Harvest Moon + Lunar Eclipse = Songwriting

I woke up this morning from a dream crying, and had to catch my breath upon waking.

I have one or two of these a year. Usually they're anxiety dreams about not having spoken to my mum enough, and I dream something has happened to her, and it makes me pick up the phone immediately. to check on her. They're my brain's way of telling me that I've been too self-absorbed and that I need to connect with the people that matter most to me. Because my mum and I only have one another, I think this is mild only-child-of-a-single-parent woe. 

This dream was different. It was about my ex, and it told me very clearly that the door to our connection was closing, and that my mind and body are re-assessing his influence in my life. I've been inside that process for nearly a year and a half,  more "officially" for a year, but after seeing a photo I hadn't meant to see, making it very clear that he had moved on and is in another relationship,  my brain started doing calculations in the background about what that meant for me. Maybe this weekend's full moon just made sure I'd caught myself up.

The truth is that I've also moved on, and moved very far away from our life together. I've dated others this year, sure, but mostly I've been working on making personal choices I know my older self will look back on and be proud of, after a heartbreaking rupture last spring made me question so many of the choices I had made over the past six years.

Apparently we're all feeling the effects this weekend of a giant harvest moon timed, unusually, with a lunar eclipse.  Our watery bodies are supposedly affected by the push and pull of the moon and this is a time of re-setting the emotional dial.  Here's the forecast for all of us from foreverconscious.com

This Eclipse may stir up some painful moments or some fears, but know that this is all so you can grow and flourish in the direction that you need to.  

While this Eclipse is helping to release the truth, it may also release any angers or frustrations that have been simmering beneath the surface. Emotions will be very high around this Eclipse and it may be difficult to see clearly at first.  

Know that the best way to channel this energy is into something creative. Writing, art and music are all excellent ways to channel any anger, frustration or heightened emotions that appear. 

 So I wrote a song about it (It's pretty terrible, but it'll be good to sing, in a somewhat PJ Harvey sermonising-style). My co-band member even wrote music for it already. Here goes.

Harvest Moon

You got me looking like a fool

Harvest Moon

I wake crying salty tears

Big rushing tidal fears

All alone in a stolid room

Emotion pushing through the gloom

All out of sorts, in my bed

I can't seem to find my head

My soul as heavy as deadened lead

I miss all the things you never said

Oh, Harvest Moon, you got me looking like a fool

The Bad Poetry Club

For a moment,

when I thought I'd lost my bag in a London cafe,
I got that dropped-stomach feeling.

That familiar lurch,
which all of us know.
The panic.

Where did it go? It was just there.

It's the same feeling as when I saw you, in April,
and you told me -
I don't feel the same
I don't see the same future for us.

I've had that feeling many times before,
But never as much
as
that day
on a Barcelona beach in April.

Where did it go? It was just there.

Findings

On a recent, fleeting trip to the US (to Idaho, no less, a place of which I had zero expectations, and left more than pleasantly surprised), I honoured what has now become a travelling-through-the-US-custom, and bought myself some twizzlers and a copy of New York magazine. During the 50-odd hour roundtrip journey from Barcelona to Boise, I devoured both, along with a book gifted to me by my friend Lo-Sal called Findings, by Kathleen Jamie.

Jamie is first and foremost a poet, who writes about observations in the natural world; in this case the collected essays published are all about Scotland. Her poetic prose is easy to read, loose-fitting, casual, comforting - but no less affecting for it. She said in an interview once that Findings was notoriously difficult to classify - both for her publisher to take it on, and for bookstores to try to decide which section to put it in, but that her readers don’t seem to mind. And I didn’t. It’s like someone pulling a big chunky cable-knit woollen blanket over you and while you’re starting to fall asleep, telling you stories about what they can see from the window. Whilst stroking your hair.

Her style is so natural - of course, for someone who chooses to write about the natural world, this is essential - but her ease with words also makes for comfortable reading.

