A Painting Artist

Photograph taken by Annie Liebowitz for Vanity Fair

When I think about cinematic love stories, and those that have transferred offscreen, I think Bacall and Bogie, Beatty and Benning, and MacGraw and McQueen.

A lot has been written about the last two, and this month’s Vanity Fair publishes an intimate interview with Ali MacGraw who talks about her relationship with Steve McQueen.

The romance was highly charged, all or nothing, “from the start it was either great days or horrendous days and nothing in between” and although she doesn’t explicitly say it was violent, she all but does. But the interesting thing she does say is, “I was 1000% not a victim.”

Her big sin, she says, “was to be inauthentic at the beginning. I didn’t state my case: ‘You know, even though I told you I’d rather be on a motorcycle opening a can of beer, the truth is I’d rather go to Paris.’ If you don’t say who you are up front, then you don’t get to wake up two years later and say, ‘Oh, man, am I sick of doing this!’”

Interestingly, this disconnect that she obviously felt and went through enabled her conversion from model to movie star when she appeared in Love Story. More interesting though is the journey she has been on privately to live an authentic life.

Because I’m writing a memoir, I’ve been drawn to reading other peoples’, in particular, Susannah Clapp’s brilliant and mesmerising account of her experience of editing Bruce Chatwin’s books, ‘With Chatwin’.

During my reading, I became curiouser and curiouser about the relationship Clapp had with Chatwin - she had a paradoxical approach all good editors have to learn to adopt, one that blends delicacy with toughness, and the ability to impart bad news (yes, you really do have to cut that section out because it will improve the book …), what is known in the trade as, ‘to kill your darlings’, combined with the ability to listen, and to hear what’s being said off the page as much as what’s being written on it. Their relationship reminded me of a similar relationship I had enjoyed with one of my authors some years ago during my editorship at Blackwells in Oxford. He was a a big fish to land, with all the drama and ego that came with that, but he had the goods to back it up. I became a better editor because of the conversations we had during our work.

One of the reasons I decided to read ‘With Chatwin’, was to learn how she structured it. Structuring memoir is tricky, I’ve discovered, especially when the story you are telling (OK I’ll own up - the story I am telling!), doesn’t necessarily follow a chronological narrative. Where do I begin the story? What goes where? What’s going to compel me (or anyone else) to pick this up once it’s done and read through to the end? What hold’s my attention and shows that I got under the skin of my subject, etc, etc.

I’m no Bruce Chatwin, but I came to the conclusion that what I really need in my life is a Susannah Clapp, because it’s hard learning to kill my darlings.

Many of the news reports about Alexander McQueen’s death from suicide have focused on the fact that he killed himself because of his inconsolable grief over losing his mother days earlier, and his mentor, Isabella Blow, 3 years ago.

As sad as this was to read, somehow the link between the two events didn’t feel right. Suddenly I thought of my own mother who is alive and well. What did this mean? That when the inevitable times comes of losing her, not only will I have my grief to deal with, but I might also have to resist killing myself?

One article I read in The Guardian challenged this view.

Carole Cadwalladr says that to say that grief causes someone to commit suicide is just plain dangerous. What’s less well reported is the fact that undiagnosed depression can lead to suicide. What’s also fact is that suicides tend to occur in clusters. This was the most disturbing part about this article.

“A study in 1974 found that a front-page story about suicide precipitated 58 “additional” deaths. In 2002, Professor Keith Hawton, head of the Oxford Centre for Suicide Research, described the evidence as “overwhelming.

At least 1.5 million people will face a major bereavement in 2010. That’s nearly 30,000 people this week alone, who, like McQueen, will be grieving and vulnerable; who may be depressed. Telling them that this boy wonder, this shining star, whose memory has been burnished by his early death, for whom celebrities have mourned and the Sky news chopper was scrambled, killed himself because his mother died a week ago is grossly irresponsible.”

This is a complex story, with a complex history binding it together. It’s going to take a more sensitive and intuitive response than the one we have seen in the press recently before we begin to fully understand the impulse behind suicide.

