writing 101 (april 2015)

serially lost (1:3)

Image | | andy townend

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 I have been thinking a lot recently about absolutes.

You know, right and wrong, good and bad, left and right, up and down, inside and out, yes and no, true and false. Perhaps even, lost and found.

What strikes me about all of these absolutes is how little relevance they end up having in life. Well, ok, maybe when you are driving, the concept of left and right is fairly fundamental.

But, I do recall, as I followed the tangential arc of learning, how many things learned as a child had to be unlearned, as I discovered that things “don’t work quite like that”. The mind boggling transition from Newtonian physics where everything is grounded by an apple tree to the insane world of quantum mechanics and the trials and tribulations of Schrödinger’s poor mistreated cat.

The point I am (not) making is that as child we often see things in this absolute sense and it is only later, as life happens to us, that we begin to see the ambiguity of our world in all its glory, and sometimes, its horror.

And then the places that shaped us, that seemed like rocks, foundations, safe havens, gradually slip away. My sister texted me today to tell me she was standing outside my former Hall of Residence at University in London. Or, more correctly, she was standing next to a hole in the ground where it used to be. A similar fate met my boyhood school some years back. My foundations not just crumbling, but demolished and replaced. And in their place, in years to come, someone else’s foundations will take their place.

What a race.

And, so far, I am digressing. Filling space on the white screen in front of me as I build up to write about what I really want to write about. Or, perhaps, what I don’t want to write about at all. But will. And, in doing so, learn and move on.

I intend to write about my father.

About what happened to him. Or what he “happened”. And about the consequences. The final end to the right and wrong phase. The time that Schrödinger’s cat finally bit deep into Newton’s apple.

A story which involves a tennis court, a phone call, a student sitting on the kerb, an elephant slide, a drive through the country.

And, the end of absolute thinking.

(for wordpress writing 101 – day four)

three songs

Image | | andy townend

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So (yes, I say that a lot when writing and talking, it’s a kind of way of allowing myself to think before acting, saying or doing anything), this is my second post in response to a prompt posted on the WordPress Writing 101 course. Confusingly, or not, I am actually responding to the prompt to Day Three after posting my response today to the prompt for Day Two and giving some thought, although perhaps not enough, to the prompt to Day One to which I might, or might not return and respond. We shall see what we shall see. Or not.

So (there, see, I’ve gone and done it again), the challenge, prompt or task, for today is to write about “the three most important songs in your life and about what they mean to you”. And, so the prompt goes, this is best done by “free writing” which apparently involves emptying your mind, not censoring yourself, not thinking, and more specifically, letting go and allowing the emotions or memories connected to those three songs to carry you. Presumably, just before the men in white coats begin to knock at the door?

On top of that, those people at WordPress can be hard task masters, the twist is a challenge to commit to writing practice, with a minimum of fifteen uninterrupted minutes per day.

So (again), that introduction has used up pretty much half of my allotted time to free write about songs that mean something. Yes, I write so slowly.

Also, I can’t help sharing how I am writing this, I’m using an app on my Mac called iA Writer Pro, the reason I love it, is that it allows you to type on a blank white screen, in a great old fashioned typewriter font. The idea being to facilitate free writing perhaps? Of course, as you may be able to tell from the photo at the top, I also stopped to take a photo of me writing freely in a non-distracted way. Fail?

Turning now to the three songs, yes, I almost forget that part. A charming trait I seemingly (and yes, I hate adverbs) developed during those long Summer days of my (long ago) youth not answering the question on all those examination papers.

Hell, I’m nearly out of time, maybe I will never get round to those three songs?

And, yes, here are three songs, they may not be the “three most important songs” in my life (and I really do hate such confining questions) but, for better or worse, I do remember them.

So (that word again), I start with “Fanfare For The Common Man” as interpreted in 19XX by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Why do I remember this? Well, I had fallen hopelessly (adverb alert) in love with a perfect Romanian gymnast at a time when I was convinced I was going to run at the Olympics one day. A perfectly misaligned set of goals and dreams.

She did, I didn’t.

But I never forget the feeling or the power of that dream.

The song was used as a theme tune by the BBC for the Olympics (or something like that). And I went out and bought the 45 vinyl in a paper sleeve, I felt such a rebel. And her biography, in a cheap light blue paperback, with her picture on the front, did I say I was so in love? Oh, and the B side (yes imagine) was the offbeat “Brain Salad Surgery”.

Song number two. Imagine, a Ford Transit van, light blue in colour, wooden slat seating, minimal provisions, everything in a borrowed rucksack. Cash in ten different currencies in a rucksack (Euro, hello, what Euro?). Tents, minimal hygiene, border crossings and girls from foreign parts. And, oh, the friend who actually owned a portable cassette player. And one tape, yes, one tape that we (eighteen of us, all boys) listened to over and over for three weeks as we camped our way around Europe. The song, “Runnin’ Blue” by The Doors. All I can say is “pretty little girl with the red dress on…”, but that’s another post for another day.

And so, the climax.

The third song, just a few years later. “The Knife” by Genesis.

And, no, I really can’t tell you that story.

Not tonight at least.

(for wordpress writing 101 – day three)

a room with a view

Image | | andy townend

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This may well be one of the first posts that I have ever posted anywhere that does not include a photograph. Which is strange because that is what I do, I photograph things incessantly and then post them. Oh, and when I talk, and write, I sometimes ramble a lot before getting to the point.

More recently, I decided that I would like to write more.

And to write better.

My first concerted effort to do so was taking part in Writing 201 Poetry. And now, here I am taking on what feels like a more intimidating challenge, Writing 101.

So this, my first contribution, is a response to Day Two, written and posted on Day Three and featuring “a room with a view”.

The room, the view, in question, was so special to me that I not only photographed it several times, I took out pencil and paper and sketched it.

The use of the room was the gift of a friend at a turning point in my life. So, for that reason alone the room acquired substance beyond the confines of its walls.

And what walls they were, a building of whitewashed stone. Approached by climbing a short flight of stone steps from a cobbled square in the centre of a small village on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. The sea over which the sun set each night.

A simple room, two chairs by the window. Stone floor. Stone walls.

A window flung open to allow the sea breeze and the sounds of voices in the bar below to drift up and swirl softly around the small space.

A room in which, each day, I ate simply and well. Fresh crusty bread, ham, tomatoes, local grown olives and a glass or two of red wine.

A room with little in the way of furnishings. But what there was, functional, clean and comforting.

A room from which I first glimpsed a precious view.

Not the sea, not the sunset, not the villagers at the bar, not the coffee shop, not the model being photographed on the stone steps, not the tourists passing through.

The view from this room was far more precious.

This room, gave me a glimpse into my heart, my life.

A room with a view.

(for wordpress writing 101 – day two)