Lynn Reid Banks will come to England's Lane bookshop next Monday. I think the last time I wrote there was a LOT about Two Is Lonely as it became some sort of bridge back to the UK.
I returned to London 3-and-a-half months ago and don't think I have written since. To merge Britain and Israel is so effortless in the world and mindset I inhabit. To care, take pride and realise its place in one's only-child instrospection is altogether different.
So Dorit arrived 10 days ago to prepare She London: The First Instalment with T, R, M and me. I had done some things...met with the girls, spoken with them, shaped my mind to their worlds, tried to pluck from them their needs and images for the process and purpose last week was to carve for us.
Since leaving Tel Aviv there has been no regression but a sort of bike-pedalling on the spot (not a gym bike) , in the sense that I can't ride a bike so the pedalling is quite impressive to watch but it is not really moving. There is space to think and analyse and to do these things productively requires discipline that, in Israel, exists without question. I forgot that with Dorit one cannot hide behind song lyrics, corsets, one-liners and eyeliners and homemade cakes.
She London at the end of February will see 5 spaces in the New End inhabited by a different artist as the audience, split into 5 groups, will move every 10 minutes around the circle. What questions are raised? Which thoughts must contextualise each artist's process and the final rooms' "products"? How, in 2 cities with 2 languages and so much to say, do we keep the circle simple with one centre-point focus?
Dorit worked with me to develop Undressing Cabaret for my relationship with the New End, for the relationship between one woman and a life and comfortablity in London and the tension and tears they encompass in contrast to their Tel Aviv counterparts. The other 3 women developed their performance art, improvisational and storytelling bases for the auditorium, bar and balcony and L's amazing skeletal puppet was incorporated on the main stage.
The flow of the evening felt practical and the Question and Answer session really showed the sophistication and intelligence of the audience but the special thing for me was what the other women in the circle chose not to mention when questioned about their thoughts and development.
In and out in and out that was how I felt all the time last week whilst all the time inside, Dorit talking with me, questioning me, caring about what I said not just for me but for the She circle, for the process of creating She London, for the bigger picture of joining the New End and the Karov, Britain and Israel. Every question, every answer, acknowledged and developed not with instensity or sentimentality but with true listening and understanding. And honesty.
An open heart and open mind...these words I always echo (somewhat nauseatingly) in every Meow Kacha I do and I have had neither for so long, not really. Then the Karov in London, Dorit in She, and the confrontations, denials and whims of the other three girls rotated something. Not changed but turned a bit of the core I can't get to, I can't control.
Fear is a powerful thing. If I lie awake at night with a two-liner lyric echoing in my mind with an anxiety in my belly which, unreassuringly, stems not from instinct but from the ever-present tendancy to only place myself first, that requires a change that can only come from small twists and turns step by step. She is so clever because it allows for slowly slowly...a long-term, gentle and firm nurturing which raises questions for the outer as well as finding answers for the inner.
I can take the care and nurture and grow and change, but can I pass it on? Can I find this friendly medium director-wise as well as performer-wise? When I continue to work with T, R and M between now and February, when I host Meow Kacha not in my parents' house and when C goes to Germany? These questions can only be answered if you consider them not in the context of your own life and experiences but after acknowledging and really caring about the questions posed by others...thinking about how their own pasts and presents shape their interpretation of your work and ideas.
If I can start to do this, degree by degree things will start to move and turn, I just know it, especially for the New End. It must have a future, it has to. And A is right, let's not make lists, let's do.
Showing posts with label lynne reid banks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lynne reid banks. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Two Isn't Lonely
Have you ever read Two Is Lonely by Lynne Reid Banks?
It is the third book in the L-Shaped Room trilogy. A film was made of the first...pretty mediocre and, considering the original purpose, inaccurate in my opinion. But the book is extraordinary. And unlike the majority of unequal sequels, they just get better.
In The L-Shaped Room Jane Graham, after a first somewhat unsuccessful sexual experience at the age of 29, finds herself pregnant and unmarried in England in the 1950s. She decides to keep the baby and the 3 books chart both the personal and social challenges of being a single mother to an illegitimate child. More importantly, though, they follow her amazing, real and utterly human nature...the mistakes and stubborness and repression and imagination in one individual in ways I at one point found so breathtaking I would carry the books around in my handbag as though they were my own children (who I will of course carry around in my handbag at all times) and describe and dwell on at the drop of a hat to anyone who expressed even the remotest polite interest.
