(no subject)
I.
Icy morning fingers on the crumpled valley landscape of Gala Water, like a ghostly hand grasping at a bed sheet. "In the silk sheet of time I will find peace of mind"...
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT says the neon sign atop the neoclassical columns at Modern 1. We pass beneath it hand in hand, and had it been made just for us it couldn't have felt any more appropriate. Inside are memories, ghosts of exhibitions past, the room layouts familiar but the contents ever-changing. I find interest in a pair of photographs. In one a line has been walked into grass, which has then been photographed in black and white. In the other is a colour photograph of a walking path, overlaid with text outlining the route, the date, and something of the theme of the occasion, how it felt. These are art beyond the frame, and while my favourite artworks are always Renaissance oil paintings and Old Masters, I am greatly inspired by this art beyond the frame, life as art. Art in the modern sense is an attitude, of experimentation and creativity. I am refreshed, and I am alive, and as we walk out again I begin to explain some of these things to you, things that I would never have spoken in the past. Written maybe, thought certainly, but to vocalise without fear or trepidation with no expectation of judgement or dismissal, certainly not. With you I am myself completely, and this is perhaps the greatest of the gifts that you have given to me.
"I never dreamt that I would get to be / The person that I always meant to be"
In the Dean Cemetery a man communicates with a combination of barely discernible shouts and hand gestures that he is closing up, and I communicate back by the same method a question 'can we still get out the back gate?', and receive the answer which is yes. These are all places that I have walked before, and that is the trouble with this part of the world; I have been to almost everywhere already, and few things here remain for us to uncover together for the first time. It's a thought that recurs when the Lyceum production of Kidnapped opens, unexpectedly, with Robert Louis Stevenson's wife singing a lyrically-adapted version of 'I've Been Everywhere'. You didn't know we were coming to this, to any of this; it's our first mystery tour where I have kept you guessing as much as possible.
The curtain's fall finds me trying to hide tears, which I know I don't have to do, not from you. Partly it's the love story, that of Stevenson and his wife, and of the two main characters who have been morphed into a 21st century same sex coupling. Particularly the closing moment gets to me, when the lonely figure of Alan Breck is seen returning over a desolate moor in the moonlight to be with David Balfour again, and the briefest flash of an appearance onstage of an unspeaking figure understood to be Robert Louis Stevenson facing his wife who has been mourning his death. There is much emotion in all of it, but there is emotion also in the day coming to an end when I don't want it to. It has been such a wonderful time that I only want it to go on.
I don't like these roads at night. I suppose I have seen too many of the news stories, of people killed here and the flower displays, and always at times of the night like this. When I reach the sign for Hawick I am glad, though not for the destination itself, which is a place of exile for me.
II.
By the A7 roadside there is a man releasing pigeons into the morning air. They take to the wing and somehow will find their way home. They don't know where they are, they don't know which roads they have travelled, but home is so imprinted upon them that they will always find it. To do so is the only thing in their world, and after these few months I can begin to appreciate that.
This one would be unexpected, I thought. You would never be thinking of a boat trip, and as we pull from the motorway to the slip road you are chatting away and haven't even particularly noticed our direction has changed. And then suddenly we are stopped at the junction and there is a sign ahead shouting INCHCOLM ABBEY FERRY from a brown background. I do my best to give no reaction as you read it aloud and ask if we are going there. Keeping surprises completely surprising is going to be tough, and I can see I will need to employ misdirection on occasion. Asking if you were ready to go while parked by the waterfront after lunch, having you put your seatbelt on and start the car, before switching it off again and saying "ok, we're here" was definitely misdirection. We get out and there is a single boat sat beneath the huge mass of the Forth Bridge, awaiting. It is a scene so perfect, and I manage to capture it just right with the camera; the camera you gave to me for this very reason, to document our times and travels. The waves of the calm Forth are in contrast to this very powerful tsunami wave sweeping over me with a feeling that this is it; this is it all beginning. We are in it, here, now, together. Not in a dream of a possible future, but in actual reality, here, now, in the heart of our lives.
Seals lie lazily and unconcerned on a floating buoy marked 17. This improbable Abbey, the 'Iona of the east' has had many people pass between its walls, and those walls have changed a few times down the years. Almost everything here is adapted, altered, covered up windows, arches cut off by walls, vaults cut off by floors, medieval floors raised above modern concrete. Many long years to stack against the comparative shortness of our individual lives, but I still believe that life is long, so long as you make sure to always be experiencing, every day. To switch that off is to advance far more rapidly to the end. If this is indeed a beginning for us, it is only that, only just the beginning.
We park on a steep hillside, where I find it difficult to fully trust in my handbrake, and we walk along Corstorphine Road to find the statue of Alan Breck Stewart and David Balfour by the roadside. Everything is connected, everything moves in circles and cycles, and things long forgotten may eventually come back. So it seems too out at Cramond, walking along the promenade with the sun fading. Many memories from what seems now another life, long before. I was myself once before, and am now again, and in the middle a kind of 15 year dream, like Thomas the Rhymer taken to Faerie. I am not sure why we are here really, except that it is an attempt to extend the evening together. In the fading sun I am already struggling with rising tears when you say it's time for you to head up the road. If love can be said to be one thing then perhaps it is this; it is the furious scrabbling at the well of time, desperate to find even one more drop so that it might be taken together. I feel that now, and it makes me sad, but then I know that this indeed is love, and that makes me so very happy.
