“You teach, don’t you?” I ask Lucy. We’re in The Jolly Farmers. Nige and Al are talking football at the next table. Lucy is on whisky and I’m on beer.
“Yes, Personal Development through the work of Gurdjieff, mostly at retreats in the country. Which means I have to work against the holiday mentality quite a bit.”
“How did you qualify?”
“Well, I’ve actually got a teaching degree, not in Gurdjieff studies, but then there isn’t a degree in that. Why do you ask?”
“Yesterday, I emailed a woman who provides a whole range of writing workshops and yet I couldn’t see any evidence on her website that she’s had anything published. I used an alias, emailed her pretending to be looking for a teacher, said that I’d expect one to either have had published quite a bit or have some kind of teaching qualification. She wrote back to say she has an agent but her novel hasn’t yet been sold. And that’s it: the basis for her offering workshops on how to write. There seem to be quite a lot of writers like her doing the same thing.”
“What’s your concern?”
I go to the bar and think about this. What exactly is wrong with someone teaching even if they haven’t published much? There are sports coaches, after all, who don’t play. On the other hand, they’re at least dedicated professionals, qualified in coaching. Most of these writers who teach are writers, not coaches.
I hand Lucy another whisky. “When I look back,” I say, “there have been all kinds of turning points in my thinking about writing, which only came by getting rejected hundreds of times and occasionally getting stuff accepted. Also, by learning from a professional editor things I couldn’t have discovered on my own.”
“In other words, you’re saying if we don’t ever shift out of the ordinary self we all get given just by being alive, we can’t really help anyone else.”
“Did Gurdjieff say that?”
She laughs. “He was a bit more extreme. Said the vast majority of people never develop or grow. He gave the analogy of acorns – only one will become a tree, the rest are just fertilizer.”
“Wow, that’s the way to keep your students. Did he say how you become the tree?”
“Well, I suppose that’s what his work was about, taken all together.”
“Hmmm . . . reluctantly adopting his metaphor, I guess I’m concerned that a lot of these writing teachers think they’re oak trees but are really just fertilizer.”
“To become a tree, you need help, advice, the benefit of experience from someone who’s done it. But I think you need guts, too . . . are you all right; you’ve gone kind of frozen.”
“I’m trying to imagine being an acorn – feels all sort of dense and uniform.”
Lucy sips her whisky. “Do you know what,” she says, “I think growth has to be forced from within. Our parents were always trying to force us to grow, from the outside. So, when our generation rejected their help, we assumed that growth would come naturally, without any effort or resistance but it doesn’t.”
While she’s talking, I notice Al leave the pub. I wave at him, then Nige joins us.
“You two look like you’ve turned up for the pub quiz on the wrong night,” he says.
“Are you growing, Nige?” says Lucy.
He turns his glass slightly, so the handle is exactly at right angles to his beer mat.
“I used to think I was,” he says, “what with all my research into conspiracies and the such. But actually that was just stuff I liked to do. Gave me a buzz. Wasn’t really growing. Don’t we all stop doing that once we learn how to shag?”
“I’m still learning to!” says Lucy. “But you may be right. Gurdjieff said sexual energy is the most powerful kind but we tend to burn it up in physical acts instead of using it to create art and new learning.”
Nige raises an eyebrow. “Are you saying Tel should be dipping more than his quill into his ink pot?”
I resist making a joke about how a ‘pen’ ‘is’. Instead, I say, “Did Gurdjieff mean that we should use the excitement and the longing that goes before having sex to drive our creativity instead?”
Lucy shrugs. “I teach his work but to be honest, I don’t always understand it. Maybe that’s the point. Creativity is about not knowing but being desperate to find out at least a bit more of what’s real.”
Nige finishes the remaining half of his pint then stands. “My ex-wife used to say I didn’t push meself hard enough and she was probably right.”
He goes to the bar. I say to Lucy, “We always back off from the point just before we get there, don’t we?”
“So, go for it,” she says.
I force myself to think past the usual, comfortable response.
“The truth is,” I say, “we writers don’t push ourselves hard enough – not in terms of self-discipline but towards better understandings, insights and inspirations: personal development, I guess. And until we do that, we’ve got no place teaching anyone else, because all we’ll do is pass-on what we think are ‘facts’ about writing but are really just comfort buffers.”
Lucy laughs. “Great, so you have the next lesson for your group.”
“Trouble is,” I say, “a lot of readers don’t really want to go past their comfort buffers, either . . . ”
“Probably the majority don’t,” she says. “How often do you hear people say they read novels to escape, or chill out or turn off their brains?”
We fall silent for a moment, thinking about this. Nige returns from the bar.
“Now you look like the pair who turned up for the Stones gig the night after it took place,” he says.
“I’m not sure how to get past personal own comfort barriers,” I say, “or if there’s any point anyway, and I don’t have a clue how to teach my group to do the same. Or different.”
Nige shakes his head. “Just do what everyone else does.”
“Give up and watch the telly?”
“No, wing it. Fly with the cuckoos, mate. Don’t worry about the facts. By the time your students catch up, you’ll be kicking some other legitimate owners out of their nests.”
I’m about to protest that it isn’t about taking anyone else’s place; that there’s room for any writer who’s good in the publishing world. But I don’t think that’s what Nige means. I reckon he’s referring to our inner nests of what we believe and hold to and won’t leave go of. Not sure if these nests are lodged in our Gurdjieffian trees but I can worry about that later.
Lucy says, “You know, Nige, you’d be a pretty good guru.”
Nige drinks half his pint then carefully places the glass in the exact centre of his beer mat. “Well, I hear the money and the sex are good,” he says.
Back at home, I make some notes but try not to shape my thoughts too much. I understand the point about challenging one’s inner beliefs. But I’m beginning to see that the real ‘answers’ to a lot of teaching issues probably exist more in the spaces between the trees, and that it’s important to not get too distracted by – and now I know it really is time for bed – kicking the cuckoos out of our inner comfort nests.