Monday 26 September 2011

seagull




A ridiculous day at college. First, the photos I took in New York that I was so pleased with are, according to Mr Meine, no use for my portfolio. I had known already that the photos didn’t mean anything, that they couldn’t be interpreted in the way that Daisy’s can; her pictures that send him into ecstatic raptures, but still, I had thought they were good pictures. A series of tall buildings glinting in a sky saturated with sun. But I swallowed my disappointment and started to think: what else could I shoot, with the deadline looming? However, he had another bombshell to drop – the actual time by which I had to submit my raw images was much sooner than I had thought. So that was it, I was going to fail, unless I could come up with something, some idea, there and then, that I could shoot locally, with only an hour of proper daylight left in the afternoons after school and against the unceasing drizzle. And without knowing that what I did would be either good or bad until he told me, by which time it would be too late. I don’t mind admitting that I didn’t understand the basis on which these decisions were made. Of course, I knew about concepts like composition, lighting, imagery, which you would think were the criteria of goodness. But my judgements of quality were always wrong, as he told me by means of a condescending smile when I spoke (and I knew Daisy’s eyebrows would be raised even though she sat behind me) and so I was permanently in the dark. Some of my friends told me that he probably made his decisions (that were inevitably subjective anyway) on a whim, and then defended them with a kind of post-rationalism, like all teachers, but especially art teachers do. Perhaps this was true and perhaps not, and as they said it with the purpose of consoling me perhaps any truth it might have was invalidated anyway, but I didn’t really need their comfort because it didn’t matter – this was the situation I was landed with: I needed something he would like, that was the basis of the qualification I would or wouldn’t get. Fine – except at the moment I had nothing. “You must have something else, Beth,” he said, though why he used my name like that is beyond me, as there was no-one else there. I noticed that while he didn’t smell exactly bad, a kind of faintly musty or damp odour seemed to be emanating from him.



And he made me go through all of the picture files on my memory card. But I knew I had nothing, or so I thought. Right at the end of the thumbnail images was one that intrigued him. Jumped right out at him, he said afterwards. I was nonplussed, and thought he might be joking, until I noticed he had that look in his eyes, like he was about to give a sermon, like he had become temporarily a conduit for a blinding enlightenment from the realm of high Art. It never seemed genuine to me, but I can see how it must be a convenient trick if you’re a teacher and can’t always muster rational, logical arguments – but the word trick isn’t the right one because it wouldn’t work if they didn’t absolutely believe in the validity of their own insights. Anyway, I had to expand the picture, and he started raving about it. “Yes,” he said, then “Yes!” with an exclamation mark, then some other things on the same tack. I couldn’t believe it. The picture was one I’d taken for no reason at all, except that I was holding my camera and the shutter button was there to be pressed.



It was of an ordinary street in Brighton, a grey day like today. I’d taken it from waist height, uncomposed, the framing was at an angle. Top left, the splodged blur of a seagull taking off from a car roof. And, occupying about a sixth of the frame, the also blurred image of a man (though you couldn't tell it was a man, and I don't recall there being a person in shot), who was turning his head into the frame and looking at or at least towards the seagull.



So I sat there as Meine went into raptures over the picture. How could I have disregarded it? He wondered aloud as if he had happened across a priceless Roman sword hilt that some hapless member of the public had been using as a paperweight. Then he started to explain what the picture meant. I don't remember what he said, or, if I do, then I don't feel like repeating it here. Other members of the class were drifting over by this point, sensing that something was happening that was diverting, or that even might somehow gain them some obscure kind of credit. I began to hear echoes of my teacher's comments from my classmates. “Yes,” they said, the “Yes!” with an exclamation mark. Perhaps someone said “Awesome!” I looked at the clock. Daisy was there, saying nothing, but arching her eyebrows, which really is unnecessary as they are anyway permanently arched like two sideways question marks, but hairy question marks.



Of course, I agreed to use the image, and base my commentary on what he had said. With padding from some other photos that I could take easily enough, I was assured of at least a passing grade. But I was just glad to get to lunch.



After lunch was English. In class I told the whole story, or something like it, to the class (which that day was only five people, so no-one was feeling what you might call industrious) and the teacher. A twist: my English teacher loved the story. For a second he too looked like he might start talking about meaning (exegesis = the practice of interpretation of texts) but he seemed to manage to stop himself in time, though apparently this cost some effort on his part, as he had the expression of someone who had to hold themselves back from saying something else, and still a few times he was on the verge of saying it anyway, and probably would have done if the right prompt had come along. And the rest of the class seemed to me to be making the now familiar noises, or at least began wearing now familiar expressions, to indicate they knew exactly what he would have meant, and that I was to be an object of vague pity as one uninitiated into my own secrets, or I was an example of narrative dramatic irony (except of course that there was no controlling intelligence here, no author behind the scenes, just a noisy chaos that some could make sense of and that I couldn't, or perhaps the point was that the chaos can't be made sense of but could at least be articulated by some as chaos, and that social means of contention with chaos, through art and through theory, could be quantified – who knows?). By now I was at least able to dredge up a smile, and then I looked down at my pad. I tapped my pen on my pad a few times. I was waiting for someone to change the subject. Then my teacher suggested I write the whole story out.



I shrugged and said I would.
Steering



In the rearview

in the backseat

with delight illuminated

in the sunshine

the face of my boy, aged three

intent on his toy,

a present from me:

a steering wheel that adheres to the seat in front

so that he can copy his dad.

I smile, and he smiles,

as we swing through the streets.



But hang on –

that last left

was wrong, has brought me to an area I don’t know.

And I am clouded by indecision:

turn back, or try to correct the error?

These roads are a labyrinth of misleading markers:

stores, terraces, funeral parlours.

I need to pull up to get my bearings,

and I do so, by a cane fence

(the kind that’s opaque unless you squint, unfocus).



My son’s face again, but now

his features are faintly creased in a frown.

And, from behind me, the sounding of a small horn.





The rewards of travelling




Leaving the 6am town made of swirling dust

and bade good riddance by incestuously familiar dogs

the thwarted trees bend after him

and bemoan their exposed and pissed-on roots.

 
 
 
 

 
Smile




Smile through the blood and emerging bruises

not yet knowing what you already are

to others






Doctors




Doctors have nothing –

in the pay of the state –

they have nothing for unsafe structures

that creak nervously, worried by the slightest wind

nothing for a voice that can’t muster love

nothing for the residue of cobwebs in windows –

 
 
 
 
three things sideways




trains cannot admit they will their derailment

gardening is not archaeology, but turns up poems that are stillborn romances

memory is the end-calibration of life, missing the ranges that unmeasure beyond it