The other night, my husband and I had an argument.
Not very uplifting, and I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say it was about one of the two main subjects married people tend to fight over, and it wasn't about sex.
The argument came pretty much out of nowhere, and our son was in the bath in the next room. He was playing away, chatting to himself, even as I stormed, and husband snapped.
Later on our son came downstairs to kiss me goodnight, and made no mention of the parental explosion. I put it to the back of my mind, still angry.
The next morning, he came downstairs with his bear, and told me, "My bear's said I have to pack my clothes and leave".
A knot formed deep in my stomach. Some of these words he'd overheard from me the night before. What had gone on in his mind? What had he understood? How had he come to the decision to use his bear to represent his anxiety? Which elements were conscious, and which unconscious? What had I meant by the words I'd used?
I took him onto my lap and said firmly that no one was leaving, that mummies and daddies sometimes had a fight, but that it was normal, and we would make up, that we hadn't yet, but we would.
He pushed his face into my neck and we sat together in silence. The room was in shadow, and it was a cold morning. I asked him to fetch my husband, who was making breakfast in the kitchen. He and I went into another room to make up.
Except that we didn't — the fight, perhaps to the astonishment of both of us, rekindled. Although it didn't lead to shouting (too aware of an audience), we were in a dark and narrow impasse, walls of resentment and misunderstanding penning us in, and we couldn't move forwards or backwards. I wanted an apology. He wanted exoneration. I left the room. The morning wore on.
We tried again at lunchtime, while the children were at school. In excruciatingly slow and halting sentences, we said again, like robots, the things that we were each upset by. No shouting, but no emergence from the impasse. We both worked silently, me upstairs, him downstairs, until it was time for me to fetch the children.
On the way home, my daughter had a headache, and my son collected daisies, dandelions, and violets. I told them that mummy and daddy still hadn't patched things up, and asked for their help.
When we got back, our son went straight to give some of his flowers to his father, and the rest to me. He took me upstairs to where my husband was working, and announced, "You need to say sorry to each other". He had to take a big puff of air to say this, his chest was pushed out, and he stood tall. The words came out of him as though they were large and important animals, difficult to swallow whole. He looked ceremoniously at each of us in turn. He waited.
We faltered, and mumbled, and said we forgave each other, and that we were sorry. The late afternoon sunshine filtered through the windows. The television drummed out Horrid Henry downstairs. Our son nodded, turned on his heel, and left. We kissed, and felt ashamed.
Friday, 17 May 2013
Thursday, 25 April 2013
Montaigne, Proust and mindfulness
This morning, on In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg was being peremptory and testy with one of my former professors and mentors, Terence Cave. The subject was Montaigne, death, friendship, the essai, stoicism and living in the moment.
I do need to digress to poke a stick at some Braggadocio. Thank goodness the man exists so that this programme itself can — but, oh, the misogyny, the pomposity and the insecurity! He speaks over any woman he has on the show and is rude to anyone more intellectually prestigious than himself. Quite often he behaves like a second-year student, who got drunk the night before and only has half an essay, and so is compensating by being bloody-minded. Hearing him order Professor Cave to "go on, tell us what Montaigne was on about, then," was excruciating.
Professor Cave and his excellent Renaissance companions teased out how Montaigne harnessed and channelled his classical education and his experience of public life into his writing. Unlike anyone writing around him, he decided, at 38, to withdraw to his library in a tower (I'd like one of them, please) write in the first person, and attempt to capture what was passing through his mind.
Given his privileged education and career, what passed through Montaigne's mind was a lot more interesting than what passes through most people's (although he would probably dispute this). The point for him was a preparation for a good death, and to grapple with his attachment to things in this life.
What makes him extraordinary is the fluency and range of what he writes about, beginning usually with a tiny detail, and flowing associatively from thought to thought. Many readers feel that he is writing what they have felt but not expressed in words, and feel an uncanny closeness with him. His is a mode of emergent truth — 'que sais-je?' being the hallmark of his style and content. He is always hoping to find out who he is.
As the speakers were talking, I kept finding myself wanting to shout, "Proust!" at the radio. There are so many parallels and continuities between the two men, even though they are separated by nearly three and a half centuries. At the most basic level, there is the exclusive classical education, the love of travel, the hypochondria, the public life and then withdrawal from it to a tower or bedroom, the pleasure in minute details, and the capacity to extrapolate associatively from them.
