Hill View

I love to climb up to the top of a hill and stand, because I always hope at the top I'll see the plains of Troy or a black ship on the horizon, far out at sea.

I never do because the image I hold of myself on a hill, gazing into the distance, is in the mind, bidden sometimes from memory of admiring incredible views from walls, from hills, from up high, into and across a life-filled landscape – a swathe of green or roiling waves, a mist of cloud or stretch of sand. Perfect, with very few two or four-legged animals blotting it. An uncongested space where breathing is easy, where any breeze is the wind on your face and not somebody else's breath, where the sun is pleasantly warm, and the land nourished, blossoming; not parched or drowning, subsiding.

Views are never as romantic as that though, in reality; only in paintings. Even the bleak look romantic then.

Still, I place myself at the top of this imaginary hill and think 'What can I see?', 'What would I like to see?', 'Where would this hill be?'

The last is the easier to answer. For this hill wouldn't have any location; it would just be there, and once I'd clambered to the top I'd be able to see whatever I wished, even if it was just to see for miles...and miles, with nothing very significant to attract the eye. Why? Because it's rare that I can do that now. The eye is always confronted by a structure. The sky has been filled.

It's a liberating feeling to look out, out, out; that, too, these days, is slowly being taken away. The natural environment eaten up: paved over, dug up, built in, built up, built down.

To spot nothing, maybe a bird or butterfly or glinting aeroplane, is special, a memory collector's item. Am I in the minority here?

I'm thankful, no, grateful, that I banked a few memories then. Caught them in a net à la Nabokov.

Is my reading memory serving me ill? I'm sure I read that somewhere about him...thinking that it was an interesting fact and might come in useful one day. Well, it has, if only for the image, even if dubious or incorrect. Net; memories banked. Fewer of us will have them soon, the memories, and possibly the memory.

Hills with views, where they still exist – the hill and the view – are less enjoyed for what they are, taken in with eyes. The camera phone is the eye; the human eye has lost its function. The human body is depreciating, catching up with the earth which has been unappreciated for too long. The song of the earth has died. That song was always meant to die, so a new song could be born.

The song of the lion; Aslan.

Perhaps the hill I climb is set in a world, a time like that. I walk through a door in my mind, then face an upward climb, never knowing what scene, when I reach the crown, will lie before me.

Will it be empty, unpeopled? Will it be filled with men, polishing armour, or bloodied and engaged in battle? Will it be tranquil, have a holiday feel? Or stormy, womenfolk watching for their men, out in their boats, to return? The sea, never far from my mind.

Though perhaps it will be a green country, with parks, picnics and parasols; or a yellow land, with desert sand and a scorching sun. A view entirely different, and indifferent, to what I wanted.

I can only ask. The mind does not have to conjure up what I'd like to see, what I think it should be. It knows better; it gives me what I need, although never without some effort on my part. The ascent varies. Sometimes as I near the summit I could almost be crawling. My hands clutch at tufts of grass and I gasp like a fish or a beast winded from the chase. But it's worth it for the reward even if I don't know, for sure, what it will be. Even if the sight is not a pleasant one. A sight seen can never be removed, real or imaginary, even if you're removed from it.

Picture credit: Louise loved to climb to the summit on one of the barren hills flanking the river and stand, 1907, N. C. Wyeth (source: WikiArt).

This post was written in 2019.

No One

No one paints a desert or prairie landscape like Willa Cather.

No one draws a garden in the mind's eye as Elizabeth von Arnim does.

No one writes about Cornwall like Daphne du Maurier, or about India like Rumer Godden, or China like Pearl S. Buck.

No one makes use of the autobiographical 'I' quite as Christopher Isherwood does.

No one builds suspense into their novels like Patricia Highsmith, and holds you there, in thrall.

No one invents and inserts twists into popular fairy tales quite like Angela Carter.

And no one writes as sparingly, as simplistically as Hemingway.

Though some try.

Because we are all triers, and naturally want to emulate those who found success or those we admire. Yet no one can produce a better body of work, in our opinion, than they have already. They have set the bar and set it high, almost beyond reach.

We will never tire of them, of their novels, though some of them have long grown tired and disappeared into the ground or been scattered on the wind.

Still, anyone that comes after and expressly tries to take up their pen will seem a poor Jane Austen, a second-rate Virginia Woolf. It cannot be done; it would be all wrong.

