Flooded with inspiration

The harvest from a three-day immersion in London.

The stage of the Globe Theatre for Troilus and Cressida

“Travel more in hope than expectation”. Isn’t that what some people say? Certainly that felt relevant as I stepped from my train on to King’s Cross Station last Monday morning. When I headed north three days later I did so carrying a notebook filled with thoughts and ideas, the harvest of visits to galleries, museums and cafés.

I’m currently going through the process of dissecting, filtering, building out my notes, working them into ideas for new pieces of fiction, or the themes which might lay behind those, or the structures I could adopt in order to support them. Already I can see a raft of stories emerging, perhaps 8 to 12 — maybe enough to form the backbone of a collection at some point in the future.

The sources were the paintings and sculptures in galleries which sparked an idea, mainly for something ekphrastic. Some ideas came from attempts to translate how an artist worked — with a style, an image, their materials — and how that might be translated into a writing equivalent, or from arms-length encounters in cafés and restaurants, usually via the conversations of others which leapt out at me as a triggers from which narratives could be woven.

‘The proof of the pudding’ (as they say) will be in what is (or is not) eventually written — and so I’ll have to wait a little while to make the final judgement. In the interim, though, I thought I’d share just a few scraps from my notebook. I don’t pretend that any of these musings are particularly profound, but be assured they seemed significant and full of potential when I paused to write them down!

"Ulysses deriding Polyphemus" - Turner (National Gallery)
- the narrative is not clear from the painting
- need the explanation & context to make sense of it
- and in writing?
- the role of the ‘interpreter’ - either in the story or the role of the author?

National Portrait Gallery
- what lives on the most: the image or the words (i.e. name) - and why is that?
- or is there some other reference triggered by one or both? e.g. music, brave deeds etc.

Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCO)
- It seems to me that the one thing contemporary art does above all is to ask questions…
- what do you think about this?
- how are you going to respond to this?
- and parallels in writing...?

Cézanne "Turning Road" (Courtauld Gallery)
- unfinished landscape
- what is that saying?
- what responsibility does it put on the viewer?
- the road in question is defined merely by a couple of brushstrokes in the bottom right-hand corner

Gaugin "The dream" (Courtauld Gallery)
- the two women dominate the picture to such an extent that you almost don’t notice the child sleeping in the bottom left-hand corner
- artistic sleight-of-hand?
- and the writerly equivalent?

frames are interesting (Courtauld Gallery et al)
- you don’t notice them, but when you do they can seem inappropriate, too elaborate
- akin to the structures applied to long-form fiction? e.g. the chapters/patterns which (if we’re not careful) can simply get in the way i.e. just like elaborate canvases, they detract from the words (true of rhyme and form in poetry too?)

Giacometti quote (Barbican):
- “in a sculpture you have to manage to grasp the head, the body, and the earth on which it stands, and at the same time you’ll have space, and the possibility of putting everything you want into it.”
- and a writing parallel?

lots of realistic/traditional art (portraits & landscapes, Tate Britain) seem to strive for “it looks like this” without any need for an interpretive response from the viewer
- cf. poetry (esp. modern) which demands a response & where the piece is ‘completed’ in the arrangement between the two (poet & reader)
- and in fiction?
- under these circumstances (old) what can you do but admire the craft? e.g. you can’t possibly know if Lady X looked like that, or a place was exactly so… (e.g. the Haywain)

The holiday in Scotland a few weeks ago yielded the odd gem, and now I’ve harvested more from London. I think both adventures have proven their worth.

I’m planning a couple of days in Cambridge in early December, and then another three days in London in February — and in between I’m going to have to knuckle down and get some things written!

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