Both men both wrote in the first person, but also invented a new genre: Montaigne's essais, his tests or attempts, are not autobiography, philosophy or factual account, but a uniquely voiced blend of all three. Proust's novel hesitates between fiction and autobiography — and began life as a conversation with his mother, which was to have been an argument with a literary critic: it was an essay.
Proust was known to be able to recite chunks of Montaigne by heart — yet this inveterate mimic and recycler of literary forebears does not actually name his sixteenth-century precursor in A la recherche. Perhaps the connections are so many and so intense that he could not, for fear of becoming overwhelmed by another writer's identity. Whether he names him or not, however, his novel is saturated with Montaigne's spirit.
In the end, what I wanted to shout loudest of all at the radio was, "Mindfulness!" All right, Montaigne and Proust weren't exactly Buddhists. Yet there are striking points of connection. Both Montaigne and Proust privileged the evanescent present moment, as well as observation and detail at their finest granularity, sensed through the body rather than the intellect.
Privileging the present moment, though, was an almost inaccessible ideal to the two men, steeped as they were in Western doubt.
Montaigne is one of the avenues through which classical Stoicism and Scepticism are transmitted to modernity. The motto of the former might be 'accept what you cannot change', while the watchword of the latter might be 'don't believe anything you can't verify yourself'. This battle between acceptance and refusal can be heard all the way through the centuries in Western thought. It comes out everywhere in Proust, in a tension between accepting himself enough to start writing, and an obsessive refusal to take anything for granted. Living in the present, accepting our thoughts and feelings, that was a bridge too far for Marcel, and we have 3000 pages of prose to show for the struggle.
Yet perhaps we need to be grateful that they would both have been absolutely terrible at mindfulness. Too busy trying to write down everything their minds wandered to, to be able to lie on their yoga mats and just be in the present.
I do need to digress to poke a stick at some Braggadocio. Thank goodness the man exists so that this programme itself can — but, oh, the misogyny, the pomposity and the insecurity! He speaks over any woman he has on the show and is rude to anyone more intellectually prestigious than himself. Quite often he behaves like a second-year student, who got drunk the night before and only has half an essay, and so is compensating by being bloody-minded. Hearing him order Professor Cave to "go on, tell us what Montaigne was on about, then," was excruciating.
Professor Cave and his excellent Renaissance companions teased out how Montaigne harnessed and channelled his classical education and his experience of public life into his writing. Unlike anyone writing around him, he decided, at 38, to withdraw to his library in a tower (I'd like one of them, please) write in the first person, and attempt to capture what was passing through his mind.
Given his privileged education and career, what passed through Montaigne's mind was a lot more interesting than what passes through most people's (although he would probably dispute this). The point for him was a preparation for a good death, and to grapple with his attachment to things in this life.
What makes him extraordinary is the fluency and range of what he writes about, beginning usually with a tiny detail, and flowing associatively from thought to thought. Many readers feel that he is writing what they have felt but not expressed in words, and feel an uncanny closeness with him. His is a mode of emergent truth — 'que sais-je?' being the hallmark of his style and content. He is always hoping to find out who he is.
As the speakers were talking, I kept finding myself wanting to shout, "Proust!" at the radio. There are so many parallels and continuities between the two men, even though they are separated by nearly three and a half centuries. At the most basic level, there is the exclusive classical education, the love of travel, the hypochondria, the public life and then withdrawal from it to a tower or bedroom, the pleasure in minute details, and the capacity to extrapolate associatively from them.
Both men both wrote in the first person, but also invented a new genre: Montaigne's essais, his tests or attempts, are not autobiography, philosophy or factual account, but a uniquely voiced blend of all three. Proust's novel hesitates between fiction and autobiography — and began life as a conversation with his mother, which was to have been an argument with a literary critic: it was an essay.
Proust was known to be able to recite chunks of Montaigne by heart — yet this inveterate mimic and recycler of literary forebears does not actually name his sixteenth-century precursor in A la recherche. Perhaps the connections are so many and so intense that he could not, for fear of becoming overwhelmed by another writer's identity. Whether he names him or not, however, his novel is saturated with Montaigne's spirit.
