We’re in a bar in Dingle, West Ireland. There’s a band playing, which is not of course unusual here, in a town where the main income is tourism – bars, Guinness, Fungi the Dingle Dolphin and Irish diddly-diddly music.
The band comprises fiddle, guitar, accordion and tin whistle. They are playing traditional songs and some Folk favourites like ‘Foggy Dew’. They’re good. They’re competent.
But . . .
Something doesn’t quite grip, or uplift, or go ‘oomph!’. Each player performs well enough and they interlock with each other efficiently.
But . . .
We move on to another bar, the Bridge House. It’s crowded and noisy, friendly. The barman seems to move slowly, yet he’s handling six or seven orders simultaneously. They’re trained to do this in Ireland, unlike in Britain where six or seven bar staff manage to avoid eye contact with their one customer, mainly by texting on their phones or swapping tips on looking cool.
A couple sees us look at the two musicians in the window seat and waves us into two empty stools next to them.
The guitarist is in his mid-thirties, long face, frizzy black hair, wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt. The squeeze-box player is in her late twenties; blonde, also dressed casually. They’re talking about what to play next. Then she starts a run of notes that he picks up, putting together a chord sequence to provide the rhythm.
Then they’re off. The reel starts slow, as they normally do. His left hand seems to feel out the chord shapes as if giving form to some inner beat. She squeezes out runs of notes that glide on the surface tension of his chords. They hold each other’s gaze; smile; she throws back her head, rocking with the increasing pace of the piece.
It gets louder and faster and their sounds seem to push against each other, giving the music –
– something extra; more than the sum of its parts; a kind of natural transcendence, not in some nebulous, ‘spiritual’ way, but with the sheer joy of two people communicating with intent.
The first band we saw tonight were talking to each other. This band is having a conversation.
#
I decide to explore the notion of ‘conversation’ where writing is concerned. I’m sure it’s something that could help the writers in my class, but I’m having trouble working out just how a writer can have a conversation with himself. At least, not without the neighbours sending in a shrink.
So here I am in number 32. Lucy’s house. She has one long room downstairs, airy, clean white walls, one or two paintings of landscapes; no clutter. Not really proper guru stuff but then I guess Lucy wouldn’t class herself as such anyway.
She’s in her early sixties, short grey hair, strong face, gaze that’s quietly watchful – not the full-on stare of the Hollywood guru, who sees-into-your-very-soul. Lucy isn’t even sure we have souls.
We’re sitting at her oak table, near the kitchen area, drinking tea out of Batman and Spiderman mugs. I wonder if she’s consciously mixing superhero belief systems. Outside the night-black rear windows, her apple trees sway gently in the breeze.
“I don’t know,” she says, after I’ve explained how I’m trying to work out what a conversation is for a writer. But then she nearly always says this. “Why’s it important to you?”
Lucy has studied with all sorts of teachers. She’s probably a Gurdjieffian at heart, but she knows a lot about Buddhism too; and can quote from most spiritual paths, including Lucasian (when the force is with her).
“Well, Mrs Yoda,” I say, “I feel that a problem maybe unique to writers is that we don’t get to have a conversation around our work, because there isn’t anyone else to talk to.”
“Don’t you talk to your readers?”
“Not really. I mean, they get a finished product that they may later comment on, which can be useful. But I’m talking more about a conversation that builds the work as it’s happening.”
She sips tea from the top of Batman’s head, thinking.
“Do you believe most writers don’t try hard enough?” she says.
“Yes, because most of the time, they don’t have anything to push against.”
“They show their work to other writers, though, don’t they?”
“Well, yes. Some use just one trusted reader friend; others put endless drafts through their writers’ group. But I’m not sure that’s a conversation.”
Then she does that irritating thing guru-ish types do, of turning the question back on me.
“So, what’s a conversation for you?” she says.
I watch the trees outside, and the mysterious night, and think about what actually happens during the writing process.
“It’s as if,” I say, “there’s all this treasure, just out of reach. You can get close to it, just a few inches away, by using existing maps and guides. But to actually get hold of it, you have to dig much deeper than you expected to, and you have to use tools no one has ever told you exist; and you have to close your mind to all the advice about ‘enough’s enough’. And keep on digging until you hit something solid.”
“Like real emotion?”
“Yes, but then you have the next step to negotiate and that’s to turn the treasure into something the rest of the world can use; and in the process you have to give it up.”
“So, the conversation isn’t actually between you and another person.”
“No. It’s between you and, well, the real you, I think.”
“You wouldn’t make much at the box office with a pirate movie based on that concept.”
“But that’s the point, isn’t it. That a writer’s treasure is always different to a reader’s.”
We stop the conversation. It isn’t finished but it doesn’t need to go any further. Emotional treasure, pirates of the Seven Cs (Creativity, Content, um, Cash, etc), conversations with one’s real self . . . it all needs mulching down into a usable feeling, rather than becoming a contrived analogy.
I stand, thank Lucy for the tea and say, “So what faith are you: Marvel or DC?”
“Oh, come on, Terry,” she says, “you should know by now that I’m a Dark Horse girl.”