“Fancy - day after day of summer sunshine, in April. The house grows dusty and neglected because we all spend so much time outdoors. It’s unseasonal, but all weather is unseasonal nowadays. The plum blossom is coming and next door’s old pear tree is a perfect triangle of greenish-white froth. They do this like a conjuring trick, the old trees. They’re brittle and cronish all winter, then blossom issues out of them and fills the tree slowly, like a dancehall filling on a Saturday night.”  Peregrines, Ospreys, Cranes, [Jamie, K. Findings: (Penguin, 2005) p.32 ]

Findings is all about looking for things, and what I’ve been looking for is a way to focus my writing, and find the time and dedication needed to finish things. I think that’s why Lo-Sal chose this book to gift to me. He said that my writing reminded him of Jamie's, a huge compliment, but of course my style doesn’t hold a candle to hers, all unbalanced and gawky and newborn as it is. However, immersing myself in someone else’s writing style inevitably gets me thinking about my own, if indeed such a voice exists.

Happily for me, and my fledgling written voice, an article in New York magazine, my other long-haul reading material, introduced me to Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. Cameron is a screenwriter, poet, playwright and general all-round creativity guru whose seminal aforementioned work has helped to “unblock” the creativity of countless artists around the world. (She was also briefly married to Martin Scorsese in the late 70s, a factoid which to this day seems to define the poor woman; not that in our fair, equal society a woman is the sum of whoever she happens to have been married to, but it does seem to captivate her audiences).

It’s billed as a self-help book, which does make me shudder a little, and the full title : The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity may support some of its detractors’ claims, which is namely that there is a little bit too much God in it. Having said all of that, two main ideas have caught my interest: Morning Pages (every morning without fail, upon waking, writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness-flow by hand) and the Artist’s Date: a once-per week time set aside, and guarded fiercely, to do something that gives you inspiration, not necessarily an artistic pursuit per se, but perhaps time in a food market, a library, a bookstore or the cinema, the idea being that it’s a safe space for creative thoughts to come to you with a relaxed brain. 

Both of these ideas, I like. And with the next two months of relative freedom from work constraints rolling out ahead of me, and a close friend’s insistence that I really ought to try and finish some proper fiction, and set myself some solid writing goals (quite right, MF, you’ve always been a super editor), I’m very tempted to skip reading the book, take on these two main tenets as experiments in upping my creative output, and set the timer on myself (t-minus 2.5 months) to see what comes forth.  

Beauty in the Details

Since leaving the UK, I am able to find more things beautiful than when I was living here. The distance makes me nostalgic,  and prone to romanticism. I'm still predisposed to expat moaning about the weather, about the hideously disorganised train station at Gatwick, and about the cost of living (the price of a glass of wine in a London pub is nothing short of scandalous), but each time I return I am reminded of the intrinsically strange and wondrous things that make this green, rain-soaked little island such a uniquely wonderful place.

Two things in particular have struck me on this visit.

1. We have an almost unparalleled university system. One I feel proud to have studied in, and one which encourages the nerdy, the geeky, the obsessive, and the introverted; those whose interests may have been their only friends through school and their adolescence. We welcome that obsesssiveness, if not demand it. This made the Americans I was recently touring universities in the Midlands with a little uncomfortable. They have students who they would consider on the "autistic spectrum" if they threw themselves wholeheartedly and unabashedly into one narrow field of study. It's almost unheard of in the USA until doctorate level, and yet we require this stringently of our 18 year olds. If being able to focus an entire university application and a series of up-to-twenty-minute interviews throughout a day waxing lyrical about one's interest in Roman coins or pre-Raphaelite paintings, toxicology or the films of Truffaut means that you're on the autistic spectrum, then I suppose most of Oxford and Cambridge's students must be damaged goods.