In the end, what I wanted to shout loudest of all at the radio was, "Mindfulness!" All right, Montaigne and Proust weren't exactly Buddhists. Yet there are striking points of connection. Both Montaigne and Proust privileged the evanescent present moment, as well as observation and detail at their finest granularity, sensed through the body rather than the intellect.
Privileging the present moment, though, was an almost inaccessible ideal to the two men, steeped as they were in Western doubt.
Montaigne is one of the avenues through which classical Stoicism and Scepticism are transmitted to modernity. The motto of the former might be 'accept what you cannot change', while the watchword of the latter might be 'don't believe anything you can't verify yourself'. This battle between acceptance and refusal can be heard all the way through the centuries in Western thought. It comes out everywhere in Proust, in a tension between accepting himself enough to start writing, and an obsessive refusal to take anything for granted. Living in the present, accepting our thoughts and feelings, that was a bridge too far for Marcel, and we have 3000 pages of prose to show for the struggle.
Yet perhaps we need to be grateful that they would both have been absolutely terrible at mindfulness. Too busy trying to write down everything their minds wandered to, to be able to lie on their yoga mats and just be in the present.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Asking the difficult questions
My beautiful, fantastically intelligent friend, Gill Howie, died on 26 March 2013. She died of cancer, after a long illness, and she has left two young boys.
We had drifted apart over the last decade or so, for no reason other than that both of us were working hard, she had had children, and then I did. She was in Liverpool, I was in Cambridge, then Australia, then London, then moving, then management consulting, then researching, then governing bodying, then... then... you get the picture. Busying myself.
Gill was a feminist philosopher, and asked difficult questions all the time about Marxism, and critical thinkers. Gill was an activist intellectual. She thought it was vital to live out her moral investigations in her own actions. So she was a union activist, and later, once she was a professor at Liverpool, and a head of department, I imagine she looked after the interests of her staff to the very best of her abilities.
Because Gill was one of the most compassionate people I have ever known. She had this interest in other people, this love of whatever other people did— they fascinated her, others. It was their very differentness from her that she was absorbed by. She had incredibly piercing eyes, and it always felt as though she were looking straight into your soul, and your own bad faith. Yet she also had the extraordinary gift of not judging or punishing others. Despite being massively more intelligent than most people around her, she was able to hold people as they developed, rather than crushing them with her judgements. She was so patient with the foibles and setbacks of others.
But she was very far from being sanctimonious. I am not talking priestly self-effacement here. Gill may have been the best listener I have ever known, but she wasn't silent. Gill was a most vital, sensual, pleasure-seeking creature. She was utterly immersed in all that life has to offer by way of sensory experience. Gill was naughty in the best possible ways. Hers were the best parties in Cambridge, she was a magnet for some of the most talented and creative people I have ever known. Her tiny flat was a salon, full of people vying for her approval and attention, which she bestowed with queenly benevolence equally on everyone. She was a beautiful cat. How many lives has she touched?
I wish I had not drifted away from her. She was one of the reasons I wanted to do a phd, and thought it was worth the effort and struggle, she made the intellectual adventure of it feel alive and important. She broke out my idealism and my feminism, and never capitulated to that dimension of feminism which is about self-flagellation and perfectionism. For her, feminism was about the right of every woman and every person to their own liberty and pleasure, free from fear and bullying, and it was about the importance of free thought as a practice. She lived her philosophy and worked it out all through her wonderful life. I will miss her very much.
Perhaps the only way to respond to her death is to carry on asking the difficult questions she used to ask, the ones that go straight to the heart of a problem, and enable people to discuss it and resolve it. She was a very brave woman. Let asking the difficult questions be her legacy.
We had drifted apart over the last decade or so, for no reason other than that both of us were working hard, she had had children, and then I did. She was in Liverpool, I was in Cambridge, then Australia, then London, then moving, then management consulting, then researching, then governing bodying, then... then... you get the picture. Busying myself.
