It’s been an odd week, dominated largely by my increasingly troublesome irritable bowel (although 'furious' would be a more accurate description). Too much information? Yes I know this is the sort of thing we simply don’t speak about, or at least not outside the walls of the doctor’s surgery or one of those ghastly internet forums; or perhaps the hearing of our nearest and dearest. But here I am broaching the unbroachable, my only defence the rather flippant tone I seem to have adopted; my excuse the fact that I have at present (and for the foreseeable) no ‘significant other’. Occasionally I remember Derek Jarman’s account of his first meeting with Keith Collins (‘HB’) in a cinema when he (Jarman) was already quite old - certainly much older than the man who became his companion and looked after him during the last years of his illness - and quite ill and from this derive some hope for the future. So I am greatly saddened to discover that Keith died of a brain tumour at the age of 54 last September. Jack and I saw him at a screening of Jarman's film The Garden at the BFI two or three years ago. I remember he introduced the film (I can’t recall any of his words, only his wonderful mane of black hair which I learn now he donated to a charity which makes wigs for children after chemotherapy) and then leaving with his skateboard under his arm, looking as though he might live for ever. Anyway, for the most part now I am resigned to the permanent single state and grateful for friends and the patience of you, dear reader.
So, the unmentionable: a delicate matter though the reality is anything but. The problem comes and goes. Weeks go by when my odd diet and happenstance combine to fool me into thinking that I have this cracked. Then, in weeks such as the last, the output (I’m struggling for a kinder word) has been for the most part slight but more or less continuous, so that I’m fairly tied to home and my own bathroom. Of late while running or for longer excursions I have had recourse to the adult version of Pampers. So in addition to the private indignities, I now have the added burden of guilt: that my lack of control in this most personal of areas is part of a growing environmental hazard, filling up landfill at an alarming rate. And as for the prospect of travelling: forget it. However, in the last day or two I have been somewhat heartened by reading about Antegrade Colonic Irrigation (ACI) via Percutaneous Endoscopic Colostomy (PEC): despite the heavyweight definition and the daily rigmarole involved, this does seem to offer a solution of sorts. What’s more, the article I read came from a team of four, all at the time of writing based at Addenbrookes; so the answer may lie on my own doorstep
'September': Gerhard Richter 2005 MoMA. New York If you’ve managed to stay with me so far without looking away - well done and thank you (and hoping you will forgive the clunky connection). Never Look Away is the English title of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest film, inspired by the early life of artist Gerhard Richter. Werk Ohne Autor ('work without author') – a phrase apparently once used by critics to describe Richter’s work – is the original German title. This is Henckel von Donnersmarck’s third feature (he made his name with the compelling Oscar-winning 2006 film The Lives of Others) and apparently earned him a 13-minute standing ovation at last year’s Venice Film Festival. With a running time of three hours nine minutes it’s a sprawling work but I found it totally absorbing when I saw it at the start of the week. The film begins in Dresden in 1937 with a Nazi exhibition on ‘decadent’ art, immediately raising questions about artistic freedom and politics, the function and purpose of art and what we mean by ‘truth’. According to Mark Kermode writing in The Guardian, the film’s central concern is ways of seeing, a story ‘about seeing and not seeing; about looking and looking away – often at the same time’. It’s a surprisingly straightforward telling for such an ambitious and wide-ranging topic – Kermode describes it as ‘an overcooked melodrama’ which nevertheless ‘succeeds more often than it fails’ reminding me somehow of the 2009 Argentinian film The Secrets in Their Eyes. A wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack, too. Towards the end the central character Kurt has burnt all his previous art and turns up day after day to sit in front of a blank canvas. I know how that feels!
Anglo-Argentine poet, writer and journalist Andrew Graham-Yooll had several things to say about art and politics and how we choose what we see. News of his death reached me a few days ago, courtesy of Francesca. She and I visited him twice in his house on Iriarte in Barracas, Buenos Aires, a street of down-at-heel car repair shops amd kiosks. I remember the jasmine which spilled over the outside staircase. We sat at a huge desk in a kind of lobby next to a tiny kitchen, drank wine, ate salty biscuits, talked and listened. Whilst there we were lucky enough to meet his nine-year-old son Mattias, adopted by Andrew and his second wife after he was abandoned, and to listen to his stories of the ‘dirty war’ of the 1970s, when the Buenos Aires Herald was the only newspaper to publish the names of the ‘disappeared’. Andrew stuck it out until his life was so obviously in danger that he went into voluntary exile in the UK. Two things he said have stayed with me: that ‘fear had a place at the table with us’, so that people evolved a way of seeing and not seeing, simultaneously, maintaining the illusion that nothing untoward was happening whilst saying ‘algo habran hecho’ - they (those who were suddenly no longer there) ‘must have done something’. Also, that the terrible events of the 1970s would never be believed until they were written as fiction; from a writer of ‘facts’, a lasting belief in the power of art.