This kind of focus and drive is what creates the idea of great British eccentricity we are all so familiar with. And guess who loves the idea the most? You only have to watch how British academics are represented in American film to understand just how enamoured they are of the idea of this fiercely geeky, weird but ultimately brilliant intelligence : Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything? Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game? Emma Thompson as Sybill Trelawny in Harry Potter?!

Where else could we have watched a lecture on entertainment in early modern times - entitled Stage, Stake and Scaffold, all about theatre, bear-baiting, and hangings in Elizabethan London?

2. People here are dead funny. There was a chipperness to people in the Midlands, despite the weather and the buildings (at times) being uniquely grey. Actually, I think this is pretty widespread. The British can laugh at themselves, and often do. We admit freely to needing to have a drink to function in large social situations. We know we can't dance, yet we have zero hesitation about yowling discordantly in large groups to karaoke hits. It initially takes more of us to strike up a conversation, but a couple of pints in our veins and we'll chat until the cows come home.

I'm back in Scotland again, having last been here in November. It's a glorious evening to arrive, with a sweet dusky pink sunset kissing the treetops. Every burn, brook and stretch of water glistens in the light, and there's a lot of water in Scotland. A friendly Glaswegian woman waiting for the loo on the train sizes me up in the queue and immediately starts chatting to me about her journey from Bournemouth. It's taken her 9 hours, but she tells me she would happily rather take the train than fly. "You can have your book, and your coffee, and your sandwich, and watch the world go by, and there's none of that..." - she motions brusquely to her feet, making a grimace - "take off your shoes, take off your belt, take out your water rubbish". (The Scots have a deserved reputation for being some of the friendliest and chattiest Britons).

And that is the British idea of pure pleasure, a hot drink, a sandwich, a good book and a journey.

I think that's the meaning of beauty in the details. Details - whether they be found in a subject you love, an eccentric leaning towards something that others might find odd, or or just knowing what little fripperies will make you happy. Generally speaking, we Brits don't need big and showy. A simple well-made cup of tea will draw contented sighs and a sense of inner peace.

It's the little things, isn't it?

Show us your Manuelas, Love

There’s an ad on Spanish telly currently that I feel compelled to tell you about. I want you to see it for yourselves. It’s for underwear from the Italian lingerie company Intimissimi, a brand that until now had passed me by, in a sort of “oh yes they’re everywhere but I never really bought anything there, because they’re sort of everywhere and they’re sort of blandly overpriced” way. 

Until this advert found its way into my living room.

Seriously, you have to watch it.

In said ad, we are introduced to a dashing young brunette in her bra and knickers, who appears to be trying to read and make notes in a chilly-looking industrial warehouse space full of books. Ostensibly, she is studying, because soon, flashing onscreen is Maria: Student, Madrid, accompanied by her voiceover - “I’m a student. I’m curious. I’m determined. I am the warmth of my laughter. This is my story.”  (Ok, I admit this is badly, roughly translated from the Spanish, which is in turn translated from the original Italian ad. But I think you get the idea).The hashtag #imastory was all over the screen first, on a book that opened up for us like an enormous disclaimer. It might as well have said #iamcompletelymadeup or #iamtheficticiouswetdreamofanadvertisingexec. 

I nearly spat out my wine as I guffawed at the screen. But then I realised this wasn’t some kind of Rude Tube rundown of the most laughable adverts of the Hispanophone world, it was really an advert trying to sell bras. It was a woman who REALLY was supposed to be a current student, showing us her push-up Manuelas.

¿En Serio? You might well ask. But this advertising concept is too old, and this material too hackneyed, to get all angry young woman about it. It’s just white noise to my generation. We all know we live in a world where Italian lingerie companies don’t have to give a toss about the messaging they send out to young women, or to young men for that matter. What? They’re just #stories, y’all. Students wear lingerie, and yes, they might study for their finals in said lingerie, and yes they might damn well study in large warehouse spaces filled with books in their bras and knickers, and they would be PERFECTLY within their rights to do so, and without judgement. Haters gonna hate.