Gill was a feminist philosopher, and asked difficult questions all the time about Marxism, and critical thinkers. Gill was an activist intellectual. She thought it was vital to live out her moral investigations in her own actions. So she was a union activist, and later, once she was a professor at Liverpool, and a head of department, I imagine she looked after the interests of her staff to the very best of her abilities.
Because Gill was one of the most compassionate people I have ever known. She had this interest in other people, this love of whatever other people did— they fascinated her, others. It was their very differentness from her that she was absorbed by. She had incredibly piercing eyes, and it always felt as though she were looking straight into your soul, and your own bad faith. Yet she also had the extraordinary gift of not judging or punishing others. Despite being massively more intelligent than most people around her, she was able to hold people as they developed, rather than crushing them with her judgements. She was so patient with the foibles and setbacks of others.
But she was very far from being sanctimonious. I am not talking priestly self-effacement here. Gill may have been the best listener I have ever known, but she wasn't silent. Gill was a most vital, sensual, pleasure-seeking creature. She was utterly immersed in all that life has to offer by way of sensory experience. Gill was naughty in the best possible ways. Hers were the best parties in Cambridge, she was a magnet for some of the most talented and creative people I have ever known. Her tiny flat was a salon, full of people vying for her approval and attention, which she bestowed with queenly benevolence equally on everyone. She was a beautiful cat. How many lives has she touched?
I wish I had not drifted away from her. She was one of the reasons I wanted to do a phd, and thought it was worth the effort and struggle, she made the intellectual adventure of it feel alive and important. She broke out my idealism and my feminism, and never capitulated to that dimension of feminism which is about self-flagellation and perfectionism. For her, feminism was about the right of every woman and every person to their own liberty and pleasure, free from fear and bullying, and it was about the importance of free thought as a practice. She lived her philosophy and worked it out all through her wonderful life. I will miss her very much.
Perhaps the only way to respond to her death is to carry on asking the difficult questions she used to ask, the ones that go straight to the heart of a problem, and enable people to discuss it and resolve it. She was a very brave woman. Let asking the difficult questions be her legacy.
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
What can you do in the time available?
The Real Women's Issue: Time, a piece in The Wall Street Journal by Jody Greenstone Miller, is a breath of fresh air in the stifling and ideas-free Women 'n' Work debate.
It takes headon the idea that all ambitious women can do in the workplace is 'lean in', a term coined by Sheryl Sandberg, to mean 'assert themselves more'.
Miller argues that, in fact, organizations and institutions could change the notion of work, rather than thinking that the only model of success is working a 60+ hour week. Let's not forget that many women (ambitious or otherwise) work that many hours a week already. It's just that, once they have a family, they ain't gonna be doing it in their place of employment.
So — change what 'work' is. Remember that it's carried out by human beings, who still operate in lunar cycles with circadian rhythms, aging year by year, reproducing awkwardly at around the time they reach full working capacity (go figure).
'Work' is, presumably, an activity that keeps a system going, prevents a system from dysfunctioning, or starts up a new system. 'Work' must be whatever doesn't just happen by itself. It takes work to prevent a garden running wild, to produce food, or to keep a house or a street or a city clean. It takes work to produce books, and teach students. It takes work to sew all those cheap garments we're used to buying. It takes work to triage patients and then operate on them, or give them medication. It takes work to lose weight, not lose your temper, to fundraise, to avoid workplace politics.
'Work' takes place in real time: time that is real by virtue of actually passing, never to come again, moving in just one direction.
Project-based working is fantastic, as is flexi-time (at least on paper). Trust is another key ingredient — if you take all that trouble to recruit, don't you want to trust your people? If you run your work around your people, the work will get done. If you treat them like battery chickens, they will lay for a little while, and then leave, and you'll have to train up a whole new bunch of expendable chickens. And they'll hate you for it.
For my money, project-based work, trust, and a very calm working space are the biggest keys. You can add to that training project managers to help them communicate with clients and manage unreasonable expectations. Finally, transparent office calendar systems (online calendars can be abused and filled up with pointless meetings — you want something wall-mounted that everyone can use). Scheduling the most important meetings within school hours is perfectly feasible (most people are at their best then anyway, and need the time to write up notes etc at the end of the day).
