Notes on a Writing Life 23
March 14 2021
Dear All,
Last week I was invited to go to a real cinema to see a real film. A friend who is on the Board of our local Arts cinema, responsible for choosing movies to be shown in the near future, took a small group of us into a cinema that had most of its seats blocked off, where we sat scattered and masked in the dark. What a pleasure – I’d almost forgotten, after a whole year, what it’s like to be immersed in a good film, to cry and laugh unseen but not alone. How different it is from sitting in front of a small screen at home, open to interruptions and the invasions of everyday life (though I’m not knocking Netflix, far from it.) The film was the beautiful Supernova, made by Harry Macqueen and starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. I’m not going to describe it, as this is a newsletter about writing, after all; but writers are also part of the world, deeply affected by other art forms, inspired and informed by film as by perhaps no other medium.
After a lifetime of loving cinema – from the first Tarzan movies my father took us to see, to lying about our ages to get in to La Dolce Vita in Geneva in the 50’s with my younger brother – ‘we’re twins and we’re 18,’ we swore – through my first year at college, spent almost entirely at the Arts Cinema in Cambridge – cinema has been as essential to me as reading, sleeping – or dreaming. I see the scenes in my fiction as if they were on a screen, and can remember them as such years later. Do other writers do this? I have no idea. What would our novels be like if we had never seen films? What was it like for those pre-cinema writers, the Victorians, the Russians, all those 19th-century writers? How differently did they experience form, narrative, exposition? You can feel the difference, I think. No flashbacks, no jump-cuts, no memory sequences, none of the techniques of cinema. They set the scene in great detail, because they had to. Their only templates were dream, or of course, theatre. The magic of celluloid, now digital, has transformed our art.
Now I will come clean and say that if I had another life, I would want to be a film director. And also that my as-yet-unfulfilled dream is to have a film made from one of my books or stories and to be involved in the making of it. Why? Something about that magic, that sleight of hand born of relentless hard work, transformed into an experience that can bring such pleasure.
So, back in the Tropic cinema, at 10.30 on a Friday morning, I sat in the dark and wept throughout Supernova – at the scenery (English), at the story, at Stanley Tucci’s face, at the warmth of the huggy family party in the Lake District, at the ability of those two actors to express love, fear. anguish, irritation, mutual understanding, everything that a couple can go through. Transcendent. And I came back to my own work to try to find in it some of that elusive, hard-worked, transforming honesty. What a challenge.
“Following this, I had a long lunch with the two others in a small writers’ group we have, talking well into the afternoon about our books, publication, ideas, problems – where we’re at. It was the first time for a year. It felt almost illegal – and so exciting. After all the Zooming and whatsapping and Facetime and the things we ingenious humans have invented in order to go on seeing each other’s faces, hearing each other’s words, it was incredible to eat and drink together and simply talk.”
Following this, I had a long lunch with the two others in a small writers’ group we have, talking well into the afternoon about our books, publication, ideas, problems – where we’re at. It was the first time for a year. It felt almost illegal – and so exciting. After all the Zooming and whatsapping and Facetime and the things we ingenious humans have invented in order to go on seeing each other’s faces, hearing each other’s words, it was incredible to eat and drink together and simply talk. Normal life again, and yet – not normal, because it felt like such a treat. A cinema and a restaurant! For all of you who are still not able to do such things, I wish them for you. I don’t think we’ll take them for granted any time soon. And yes, they have been and are so much a part of the writing life. As Julia Cameron wrote in her 1990’s book, the Artist’s Way, we need our Artist Dates, our fallow times, our fun.
My second novel A Virtual Image, first published in 1971 is now available from Michael Walmer, North House, Melby, Sandness, Shetland ZE2 NPL, mikewalmer@ yahoo.co.uk. as well as from the usual online places. (A 60’s road trip through France, with lots of wine, sex and a sort-of mystery. I now see how influenced I was – for better or worse – by French New Wave cinema.) Thanks to Janet Burroway for her inspired new introduction.
Affectionately, Ros