The main problem I have with this advert, really, is its ludicrousness. But hey, we’ve all seen worse. So maybe, if we just treat it with the same amount of respect that we’d allow a perfume advert with Brad Pitt spouting some nonsense about things being inevitable, or Keira Knightley showing us it is possible to pout intensely whilst driving a gondola or whatever it is she does in those Chanel ads, it’ll make young women who actually are students, and are really thinking, and actually reading, and might already know all about the male gaze, mainstream media’s scopophiliac, voyeuristic and narcissicistic tendencies, treat this ad like the ad execs’ fantasy it really is, and not go rushing out to buy overpriced bland lingerie at the expense of their next couple of jägerbombs, or their books, for that matter.

In fact, why not let’s all go braless in retaliation and squish a few pennies off Intimissimi’s end of year sales figures, in the meantime? You could choose to flounce around an abandoned warehouse space in your drawers, hashtagging it #nobraday as part of America’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, or take @augustadt_iris’s great advice and schedule a mammogram instead. 

Independence Day? Or: Why Catalonia Might Not Be Spain

“You still have this…bullshit?”

That was the reaction of my Spanish housemate as we were sitting at the table discussing our respective political systems, and I’d gotten to the part about the House of Lords.

“Ok, we still have these things in Spain, too: an unelected monarchy, and aristocratic people like the Duquesa de Alba. She had more titles than your Queen,” she smiled.

Our conversation had come about because whilst crossing the street last weekend, I had been stopped by a kind-faced older Catalan woman who had taken great pains to follow me across the street; speaking with complicit urgency, she pushed this leaflet into my hand:

7 Respostes Sobre La Independència (7 Answers About Independence) was all written in Catalan: a language of which I still have limited command after two relatively short bursts of living in Barcelona (this is another subject that could take a whole other column to explore, but we’ll leave it there for now), and so I’d asked my obliging, intelligent compañera de piso, who is from a small town near the border between Catalonia and Aragon, to help me translate it.

The seven questions inside, ranging from Why an Independent Catalonia? to Will It be Economically Viable? Will we stay in the EU? are all answered in equally assured tones.

Yes, independence is the only opportunity to create a better and more just state for everyone!

If Catalonia wants to form part of the European Union, it will.

Yes, economically, the Catalan Republic is totally viable.

They’re pretty simplistic responses to very complicated questions. Examples are given throughout of how independence is the only opportunity to create a new state, changing outdated structures, re-establishing democracy and rejecting the current administration. There’s a lot of talk of creating a more just society and maintaining a sense of dual identities.

Living in Catalonia right now must be a bit like how living in Scotland felt just a little over a year ago. Although Barcelona is by far not the most pro-indpendista city in the region (try ordering a café con leche in Girona, and see how they take great pains to reply in Catalan or English), there’s a real buzz at the moment around the forthcoming Catalan parliamentary elections this Sunday. In these local elections, a host of separatist parties from across the political spectrum are placing their hopes in a consensus from the people in forging ahead with secession from Spain. The Catalan President, Artur Mas, has declared the outcome to be a proxy referendum after patently ignoring Prime Minster Rajoy’s insistence that this would be unconstitutional (The Spanish Constitutional Court voted to suspend a Catalan referendum last September, although a non-binding poll was still held, to the tune of 80% voting yes to independence). 

Even so, it probably wasn’t the brightest idea not to allow 16-odd percent of your country to feel they had a say in their own future, and thus the fervent spectre of independence has raised its head again. Even as Spain’s economy supposedly ‘bounces back’ after announcing its strongest quarterly growth in 8 years, on the ground here there’s still a long way to go. Tackling unemployment rates of 18% is still going to take some doing. And in a region of the country that contributes more than 18% of domestic GDP, hard line austerity measures - savage cuts in public spending on health and education, doled out from Madrid - are about as popular as suckling pig would be on David Cameron’s next dinner menu.