The tears spill over before parting. I put on music to cheer the drive home, but find only Bob Dylan asking "How does it feel / to be on your own / with no direction home"
Icy morning fingers on the crumpled valley landscape of Gala Water, like a ghostly hand grasping at a bed sheet. "In the silk sheet of time I will find peace of mind"...
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT says the neon sign atop the neoclassical columns at Modern 1. We pass beneath it hand in hand, and had it been made just for us it couldn't have felt any more appropriate. Inside are memories, ghosts of exhibitions past, the room layouts familiar but the contents ever-changing. I find interest in a pair of photographs. In one a line has been walked into grass, which has then been photographed in black and white. In the other is a colour photograph of a walking path, overlaid with text outlining the route, the date, and something of the theme of the occasion, how it felt. These are art beyond the frame, and while my favourite artworks are always Renaissance oil paintings and Old Masters, I am greatly inspired by this art beyond the frame, life as art. Art in the modern sense is an attitude, of experimentation and creativity. I am refreshed, and I am alive, and as we walk out again I begin to explain some of these things to you, things that I would never have spoken in the past. Written maybe, thought certainly, but to vocalise without fear or trepidation with no expectation of judgement or dismissal, certainly not. With you I am myself completely, and this is perhaps the greatest of the gifts that you have given to me.
"I never dreamt that I would get to be / The person that I always meant to be"
In the Dean Cemetery a man communicates with a combination of barely discernible shouts and hand gestures that he is closing up, and I communicate back by the same method a question 'can we still get out the back gate?', and receive the answer which is yes. These are all places that I have walked before, and that is the trouble with this part of the world; I have been to almost everywhere already, and few things here remain for us to uncover together for the first time. It's a thought that recurs when the Lyceum production of Kidnapped opens, unexpectedly, with Robert Louis Stevenson's wife singing a lyrically-adapted version of 'I've Been Everywhere'. You didn't know we were coming to this, to any of this; it's our first mystery tour where I have kept you guessing as much as possible.
The curtain's fall finds me trying to hide tears, which I know I don't have to do, not from you. Partly it's the love story, that of Stevenson and his wife, and of the two main characters who have been morphed into a 21st century same sex coupling. Particularly the closing moment gets to me, when the lonely figure of Alan Breck is seen returning over a desolate moor in the moonlight to be with David Balfour again, and the briefest flash of an appearance onstage of an unspeaking figure understood to be Robert Louis Stevenson facing his wife who has been mourning his death. There is much emotion in all of it, but there is emotion also in the day coming to an end when I don't want it to. It has been such a wonderful time that I only want it to go on.
I don't like these roads at night. I suppose I have seen too many of the news stories, of people killed here and the flower displays, and always at times of the night like this. When I reach the sign for Hawick I am glad, though not for the destination itself, which is a place of exile for me.
II.
By the A7 roadside there is a man releasing pigeons into the morning air. They take to the wing and somehow will find their way home. They don't know where they are, they don't know which roads they have travelled, but home is so imprinted upon them that they will always find it. To do so is the only thing in their world, and after these few months I can begin to appreciate that.
This one would be unexpected, I thought. You would never be thinking of a boat trip, and as we pull from the motorway to the slip road you are chatting away and haven't even particularly noticed our direction has changed. And then suddenly we are stopped at the junction and there is a sign ahead shouting INCHCOLM ABBEY FERRY from a brown background. I do my best to give no reaction as you read it aloud and ask if we are going there. Keeping surprises completely surprising is going to be tough, and I can see I will need to employ misdirection on occasion. Asking if you were ready to go while parked by the waterfront after lunch, having you put your seatbelt on and start the car, before switching it off again and saying "ok, we're here" was definitely misdirection. We get out and there is a single boat sat beneath the huge mass of the Forth Bridge, awaiting. It is a scene so perfect, and I manage to capture it just right with the camera; the camera you gave to me for this very reason, to document our times and travels. The waves of the calm Forth are in contrast to this very powerful tsunami wave sweeping over me with a feeling that this is it; this is it all beginning. We are in it, here, now, together. Not in a dream of a possible future, but in actual reality, here, now, in the heart of our lives.
Seals lie lazily and unconcerned on a floating buoy marked 17. This improbable Abbey, the 'Iona of the east' has had many people pass between its walls, and those walls have changed a few times down the years. Almost everything here is adapted, altered, covered up windows, arches cut off by walls, vaults cut off by floors, medieval floors raised above modern concrete. Many long years to stack against the comparative shortness of our individual lives, but I still believe that life is long, so long as you make sure to always be experiencing, every day. To switch that off is to advance far more rapidly to the end. If this is indeed a beginning for us, it is only that, only just the beginning.
We park on a steep hillside, where I find it difficult to fully trust in my handbrake, and we walk along Corstorphine Road to find the statue of Alan Breck Stewart and David Balfour by the roadside. Everything is connected, everything moves in circles and cycles, and things long forgotten may eventually come back. So it seems too out at Cramond, walking along the promenade with the sun fading. Many memories from what seems now another life, long before. I was myself once before, and am now again, and in the middle a kind of 15 year dream, like Thomas the Rhymer taken to Faerie. I am not sure why we are here really, except that it is an attempt to extend the evening together. In the fading sun I am already struggling with rising tears when you say it's time for you to head up the road. If love can be said to be one thing then perhaps it is this; it is the furious scrabbling at the well of time, desperate to find even one more drop so that it might be taken together. I feel that now, and it makes me sad, but then I know that this indeed is love, and that makes me so very happy.
The tears spill over before parting. I put on music to cheer the drive home, but find only Bob Dylan asking "How does it feel / to be on your own / with no direction home"