The writer A. Alvarez, who wrote the classic book about Suicide called The Savage God says, “suicide means different things for different people at different times.” There are no glib, easy explanations, and part of the difficulty of dealing with suicide is that the one person who can explain it is dead. They have had the last word.

Like Woody Allen, I’ve done some time on the couch.

Unlike Woody though, I didn’t stay supine. I came to the conclusion that I could either spend the next decade analysising my life or, I could get out there and live it!

Allen has always maintained that his own analysis has enabled him to be more creative, not less, which is kind of interesting, and maybe says something about the type of relationship he had with his analyst, a view that was confirmed yesterday at the ICA, who hosted a viewing of Allen’s film, Deconstructing Harry, followed by a Q&A panel in association with The Institute of Psychoanalysis.

To some extent, Allen’s prolific productivity - a film a year, speaks for itself. Either way, I don’t think it’s cut and dried. Working issues through in analysis does give you a deeper and clearer meaning, sometimes even a changed perspective, and occasionally, a revelation. At it’s best for me, analysis did just that.

But at some point, doesn’t the artist have to step out from behind the shadows of the analysis, and put pen to paper, rather than pouring it all out on the couch or, does the couch enable you to generate more ideas for the page, the canvas?

Allen’s body of work seems to suggest that it’s a mixture of the two, and that his deconstruction of ideas is working just fine!

A friend of my husband’s invited us to hear a band called The Plastic People of the Universe. Heard of them? No, I hadn’t either. But they were the Stones of the ’60s in what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Dissidents at heart and in their music, they came to London to perform a set at the South Bank. Tom Stoppard’s 2006 play Rock ‘n Roll was inspired by them. I was a bit sceptical about the music to start with, not being a huge fan of The Velvet Underground, which was a major influence on the band, BUT, what inspired me, was the pure poetry of the music!

I was particularly captivated by Vratislav Brabenec, the Saxophinist who has below shoulder length grey hair, and John Lennon style glasses, and a quiet soulful style. There was something wizard-like about his physicality - I wouldn’t have been surprised had he disappeared off into a grotto, or said, ‘hold on a sec while I just magic in a bit of faerie dust’.

So the following day when my husband gave me a copy of his book, The Center of the World is Everywhere, I opened it in awe. Here was a collection of stories written for children, a collection of stories that Vratislav told his daughter as a child.

Vratislav has shared his life with all sorts of animals - from intelligent horses and dogs to birds of all kinds. A musician, gardener, forester, farmer and poet. He doesn’t even underestimate chickens - as a child, he trained chickens to fly onto a stick as soon as he held it out. He loved to talk about animals with his daughter, Nikola, when she was small, and he has written these stories down for other children to enjoy. In his life, he says he has encountered two miracles: women and pine trees! What a man.

The book is stunningly illustrated by Matej Forman, son of the filmaker Milos Forman.

The stories introduce children to the wonders of living with animals and the lessons they impart to us:

“Woodpecker (I haven’t laughed like that in a long time)

Courtship, bait and spells
gold-plated charms, hocus pocus
knocks on your soul’s door
where a fire burns
from a spark
hidden deep inside
don’t trip
over a wandering root …”

Sadly only 100 copies of this book have been printed in English by Meander Publishing House. This is crying out to be picked up by a Publisher who has an eye on using social media to promote it ….

Contact me if you are interested.

This story made me smile. My husband showed me the article in the London Evening Standard about Baby Archie - is he the new Jamie Oliver? Archie’s dad, Nick, was made redundant, and became a stay-at-home Dad, and started cooking with Archie, his son and creating a video blog. The blog gets over 1,000 hits per day, and a book deal is in the works!

Now, they cook every day together, and Archie loves his food. Given the ‘fussy eaters’ children can be, Nick’s approach is proving to be a huge inspiration for parents, and not just parents - I watched the video on Plum Clafoutis, something I have always resisted making, much to my husband’s chagrin - having seen how easy it is, I’m making it!

