Thank you to everyone who came to Paris to see The PowerBook - we were sold out every night and the press was fantastic. The Minister of Culture invited us to lunch, and would that happen in England? Absolutely not. Vive La France!
What interested me too, is that in France, nobody seemed to have a particular problem with a show about two women, where two women stand for a totality of emotional experience. I have never had much patience with the assumption that male experience, and or heterosexual experience, can stand for all of us, while, female or gay experience, is specific. The truth is much broader.
The theatre process is a strange one; the show has developed and changed so much since we played it in England. It is in every way better, though I am not sure how this happens, anymore than I understand how a dress rehearsal on a Tuesday can be stilted and depressing, and an opening night two days later can have a crowd on its feet.
I find the vulnerability and exposure of live theatre very moving. It is a daily risk, and in our safety-obsessed pre-packaged and recorded world, the risk, freshness, and impermanence of a night at the theatre, becomes a kind of antidote to supermarkets, movies, and mortgages.
So I have come back to England for a couple of days to water my trees and deal with a pile of post the size of a small child. I hope that all of you who have small children will buy or borrow a copy of THE KING OF CAPRI, now out in the shops in the UK, France and Germany, all translated of course, and a book I am very fond of, perhaps because I am so fond of the child for whom it was written. She's a little bit old for it now, and reads HARRY POTTER on her own, which is pretty good for seven. My task in France, as far as she was concerned was to get Aunt Petunia, AKA Fiona Shaw, to sign one of her books. Tomorrow, on my way to Rome, I shall deliver it, and earn Godmother points.
Rome - where I hope I'll see some more of you at the show at Teatro Argentina.
Then, it's home for me, and re-writes and revisions on my new book, LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING, which will be published in the UK next May, by Fourth
Estate. Here's the opening line -
My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal, part pirate.
So now you know.
I have had a lot of mail asking what the book is about, but I can't really say, but it is about itself, and because I am still so close up to it. It is still a part of me, and publishing is a process of gentle amputation.
Worse than being a part of me, it is a part of me that is an open wound. The wound will begin to close up now, and the agonising sensitivity of it will lessen. Writers are touchy about their work for that reason - touch it and it stings. It takes time for the place to become safe again. Even after publication, the book lodges in the writer, and only years later, is it possible to be truly separate from the thing you have made.
I have time to make other things too now; a wood and a garden. The wood around my house was a conifer plantation, and I am carefully thinning it out, and re-planting with broad-leaf native trees. Bulbs are going underneath, and we are starting to seed grass around last year's planting.
I know I won't stay in this house for very long - the river at the bottom of the garden will carry me away one day - but until then I am going to do my best for the land. Maybe I have no choice - I am, after all, an Earth Sign.
Next projects are a TV film for Channel 4, and a new theatre piece for Deborah Warner. My second godchild wants her own book written for her, so I had better get on with that. I love the time after a major project, because life becomes rich with possibility. I might end up doing something completely different, not even sighted yet.
What I am going to do is take an apartment in Paris for a year - not to live in all the time, but as a place to go and work. French culture may not be perfect, but it feels a lot better than anything in England right now. And whatever we think of Chirac, he was right not to go to war against Iraq.
I arrived back in England to find that there is still no evidence at all of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Bush continues to bully France for refusing to toe the line on Iraq, and the newspapers are full of disquieting information, some of it, no doubt, mis-information. Still, if I have to choose between being part of Europe or part of Bush's America, I want to be part of Europe.
I hope this will end. I hope this isn't the becoming a new kind of imperialism, with new dividing lines across the world.
There is only one world. We are going to have to share it or lose it.
On a housekeeping note - please remember that we never open attachments from anybody we don't know - they are automatically deleted. And, while I am always happy to answer what emails I can, I can't guarantee that I will answer, and I won't be able set up a regular chat with anybody. INFO will answer what it can, but we get over a hundred week off the site, and there's only so much we can do.
We can't help with essays, coursework etc - I put this in because a new term has started and we are already bombarded with questions! My view is that the only way to think is to think for yourself. (So don't ask me!)
Now that I have a bit more time, we will be adding to and updating the site in the near future, including a photo shop, where photos can be downloaded. Meantime, while I was in Berlin (it's been a busy month), I had some new photos done, and the photographer has an amazing author-photo website. Check out www.peitschphoto.com. Click on English, and off you go.
Have a good month.
Back to top« Go back |
feed