The third book, Two Is Lonely, charts Jane's struggle to come to terms with her little boy's fatherlessness...the effect on him and the inevitable guilt. It's magnified by the fact that she, somewhat "modernly", chose not to marry the father because they did not love one-another. He did offer but not only did she refuse him but, because of an avulsion to his weak nature and pathetic personality, decided to sever all contact and the possibly essential ties between father and son. Now he needs a father. He needs one very badly. And before she can accept an offer of marriage from Andy - her now-suitor and a complex, compassionate and brutally favourable choice, she must go to Israel and cut another connection. Whilst pregnant Jane began a relationship with a Jewish writer Toby Cohen, also weak-willed but an extraordinary balance to her practicalness and bright nature. The relationship didn't work out and he has since married, had 2 daughters, divorced and moved with his eldest child to a kibbutz in Israel to work the land and make what he feels a mandatory contribution in the days leading up to the Yom Kippur war.
I re-read (for perhaps the eighth time) this novel just after I arrived here in January and I am re-reading it again now. It tires me beyond reasonable doubt. I had many useful things to do today but instead I stayed reading this book, sleeping for hours at a time in between. God knows why.
And as Liron and I listened to music and drank vodka and orange I thought about two. Over the past half-year I have had no conventional partnership to speak of. Well I have only had one such in my life, in fact...a fortnight-long one which changed my head and left my insides shattered from the inside out...but since January I have lived and existed in twos, divided my days and head between one and two, quite by accident, and learned a new type of not being lonely.
Another person, another existence, another set of nature/nurture blots and beauties, creates an inevitable perspective alongside your own. It's not a matter of having someone else to consider. Depending on who you are you will or will not do that anyway. But the luxury at this age of being able to live with somebody else who is not practically dependent on you but is also going through change and sameness; struggle and joy, cannot be underestimated.
Read Two Is Lonely if you can. I had a similar tie to Anita Diamant's The Red Tent and used to give a copy to every lover who meant "something" to me (poor bastards) but apart from one individual I never shared Lynne Reid Banks and her magic on my life.
Please, please read it. And if you do, let me know what you think.
It is the third book in the L-Shaped Room trilogy. A film was made of the first...pretty mediocre and, considering the original purpose, inaccurate in my opinion. But the book is extraordinary. And unlike the majority of unequal sequels, they just get better.
In The L-Shaped Room Jane Graham, after a first somewhat unsuccessful sexual experience at the age of 29, finds herself pregnant and unmarried in England in the 1950s. She decides to keep the baby and the 3 books chart both the personal and social challenges of being a single mother to an illegitimate child. More importantly, though, they follow her amazing, real and utterly human nature...the mistakes and stubborness and repression and imagination in one individual in ways I at one point found so breathtaking I would carry the books around in my handbag as though they were my own children (who I will of course carry around in my handbag at all times) and describe and dwell on at the drop of a hat to anyone who expressed even the remotest polite interest.
The third book, Two Is Lonely, charts Jane's struggle to come to terms with her little boy's fatherlessness...the effect on him and the inevitable guilt. It's magnified by the fact that she, somewhat "modernly", chose not to marry the father because they did not love one-another. He did offer but not only did she refuse him but, because of an avulsion to his weak nature and pathetic personality, decided to sever all contact and the possibly essential ties between father and son. Now he needs a father. He needs one very badly. And before she can accept an offer of marriage from Andy - her now-suitor and a complex, compassionate and brutally favourable choice, she must go to Israel and cut another connection. Whilst pregnant Jane began a relationship with a Jewish writer Toby Cohen, also weak-willed but an extraordinary balance to her practicalness and bright nature. The relationship didn't work out and he has since married, had 2 daughters, divorced and moved with his eldest child to a kibbutz in Israel to work the land and make what he feels a mandatory contribution in the days leading up to the Yom Kippur war.
I re-read (for perhaps the eighth time) this novel just after I arrived here in January and I am re-reading it again now. It tires me beyond reasonable doubt. I had many useful things to do today but instead I stayed reading this book, sleeping for hours at a time in between. God knows why.
And as Liron and I listened to music and drank vodka and orange I thought about two. Over the past half-year I have had no conventional partnership to speak of. Well I have only had one such in my life, in fact...a fortnight-long one which changed my head and left my insides shattered from the inside out...but since January I have lived and existed in twos, divided my days and head between one and two, quite by accident, and learned a new type of not being lonely.
Another person, another existence, another set of nature/nurture blots and beauties, creates an inevitable perspective alongside your own. It's not a matter of having someone else to consider. Depending on who you are you will or will not do that anyway. But the luxury at this age of being able to live with somebody else who is not practically dependent on you but is also going through change and sameness; struggle and joy, cannot be underestimated.
Read Two Is Lonely if you can. I had a similar tie to Anita Diamant's The Red Tent and used to give a copy to every lover who meant "something" to me (poor bastards) but apart from one individual I never shared Lynne Reid Banks and her magic on my life.
Please, please read it. And if you do, let me know what you think.
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