Light from Darkness

 

You know that empty feeling you get deep inside when you lose a loved one? Whether through bereavement, estrangement, rejection, or simply because you had to set someone free?
 

You know the old adage: if you love someone, set them free?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It turns out this is not so easily attributable. Was it Sting, was it Jonathon Livingston Seagull; was it two mini-lovebirds? Or some woman with a caged canary?

 

 

Here’s another thing: my recollection is that it concludes with a different line from that which appears on the internet. A friend, many years ago, quoted it as this: “If you love someone, set them free; if they don’t come back, it was never meant to be.” I took this to mean, ‘If they really loved you, they will return some day.’

 

Either way: to lose someone you love – whether they were taken from you, turned against you, or they simply fled the nest – can leave you with sense of profound emptiness. This is what grief is.

To say that I felt this same empty feeling about a building might seem weird, or melodramatic.

 

And yet for the second time in four years seeing the inferno lapping the innards of the Mackintosh Building in Glasgow, my sense of grief skipped quickly through Kübler-Ross from ‘denial’ to ‘anger.’ When I heard that this great Work of Art might have to be demolished, my stomach turned. The third stage, ‘depression,’ soon turned to ‘bargaining’ as I learned that The Mack was going to rise, once again, from the ashes; finally ‘acceptance’ set in.

 

I was reminded of a quote which I scribbled once in a card to a friend (a quote which came back to me recently, in my own handwriting, from 1992!)  

 

“Every day won from such

 darkness is a celebration”

 

ELAINE FEINSTEIN

 

So it seems, perhaps, that Glasgow School of Art’s iconic building will celebrate new light again, one day. If only some of the art spaces in Edinburgh had the same enduring longevity. If any of the Scottish National Galleries were to be razed to the ground, you can guarantee funds would be found to re-build them. Then again, it would be more like Edinburgh Council to let their bedfellows in The Drum Group build a hotel, or yet another block of ugly student accommodation in its place.

 

This may not be relevant to those living outwith Edinburgh, but throughout this wonderful city doors are closing on art establishments and, in their place, money-making ventures are springing up, screaming “Buy!” and “Sell!” A few weeks ago I reviewed the last ever films to be screened in the derelict State Cinema down in Leith, as part of the Hidden Doors Festival. The following day, the demolition team were in, reducing an icon to the impoverished status of luxury flats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in Spring, in another review, I spoke about an arts complex on London Road that is home to a vast range of creative and charity organisations and individuals. It’s an ugly building, right enough, but the Council is going to turf out the community and turn it into something uglier: mammon. By no small chance, the event I reviewed was called Doors That Open, and the optimism of the artist in question was admirable and enlightening.

 

 

When One Door Closes...

 

Regular readers of this blog will know that doors have featured in my work over the last year or so. My sequence of 26 Doors Between My House and Yours charts a journey and a friendship, as well as the symbolism of doors. One of the doors I photographed and wrote about was on the front of the Queen’s Gallery of Holyrood Palace.

 

Imagine if that got burned down like The Mack in Glasgow: people would care far less, but it would be re-built without question. I don’t really care for royalty, or chivalry, nor for the petty politics between neighbouring countries. The wall dividing England and Scotland fell to ruin years ago – I’ve no time for those who want it re-built. So I ignored the doors with the proud chivalric figures of rampant lion and unicorn, choosing to picture and write about the less-glamourous door beside it:

 

 

 

The Queen’s Gallery, Abbey Strand

 

“My next-door-neighbour’s door

is adorned in the rampantly proud

heraldic symbols of neighbouring

nations formerly at war,

now, locked in endless argument.

They’ll never see eye-to-eye,

for the Lion represents English Pride,

while the Unicorn is Scotch Myth:

a fictitious creature never born.

Every day those separated gates

let the tourists in, yet I remain secure.

I stand for Art. Nothing more.”

 

 

Further along my random route, another arts venue featured: The Number Shop. Run by Edinburgh Contemporary Art Directory, and home to studio, gallery, and shop space, this quirky building has also had to close its doors to the artistic community who made their home there. I dropped in on its closing day, and learned that the Council had given the people who use it the chance to bid for a renewed lease, but they rejected their bid in favour of a more lucrative tenant.

 

I wonder how many other ‘doors’ in my sequence will be closed to creativity?

 

 

Project Space, Pleasance

 

Someone has left

a bright red chair

outside a brightly-

coloured door.

(In point of fact,

the door is black:

the window-frames

seem to proclaim

this is a space for

artists’ studios.)

Is it the windows

and mouldings

drawing my eyes;

declaring the

creativity that lies

behind the door?

I sit on the chair

pontificating how

windows, not doors,

reveal much more…

 

 

As it is, this blog is also about keeping a window open. Even if I stop posting here (which I may do when I reach a decade of posts next year) I will leave the curtains un-drawn. After all, every day won from such darkness is a celebration. I used to wait on death’s yawn. Now I embrace the dawn.

 

You know the old adage: if you love something, set it free?

 

 

POST-SCRIPT:

 

Happy Birthday to my friend, the dedicatee of this poetry;

my light and inspiration, who makes every day a celebration.

 

 

Ghosts

 

Sometime last summer I posted on my Facebook page a cryptic message. It read: “When someone who caused immense emotional turbulence over 20 years ago finds your (locked) twitter account and, out of the blue, requests to follow you... Accept or Decline? Or stay awake wondering, Why?” It was interesting to see how people interpreted what amounted to a tabloid-style headline of scant information with enough sensational content to create a reaction.