Ultimately all this points to the ideal of emphasizing quality over quantity. Leave quantity to statisticians and nerds, who love to aggregate and average, and unitize. People are not the same as the stuff that goes on shelves, or gets typed into computers. They are people.
All of this thinking applies whether you are male or female. Women are forced to think about time more intensely and creatively, because they are the ones confronted with double and triple workloads once they have children, and so they have found ingenious ways round it.
I don't really see how it's a "loss" if ambitious women leave workplaces that demand their souls. Those same women don't lie down and die, they start new businesses of their own, they work freelance and parttime, they grow far stronger networks than they had before, they welcome the notion of portfolio careers, they undertake project-based work around their families, they have more time to breathe, and they work until they regain control over their lives. Isn't that a key definition of success?
Monday, 4 March 2013
The Sugar Trials
This weekend I was put on trial.
My daughter, aghast that the biscuits had been finished, demanded to know who had scoffed the lot.
It was me. I had made a lovely cup of coffee and had leant against the sink, gloriously inhaling Hob Nobs one after the other, until they were all gone. I'd consumed about six, without really thinking about it, and enjoying every single one. I'd had a momentary pang of guilt, remembering that my daughter and I had purchased said biscuits together the previous day. But it hadn't been enough to prevent me polishing them all off.
My daughter thought for a moment, whisked upstairs, and came back down with a white woollen shawl draped across the top of her head, long woolly flaps hanging down each side, and wielding a hair brush gavel. She was my judge.
She asked for witnesses. There were none. She demanded evidence. No biscuits in cupboard, empty wrapping in bin. She extorted a confession. I shamefacedly gave her one. She sentenced me to two days without sugar of any kind. Then both children wrote up my sentence, and blu-tacked it to the kitchen door.
I found it pretty darn hard to get through that first day. Over and over again I reached for the biscuit cupboard, or looked sadly in the fridge. Not least because we had friends for supper, who brought chocolate, and my husband supplied chocolate too.
In fact — and I'm not proud of this — I didn't make it. I sneaked a biscuit at the dinner. I had a chocolate when everyone was gone. My cheese biscuit was a digestive. I failed.
But during both days I managed not to, say, eat palm sugar and golden syrup from the cupboard, eat the kids' snacks, or do more than have a lot of fruit, nuts and smoked mackerel (yes, I know).
It was one of the hardest things I've done in years. Harder than giving up alcohol. If I hadn't been able to drink coffee, I would have gone under in fury and frustration.
Yet it was the first time I have ever been able even to try to stop eating sugar. I have tried to trick myself so many times, or beat myself up, or play games with myself about it. My best method has always been not to have it in the house. But with children, sugar's really hard to avoid. Although strangely I'm very good at depriving them of sugar (not because I've eaten it all already, I hasten to add).
I found my strength of purpose (such as it was) in the idea that my daughter was justified in her annoyance, and that I owed it to her to atone for my rather greedy thoughtlessness. That if I expect her to do maths, and play piano when she doesn't want to, and get cross with her, and every so often sanction her, then I should be able to take my own medicine. Otherwise it's a tyranny.
It surprised me that I was (mostly) able to stick to my purpose when it was to honour my daughter's hilarious judgement of me. I really didn't want to let her down.
Maybe I'll try again this week.
My daughter, aghast that the biscuits had been finished, demanded to know who had scoffed the lot.
It was me. I had made a lovely cup of coffee and had leant against the sink, gloriously inhaling Hob Nobs one after the other, until they were all gone. I'd consumed about six, without really thinking about it, and enjoying every single one. I'd had a momentary pang of guilt, remembering that my daughter and I had purchased said biscuits together the previous day. But it hadn't been enough to prevent me polishing them all off.
My daughter thought for a moment, whisked upstairs, and came back down with a white woollen shawl draped across the top of her head, long woolly flaps hanging down each side, and wielding a hair brush gavel. She was my judge.
She asked for witnesses. There were none. She demanded evidence. No biscuits in cupboard, empty wrapping in bin. She extorted a confession. I shamefacedly gave her one. She sentenced me to two days without sugar of any kind. Then both children wrote up my sentence, and blu-tacked it to the kitchen door.
I found it pretty darn hard to get through that first day. Over and over again I reached for the biscuit cupboard, or looked sadly in the fridge. Not least because we had friends for supper, who brought chocolate, and my husband supplied chocolate too.