Why do we compare? Why can't a newly published author or a newly published novel be like no one, like nothing before? Do favourable comparisons bring sales? Attract readers? It's not about Self, it's about who you're like.

Has everything been done? Everything including the many ways in which to write and create a novel: describe a landscape, sketch characters, tell a story. Maybe it has, but surely how words are used will always be different...

No one means subtle differences. No one can be the same. If one tries, one will fail. One can master a craft that way, but success, if based on this, will be short-lived once the fuss dies down. No new readers will be won, and the old may fade away, because you are not that one, their shining star. Their beacon of good authorship. One will, at some stage, disappoint; or be unable to break from the act of imitation. One then cannot become what one wants to be.

Agatha Christie has gone; let her be. Kafka does not need to be improved upon.

A silent or a little known character does not need to have his or her story told.

A good story does not need to be revised or extended; narrated from a different perspective. A story should be left where the author left it, as intended, and more especially if it's an unfinished piece of work. It's enough to wonder...or be satisfied.

Public demand should not be given into by the original author or by another writing in the name of. One does not have to obey what the agents, what the readers want. Not if one bows to it from pressure, gradually yields to it with no inner conviction. If the creative urge can't be wakened it should be not forced. Explored, but never forced. Ideas are sometimes that, just ideas: to be played with but not acted upon.

A novel that's great can't be made greater; an author once (and still) considered great can't be made greater still. Revision is the death of greatness. Revision by others dilutes talent; elaboration kills it.

And yet it will be done. Based on. Loosely. Adapted. Abridged. The 'classic' brought to more people through these methods. And on each occasion the main voices will be different; the story will change. The opinions of listeners, readers, viewers too will shift. It will be done again. And again.

One is alike; no one is alike.

No one will write about inappropriate infatuation like Nabokov. Lolita was a bad girl.

No one will, like C. S. Lewis, create a world quite like Narnia, and if they do it will merely seem Narnia-like or Tolkienesque.

No One is the name some artists use, to hide.

Picture credit: Captain Nemo, N C Wyeth (source: WikiArt).

This post was written in 2019.

Teacher's Eye

It's rare that writers revisit their work and think it good. Wholly good. I certainly don't, even though mine is that of a amateur, a school girl's effort with school girl mistakes, and so I anticipate my teacher's eye; the same eye that spots misprints and grammatical errors in reprints of classic novels.

The student is always learning, and maybe aping writing styles – sometimes subconsciously - for she has not yet found her own, though that I think is a compliment to those writers that are well-known – the highest form of flattery that can be paid. And I may not find a style or one style or my style, since my mind is too easily influenced by whatever I'm reading, and somehow this always intrudes into what I'm writing. I could never write a novel and be satisfied with it. The style, too, sometimes changes in the midst of these articles because I've picked up another book which has flooded my brain with new thoughts and ideas. I have to, therefore, work fast. Get it down; locked down, no more changes, or I'll tinker forever until it's unrecognisable and far removed from my original notion.

Happy? Sort of. Not quite.

Happy? Yes, fairly. Though the closing paragraph doesn't have quite the right note...

Happy? No, not with the title...

Happy? Yes! That's it! Done.

Only to revisit, say, a year later, before publishing, to experience the following: a piece I thought was great will seem just okay, or it will impress again, in a different way; or a piece I thought was just okay will surprise, even bewilder. I, the author, have flummoxed the brain reviewing my own work. I may not be able to relate to the piece at all as I'm now in a different head space, or I may not be able to recall the effect the novel mentioned in the article had on me. The eye reviewing is therefore not just a teacher's eye, it's an objective eye, viewing a work from a distance of time, written by a different self: a maturing writer, an experimenter.

Still, I leave the article alone, even if I can't make head or tail of it. I will not revise it. It meant something, it made sense, in that moment of composition. I have moved on, that's all. My perspective has shifted. The opinions I hold now are similar but not an exact match, and even if they were the wording in which I explained them would be altered.

With a pen and a pencil and the tapping of keys, I brought these ideas, thoughts and themes to life. To revisit and be too critical would mean an overhaul.

So, I stand by my words. And the time (and the mood) in which they were said.

That, however, doesn't mean I always like the finished then published pieces. It doesn't mean I don't either – sometimes the ego is stoked into a small flame of pride. But often I can't make the connection between me and them. I have detached myself from them. I view them through a very long lens.

The teacher's eye thinks: very good; waffle; what?! There's a word missing there... could there do with a comma...? Should that be a capital letter?...why has that been put in italics?

