Great Panjandrum with the little button at top

Giles Fraser on writing about sex and God

Recently edited to make it readable, as pointed out by my faithful reader, Emma (she of the hilarious Whimsiblog - read the latest post (vg)).

I've been looking for this piece for months, as it encapsulates exactly my struggle as a writer.

Finally have located it, I am copying it here for the record, so i don't lose it again.

I promise to write something of my own in here before the decade is out.

Thought for the Day, 13 October 2010 The Rev. Dr Giles Fraser According to Martin Amis, writing well about sex is "impossible". So he told an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival last weekend. And Amis clearly has a point. Consider how many cringe-worthy descriptions of sex one finds in novels, even otherwise quality novels. Back in 1993, the Literary Review launched the Bad Sex Awards "in order to draw attention to, and hopefully discourage, poorly written, redundant or crude passages of a sexual nature in fiction." In this same spirit, perhaps someone ought to inaugurate a Bad God Award. For like good writing about sex, good writing about God is especially tricky - and for similar reasons. The connection here is how we represent the most intimate things in our lives. For our relationship with God is always deeply personal in so far as it draws in all our complex, messy and dysfunctional reality as human beings. The idea this can be simply a matter of breezy self-disclosure is often plain embarrassing. And indeed, those believers who constantly go on about their relationship with God often make me cringe in just the same way that people do who want to talk too much about their own sex lives. With writing about sex and with writing about God, less is always more. In his great work of analytic philosophy, the Tractatus, Ludwig Wittgenstein makes a celebrated distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown. Facts about the world can be said, stated as propositions. Everything else can only be shown. In Wittgenstein's terms: a great deal can be said about sex and our relationship with God - but only when these things are reduced to matters of mere technique, to the mechanics. However, the emotional and spiritual reality of both means that this reduction to technique is always a narrowing and an impoverishment. A fuller truth about sex and about God can only be shown, hinted at, revealed sideways, seen out of the corner of the eye. The erotic and the spiritual are at their most compelling when they are simply glimpsed. Perhaps this is why both God and sex make much more sense in poetry than in prose. Of course, Wittgenstein famously ended his Tractatus with the words: "Whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence." And I can quite understand those who want to apply precisely this logic to writing about sex and about God. Martin Amis may be one of them. But this won't quite do. For desire - whether of God or of another - is such fundamental part of our lives that writers cannot avoid trying to explore it in their work, even if the attempt to do so looks impossible from the very start. In the words of that extraordinary monk Thomas Merton, writers are called to make "raids on the unspeakable." And if these raids fail or win awards for foolishness, so be it. There remains a nobility in the very attempt itself.

copyright 2010 BBC

Review of my adaptation of Three Sisters -

Download Three Sisters review

Entering autumn - life in the old dog yet.

This morning, filled with sadness at the course my life has taken, I was walking along Everlasting Lane to buy some milk.

Suddenly I remembered making the same walk, at the same time of year in autumn 1996, filled with the same melancholy of unfulfilled promise. On my walk I noticed a
bush of sloes growing in the hedgerow. The sloe was new to me; I was intrigued and delighted by them, and went back to my desk and put a reference to the fruit into the novel I was writing.

Suddenly he recalls himself, and looking about, sees that Blanche is standing in the doorway, watching him. She is carrying a creation of  bright berries and late autumn gold for his approval. She says nothing. Her watching him says everything that is necessary. He feels moved to make some gesture to express the sadness and beauty that are in his heart.

He puts down the axe, leans it on the chopping block, and goes towards her.  He runs  his hand down her cheek, slowly, slowly, so that his fingers brush the skin as carefully as if he were dusting the gold leaf on a book of hours.

“You are so beautiful,” he said.

She shakes her head, very slightly, a breeze, a murmur of disbelief.

“O, but you are, and not knowing it makes you more beautiful still.”

He leans towards her through the thicket of berberis and sloe and kisses her.

That novel was Palliser Wentwood, the writing of which turned a corner of my life, and changed it for the better, for ever. The melancholy sense of underachievment was banished for years.

Eventually, of course, it returned. These days, I am conscious of having squandered the gifts I was born with, much in the way I have squandered my money. There is a certain amount to show for the talent, as the pages of this journal bear witness, and also for the money, but nothing like as much as there should be for either. Far too much talent wasted on politicking and changing direction and far too much money poured out on a good time, on wine, paté and steak, on clothes that no longer fit (because of the wine, paté and steak) and books unread (see under wine, good times, changes of direction.)