Despite my immediate circle here not including any strong pro-independentistas, there are some strange similarities between the type of political conversations we have here, and those I have with friends in the UK. The overarching themes are usually the same - a widespread sense of alienation with the current choice of leading parties and/or the feeling that the parties whose policies you might agree with have little sway in your constituency (Spanish general elections follow a first-past-the-post format, too.) A sense of widespread corruption built into the existing systems, a sense of inbuilt privilege being the surest route into politics and a real distrust of carefully stage-managed communications in the mainstream media. All of the things that led me to write this for The Malcontent, in fact.

Independence might not be the immediate way forward for the people of Catalonia to change  or combat all of these things, but hoping for change from the status quo and sticking two fingers up at the establishment might be powerful enough to create waves that bleed into other parts of Europe.  Just as the Scottish referendum result was watched here with huge interest, so might the Catalan elections be watched in the Basque country, in Galicia, in Wales, and in Scotland again, in return.

What’s evident is that a leaflet like this could be produced in most regions of Europe, even the UK right now and it would gain readership. Is that a dangerous thing, or a sign of so much disillusion with our current political elite that, if harnessed by the right candidate, could be used as a truly unifying force?

My flatmate and I certainly don’t have all, or even any of the answers. But I at least now understand a bit more of the current situation here, and she’s all up to date on #piggate. 

We put on Pulp’s Common People and had a little dance around the living room.

Flutter (A Short Story, Not At All Autobiographical)

The days were long in June, and the evenings barely blushed and fluttered their eyelids, with a sunset of a little over two hours. He felt that day had lasted forever, as he waited for her to arrive. He idled. The long glass corridors made him uneasy: the ringing out of his heels on the polished wooden floors troubled him somehow, as if he were pacing a hospital corridor. Here he was, in the site chosen to mark the occasion of their long overdue meeting.  

The idea had come to her in a Williamsburg bookshop. She had picked up a series of travel essays about Iceland, and she’d fallen in love with the photos; her glacial eyes gleaming at finding such serene blues on the book jacket. They had picked the Harpa concert hall as their meeting point. “We can pick up our own symphony where we left off,” she had said.

Their lives had been abruptly separated when she had accepted a new job in a New York publishing house.  He had remained in London, unwilling to give up the work he loved as an editor, but also the townhouse, the dog, and his usual weekend stroll to collect the paper, followed with precise regularity by a flat white and some Ottolenghi sourdough toast. It wasn’t that he was stuck in his ways. Just comfortable. It had been four months since their last physical meeting, and an intercontinental ache had set in. He despised the digital. He couldn’t get used to their instant messaging – it just seemed so banal, the information they would exchange: the photos of their lunches, their desks, their walks to work. In the early days, he thought, they might have met at the museum of penises instead. They would have snickered in complicit unison, as they had on their first trip to Amsterdam. The sex museum had hardly been highbrow, but they had wandered about in a dazed glow, giggling as they took in exhibits of Monroe and Mata Hari. That first year had seemed like one long Sunday morning spent entangled in his high threadcount sheets. Now? They whatsapped their salads to one another.

He sighed, his heartbeat quickening. He missed her nape, her scent, her often-fuzzy legs. He fought his impending erection, scandalous in the airy confines of a concert hall with endless windows. He strode, then slowed, then sat, then stood and dialled. A robotic voice asked for his message, but he found he had none.The sun was dipping, lazily, like a cat stretching. There was no sign of her. He tried her phone again, fruitlessly. An icy thought gripped him: panic that her plane hadn’t arrived. As he arrived at the next possible conclusion, he felt nauseous. 

She hadn’t boarded in the first place. 

Light danced on the glass panels, honeycomb glittering in the soft evening sunshine. Final flurries of activity at the concert hall doors were taking place. Attendants collected wayward tickets, wives snapped their handbags shut and husbands downed the last of their drinks. He put his dinner jacket over his shoulder, and hurried down the glossy hallway, towards the briefest of dusks.