A Fierce Beauty

Last night I went and spent money that I didn't have on an evening dedicated to the great Spanish poet and dramatist, Garcia Lorca. I commited this rash act (being, as I am, savagely broke), because Lorca happens to be among a handful of artists who have changed my life, and for whom I would, as they say, lay down on the tracks. So parting with my money to go and see it seemed like a relatively small act of devotion.

Unfortunately, the evening was utter rubbish. It took the most razor sharp of passions, some of the most mortally wounding poetry of the 20th century, and put an old, comfy, pair of slippers on it. Though it makes me sad to say it, it was tragically British.

Lorca lived a relatively short life. He was beautiful and he was homosexual, and in the Thirties, Lorca was Spain's greatest living poet, describing and epitomising a spirit of Spain, a spirit that also manifested in flamenco and in the bullfight. In 1936 he was shot dead by the Fascists both for being a poet and for being a homosexual. He died face down in the mud. He wrote these words:

..there are neither maps nor exercises to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned, that he smashes styles, that he leans on human pain with no consolation and makes Goya (master of the grays, silvers, and pinks of the best English painting) work with his fists and knees in horrible bitumens..

I think anyone who creates - who writes, plays music, performs, longs for this state that Lorca describes and that runs through all his poetry, because it contains magic and genius. Or perhaps we don't even need to be an 'artist' to have this longing, in life itself we can yearn for it. But most of the time we are so terrified of it that we want to stick to all the safe roads instead; we seek out the poultice of burning glass, but we don't want it to burn our hands.

As I struggle with my own existence, trying to write, trying to make music that might just have some integrity to it; through the loneliness and insecurity of trying to stay with the process and the wildernesses I often finds myself in, it feels a precious thing to try and keep remembering Lorca.

It's horrid seeing the fear of mistakes and failure embodied in another person's performance, as I did last night; to see all the imperfections rubbed out, and with it, all the lifeforce. It reflects what I myself might become if I begin to let those things rule my own poetry and songs, my performance. And it's sad that those musicians' efforts killed even the possibility of anyone in that audience getting the chance to experience the beauty that Lorca lived, and died for. Better perhaps to stay silent, than to kill the thing you love.

Here is some footage of one of the greatest ever Flamenco dancers, Carmen Amaya, who had left Spain by the time of the Civil War and Lorca's death, becoming a world-wide star. Often dancing in men's breeches and a jacket, she danced steps traditionally reserved for male dancers, and she embodies what Lorca describes as that "mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains.. a power, not a work.. a struggle, not a thought."

He continues "I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet. Meaning this: it is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation."

By the way, the woman in the first video is Eva La Yerbabuena, who is also incredible.

These days, I am finding it increasingly hard to look at photographs of my Mum. I glance over them quickly, unable to allow myself to make the connection between who I see in the picture and the image I hold of her in my head. In so many more recent photos, she is sitting in the front room, tv on, her hair scraped back into a pony tail. She is smiling self-consciously. But the image in my head is of a moment caught forever in silence and stillness. It is a running video, but nothing is moving; it is a song without sound, a touch I can feel, but I don't know where the hand has gone.

The woman in the picture has gone and I don't understand what is left of her. I think of Sleeping Beauty with her rosy cheeks, ivory skin, eyes closed, spellbound to perpetual coma. I see only a haze of white - white sheets, white pillows, the white of her eye, white nightdress with a satin ribbon at the neck. I want to immerse myself in snowdrops. I want to course the ice floes, stretch myself out on a glacier, breathe it in deep. I want only cloud and a sun behind it that never sets. I want to be pale as a baby wrapped in its first blanket.

From the whiteness, red creeps in. Blood circles in my hands and arms, and begs these legs of mine to run. Run to the equator, to where time zones collide, imprint a map of the world upon my skull, forage amongst the insects and the beetles for a taste of life itself, curse the sky and ride a westward thunder, laughing. Blood follows me wherever I go. I cannot evaporate into ether, nor disappear into silence. Blood keeps me feeling, remembering I am flesh and bone, skin and longing. Angels inhabit my tender places, they haunt my dreams with their whiteness and their singing, but it's the bloody hand that keeps me here, that keeps me in the running.

I won't lie frozen for an eternity until I am kissed by a prince with black hair and a sword. But I will watch my mother, in her own world now, in a world of whiteness far beyond my reaches. And there will never come a day when I won't crave her touch again, to see the redness in her cheeks, for her lips to come back to life and speak. Blood still runs through her, though it is silent. She stares out of the window, at what, I can't know. It is then that the snows fall on me again, as I remember the belly I came from, the mess and spill that fell out with me, the cord that kept me attached until it was cut, my first cry into her breast and the red fist I raised at the world as I realised, in utter joy and horror, that I was alive.

The Leaves Are Starting To Fall..

Autumn is coming. Walking up Ditching Road this morning, I felt it in the breeze, saw it in the cracked orange leaves that circled round my knees and bag.

This morning I am a girl of the sea. Sweet and strong with a head full of wonder, an eye for light: I sparkle on water. Tomorrow I may be Andalucia, with a body of blood like aged red wine from the cellar, a heart of ardent rapture, sitting by a ring of sand, watching the bull toss his head with bleeding pride.

Yesterday was a bad day. Today, so far, my heart is alive and breathing once again, remembering it can take care of itself, and that, in the midst of pain, there is still love, if you can persist to find it. This can take some looking.

