Ordinary Surprises

(Call it birdsong and flowers)

I am working in London during the weeks just now. It’s been a shock. I go to London once a week, usually, and stay the night, but last week I was there from Sunday night until travelling home on Friday. I know the city so well, lived there for over 10 years, enjoy the culture, the connection, and yet, what I need isn’t there anymore.

That’s because London has changed and I have changed.

What is it? Tired of London Tired of Life? No. I am not tired of life. I have never been more aware of life - my own and the stuff that isn’t my own. These are terrible and fascinating times. These are times to jump in deeper not swim to the sides. And besides, I am no fool. I have 15 -20 good healthy years left if I am lucky. I might live well into my 80’s. I might get some Silicon Valley longevity enhancements. I might just drop dead. Fact is, I am aware. Self-aware. World-aware.

But I am glad not to be living in London.

David Hockney, RIP, said that he loved living in California because it was so sincerely artificial. Gertrude Stein said she loved living in Paris because everyone was speaking in French and she could be alone with her English. I thought about DH Lawrence finding mental space, if not mental health, in Mexico. Having seen the lovely Leonora Carrington exhibition in Paris recently, I was struck by how she found space for her creativity by physically moving away from whatever constrained her - whenever she felt constrained. Paris was always a welcoming city for misfits. I think it is still. Well, I feel easier there than I do in London. Probably for the Gertrude-reason. As someone who is hyper-alert even when asleep, I look for places where I can flow. Paris, yes.

London, no. Not now. And I as I have been writing a new, long, Afterword, to Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs Dalloway (1925) I have been living inside her love of London. She wasn’t a country girl. London was society. London was access. London was culture. And crazy busy. Around 8.5 million people lived in inner London when Virginia Woolf was walking the streets. That figure started dropping dramatically post-war, while outer London figures rose. Strangely, the London I lived in - 1980s to 1990s, had about 2million fewer people than in Woolf’s day. It’s way back up now, and heading towards 10million, which is the number for Switzerland’s upcoming referendum on population cap. Does London feel crowded? Of course, because residents plus visitors equals a lot.

So maybe I have got used to the countryside and need the birdsong and the garden. But really, anyone who has made the decision to put creative work first and centre in their lives, needs to find out where they need to be to do that work. Likely, that won’t be the same place forever.

If you are making movies, making music, or working in performance art, you probably need a city where what you do is valued, where there’s a history of what you do, where there are opportunities, including those jobs we’ve all needed to survive at various times. The problem is there are less of those jobs, just as there’s less affordable housing. I don’t believe that anyone can just rock up anywhere, especially not as a single woman, but I do believe it’s worth thinking through the question of where you could live, and knowing why. Above all, staying as Buddhist as possible, not getting too attached. You can love a place and help it thrive, yet not be attached - at least not in such a way that would actually damage your creativity if you had to move on.

I say this because the world is in its most extreme phase of money-worship. Witness SpaceX frenzy. Can I throw in as an aside here that clearly millions of people think Elon Musk is fine - OR those people separate their love of money from what they otherwise call their values. OK - MuskRant done.

In the extreme worship of money, nobody’s lives matter, and so, even if you find the right place for you and your work, a developer can tear it up or Air BnB will move in.

What is the most important thing in your life?

If it is your creativity then make every choice with that front and centre. No, it’s not selfish. It’s who you are. It is not selfish to be who you are.

(Note: I will say the obvious and say this is much harder for women)

If it’s a partner, a kid, family life, the job, the elderly parents, then of course you do what’s right for you. And if you say, I can’t square the circle, I’d say, think outside of those shapes altogether. No square. No circle. Are you sure you are trapped in the way you believe? Are you sure there is no alternative? Maybe not… but I’ve said before, if we are not in a war zone and not in Afghanistan, we have more choices than we imagine - imagine being the active verb. The way out might not happen overnight - you might have serious planning to do - but that in itself will make you feel better. Powerlessness is the worst thing - and the worst thing for creativity. And look around. People make really mad decisions work for them.

In fact…

A social scientist/psychologist I read and follow, called Ellen Langer, makes a controversial claim: She says that as we live in a time of maximum information overload and maximum uncertainty, it is hard to make ‘right’ decisions. We find ourselves overwhelmed, and likely decide something just to shut the fuck up - but then, even if we made the ‘right’ decision, the world can come along in seconds and undo the lot. Her view is this:

Don’t stress yourself to death over the ‘right’ decision. Make the decision right.

Sure, there are pitfalls here. We could say 3 cheers for arranged marriages. Stop crying and start baking. We could say, ‘great, you had to move from everyone you know for your dickhead husband’s new job, so spend your lonely hours learning Italian on Duolingo’.

But who knows, maybe you meet that lovely Italian, and it all turned out to be worth the trip.

I thought about what she’s saying, and if I am clear with myself I find that everything I proposed with such great thought and planning, then changed shape in some way, or I did. I find that the unexpected - what I couldn’t control - played a much greater part in my world that I like to notice.

Does this contradict my advice that you find what you love to do and find the best place for you to do that thing? No. There is some strange, and for now, unscientific connection between making an effort and doing your best, and proceeding from a good heart, and the results that follow. And no, that doesn’t mean humanoid- horrorshows aren’t in charge of the world and your world - the people who are only interested in money and power will always act like wreckers for the rest of us - at the same time as calling themselves ‘successful’. Anything less successful as a human being than Elon Musk is hard to imagine. And I am including his buddies in the White House.

But… if we have our own values, and our own deep interests, and our own love of what we do and what we want to do, and our own commitment to what matters to us, then, yes, we can make choices. That is what gives us free will, autonomy, dignity. Sure, someone or something can wreck it for you. War wrecks everything.

But you - the person who made those decisions, who knows what you value, and why, suffers the damage, but is not coerced or destroyed. You acted freely and for the sake of what you value. That, in itself, is a strength exercise. An act of resistance. You didn’t line up waiting for the next trend, the next fashion, the next stock-pick, the next influencer-destination, or worry about what other people call a good life. You heard your own voice inside the noise. And when you fail, and sometimes we do, you fail from where you stand, not from where you tried to catch up or out-run the pack.

I was walking from Temple, along Fleet St, up Fetter Lane, down Charterhouse St, past Smithfield meat-market, to the Barbican, where I jumped on the tube a couple of stops. Fleet St is my favourite stretch of old London. I love to walk that way. And yes, I can think, and yes, I can think about books, other people’s and my own. What I can’t do is disappear. In London, being alert is survival. Especially if you like to walk at night. Especially if you are female. So there’s part of me can’t leave my body, and I find I have to do that, more and more I find I have to do that, and not because I don’t like my body. I do. It’s just that I want a place where there is no consideration given to ‘outside’. Except that I prefer it if the place is outside. in some ways I am so unsuited to being a writer. I hate being indoors. Until I built my big light and airy kitchen (T shape to house) I always kept the back door open unless it was actually snowing in. Being trapped terrifies me. (Childhood). Outdoors is freedom.

And the place where I feel completely free is my garden.

At this stage in my life, certainly my creative life, I have to come home to my garden. Winter as well as summer. I don’t want to travel more than I do - because I travel a lot for work, so no bloody holidays, thanks. I don’t want to rent a house somewhere. I want to be here. Until that changes (one day it will) this is the place.

And you?

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