AFTER THE MUSE

Finding inspiration is not usually a challenge for me - knock on a million pieces of wood. Although external sources often trigger an idea and feed us, I think most people agree that inspiration comes from within. However, a muse is nothing at which to sniff. One of Lucian Freud’s muses inspired a painting that set the world record for the highest amount paid at auction by a living artist. Here’s Sue the benefits worker.

But how do we move from the excitement of inspiration to a result? How do we write the last chapter, paint the last stroke, put the finishing touches on that workshop? And should we discuss the icky middle stage? I think not. I asked a few friends how they move along when stuck in the mire of creation. The answers were varied and fascinating.

Above photo: Curtsies to Lucy Martin.

Brenda, Director of Movement Dialogues has been involved in movement education since 1985. She works with a diverse group of clients, both adults and children, including artists, musicians, dancers, athletes and those who wish to enhance the quality of their life. She says:

“The earth, trees, sea and sky are always so inspiring to me and I need my time in nature. Yet it is the mindful movement and attending to my own nature -- my earth -- that allow me the ability to connect more deeply whether it is to mother nature, my husband, my friends... as it also helps me with my feeling of vitality and comfort in my own body. The movement itself connects me to my creativity -- I never know where going into that structure of comfortable exploration is going to take me.”

Lisa, is the co-owner of Chroma Makeup Studio in Beverly Hills. As a makeup artist and producer of all Chroma products including two seasonal color palates each year, Lisa is constantly in creative mode. Her response:

“That's such an interesting topic. I struggle with this a lot. I find that just starting to do whatever it is that requires inspiration helps. Sometimes the inspiration follows...sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't I just stop working on whatever it is and start up again later. My job requires I am creative whether inspired or not, so when I'm working on things outside of makeup, I really want to be inspired. I have to add, it's interesting that when I have to produce, inspiration or not, technique takes over and the outcome is probably the same. It just doesn't feel as fulfilling.”

I have a friend who is a story analyst, writer and teacher. Seriously lucky me. She says, “I don't have any particular rituals when I'm moving on from inspiration to results, but I have always held an image in my mind since working on my grad school thesis. I think of each sentence as a brick and I'm the bricklayer. What I'm building - a wall, a room - depends on the emotional content of the section.” Love that.

I experience quite a lot of fear and anxiety when I write and quite a bit more as I sit idle and wait for the process to have it’s way with me. My friend who lays bricks gave me this.

It helps. So do her phone calls and emails – immeasurably.

So does this fellow.

He was sitting on the flagstones in Hampstead on a street called Flask Walk, no cars allowed, propped up against a table burdened with dreadful unwanted glassware. His Madam, the terrifying Jacquie, never seen without thick, hot pink lipstick and cheap perfume, sold him to me for £4.00. There's something whorish about that, I almost felt bad paying so little. I call him Worthington the Scolder. Every time I look at him he tells me to get on with it. I move him around the room and I don't like to sit with my back to him. He’s put a hex on the camera; all of his photos turn out the same, with some part of his face missing. He’s not mean, but he’s not the partygoer either.

I surround myself with things that boss me around and tell me what to do so there’s very little chance I’ll slack off without a great deal of guilt.

What do you do?

THINKING OF MISS ALBERTA

I was nervous the first time I met Miss Alberta. Did I have the right to intrude upon her privacy just because I once lived in the same house in which her great-grandmother was born a slave? I had a little talk with myself to make sure my interest in her was ignited by a genuine quest to make some sense of why and how our paths crossed.

We first met on neutral territory – a library. Books ease all things. With her was Clara, a lady who had been Miss Alberta’s caregiver, friend and protector for well over twenty years. At the time, Miss Alberta was 94 years old and as bright, intelligent and clear-headed as a woman twenty years younger. As we began to get a sense of each other, I noticed her long, elegant fingers clutched a plastic bag.

“If you want to know who I am, what I feel, it’s all in the book.”

She produced a volume of self-published poetry that she’d spent most of her life writing.

