How lucky these kids are to have access to so much live inspiration and stimulation early in life. What with the proliferation of computer games, gadgets and gimmicks, listening to a real live person telling a story and watching a real live artist making lines come to life before your eyes is a thrill too often forgotten.
My movie clip can be seen at Blaugustine and on blip.tv
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Philip Larkin
Writing about my mother inevitably brings up thoughts about my parents, my childhood, and all sorts of paths leading in and out of that territory, partly factual, partly selective memory and partly buried emotion. The first line of Larkin's poem is so famous because it's so true. It echoes with everyone, or nearly everyone, who has had parents. Some of the things we are fucked up about do not come from our parents but some do, that's undeniable.
Being a good parent, or a 'good enough' parent, is a talent which doesn't necessarily pop up the minute a baby lands in the arms and the life of a formerly baby-free woman and her mate (if a mate is present). Some people are hopeless at the parenting art, some struggle to learn it and a few - very few, in my opinion - take to it like ducks to water or cats to kittens.
I feel very fortunate to have had the parents I had, not because they were good parents (they were not) but because they were two interesting, complex and marvellous people I got to know very well by virtue of being one of their children. As a child - and sometimes far into adulthood - a Parent is seen only in capital letters. Those letters might spell love or rage or need but they are always capitalised. It takes a lot of growing up to finally accept that Parents are only people, ordinary humans just like us.
is here so go there and let me know what you think. It's about 18 minutes long and because of having to compress it so much, it's become rather blurry. But please stick with it anyway because there are some good moments, especially on the roof when my niece's beautiful hand gestures, slowed down, seem to be conducting the music or pointing like a frescoed angel.
I go a bit bonkers when I start editing film so I never got to bed at all last night and today has been the same. It's a rivetting and infuriating process, demanding 100% obsessive compulsion. Having removed all my original video soundtrack, keeping only some voices in the children's park, airport noises in Fiumicino and the landing at Heathrow, I had to choose music to insert in the gaps. That was the most fascinating task of all, seeing how places, faces and things are transfigured by merely giving them a new sound.
Wouldn't it be lovely if for at least a day, no one spoke at all, and all ordinary noise would be turned off, replaced by music intuitively chosen to accompany the movement of people and objects in space?
