MartinA. Egan A Question and Answer Session Poet, Painter, and Multi-Platinum Song Writer

A question and answer session with Martin A. Egan

Biography Martin A.  Egan

Martin A. Egan is an Irish Singer Songwriter who had until March 5th 2010 never released an Album but despite this reached Multi Platinum Status in Ireland and Europe in 1997 and also 2006 writing "Casey" a Song about the adventures and misadventures of the profligate Bishop of Kerry for Christy Moore, 1997 also saw Egan working in Collaboration with the Hothouse Flowers, resulting in  “The Making of Us All” featuring on "Your Love Goes On" the first Single from their 2005 "Into Your Heart" Album. While working with the Flowers a number of Songs were written and recorded in Peter OToole's Home Studio in Lacken Co Wicklow. One of these Songs "The Tune"  featuring Peter on Bass, Bouzouki and Guitar became the Title Track of his Current Album. Another Co-write "Talking to the Wildman" also ended up on the Album.

The Black Romantics Collective featuring members of Jack's Band, In Tua Nua, The West Seventies and other seminal Dublin Bands recorded Egan's  Spoken Word Piece: “The Shepherd and his Maiden” on their Album  “Nine Parts Devil" Martin also worked with Poppy Gonzalez (ex Mojave 3 piano player) and her Band Hush Collector for whom he co-wrote the Title Track “Flowby” for their Debut E.P. on Candy Cone Records and the Late Woody Sagoo whom he also managed.

Martin has also worked with Eamon Carr of Horslips and written a number of Songs with Will Merriman of the Harvest Ministers one of which "Ruined Shoes" currently features as part of his Live Set.

He was Nominated along with Mary O'Regan of Draoicht for the German Music Award in 1997 for Mary's Solo Album "Every Punch needs the Kiss" for which Martin wrote the Title Track along with 3 other tracks.

Martin Egan is also a recognised Irish Neo-Expressionist Artist and although he has not produced any new work since 1997 is about to begin a New Multi-Media Project involving Experimental Music, Painting, Spoken Word, and has also completed a Book of Sonnets on the Theme of Grief and Loss which will also be incorporated into the New Project.

Martin Egan returned to the Studio on March 22nd 2010 to complete Recordings begun in Ashtown Studio's in late 2009.  having finally released "The Tune" along with a Video of the Title Track on March 5th 2010 on his own Slinky Vibe Label Martin feels that he has at last put his past to rest. The New Album fondly known by the Working Title Part I includes work written with the participation of Brian Conniffe the Sound Sculpture Artist who has worked with a number of highly respected Musicians. Part I features Paul "Binzer" Brennan and Tommy O'Sullivan on Drums and Dara "Dip" Higgins on Electric and Double Bass. Tommy O'Sullivan also  contributed Guitar on a number of Tracks. Martin begins work on Part II on January 6th 2011 and Part I will be released in 2012Creating work in many disciplines is a way of Life Martin and Other Projects which for the moment remain secret are in train and will be brought to fruition over the next few years.

"The Tune"recorded between 1992 and 1997 with a great many Irish Musical Luminaries of that and the current time is now available in a Signed Limited Edition C.D. Format or by Download or at www.slinkyvibe.com and is Distributed Nationwide by Mail Order from Claddagh Records http://claddaghrecords.com/WWW/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=Martin+A.+Egan&x=14&y=14 is available by Download from www.itunes.com or on C.D. from City Discs in Eustace Street Temple Bar Dublin, Freebird at the Secret Book and Record Store in Wicklow Street, the Sound Cellar in Nassau Street and also on all the usual Online Outlets. A slide Show of Martins Paintings is available in the Photo Gallery and will also be available to buy with a Price List included.

1.  One of your songs, “Casey” is about the “misadventures of the profligate  Bishop of Kerry”-I have no idea what that involved and I am guessing outside of Ireland not many people understand what that means.  My first thought was that it might be related to the scandals in the Church in Ireland-can you explain this a bit and let us know why this inspired you to write a song about the Bishop, please?