Then Miss Alberta invited me into her world. On a stifling August morning, so hot that the air quickly dampened my skin and curled my hair, I drove along the gravel road that was Bibbtown, although Bibbtown was not a town, not even a village. It was named after Major Richard Bibb, the Revolutionary war hero who, in 1820, owned over one hundred slaves in Kentucky and built his antebellum mansion in a small town, a few miles away.

This farmland acreage on the outskirts of town, deeded to Bibb’s former slaves, was barely touched by modernity except for a few telephone lines and even those disappeared as I approached Miss Alberta’s home. Her one room trailer sat a few yards from the church. Her farmhouse and all of her possessions were destroyed by fire in 1977. It was then that Clara first came to her aid. Miss Alberta lived without electricity, a telephone, or running water. Clara rigged up a generator and a gas contraption of which I never understood the workings. Miss Alberta was a pack rat, so reams of paper, books, and odd items were stacked to the ceiling. This fire hazard often caused Clara sleepless nights.

Miss Alberta was no longer able to work the fields of her ancestors on which she had raised tobacco and gardened, but she still cared for the 150 year old Bibbtown African Methodist Zion Church, also called Arnold’s Chapel, that her relatives helped build. There were only three members left, but as long as she was able, she cleaned it and readied it for monthly services. We approached the simple white clapboard building to the tune of Miss Alberta’s big set of keys that dangled in her hands. Its solitary decoration, an unassuming cross on the roof’s peak represented the only clue that it was a church.

I was not prepared for the beauty inside. The hand crafted hardwood floor supported solid wooden pews the color of molasses, shiny and smooth with wear. The mint green walls were cool and a respite from the sun. An old upright sat against a wall and Miss Alberta asked me to play. She was a deeply religious woman, but a non-believer in denominations. She fancied singing a hymn. I hadn’t played a hymn since I’d lost my baby fat and the F key and it’s cousin F sharp failed to produce a sound, but we muddled through two verses and it made her happy.

She then chose a pew and we sat quietly together until she was ready to speak.

“My great-great grandmother worked in the big house. And my great grandmother Catherine was born there. Major Bibb, his reputation was supposed to have been spotless, was Catherine’s father. Against her will. That’s why my family’s so light skinned. That happened a lot back then.”

Catherine Bibb Arnold

She looked away from me when she said, “I didn’t know my father, either. I know today that kind of thing is accepted, but back then it was deeply shameful.”

The “big house” eventually ended up in the hands of an eccentric, but business sharp elderly lady who wore no other color but red. I visited her frequently as a young girl. She bequeathed the house to my father. We moved out of the funeral home where we’d spent most of our lives and into the antique-filled antebellum home. Then we lost it, but that’s another story.

Before I left her that day Miss Alberta told me that many years ago a lady in red came to see her. She too sought to unravel the tangled threads of the history of her house.

When Miss Alberta celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday, Clara was her biggest cheerleader. She tried to positive-talk Miss Alberta into staying for another year, to hang around for the big one. But Miss Alberta was tired and ready to go. We lost her that year.

A RECIPE FOR DISASTERS

I lied. Mostly to myself, but still, I lied. I said I would never, ever post a recipe on my blog. So many people do it beautifully. But here’s the thing of it. The day before New Year’s Eve the heating broke down. From the 30^th of December until January 8^th I survived a cold week in hell. London hasn’t experienced a winter like this one for thirty years. Space heaters were a runaway best seller at the local hardware store. I became intimate with four of them.

I can’t imagine how I came down with a stomach virus during the takeover of the flat. The heating guys were incredibly nice, but I felt a shade of green as I answered their calls for things like a bucket, a broom, paper towels, tea, (my contribution to keep them happy) and a number of other things that you can’t imagine a heating specialist would need. Each time I tried to lie down to stop the room from spinning, someone called my name, or everyone’s phone rang at the same time, or they pounded on the pipes. Then one of the guys smashed his finger with a hammer. Suddenly there was blood in the oddest places. The new boiler fell off the wall and almost landed on top of the same poor guy. For days the design element of the bathroom took on a Jules Vernon atmosphere.