In fact — and I'm not proud of this — I didn't make it. I sneaked a biscuit at the dinner. I had a chocolate when everyone was gone. My cheese biscuit was a digestive. I failed.
But during both days I managed not to, say, eat palm sugar and golden syrup from the cupboard, eat the kids' snacks, or do more than have a lot of fruit, nuts and smoked mackerel (yes, I know).
It was one of the hardest things I've done in years. Harder than giving up alcohol. If I hadn't been able to drink coffee, I would have gone under in fury and frustration.
Yet it was the first time I have ever been able even to try to stop eating sugar. I have tried to trick myself so many times, or beat myself up, or play games with myself about it. My best method has always been not to have it in the house. But with children, sugar's really hard to avoid. Although strangely I'm very good at depriving them of sugar (not because I've eaten it all already, I hasten to add).
I found my strength of purpose (such as it was) in the idea that my daughter was justified in her annoyance, and that I owed it to her to atone for my rather greedy thoughtlessness. That if I expect her to do maths, and play piano when she doesn't want to, and get cross with her, and every so often sanction her, then I should be able to take my own medicine. Otherwise it's a tyranny.
It surprised me that I was (mostly) able to stick to my purpose when it was to honour my daughter's hilarious judgement of me. I really didn't want to let her down.
Maybe I'll try again this week.
Saturday, 23 February 2013
Family days
Yesterday I took the children to Tate Britain for a Family Day.
They had given over some five of the rooms to art activities for children: a cardboard city, costumes imprinted with famous artworks which children could use to act out playlets, a musical section with amplified instruments, and a room filled with building blocks.
The place was mayhem. The cafe was manned by just one server, and the queue was round the block.
In a side room, parties of buggies, babies and toddlers were camped out. The scene resembled a refugee camp. On the opposite wall was a series of Gilbert and George tapestries. They looked like vast pencil sketches, and featured the two men sauntering through Constable country. Printed in capitals along the bottom was a message which, paraphrased, reads: 'Art is a way of contemplating life, love and nature, and makes things better for Gilbert and George'. It was a lovely tease: is Art only for the initiated? Is there always a risk of solipsism in the artist? Is the power of Art a loosely guarded secret there for the unravelling if only we choose to look? As I watched, a gallery worker swooped down on a toddler who had got herself behind the wire and was reaching grubby paws up to the tapestry.
Cardboard City was in a dimly lit vestibule, illuminated from side projectors to look kaleidoscopic. It had originally been hundreds of cardboard boxes. Over the course of the Family Day, these were dismantled, flattened and shredded into a thousand pieces. Lolly sticks and tissue paper made amazingly good binding agents, and the place was a sea of kids armouring themselves with cardboard and having fights.
The dressing up room was dominated by a stage, miked up and and covered with clackers, klaxons, bells and recorders. A huge screen was wedged in one corner. Kids were putting on the imprinted oilcloth costumes, which made them all look like mini Elephant men. Then they took to the stage and made incomprehensible noises, which were filmed and screened live. My friend looked at a solitary woman sitting sketching and said, "she didn't choose the best day to come to the Tate, did she?"
The set ups were mainly in rooms filled floor to ceiling with art from the 1800s onwards. Everywhere you looked, flying three-year olds were sailing within inches of priceless artworks. Sticky fingers were hanging on gamely to century-old frames. The noise boomed off the walls. My friend and I conducted a Whistler-stop tour, wistfully telling each other we'd come back, and that somehow we were adding a postmodern twist to the Turners: if he'd tried to capture speed and movement, we were adding relativity to the viewing experience as we ran past, fielding six year olds.
We stuck it out for around two hours, then left for a similarly fraught and harrowing field trip home on the tube, punctuated with rice crackers and exhortations to keep feet off the seats, under the disapproving eye of passengers.
My conclusion? What on earth was the Tate thinking? There really are some places in which children should neither be seen nor heard. Whoever decided that outreach work meant putting a festival in a confined space filled with artworks in order to justify lottery funding is insane.
They had given over some five of the rooms to art activities for children: a cardboard city, costumes imprinted with famous artworks which children could use to act out playlets, a musical section with amplified instruments, and a room filled with building blocks.