However, it is not too late.  I am not dead yet, as I constantly tell my agent, and anyone else who laments the absence of solid literary work (my play apparently not counting). By chance, the next paragraph in Palliser, after that quote above, featuring the sloe, reads thus:

 

The morning after the kiss, a Sunday, Palliser stands at his window, testing the floor boards with his bare feet and thinking about the slippers lined with possum fur that Jemima made him for his fortieth birthday. Lovely soft fluffy fur, from such a nasty little animal. Fur that reminds him of nothing so much as -

Sunday is officially his day off, and there being no breakfast provided in this strictly fasting household, he has nothing to detain him. More than once he has given up his Sunday morning to take Blanche to the parish church for the advantage that is to be gained from sitting close by her side through the longeurs of the sermon. Sermons always provoke thoughts of the flesh in his mind, and he prays that they might in hers.

But today he feels moved to go out into the autumn and find a bit of skirt. In his pocket is a month’s salary, in crunchy pound notes. In his limbs is energy and in his loins fire. The sun is shining, and there is life in the old dog yet.

Portrait of the artist (medium, inactive) in a new office

In one direction a characterless street with cars whipping by in a constant stream;in the other a vast sea of identical desks. I feel like a character in one of those Sixties futuristic movies, in which all eccentricity and character has been expunged from ordinary life, to create a Brave New World of equality, security and safety. Every desk is identical. We are not supposed to keep personal items on our desks. We are not supposed to eat at our desks. We are to swipe in and out of every door. We are restricted and bossed-about at every turn, removing all sense of autonomy. There is no-one against whom to rail - only a faceless They who have decreed these things.

And what has all this to do with the writer's life that I am chronicling, sporadically, in these pages?

Everything.

The loss of status, the loss of identity, the loss of difference - these sap the vital spiritual juices, the little supposedly irrepressible spring of self-esteem that allows the writer to believe their voice worth hearing. Here, in the heartland of barren business efficency, it is only barely possible to cling on to the sense of self, the essential egotism that is the engine of art.

Engine stalled, hence no activity.

 

 

 

 

Eureka moment

The arrival of a small piece of unsolicited fan mail for Palliser  from America (OK, one piece in several years, but this missive implies that the books are still in circulation, somewhere) has made me revisit the idea of writing a novel.

But as the dogged reader of the e-journal will know, I am currently committed to writing plays. And loving it.

Then the break-though (not, sadly the break-through book, that Holy Grail of all neglected authors) - what if I wrote a novella first, and the play of it,  second? That would create the shape of the play, and all the back story. The actors would read the novella to get the context, I would necessarily know all the detail which I need to write the play.

Instead of a playscript (which we did for Playing Faustus (copies still available (email delaberi@gmail.com))) we could print the novella to sell to the audience, and then out to the wider public.

Brilliant, Imogen. Get writing.

Note:

The lighthouse image is here because the new play/novella is about the terrible two and a half days I spend on Waiheke island when I worked for MAF NZ being reprogrammed.

My version will be set on Lundy Island, which has three lighthouses, no less.

Faustus revisited

I may be morphing into a monster.

In the last month I have done more and slept less than I could have believed possible. The patience of my long-suffering family is beginning to fray at the edges, as once again a dark-eyed wraith rises precipitously  from the dinner table and rushes out, trailing shreds of costume, stray spoons and French novels, and boxes of clean wine glasses - the normal accoutrements of a director/theatre manager. attempting four different productions in three weeks.

But in spite of this superhuman effort, I have a mild sensation of failure because I have barely written a word in a month.

Nonetheless, the month hasn't been wasted in literary terms, because we revived Playing Faustus (see multiple previous posts - ad nauseam, no doubt) and once again it created a tremendously gratifying effect, the words brilliant, great and fantastic being bandied about. It also garnered some excellent intelligent criticism, which made me understand what it was about the play that I didn't find satisfactory, in spite of the aforementioned extravagant praise.

My friend Adrian identified the flaw at the heart of the play - that I am trying to do two slightly different things with it, and so send out a mixed message. I write about the loss of faith and love, about what it is to be in hell, and also about the inherent nature of sin - the murderer/rapist inside us all. While not strictly inconsistent, the dual thrust of these ideas confuses and overwhelms the auditor. 

I am trying to decide whether to rewrite the play completely, change it a little, or simply put it in a box a walk away, having learnt immeasurably from the experience of writing it and playing it, and get on with the next project.

The decision is made harder by the play's myriad fans ( OK, two or three fans) who don't think I should change it at all.

Talking about this to my friend Peter, who is one of the fans, but not disinclined to a rewrite,  I am leaning towards a version which concentrates on the portrait of Stephen (and Margaret's) workaday hell, and remove the portrait of workaday sin for some other time (after all, sharp-eyed readers will have spotted the reworking of some of the stuff about the quotidian nature of sin from my novel The Welcoming Committee) . The sexual assault becomes more emotional and personal, than physically violent, though the effect on their lives is much the same.

But the current project ( my vainglorious own version of Three Sisters)  has a more urgent call on my time, so these ideas will have to bubble away in the mud at the bottom of my mind for a bit longer.