I must have been the only person in the UK to lose weight during the holidays. I needn’t have worried about the chocolate tart or the Danish birthday cake I ate before the traumatic New Year. I couldn’t eat for a week. When my appetite did roll around again the only thing I wanted to eat was what I consider one of the best recipes for the winter months. Ever. Ever. It’s not pretty, although I’m sure a food photographer could manage to do something with it. I’ve cobbled together several recipes, but most of the credit goes to that longhaired genius in Dorset, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame. This recipe of Minestrone will turn you into a deity, no, scrap that, not really; it will make you extra special to those who already love you and endear you to those who don’t.

Don’t despair. I’ll jot down the recipe properly at the end. I’m just adding a few visual aides.

You’re going to need some of this.

If you’re a vegetarian or Kosher, then I’ll see you on the other side, because while you can make it without pork, it won’t be quite the same. If you’re lucky and are able to buy diced pancetta, then glory hallelujah to you. If not, lardons will be your next choice. And woe is you if there are no lardons in your grocery, you’ll need to dice some pancetta or bacon, preferably from a thick cut piece.

You’re also going to need a chunk of this.

Ever wonder what to do with that Parmesan rind? Ever scrape the skin off your fingers by grating too close to that nasty rind? Those days are gone, my friend. When all things great and small are in the pot and beginning to simmer into untold goodness, you are going to toss that humble rind into the pot. Why? Depth. We’re talking about adding Freudian type depth to your Minestrone. That’s depth, not death.

And you will need a lot of stock made from one of these.

Secret tip. I use organic chicken stock cubes and water and lordy, lordy, it works every time. Don’t have to make your own stock or buy Chef Incredible’s hand wrung chicken stock from Bavaria. Or, if you’re in the States, you can use the canned variety. Sadly, we don’t have those darling cans in the UK. Go figure. I'm feeling a bit homesick at the thought.

You’ll be using several of these, too.

And none of this stuff.

And when you put it all together, it will look like this at first.

I told you, it's not a pretty dish. But not to worry, it will cook down after a while.

And now go do something else. Personally I think it’s always time for this.

So, here’s the recipe in full. I’d love to know how it turns out for you. But only if it’s good.

Marvelous Minestrone

Ingredients

3 tbs olive oil

6 ounces (130 grams) of pancetta or bacon cut into cubes

2 or 3 carrots – diced

1 onion – diced

1 or 2 sticks of celery – diced

2-3 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

6 ounces (200 grams) potato – peeled and diced

A Savoy cabbage – finely shredded

1 package of curly kale (it's safe - you won't be able to taste it)

2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or throw a few stems in and pick them out later

1 can of chopped tomatoes

About 1 ½ quarts (1.5 litres) of chicken stock

1 can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (or, ditch the potato and add another can of beans)

½ cup (80 grams) of small pasta, such as macaroni or tubetti

A small bunch of flat leaf parsley, chopped

Salt and Pepper

1 piece of Parmesan rind

Freshly grated Parmesan

Warm the olive oil in a big pot, then add the pancetta and saute until golden. Add the carrot, onion, celery and saute on low heat, stirring until soft, about ten minutes. Add the garlic, potato, cabbage and thyme and cook until the cabbage wilts. This won’t take long. Add the kale and cook until it wilts. This won’t take long either. Add the tomatoes, the stock and your new best friend, the Parmesan rind, and cook on low heat, partially covered for 40 minutes. Add the beans and pasta and simmer for 20 minutes. Add more stock or water if it looks too thick, although thick isn’t a bad thing. Don’t add salt until you’ve tasted. Depending on your stock you may not need it at all. Seriously. Add pepper and throw in the parsley. Taste again for seasoning. Serve with the grated Parmesan. Expect numerous OMG’s and compliments. This recipe makes a ton.

THE CALL OF THE WILD

That’s Stella again, my great grandmother riding a motorbike. The photo reminded me that it’s important, if not vital, to get out of the house and do something wild, weird, or bizarre.

For the past two years I’ve been running on the fumes of Punchdrunk, the production company that created The Masque of the Red Death in 2007, an immersive theatre experience based on the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe. At that time I was in dire need of refuelling. While in the middle of re-structuring my memoir, I was losing steam rather quickly; a leaky gas tank, if you will.