The place was mayhem. The cafe was manned by just one server, and the queue was round the block.
In a side room, parties of buggies, babies and toddlers were camped out. The scene resembled a refugee camp. On the opposite wall was a series of Gilbert and George tapestries. They looked like vast pencil sketches, and featured the two men sauntering through Constable country. Printed in capitals along the bottom was a message which, paraphrased, reads: 'Art is a way of contemplating life, love and nature, and makes things better for Gilbert and George'. It was a lovely tease: is Art only for the initiated? Is there always a risk of solipsism in the artist? Is the power of Art a loosely guarded secret there for the unravelling if only we choose to look? As I watched, a gallery worker swooped down on a toddler who had got herself behind the wire and was reaching grubby paws up to the tapestry.
Cardboard City was in a dimly lit vestibule, illuminated from side projectors to look kaleidoscopic. It had originally been hundreds of cardboard boxes. Over the course of the Family Day, these were dismantled, flattened and shredded into a thousand pieces. Lolly sticks and tissue paper made amazingly good binding agents, and the place was a sea of kids armouring themselves with cardboard and having fights.
The dressing up room was dominated by a stage, miked up and and covered with clackers, klaxons, bells and recorders. A huge screen was wedged in one corner. Kids were putting on the imprinted oilcloth costumes, which made them all look like mini Elephant men. Then they took to the stage and made incomprehensible noises, which were filmed and screened live. My friend looked at a solitary woman sitting sketching and said, "she didn't choose the best day to come to the Tate, did she?"
The set ups were mainly in rooms filled floor to ceiling with art from the 1800s onwards. Everywhere you looked, flying three-year olds were sailing within inches of priceless artworks. Sticky fingers were hanging on gamely to century-old frames. The noise boomed off the walls. My friend and I conducted a Whistler-stop tour, wistfully telling each other we'd come back, and that somehow we were adding a postmodern twist to the Turners: if he'd tried to capture speed and movement, we were adding relativity to the viewing experience as we ran past, fielding six year olds.
We stuck it out for around two hours, then left for a similarly fraught and harrowing field trip home on the tube, punctuated with rice crackers and exhortations to keep feet off the seats, under the disapproving eye of passengers.
My conclusion? What on earth was the Tate thinking? There really are some places in which children should neither be seen nor heard. Whoever decided that outreach work meant putting a festival in a confined space filled with artworks in order to justify lottery funding is insane.
Friday, 22 February 2013
Have a break. Have a breakdown.
What the hell just happened?
Oh I know, it was Half Term.
Somehow I quite often seem to blog about holidays when they are about to be over, when I am at an ebb so low you can see the the mid-Atlantic ridge of my soul.
What is it about these energy-sapping, will-defying, hope-unplugging weeks?
On paper I was good to go. My military precision planning had ensured:
What a domestic goddess, I hear you cry, cheering me on in my maternal triumph.
Hmmm. The actual lived experience of the last seven days has been somewhat different from its planned version. Let me count the ways.
It's hard to put my finger on it, when put on the spot in this way by my own conscience. My feeling, however (supported by diary evidence), is that I did everything else. I planned the wondrous exploits the children and I embarked on; I made all those packed lunches; I kept the heroic washing cycle turning (why is wash day now every day, instead of Monday, as it was before the invention of the washing machine?); I cheered on, told off, picked up, dusted down, listened to, organized, played with (to a certain extent, let's not exaggerate), shouted at, read to, smiled at and photographed the children.
Perhaps it's what I did not do that makes me even crosser. I did not do my own work. I did not read. I did not phone a friend. I did not ask husband to share the childcare load.
Now, whose fault is that?
But the tour ended, predictably enough, in a gift shop. Selling a bunch of tut with pretty much nothing to do with the ship. My son fastened onto a £6 plastic aeroplane. When I said that I wasn't going to buy anything, and made him go outside, he threw the world's biggest tantrum, running away, screaming, hitting me, sobbing uncontrollably, excoriating my meanness. I held fast. The day, for me, was wrecked. For him, a yoghurt and some TV cured all ill.
