Sunday
Seven men track a circular course on the Dorset/Somerset border. Seven men of a certain age - somewhere between fifty and eighty. We start from a perfectly preserved, perfectly loved chapel dedicated to St Rocco - patron saint of dogs and those who love them, batchelors, surgeons, pilgrims, tile makers, falsely accused people, invalids, diseased cattle and Istanbul. You must admit a wonderful range of beings to look after. Will he look after us as we set off to face wild dogs, angry farmers who hate the footpaths that cross their land and presumably hate those who use them. How will we run from those who would sink their teeth into us: teeth of dog, teeth of horse, teeth of barbed wire? Seven men who in their different ways are drawn to meet out of some consciousness of being men, not only of a certain age, but out of something troubling about being men.
Perhaps men losing ground, being outmanoeuvred by age, herded, caged by the events of their lives, a lack of missionary purpose. What do you believe in? Not very much - is that the answer? But hang on we could become our own purpose. It's very simple. We are not heroes, not saints, nor particularly sinful sinners: there is an ordinariness that is a burden. Perhaps it's the burden of failure, of a failure to understand what it was (precisely) that we were supposed to do. At least we can help each over the barbed wire, give each other courage as the horses gather round unsure what they might want to do us - bite us, kick us? Who knows?
Monday – Thursday
Packing and unpacking modernism and the problem of texts, of spinning words into shapes. How to provoke, how to attract attention, how to write the words that are available, that are given to us out of feeling or idea. How to write a non-narrative text with somewhat startling rhythms, surprising content. A text that engages with others, the Other, you or You. A text that may get beyond the response of 'I don't know what you are talking about'. No, I don't know why I have to do this but what can I do, what defence can I plead - I only have the words that are there.
Then a bit later I'm reading through the day's Guardian (1.10.12) and my eyes light upon John Harris's column in which he discusses a new book due to be published in a couple of weeks. Written by Helen Rosin and given the alarming title: The End of Men: And the Rise of Women. Cardboard men who crumple into defeatism and plastic women who are adaptable and (increasingly) well educated. Harris writes: 'The general impression of millions of men as essentially confused, hidebound creatures, in search of certainties that the modern world has left behind, adds up'. Maybe, maybe not.
I think I have some sort of notion of what Helen Rosin might be setting out to describe and as she dedicates the book to her nine year old son I want to believe that she is writing (at least in part) out of love. But I also have the sense that it is one of those somewhat weird phenomena that comes under the heading of 'now you see it, now you don't'. What have we men done over history after receiving the drubbing of our lives? Yes, sometimes we disappear in alcoholic stupor - by the way I saw a great little play by the name of Botallack O'clock at the Bike Shed Theatre last night - abstract artist Roger Hilton drinking himself into psychotic episodes that in the play are both funny and touchingly painful. Botallack is near St Ives where he lived and painted though confined to bed towards the end of his life (he died in 1975) partly due to alcoholism which is the period of his life that the play focuses on. Was he defeated? Was alcohol a way of not feeling the defeat? This artist who had been a commando in the war and taken prisoner after the Dieppe raid. Questions. Questions. But defeat is also a time for reflection, thinking - how do I do this thing? How do I and we walk on?
I'm bound to be reminded of where we were fifteen years ago with those three words - walking and talking and writing. It's probable that we might also demand of ourselves to say something about where we've got to. Or is that the wrong question?
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