Picking at the coalface

I have a new writing project - a version of Chekhov's Three Sisters, which I am directing in November.

You might wonder why I would want to do this when there are four or five modern translations on the market, some of them very playable.

I have asked myself this question once or twice, suggesting to myself a certain arrogance and foolhardiness in presuming to rewrite Chekhov of all people.  But in reality,  we are not dealing with the words of the master, but the translator's take on them, which is inevitably influenced by the lugubrious Stanislavskian manner of doing the plays. The acme of this is probably the Olivier/Plowright filmed version which is ponderous and self-important. Even so, I remember weeping through it copiously in the cinema. Yes, reader, we used to watch films in a cinema in my youth.

I want Three Sisters to be light and fast and airy, and incidentally shorter, and free from the drawing-room/naturalistic mode of playing associated with Chekhov. I know I have repeatedly said that it makes no sense to move Chekhov to another era, (I may be wrong about that) but you can play it in another style. Or so we are about to find out. The translations are all linked, in my mind, to the built-set, perfectly-accurate-uniforms manner of playing, which constrict the play. A revered designer came to see a rehearsal of student production in which I played Masha; he said "You're not using that champagne bottle in performance, are you? Champagne bottles didn't have gold on the label at that period."

Misplaced attention to detail, methinks. We worried about getting the champagne bottle right, not about the truth of our performances.

I'm probably being unfair on the translators, but I feel that by making the script my own, I can free my imagination from the shackles of past productions.

Currently I doing prep work. I've being doing prep for a while now.  I could make the prep work spin out for a very long time, giving me the illusion of being very busy about my play, and then at the end, opt for one of the translations.

If I do, feel free to mock me publicly for pretentiousness.

In the meantime I am finding lots of displacement activities, not only rehearsals for our 1950's, Paris Left Bank All's Well (my idea, but that's about all I've contributed to the production so far), but things like sorting out the filing, defrosting the freezer, overhauling out the first aid box, weeding... all worthy activities, which fill me with a great sense of achievement, even though all I've done is clear the shamefully overdue backlog of ordinary living. Amazing how one can keep a tube of antibacterical cream for ten years after its use-by date. And I have discovered a hitherto-unknown species of woolly mammoth in the freezer.

True rapture

Am I obsessed by my own writing?

Of course, there is no writer born who is not. It's just that some are well-bred enough to try and disguise it.

I am only obsessing about the last play because I can't get on and write the next one. I can hear the new obsession fluffing up his feathers as he prepares to swoop down and seize me for the wild and vertiginous flight. Now that is the true rapture.

I am filled with an almost indecent desire to gather a group of actors round a raw script and see what emerges.

But this is impossible at present. The exigencies of running a theatre - the means whereby I can put my plays on - require us to get other plays in, some of which I must perforce direct. And we must pay the bills, chase sources of revenue, sweet talk new actors, woo new directors, clean the loos, keep track of the keys, put down the trash - all in the name of Art.

Art, you endlessly demanding lover, but oh, what rapture in your arms.

There to narrowly avoid Macbeth

This week we experienced Cheek by Jowl's Macbeth.

I'm recording my thoughts about it for my own future benefit , because when/if we come to do it again (and I'm thinking 2012) I would like to remember some of the highs and lows of this inspired but equally troubled production.  I would like to pretend that I will remember it in detail, but sad experience has taught me otherwise.

This photo is not from Cheek by Jowl's Macbeth, but David Widdowson as Stephen in my Playing Faustus. I like it better than any of the available images from CbyJ, which are tense and monochrome.

David had a good first stab at Macbeth in the days when I knew nothing about directing Shakespeare. Both he & I have come a long way since then, as his magnificent Stephen/Faustus demonstrated  He badly wants to do try M again, and I'm toying with the idea.

Round up of reviews

The Cheek by Jowl version made me think about the play afresh - as they always do. They take the pieces of a play, throw them into a hat and shake them up vigorously, and chuck them on the floor to see what comes out.
They don't feel the need to keep the Stuffed Stag - which graced every As You Like It at the RSC from 1880 until 1951.  They don't feel the need to have swords, daggers, blood, food, letters or armour. Equally they don't feel the need to have separate actors for Donalbain, Fleance, young Macduff, Seton, Ross, Monteith, Angus etc, which is liberating in the extreme. We started down this path with our wonderful jazz age tea-sipping, gin-soaked witches, who turned up all over the place, as murderers. the porter, banquet guests, the doctor... But Cheek by Jowl don't feel the need to keep the witches either.

Macbeth without the witches? There are two reasons why this doesn't work. One is psychological. Some web critics were confused by the non-visible witches (two women's voices, and the company whispering) into thinking that both Banquo and Macbeth were imagining them. But this surely does serious damage to the fabric of the play. Actually, I don't think we were supposed to think them imagined, any more than we were supposed to think that  Macbeth's mimed daggers and bloody hands weren't real - but it gets confusing when you have an invisible dagger (Is this a dagger I see before me?) that is not real, and invisible daggers that are real. And I realise I hate mime.