But as there is a season about to end, there is another beginning. I will make it a new beginning. And to mark it, this Sunday I hold A Tea Party on the beach, with fancy frocks and friends to say goodbye to what has, in many ways, been a memorable and beautiful season.

And I am not quite ready for snow, but the thought of chocolate coloured days and walks by the green cooling river fill me with a new joys. Trips to London to see the new Rodin collection, Tate Modern, my sister and the Thames. Kittywakes calling from Seaford cliffs, quiet afternoons writing, berries and hot tea late at night.

And the beach will change its flavour, but will still be there, chugging and churning, my solace in this greedy busy town, peace in the burning car headlights.

Who knows what will actually become of this Autumn, but perhaps I don't have to opt for complete hibernation just yet, or can do so in another way. I think they call it Recuperation. I call on all my animals of the forest, of the ice, of the road. Let them take care of this little soul when it grows littler, when the rocks start falling and I need a place to hide, some fur and strong paws to bury my face in.

And all being well, it won't break my heart to see Mum in the new nursing home where she'll soon be residing, with her child-like vision, the flower pots on the patio. I am so glad there will be flowers for her there. And though it feels a devastation to think we all might be in for another long haul, because we know she will not get better, but could stay in some twilight world for years to come, I am glad she will be settled somewhere where there are no nurses, too busy to give my mother a second glance, to really look after her, where I can leave behind wards, the clinical smell, the dreadful taste of death and withering in my mouth. At least there are hills there.

And I have joined a Writing Circle. And I soon begin a little writing course. And life moves onward. I never stay the same. And even in one day, who I am shifts and changes. I am Clare, and I am reborn with every tear, every pain.

Blood

I have had a hell of a day - the kind that when you arrive home from it, you want to cry with joy that it is nearly over. I tumbled through my door, on my last legs, my brain feeling like an oversized pea, my heart like a battered ocean, my only thought being how I could jump in the bath.

As I entered my hallway, I noticed a bright red puddle oozing under the door of my hall cupboard. Amazing in its brilliance, this red was the red of postboxes and London buses. It is also the colour of fresh blood. It had gathered into an alarming sized puddle on my hallway carpet.

I breathed in slowly and walked into the front room to collect my thoughts. Then I re-entered the hallway and approached the cupboard. An entire tin of vinyl matt emulsion had fallen off the top of my painting bag and landed face down on the floor. It was carnage.

I decided denial was the best strategy for now, since facing this devastating mess felt sure to send me over some proverbial edge. I checked my e mails. The phone rang. It was Jo. At the end of the conversation, she urged me to get an early night, look after myself, get some sleep. I agreed, "after I've cleaned up that bloody paint".

We hung up and I re-entered the terrible scene in the hallway. I'd decided that the best strategy for protecting myself during removal was to do it naked, and once I was, I set to work. Almost immediately though I stepped in a dribble that had separated from the greater puddle, and so, in order to prevent myself from treading it into the rest of the carpet, I began hopping about on one leg towards the direction of the bathroom.

Of course I stumbled, treading said paint into carpet and grasping at the wall with red painty fingers, leaving streaks all across it. I was scooping the paint into a tray, but it was going all up the walls. In the bathroom, red streaked the walls and towels, the inside of the sink. A futile hopeless affair. The hallway was looking like the scene of some terrible massacre, bloody hand prints up the walls, globules of red across the toilet seat. Grim.

You have to realise the state I have got myself into today. By seven o clock this evening, after an incredibly long day painting ceilings, filling holes, clearing up rubble, and vast long ruminations about my life, and my imminent, and now, slightly terrifying feeling trip to New York, my mind felt like it was capsizing.

So I gave up trying to clean up the paint, grabbed the spatula I was using to scoop it up, dug it into the fresh red, flipped it up and stroked it across the bare skin of my leg. Then I dived in another time with the spatula and did the same thing on my other leg. I didn't stop until my entire body and face was covered in red strokes, until my flesh had disappeared under a skin of bloody pigment.

I looked a fright. Like some kind of menstrual banshee. But the freedom felt compelling, and as I added each stroke, the day, and the hopeless circular workings of my ego left me, somewhere back at the traffic lights on London Road.

You know, sometimes counselling or a cup of tea just won't do. Sometimes I need to paint myself all over in bright red vinyl matt emulsion to get to how I feel. Now my flat really does look like the set from "Psycho", and the red puddle is still there, taunting me.

Afterwards, I sat in the bath. The paint had gone hard on my body, I looked less like some ancient warrior heading into battle, and more like some kind of voodoo doll. I peeled layers of the rubbery stuff off with my hands, red skin, revealing white skin, scrubbed and faintly stained pink. The water was turning ruddy, the water billowing gradually with colour. It looked like an image from a Sylvia Plath poem.

My Munch painting hung above me, on a red wall, painted with the same paint that had spilled so violently. This is not the kind of life my mother had cut out for me. And though it may have been some kind of necessary catharsis, some kind of shamanic re-enactment, at the end of it I sit, cold in the bath, exhausted, unrested and still full of a nameless raw fear about going away.

My ego is crying out "something must be wrong, you can't follow your dream like this!" My identity is shifting, and I am leaving important people in my life behind. And who will I be when I return? Will Clare as we know it even be coming back?

The answer is clear - I don't think so, I can feel it in my blood, I can see it in the stained hallway, this is what it is revealing : there is no taming my blood, no stopping the redness, I am taking my rightful place in aliveness, and the colour is too bright, I can barely look at it.