The teacher's eye scans once more, but is no position to judge the place the article came from. It can only mark the obvious: the grammar, the punctuation, the structure, the impressions expressly given or implied; it cannot turn back time and see the world as it was seen then, it can only visit; a tourist. The article is always passed.

Successful authors, so I hear, so I've read, also have mixed feelings, changed feelings towards their own work. Sometimes if they write the introduction to a reprint they often assert they were young, or it was an early work, that they should have done this and not that, that it was overlong or their conception was flawed; that they weren't keen on its working or known title, or that they'd made it clear the punctuation shouldn't be amended.

Writers are happier writing than doing any other line of work, but generally they're not a self-satisfied breed. They don't recognise, nor appreciate, their own talents. Others – writers and readers – have to do that for them.

Picture credit: The Song of the Lark, 1884, Jules Breton (source: WikiArt).

This post was written in 2019.

Blank Page

A blank page, a white sheet. Smooth, no ceases, no frayed edges, no ragged or folded corners, no finger smudges. No untidy sprawl of ink or loopy yet legible penmanship. No childish or extravagant dotting of i's and crossing of t's. Blank. Perfect, or as perfect as can be.

Then it's handled. Unclean, unclean. Still white, with no visible marks, but dirtied. Touched, even caressed. Where have those hands been? What might they do next? Will they rumple, fold, press a ballpoint pen to its surface, hammer letters onto it, sketch lightly upon it, mangle it in a machine, rip up and throw away.

The page no longer blank has fulfilled its use. The page no longer only white is of no use. Its blankness has been filled, not necessarily to capacity but blank is now not a term that can be said of it. Now it is just a page. A page used, a page that is a sheet in a document. Its white space has been utilised, to the user's satisfaction or dissatisfaction. A crisp white sheet on which black beetles waltz and attract an admiring eye. A crisp white sheet where the black beetles have revolted. The manual or mechanical hand that applied the beetles to its surface has made a mistake. The eye is disappointed; the waltz of the beetles has been halted. Some beetles continue to dance but the eye disapproves. The unpaired beetles and the arguing couples grab all the attention. Imperfection. Chaos. In the hall, on that one page. Trapped there forever, uncorrected, or the hall brought to fall, torn up and destroyed. A improved hall constructed, its new design complex or minimal, where black beetles jostle for space or whirl freely.

A crush of crawling black, a stifled closeness. A pressing of limbs, a pushing surge. A forward movement like an army moving under the cover of shields. A war fought on the page.

Or: the war forgot, the war never happened; the war is not happening.

A swaying black, a circling current. One motion, one rhythm. Air to breathe, air to move in. The couples, like those in a ballroom, dizzy, drunk on dance. Freedom has been let loose on the page.

Neither pages have brought perfection; their beauty or flawlessness is not that of a blank untouched page. Theirs is of a different kind, which changes according to the user, the reader, the time. It can become beautiful; it can grow ugly. The beetles come alive or wither and die, dry out and fossilise. All they stood for, danced for, has meaning. All they fought for means little. The filled page, now aged and yellowed, praised or disregarded. Respect shed or earned late.

The blank page is where it starts.

Or doesn't.

Narrative beetles. Loving beetles. Amusing beetles. Maddened and maddening beetles. Philosophic beetles, given to opinion. Contemplative beetles, given to religion. Reflective beetles, given to self-criticism. Who don't begin as they end. Who change throughout. Who cause surprise and revulsion. Who bring disappointment and joy. Who reverse fortunes – good to bad, bad to good. Lift and depress. Open and suppress.

Flawed or flawless, black beetles work to keep their place on the page. To convey what was meant to be conveyed. The eye, however, will interpret how it wills. The black beetles blurred, unclear. Or their movements so obvious that the eye knows what's coming before it's reached them. A missed, never seen before, beetle noticed for the first time; a familiar beetle met again. A new beetle befriended.

These black beetles pressed to, on, the page can't be taken away, forcibly removed, not without leaving a hole in the paper, a gap in the story.

But neither can the blank page return to what it was, to its original starting point. A pencil has been run along it, a pen across it. A hand has perspired on it, left traces of its sojourn: sweat and food. Maybe other secretions, too.

The black beetles march to a beat, the black beetles dance to a tune.

The blank page, recorded on, exists.

Picture credit: Page one of an illustrated letter from Betty Parsons to Henry Ernst Schnakenberg (source: WikiArt).

This post was written in 2019.