Punchdrunk transformed the entire premises of the Battersea Arts Centre, a five story Victorian building, formerly a Town Hall. Imagine roaming one of the largest buildings in your town or city after dark and recognizing nothing about it. Imagine being given a big white plastic mask, which you must wear at all times except in the Palais Royale, a music hall somewhere in the building that you must remember to find.

The hook-nosed masks that seventeenth-century medics thought would protect them from the Red Death inspired the creation of the masks.

Bloggers warned us to wear sturdy shoes and have an even sturdier heart because some experiences were genuinely frightening. And lastly, it was suggested that if you were prepared to investigate on your own, ditching those who went with you, it was then that the most interesting things happen to you. I ditched.

With all the advice I was still ill prepared for the evening. The white mask was surprisingly comfortable and offered anonymity. And I soon learned it distinguished the actors from the audience, helpful when one is immersed in a promenade production.

For three and a half hours I walked room-by-room, floor-by-floor. The mask made it slow going in the dark. I was forced to move my head in a different way and had little to no peripheral vision. The sound effects throughout the building were enveloping, my heart thumped to a world-weary sound I found impossible to describe. I felt I had walked into a nightmare in the mid nineteenth century.

I came upon a room where an unusually tall man dressed in a black cape and top hat dressed others in black capes. I stood in line to receive mine; he tied it just under my chin without a word. It was a strange, silent dance. For the rest of the evening, our capes rustled through rooms; we looked like blackbirds with white beaks.

I saw a man being buried alive in a wall. I walked though a fireplace. I climbed countless stairs to the attic in which a wooden platform crossed the eaves and led to a murderer’s bedroom and hideout. Hanging in the washroom were bloodstained clothes. I was the only person in the attic. I got out of there.

Four floors down in the basement was a well-stocked wine cellar and a coffin.

I picked up my pace and followed the stories of several different characters by running after them room to room. The opium den was very nice as opium dens go, a man smoked, and after which, fell into that deep sleep. A black cat, a real one, and I sat in a deserted parlour; I rested, fully expecting something to jump out at me. The fact that nothing did was probably the point. I witnessed the purchase of Victorian potions in a small apothecary; the characters stood so close to me that our arms touched. A man with a doctor’s bag rushed past, I ran after him to the bedside of the sickly and deranged Madeline, Usher’s beloved sister, as the doctor attended to her.

A character grabbed my arm in the crypt and looked straight into my eyes with an unspoken plea and anguish. I stumbled upon a dressing room of the characters that were playing actors in the performance at the Palais Royal, which I still had not found. A fight broke out. The closet in the room revealed a secret door to another room into which the quarrelling male characters disappeared, shutting the door in my face.

I found the Palais Royale, a music hall, complete with a stage, a bar, chairs and tables littered with white masks. I removed my mask, too. Several other faces were as astonished as mine, most of us were thirsty and ready to throw back much-needed drinks.

Our emcee appeared in his gender bending glory and a fetching tutu.

The emcee hopped off the stage, something he was wont to do, and sat on my lap. He stayed in character and told me I had the strongest thighs he’d ever known. I don’t blush easily, but blush I did.

We drank and watched the show in which one of the performers hanged himself. A group of characters burst in and told us we must put on our masks and leave the Palais Royale immediately. We were ushered out into a dining hall where a raucous dance scene around a dining table made us fear for our safety. A dancer landed on my foot.

Again we were pushed out with alarm and taken through halls and doors and finally into a grand ballroom. It was then and only then that we saw there were hundreds of audience members. We had passed through so many rooms and so many floors that it was impossible to calculate how many people were in the building until that moment. Frankly, I was so thoroughly absorbed that the thought of large numbers never entered my mind.

The grand finale unfolded in the ballroom where dancers commandeered the floor in dreamlike, yet frantic choreography. Just in case Punchdrunk takes to the road, crosses oceans, or somehow transports this incredible event to you, I will not spoil the ending.

After we sucked in the night air and found an open restaurant, my husband and our friend exchanged stories. Our three accounts were different. They experienced things I had not even seen. Two months later I went again with another friend before the show closed. I found rooms I’d not entered before, storylines I hadn’t followed the first time. I learned that other theatre groups were embedded in the main production, like the macabre puppet show into which my husband had been dragged. The dragger made a point of locking the door.