The other passing which has preoccupied me this week has been that of our own larger-than-life-transgender-tanguera-with-Parkinson’s, Cassie. At first there were fears she might have taken her own life and there was some doubt whether there would even be a funeral since she was estranged from her family. But then the news filtered through that she had died of natural causes following an aneurysm, a sad departure of a different order and her funeral, arranged I think by Ely Labour Party members and ‘the girls’, Cassie’s friends, took place on 16th July, which would have been my mum’s birthday. It seemed an extraordinary occasion, hosted (is that the right word?) sensitively by a female member of the family firm of funeral directors Fuller’s of Ely. The crematorium was satisfactorily packed, including a substantial handful of the tango community and lots of Cassie’s friends, several of whom spoke. I read a shortened version of the piece I’d posted shortly after her death. Then a woman who turned out to be Cassie’s daughter stepped out of the crowd (congregation?) and stood with her hand on the coffin, speaking directly to Cassie. Except that she addressed her (him?) as ‘my dad’. It was hard to hear (she had her back to me) but I caught some of what she said: that he had been a ‘bloody awful dad’ but then she had also been an awful daughter; that she loved him; that she wanted him to know he would be buried under the tree with the dogs and the children, part of the family. And then she wavered into song, something unlikely from the Upanishads. It felt like a remarkable moment of reconciliation (albeit too late for Cassie to hear?) Afterwards, at the milonga, John spoke about Cassie and we have chatted a good deal since then, trying to make sense of it all, not least the thought that we could be kinder to each other. I have been remembering, from Arthur Miller’s play A View from the Bridge, the lawyer Alfieri’s words about Eddie: that he allowed himself to be ‘wholly known’ and for that he would love him ‘more than all [his] more sensible clients’. And I’m sure Cassie would be surprised, intrigued and rather touched that she has been so much in our thoughts and on our tongues since her death.
Issa Perillo Founder & Executive Director of Go! Tango P.D. Cassie stood out in our tango world in so many ways: never a comfortable fit, she tended to ride roughshod over tango’s codes of behaviour and was often hurt by her lack of acceptance. But she will be remembered for her determination and courage, her idiosyncrasies, her sense of humour and her generous spirit. I know that she found tango helpful for her experience of Parkinson’s and I’m sorry that she won’t be around when The Tango Effect is published next year. The book has attracted a bit of attention online recently, not just in the UK – an invitation to speak at the Lichfield Literature Festival in March, for example – but also in the US. One approach came from Ninah Beliavsky, Professor of Linguistics at St John’s University, New York who took my story with her to Buenos Aires where she addressed a conference on unspoken communication in Argentine tango. The second, most recently, was from Issa Perillo, a dancer diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s in 2011. With movement specialist Gloria Araya, Issa now teaches regular adapted tango classes for people with Parkinson’s tango in Chicago (check out her website here). We spoke on Skype a couple of days ago, comparing our experiences and I’m very much hoping we will stay in touch. Issa wanted to know if I was likely to be in Chicago any time soon. While I tied myself in knots with my very English evasions, she was refreshingly open about my gastric problems and not afraid to call a bowel a bowel, leaving me feeling optimistic: that what has begun to seem like a life sentence, an early end to travel opportunities, might actually be resolvable.
Yesterday marked the end (for now at least) of the Dance with Parkinson’s Poplar project. After seven weeks of workshops and preparations with a wonderful team of musicians and dance and visual artists, the afternoon saw the exhibition and our final performances.The whole thing was highly emotional and came with a great sense of achievement, heightened by the fact that two of my London friends were in the audience. The performance aspect has been a key element of the project for me, its promise of visibility a counter to the shame that often goes with Parkinson’s, the felt need to hide away the self or at least the symptoms. I’m reminded of the inspiring Capturing Grace, the Mark Morris film account of their Brooklyn Dance for PD group’s preparations for performance (in fact I snivel my way through most of it once more this morning). In particular, the words of two dancers have stayed in my mind:. First, words from Reggie which we have all echoed in some way over the last few weeks: ‘It’s liberated a part of me. When the dance class is going on, there are no patients. They’re dancers.’ And Cindy on the verge of the performance: ‘It’s a moment to shine… when you think your life is not going to hold any more surprises, here comes this wonderful gift.’ I spoke at our last workshop about the sense of liberation which I have gained. It’s measured for me in the removal - or lessening at least - of the inhibitions which have prevented me from enjoying any kind of dancing outside of the formal frameworks of tango or classes: I’m hoping that at Thursday’s after-party I will be able to spread my wings!
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