This guy is going to rock the foodie world with his approach, and so watch out Annabel Kiemel … Nick doesn’t hide his carrots, make them into eyebrows so Archie won’t notice. Oh no. Nick has followed a ‘baby led weaning’ approach, so Archie doesn’t think carrots are eyebrows, he knows they are carrots, and eats them!

The other thing I like about Nick’s approach is the little aside stories he includes on his blog, like the one in this video about the Mum who lost her daughter. Yes, life is precarious, and it’s also precious, and cooking together, sticky fingers and all, makes you stop and appreciate one another.

He didn’t set out to ‘make money’ from his idea, he just used this as a creative outlet, and a way to interact with other parents online. The irony is, of course, that he will probably end up being a squillionaire!!

Good luck Nick - and Archie!

She had me at India.

Not Italy, although Italy was OK, but I was too distracted by her pasta eating …

But in India her journey deepens and so does her writing. Maybe she planned it this way, or maybe it was happy coincidence. Nothing, I have learned recently, about this book’s arrival, was coincidental.

Writing like this:

“If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be … a prudent insurance policy.

I’m not interested in the insurance industry. I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.”

Yeah, she had me at India.

Mark Rothko said: ‘anyone who eats food at these prices, won’t look at my paintings.’ It was this statement which preceded him giving the money back - returning the $35,000 paycheck he received to paint four canvases which were to hang in the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram building in Manhattan.

This moment forms the basis of John Logan’s outstanding new play, RED which opened at The Donmar Warehouse in London on Dec 2. I saw the play on New Year’s Eve, which felt like a fitting way to end the last year of the decade. “What do you see?” Rothko repeatedly asks his assistant. Indeed, what does one see? It’s a searching question as I reflect on the last decade, which has seen a full quota of red …

As Rothko said, knowing what has gone before us, what our cultural ancestors did, who they were, and what they aimed to teach us in literature, art, music, history, anthropology … gives us a presence of mind and a context to live within, to redefine ourselves by. History informs the present, and those lessons we learn from it enable us to take the next step.

Maurice Sendak is a genius. How is it that I discovered this only recently? My parents should be thrashed for not reading his classic book, Where the Wild Things Are to me …!

What’s even more exciting is that I read yesterday, on Dave Eggers site, that he has published a novel based on the movie, Where the Wild Things Are, called simply - The Wild Things. How cool is that. When I saw the movie I said to my husband: this story deserves a book … ah, to be proved right again …

The movie reminded me again that outsiders - also known as ‘wild people’, are just geniuses who haven’t found their rightful niche yet. Or, maybe they are new niche makers?

I don’t make new year resolutions anymore, but I am tempted to draw up a ‘wild things list’, all the wild things I want to do next year, starting with, drumroll please … restarting my dance classes - those that I stopped when I was a teenager and had a more serious and studious job to do. I miss that feeling of joy that I get when I dance, wildly or not, it’s just one of the ways I express myself. Others I can think of now are:

Not wasting anymore time …
Travelling to India and Egypt, and gliding down the Nile on an Egyptian steamer wearing my flapper dress
Finally getting to Bali … living and painting in Bali …
Opening a retreat in Morrocco, and filling it with hot pink cushions from the souks

I’m sure there will be more.

Got any wild things you want to do next year? Tell me.

I’ve been thinking for some time now that the power dynamic between author and publisher has shifted, in favour of the author. Which is great news. This has happened, largely because the options to self-publish and distribute have grown up and become respectable, rather than being a disadvantaged teenager. This respectability has given authors an opportunity to generate more income for themselves, rather than giving the lion’s share to the publisher, and therefore also build their brand, and touch their tribe.

The author Nick Kettles is doing this with his book, ‘The All-Seeing Boy and the Blue Sky of Happiness’, which recently garnered an endorsement from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Impressed with this achievement, and curious about how he had done this, I have interviewed him for my blog. His insights into his creative process are worth reading, if you are struggling to find an audience and publisher for your book. His secret is so simple, and yet easy to overlook in a marketplace that thrives on noise …

Read the full interview.

To read more interviews with authors who have broken the rules and achieved success, please subscribe here.