 

Only one of my 300+ Facebook contacts – my lifelong friend Sarah – had any true idea of what I was talking about. I received a number of responses, mostly of the ‘don’t go there’ variety, or ‘decline – sleep well’ kind of thing. Others were less aghast. My good friend and collaborator, Paul, said “Do it!!” suggesting this would lead to more material for my miserable stories! Another friend, who is a writer, said that curiosity would get the better of her.

 

This writer was working on a memoir at the time, so I asked her how far should you go; how deep should you delve into the rabbit-hole of the past? “As deep as you can go,” she replied, suggesting that I shouldn’t leave any stone unturned. “You might not be able to use all of it, but – yeah – dig away.” I can’t wait to read her book when it comes out next year! We also agreed that it seemed people reacted adversely without knowing the context. This sums up the way most journalism works.

 

Allowing this person to follow me on twitter wouldn’t change much. These days I rarely tweet, and my account is locked to prevent specific people from abusing me and my friends. Furthermore, the question I posed didn’t talk of following her back: that would open a different can of worms... perhaps. So before I say what happened next, I should give a bit of context.

 

Exactly when this person requested to follow me is hard to say. I’d not been using twitter much, and wasn’t in the habit of checking my follower requests. She now had a different surname (she got married many years ago) so I didn’t spot her at first. However, I’d been looking up old friends on Facebook and saw her profile picture among the friends of an organist I once knew. This was her twitter avatar also. When, by chance, I looked through my follower-requests, the penny dropped.

 

Accept, or Decline?

 

There were too many other questions before I made a rash decision either way. Most pressing to me was: how the hell did she find me? She wouldn’t have known the ‘nom-de-plume’ I have taken on since changing my direction from music to writing ten years ago (although she would have known about my writing aspirations.) Also: why did she find me? We haven’t had any contact for, possibly, twenty-five years. As far as I’m aware she is happily married with two teenage girls and is getting on with her life. Why would she want to know anything of my soap-opera life now?

 

Perhaps I should give some back-story before I try to answer these questions. When I graduated from Music College, I went to live in a small provincial city west of the Midlands to start my life as a singer (and also, I hoped, as a writer) but found this change a massive jolt after London. I was far from happy, but someone whose unhappiness far out-stripped mine became a frequent visitor to my flat. A young woman who was deeply troubled by something that she was utterly incapable of putting into voice would come and sit with me for an hour, and then leave with barely a word.

 

It would be several years before I got to understand something of what had silenced her. When she left for university, I sent her a copy of Maya Angelou’s first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This at least opened up a conversation through letter-writing (this was before email existed) but, in the end, it seems she was forced into silence again. We fell out of touch, and I was left wondering: what was the truth of her story.

 

This not-knowing and yet-knowing-something has had a profound effect on my life. It has informed and influenced almost everything I have written, and caused colossal turbulence in ways I cannot bring myself to talk about. Now I am the silent one. Something I must be absolutely clear about is that I do not bear a grudge, or blame this person for any of this. I have never stopped wondering how things worked out for her, nor ever ceased to hope that she has ‘survived.’

 

Does this answer any of my questions? I doubt it. Her twitter account is also locked, and Facebook gives no clues. What plagues me most is that my part in her life, over twenty-five years ago, created more disturbance than I had the right to cause. What if this twitter-request was an olive-branch? Surely I’d be a fool to ignore it. Or was it some kind of threat? A sword of Damocles, hanging over me? It seemed unlikely.

 

So I clicked ACCEPT. And – guess what – nothing happened.

 

Summoning the ghosts of the past is one thing, but when they come knocking at your virtual door, you have a choice to ignore them and hope they go away. Or, better still, to let them in so they might never haunt you again. There was, however, one more thing I could do having opened this one-way portal to my past. Request to follow her back. I waited until January this year before I did so.

 

Within days it was accepted.

 

Curiosity couldn’t prevent me from having a look. There is little action on her twitter-feed, and only a long list of followees mainly relating to her daughters’ activities. One thing I noticed as I scrolled through was that, despite showing little interest in literary feeds, there was one author (sadly, who died four years ago) who this person follows.     Maya Angelou.

 

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom. 

—Maya Angelou, “Caged Bird”

 

 

What happens now I cannot say; I simply don’t know. I can’t resist, although it does not match our situation, ending this post with a poem by Elaine Feinstein.  My former friend may understand why.

 

 

 

A Letter from La Jolla

 

On a balcony in California

being surprised by February

which is the sweet season here, when

blue-scaled grunion dance

on their tails, at high tide

on La Jolla sands, to mate there

and are caught in pails and eaten,

 

I write across distance and so much time

to ask, my one-time love, what happened to you?

Since my last letter which I meant to be

as cruel as my own hurt could barb it, now

under yellow skies, pale sun, I sit

sucking fresh limes and thinking over

my childish spite, and how much life I’ve wasted.

 

I’m jealous of the sensible girl

you must have married long since.

Well, I’ve been happy, too.

Sometimes. You always knew

the shape I’d choose would never

be single or sober, and you did not need

what you once most admired.

 

Unswerving as you were, I guess

you must be prosperous, your children neat,

less beautifully unruly than my own

perhaps less talented, less generous;

and you won’t know my work or my new name,

nor ever read my books.

Our worlds don’t meet.

 

And yet I doubt if you have altogether

forgotten the unsuitable dark girl

you held all weekend in your parents’ flat,

talking and talking, so this letter

comes to you this morning almost in play:

our thoughts once moved so easily together

like dolphins offshore to the land mass of the day.

 

ELAINE FEINSTEIN

(from Badlands)