Don't guilt me into paying over the odds to go and see stuff, and then pressurize me into paying even more money for rubbish.
Oh I know, it was Half Term.
Somehow I quite often seem to blog about holidays when they are about to be over, when I am at an ebb so low you can see the the mid-Atlantic ridge of my soul.
What is it about these energy-sapping, will-defying, hope-unplugging weeks?
On paper I was good to go. My military precision planning had ensured:
- food supplies in the house
- a diary neatly stocked with things to do
- a weekend at my mother's (always a good way to use up several days, while knowing that there will be a soothing caress and a gin at the end of each one — did my mother bargain on having to mother me until her mid-seventies?)
- playdates
- library
- cinema
- cultural exploration
- shopping
- a sleepover
- special time with each child
- menus planned for the week
- a night out pour la mère
- packed lunch goodies
- and I was even able to do a bit of teaching and dance.
What a domestic goddess, I hear you cry, cheering me on in my maternal triumph.
Hmmm. The actual lived experience of the last seven days has been somewhat different from its planned version. Let me count the ways.
1. Husband working from home
Now, my lovely husband appears in these chronicles from time to time, and I observe that it is usually when I am cross with him. What's he done this time, poor man? Nothing much. He worked from home this week. He actually made the majority of the dinners. He quite often made me a cup of coffee in the mornings. He cleaned the bathroom last weekend when I was at my mother's, drinking gin and moaning. What more could I ask for?It's hard to put my finger on it, when put on the spot in this way by my own conscience. My feeling, however (supported by diary evidence), is that I did everything else. I planned the wondrous exploits the children and I embarked on; I made all those packed lunches; I kept the heroic washing cycle turning (why is wash day now every day, instead of Monday, as it was before the invention of the washing machine?); I cheered on, told off, picked up, dusted down, listened to, organized, played with (to a certain extent, let's not exaggerate), shouted at, read to, smiled at and photographed the children.
Perhaps it's what I did not do that makes me even crosser. I did not do my own work. I did not read. I did not phone a friend. I did not ask husband to share the childcare load.
Now, whose fault is that?
2. Exhaustion
I feel so old whenever the kids are on holiday. During term time, I feel pretty fit these days. But when those surging beasts are running around me, screeching, from 8am until 9.30pm, demanding, showing, begging, accusing, hitting, jumping, oblivious, eating, refusing… I realize that being an Older Mother is a truth rather than an insult. Gosh, we really do get older.3. The Gift Shop
We loved HMS Belfast. It was thrilling, but sobering, to stand in Y Turret, with the smell of cordite and smoke filling our lungs. The tour of the ship is moving and thought-provoking. It's spooky to be on a ship that has participated in wartime battles.But the tour ended, predictably enough, in a gift shop. Selling a bunch of tut with pretty much nothing to do with the ship. My son fastened onto a £6 plastic aeroplane. When I said that I wasn't going to buy anything, and made him go outside, he threw the world's biggest tantrum, running away, screaming, hitting me, sobbing uncontrollably, excoriating my meanness. I held fast. The day, for me, was wrecked. For him, a yoghurt and some TV cured all ill.
Don't guilt me into paying over the odds to go and see stuff, and then pressurize me into paying even more money for rubbish.
4. My worsening mental state
Now, I know that holidays are tough. I know that I need breaks. I thought I had sorted all that stuff, and made sure I wasn't doing too much (after all, the happiness of my dear children depends on my own happiness).
Yet despite all my forethought, I have still come to the end of the week thinking that my own children are spoilt, demanding brats. Yes, I know this sounds terribly harsh. Yes, I realize that their brains are simply physically not mature enough for them to hold commands in their heads without endless repetition. Yes, I know that kindness and patience get better results than shouting. Yes, I can see I'm "just tired".
When, however, you watch your flesh and blood pushing, hitting, turning their noses up, moaning at having to tidy up their rooms, refusing to do even a few minutes of writing homework, never offering to lay the table, etc etc, you are, as a mother (or at least I am), assailed with a double whammy: (a) why are they so selfish? (b) it must be my fault.
N.B. Ask me in three days time when they are back at school, and I will tell you that my children are beautiful, considerate, largely well-mannered, hardworking and well-organized.
Just get me to the finish line.
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