The second reason is also about the structure of the play - I always argue strenuously for keeping Shakespeare's scene structure, even in the most residual form (e.g. a song replacing a little scene) because the audience absolutely needs what I call 'the bridging scenes' which give you some relief (not necessarily comic) between the high points.  In this version, you get relentless Macbeth and/or Lady Macbeth from the opening until the England scene. And when the Macbeths are as frenetic, unbalanced and intense as this couple it's completely disengaging. One simply switches off to them, in spite of being within spitting distance of, and apparently direct eye contact with Macbeth, during almost every one of his soliloquies.

The witches, as well as the other little scenes, are necessary breaks, which allow us to draw breath. Otherwise we collapse exhausted.

What was good about this production?  If one had never seen a Cheek by Jowl before, one would have been blown away from the amazing energy, the wonderful graceful precision of the movement, the beauty created with the simplest means - a few people in black, brilliantly positioned and lit, making a moving pictures to die for.  Beautiful live music, percussion, dance.  One would also have been excited by the constant gesture, the stumbling and rushes of the speech, making it sound as if newly minted by the character - about as far from the traditional slow, static delivery of old as it's possible to get.

The trouble is, we have seen them before, and all this is now routine, and worse, it has now become so codified and exaggerated as to be as bad as Donald Wolfit spouting by the Stuffed Stag.  No one can stand still. No one can look another actor in the eye. No-one can speak to the audience and really speak to the audience. No-one can say a line just as it is written, as if it were poetry.

The production reminded me that the difference between a Macbeth that works and one that doesn't is fundamentally one of humanity - do we feel for the Macbeths, for Banquo and the Macduffs, in different ways, of course, as human beings. When Macbeth cuts his wife out of his life, when he says "I am in blood stepped in so far, that to go back would be as tedious as go o'er" - we should care about his decline, even though we abhor him. The Macbeths in this production were unhinged and unengaging from the start, with none of the charisma and charm that they need to succeed in their evil. The high points for all of us in my little group was the England scene, with Macduff's very real emotion at the death of his wife, even though he had clearly been told to play it was deadpan as possible.

On the whole, this production was liberating - you can do without broadswords, but you cannot do without the human heart.

sharing the pain, sharing the glory

Tiggi is home for the holidays.  It's wonderful. Someone to talk to endlessly about creative projects, who understands completely what it's like to be bursting with ideas. Someone who knows from first hand experience how hard it is to seem modest when you have a healthy respect for your own talent.

The downside is that I am bursting with pride over my "Playing Faustus", which has been extraordinarily well received, and Tiggi who normally shares these triumphs with me is unable to manage crowds and enclosed spaces. So I have to content myself with raving to her about a play she hasn't seen or read. It's even beginning to bore me.

The truth is that, as is the classic way of the artist, as soon as one work is completed, you move on to the next one. The previous work is quite uninteresting; only its flaws stay in your memory. The good parts have simply become part of one's oeuvre.

I made this pretty little speech at the cast party (the first part was all the thank yous that last night speeches contain de rigeur):

...For me the last two months have been among the most rewarding and exhilarating episodes of my life, and that’s saying something. I have delighted in every moment of seeing and hearing my literary creation become a living thing in your hands. I have loved watching you making the characters your own and running with my text. And that’s a mixed metaphor.   As director, I’ve also enjoyed every single minute of rehearsal, as Jeremy will affirm, and have loved working with such a great group of actors. No-one ever complained about the great weight of words I laid on you in those long long speeches.

I have promised David that in the next part I write for him, he will only have to grunt and not kiss anyone.

 

Theatre is catharsis. And this piece of theatre is specifically cathartic for me. You – without necessarily realising it – have taken  my thoughts, feelings, the inner workings of my head and heart, and embodied them. You have made them your own, and in doing that you have let the light in under the door. To change the metaphor, you have been the instruments and collaborators of  this birth, and now it is born, it is no longer inside me. Shit, why can’t we express ourselves without metaphors…

 

Last night I watched David intently, as I always do – for all the right reasons -  saying my lines, expressing my thoughts, and suddenly I realised that they were no longer mine.  They had gone into the play, been transformed by art, and left me.  

This doesn’t make the play any better or worse -  it could be cathartic and still be crap literature - but I wanted to share it with you, and thank you all from the bottom of my now rather less tortured soul. And now it’s time for the power of hug....

That last remark is a reference to a great line added by Kieran, who plays Brian. After the most brilliant, soapy and soppy rendition of "The Power of Love", he tells the audience to experience "the power of hug". Wish I'd written that line.