as well so she’d seen a range of my work . The problem was (and still is) that I can’t just turn my lyrical voice on and off at will. What usually happens is that an experience of some sort sticks in my mind – it might be anything from finding a new plant to an overheard remark – and when I write about it the voice just emerges, as if it came from behind a door with no handle. The echo with the Holman Hunt “Light of the World” painting is a fair way of describing what is always a kind of visitation.
Then, in one of those intense conversations that Madame and me have sometimes, we were discussing whether Tracey Emin could have been influenced by Edvard Munch’s work – there’s obviously a kind of affinity there – and I recalled that an influence isn’t always an intellectual thing at all. Sometimes a memory finds its way into your being in a more tactile way; through the eyes and fingers. The senses – like – Proust’s madeleine – have their own language and logic.
So I’ve been staring at this photograph for days now, wondering what it was trying to say to me; I knew it was significant, or should I say it had legs but I didn’t know why. The boring answer would be that it was a good shot of a powerful cold front bearing down from the north east, presaging wind and rain overnight. So the most obvious and least interesting inference was that tomorrow we’d be wearing raincoats for our walk. Then, an hour ago I noticed the Abbey in front of the approaching storm; in fact both the church and the surrounding city looked as if they were about to be engulfed by a rather malign darkness.
If I tried to explain how it came to be that these days I find it so difficult to enter a church after all the years of preaching and pastoral work I’d probably crash out in flames. I didn’t so much lose my faith as find a better one, and the most painful part of that process was the growing realization that the golden cockerel that tops so many spires and towers wasn’t so much about chanticleer greeting the sun but was a powerful symbol of betrayal; about denial and cowardice. “Come here” – it seemed to be saying – “and see Christianity betrayed; in the endless processions and minute doctrinal disputes, in the overweening ambition, ludicrous dressing up and the mediocre oratory of preachers with nothing to say“.
So possibly the impulse that flooded through my eyes and into my fingers as I spotted this shot which I took three versions of, and then chose this one – perhaps the sense of the Abbey and the city being overwhelmed was carrying some personal freight for me; enough for my finger to press the shutter without quite knowing why.
But then there are trees in the foreground as well; bare leafless, winter trees, with twilight rapidly approaching. A time for huddling into your collar and jamming your hands into pockets: and as I digest this little gift; revelation, visitation, I realize that the moment encapsulated almost exactly, a whole cats cradle of ideas, experiences, memories and above all fears. The single moment draws to a meniscus; like a shockwave, and disperses instantly. No wonder they call it a shot.
This wasn’t a photograph of Bath Abbey at dusk with an approaching storm. It was an unconscious and instantaneous self portrait, because I am prone to sadness and these last months have been like an endless winter, and – to use a prison phrase – we’ve been “doing our bird” – trying not to get sucked under by lament or longing and clinging fiercely to the daily routines of allotment, cooking, walking and writing.
And then with the announcement of the vaccine our parole hearing hove into view and I got the maps out, blew the tyres up on the bikes, took out the kayak and got the trolley ready again and felt just a bit more alive again. We’ve developed this curious habit of watching films in the evenings – not for their artistic merit at all but for their settings. We’ve watched all the series of Montalbano – many of them are complete stinkers but who’s listening? We’re just enjoying the Sicilian landscape. Maigret (three series) for a bit of Paris – although the Michael Gambon versions are certainly not stinkers but don’t ask me to remember the plots. The whole new aesthetic of the Potwell Inn has been centred around locations; mountains, hills and rivers get stars as long as the script doesn’t intrude -although we also watch hours of psychopathic murders, torture and betrayal as long as it’s got some decent landscapes in it to leaven the darkness.
So I see how my lyrical voice falters. If I were a plant I’d be chlorotic after months sitting in the endless winter, deprived of light and food. People are going crazy here, flooding into the shopping centre looking for the only kind of hope this etiolated culture can offer, even despite knowing that this will give the virus new and enticing opportunities. Greater love hath no man – than what? to lay down their life for an Xbox or some new trainers? Spare me, but I’m too busy clinging to the legs of my disappearing voice. When the music and poetry and song die that’s real death.
I say to myself a hundred times a day – this will end and we’ll be able to celebrate the sacramental simplicities of life once more. Hugging our children, kissing our grandchildren, eating with friends, not being scared of crowded places but enjoying being a part of the crowd, not misting over with hatred when we’re lied to and when journalism has betrayed its fundamental principles for the umteenth time in exchange for a backdoor pipeline into the machine.
And on the promise of that glorious day, we’ve bottled up last year’s damson vodka – although we still don’t drink alcohol ourselves. But that’s another story! Be safe.