When I was very young an eccentric old woman befriended me. She introduced me to her favorite writer, Edgar Allen Poe. I’ve written about her in my memoir and I’m certain that my view of her became clearer after Punchdrunk brought Poe back to life.

It’s time again. I’ve received the call of the wild. A train ride to Dover, a walk along the white cliffs, one named after Shakespeare… if it’s good enough for him. Then I’ll enter the stomach of the cliffs, and descend into their bowels where secret tunnels have been carved out of the chalk. I’m expecting claustrophobia to be sure, crypt-like tunnels full of rooms. I’ll go in January when it’s cold and bleak, when I’m sure to be blown around by high winds at the edge of the cliffs where it’s wild and woolly, the Channel angry and brutal.

Inspiration. It comes in the strangest forms at the most opportune times. But only if you…

Get out of the house. Do something that scares you.

TRESPASSING ON THE KEATS HOUSE FACELIFT

I’m sitting on the floor of John Keats’ parlour. In this small room he wrote, fell in love with Fanny Brawne, became ill and thought himself a failure. The fireplace that warmed the room is original to the house, as are the wooden shutters that flank the tall windows from which he ached for a sighting of Fanny in the front garden.

The house sits on the edge of everything, the edge of Hampstead High Street, the edge of the Heath, the edge of South End Green. When I first moved near Keats House it was closed for refurbishment. I made a regular pilgrimage to the street, hoping to find the gate open and even considered climbing over the fence. I wanted to see inside the house before the surgery was over and the facelift complete. A couple of times I got lucky, found an open gate and intruded upon the builders and restorers. They lounged on the grass in the back garden in their pristine white coveralls, white coats and white caps, eating fat sandwiches they then washed down with cups of tea. I asked if I might enter while they had their lunch. Certainly not. Could I walk around the grounds? Yes, but careful of the scaffolding.

What a holy mess. I put my nose against one of the windows and it was clear why they wouldn’t let me in. I slipped away from the workers and found the front door open.

After a four-year restoration Keats House is open to the public. I continued to walk by and decided to give it a couple of weeks to avoid the first crowds. And here I am now, the only person in the entire three-story house, except for the gentle lady who took my £5.00.

Everything smells new. The paint is fresh; the Regency patterned wallpaper is clean and smooth. The colors, mostly muted, are soft and calming. In 1818 when Keats moved in, the house was only three years old and considered to be very modern. The wonder of wall-to-wall carpeting had just been introduced. I expected wood floors and Orientals throughout. Instead, I sit on a pattern of red and gold swirls in keeping with the painting that hangs above the fireplace depicting Keats sitting in this room with such a carpet underfoot. Today, the sun streams through and lands on the spot where he propped himself up by leaning over a chair while sitting in another. It appears to be an uncomfortable way to read.

Truthfully, it is Fanny Brawne’s presence that is most keenly felt in this house.

The Brawne family and Keats lived separately in this house, which at the time was two attached houses. They fell in love through their common walls. The engagement ring Keats gave Fanny is displayed in a wood and glass case alongside her soft leather needle case, a sewing box, a wide hair ribbon and delicate bracelets. Strands of Keats’s hair make up the strings in a lyre brooch. Fanny’s fashion plate book, in which she kept cuttings of fashions of the time, was not a whimsy, nor were the sewing utensils mere symbols of feminine chores. In today’s world she might have been a fashion designer.

I wander upstairs. On the landing I am astonished to see three headless mannequins draped with costumes from the movie Bright Star, Jane Campion’s brilliant movie set entirely during the period Keats lived in this house. I almost touch them; I want to very badly, but having worked in a museum at one time, I know better. Fanny’s dresses are wisps of floaty white linen, one further enhanced with a striking cherry red, short knitted jacket. Keats’s deep blue-green linen jacket and tan stirrup britches are as slender and petite as the dresses.

It’s quiet. I move to Fanny’s bedroom where the walls are covered in putty colored wallpaper in a playful design. The carpet is woven with green leafed twigs; it suggests the view from her window. The room is small like all the others, like his.

Upon entering his bedroom, on the same floor, I'm immediately drawn to the copy of his death mask; the sculpted head sits atop a stand that brings the mask to his full height – five feet, one inch. I sit on the floor next to the high tester bed mindful of the flash of the camera’s red light. No one has yet come to tell me I shouldn’t sit. They must see my pen and notebook. It’s close in this room. I feel a little claustrophobic.

I make my way down two flights to the lower level where the air is cooler. The floor is made of stone in the Brawne kitchen. A lantern hangs on the side of the fireplace. It’s sparsely furnished with the exception of one gigantic cupboard and sideboard combination.

Soon this house will be flooded with people. The film opens on November 6 and they’re expecting large numbers to flock to Keats Grove. I am told the production team thought the house too dull, the rooms too small and the setting too urbane to properly depict the setting as it was, thereby abandoning any idea of shooting here. That was before the transformation.

I wonder what Keats would make of all this. His most famous works were written in this less than spectacular house in what was then just a small village north of London. His critics were harsh and contributed to his opinion that he would most definitely die a failure. Think of that. I’ve heard a few people say that we shouldn’t use the word ‘try’, that we either do some thing, or we don’t, that there is no trying. I think we could do without the word ‘failure’, because as long as we try, we are not failing. Even after death.

I walk the Heath almost every Friday. In the heart of London, it’s still an amazingly wild, expansive piece of land where one is easily lost in its woods. But I will never walk it again without thinking of Fanny Brawne, who donned the severity of a black mourning costume when her fiancé died, and roamed the Heath frequently for over three years, her figure like a blackbird in the woods.

Years later Fanny married a Mr. Lindon. When they were of age, she confided in her three children and showed them her love letters from Keats, She made them promise to never reveal to their father that she had been previously engaged. After their parent's death, in a controversial act of profiteering, the children, led by Herbert Lindon, sold the letters at auction. It is to Fanny and her children we owe the story of Keats House.

REAR WINDOW NORTH BY NORTHWEST

I witnessed a crime from my kitchen window last Sunday morning. Stirring around the kitchen sleepy-eyed, I made coffee while I habitually looked out the window. We live on a leafy street in northwest London, a good street in a good neighborhood. Sunday mornings are the only time the street is devoid of traffic noise. Our one-way system doesn’t stem the flow of pizza delivery motorbikes, child carrying vans, lumber toting trucks, Porsches from our banker contingent and the odd Prius and G-Whizes, although they’re well-behaved and don’t drive us mad.

Thieves are also aware of our sacred morning of silence. The man I saw was blatantly without disguise, his face naked for me to see and remember, which I do. He was tall, dark haired, olive-skinned and wore a beard. His beard was not closely cut, yet didn’t conjure images of Walt Whitman either. It was a Mama Bear beard, right in the middle. The criminal was nicely dressed including a leather jacket, which is why when I first saw him try to break into the private gardens that are entered between the houses, I thought maybe he was lost, or a new resident; although, my instincts told me otherwise, told me I should watch him.

Then, in the broad daylight at 8:30 in the morning he broke into a car. I saw him fiddle with the lock, open the hatchback and rummage around. I raised the window noisily and stuck half my torso out the window. He heard me at once because our windows creak like an old lady’s bones and the sound carries half way around the world. Maybe you’ve heard our windows.

He looked up at me and took his time about moving away from the car.

“What?” He said.

I said nothing.

“What. What can I do for you?”

I remained silent.

“What. Let me see.” He pointed at our house. “Okay. I’ve got your house number. I know where you live. I’ll be back.”

Quite astonishingly he slowly walked away while he continued to threaten me.

“I know where you live. I’ll be back, I’ll be back.”

After I lost sight of him I thought of calling the police and I bemoaned the fact that my phone was upstairs and that I didn’t snap a photo of him. I threw on some clothes and wrote a note to the owner of the car, then ran across the street and placed the note under the wiper.

I never heard from the owner of the car.

Sunday will roll around again before I know it. What would Jimmy Stewart do?