Bishop Casey was the local Bishop in Kerry when I moved there from Galway in 1980. He had been Bishop of Galway while I was there also. He was notorious for his very erratic and high speed Driving. I was told the Core of the Story when I was working cutting turf with the local villagers and added my own idea's after that. Bishop Casey was arrested in London for drunken driving and I compared the British approach of "We don't give a damn who you are" to the Irish Gardai at the time which was very subservient to the Church. Later on the Song was recorded by Christy Moore and when Casey was exposed
along with Michael Cleary as having in Casey's case a Child by Annie Murphy Christy added the current last verse. It was written initially as a bit of fun but turned into something more serious after the Niall O'Brien Affair and all the Polticis of those times which we are only seeing the very nasty results of now,

2.  How did you get involved with writing a song for Mary O’Reagan?

I didn;t actually. I was a Busker for many years in in Dingle and Tralee in Co. Kerry, playing Music and having Exhibitions in the Summer and Writing and Painting through the Winters. Mary was in a Band called Draoicht with the Mulcahy brothers Frank and Tom (a very fine Songwriter himself). They heard me singing when they were starting off and then included "Every Punch Needs a Kiss" in their Live Set . Mary left the Band after a Tour of the German Speaking Countries in Europe, Austria, Germany Switzerland etc and was offered a Solo Deal by Magnetic Music in Germany. She recorded the Album and honoured me by using the Song "Every Punch Needs a Kiss" as the Title Track and recording 3 more Tracks as well. To everyone's surprise it was Nominated for the German Music Award (Folk Category) which helped with Radio Play and Sales very nicely

3.  Your bio says you are recognized as a Neo-Expressionist artist-can you please explicate this in non technical terms.

I was actually called a Neo-Expressionist by people within the Arts but never really saw myself as that. I began Painting as a means of getting beyond word based writing a medium in which I found myself having increasing difficulty expressing myself. I was suffering Writer's Block more and more and became a Painter quite by accident beginning by painting with cheap Chinese Acrylics I saw in a shop window in Dingle and progressing to Large Canvas Paintings. I was driven mostly by a need to express what was occurring internally that words
could not convey. The Primary drive was a search for a sense of Identity as a man and as an Artist after the loss of 3 children and the resultant collapse of my marriage, Music and Wors while still present were increasingly unable to express the non-verbal aspects of Loss. A lot of this had to do with my Upbringing, it also had to do with a stubborn streak in me as an Artist, a refusal to let any experience of my life pass by without documenting it and I suppose a refusal to experience all that Grief and Loss without getting anything Creative or for want of a better word Eternal out of it.

4.  Regarding your poety, I hope this is not to personal a question but it is brought up on your webpage.  What is the personal background to the 89 sonnets you lost  in the summer of 2010, which were sonnets to your deceased children?  

I have been writing since I could talk. Not just Poetry but Monologues, Spoken Word with Poetry, Songs, Short Stories, Plays and 3 Feature Film Scripts Poetry is how I initially began Performing live. I am from a very Musical Family and I think writing gave me a sense of separateness from the Family, in terms of identity especially musically. I wrote and had published my first Poems in the U.K. at the age of 13 after an
English Teacher told me I would never be a Poet. It is only recently that I have started to publish Poetry again. I was born in the same Hospital as Michael Hartett, grew up in the same street and then New Housing Complex Assumpta Park in Newcastle West and have only recently put the Writing pattern that has emerged into context from reading extensively about Michael and his methods of writing which parallel my oww methods in an uncanny fashion without any planning on my part.. The loss of the 89 Sonnets was a big deal but I had Working versions of about 40 transferred to my Computer so in fact really only lost 49 but once the heat of writing goes off things it is very difficult to reheat them so to speak. The loss of my Children has taken me into far deeper losses a lot of which were hidden within the Family History and have led to a lot of thinking about Cultural Identity and the reduction of the Irish to a second class Race in many ways and I do not
mean in the sense of how to look good or earn a living or any of that social nonsense. This as you might imagine is open to a lot of misunderstanding but being misunderstood is the Poets lot in my experience.

5.  “Green Water” seems almost like an elegy to lost youth, to memories of a passion once felt.  Is there a sense in which a long for the past, better times before time and sadness deeply intrudes in all of your work?

"Green Water" is an Elegy to the 3 Women I have loved most in my life, none of whom I am going to name here. It is also related to the place of Water in the great Mysteries of Nature, Reproduction and Love. Its Symbolism of a connection to Flow, Eternal Life and the original Irish Muse.

6.  Over the last year I have listened to a lot of traditional Irish music through the internet on my IPAD.  Much like “Green Water”, a lot of it is a longing for the past and an attempt to accept that your best and maybe Ireland’s best days are over?   What is your reaction to this?

My Parents love of Music and their playing of it was evenly divided into 2 Camps. My Mother loved Irish Traditional Music and played with a lot of the greats in Sessions in London in the 50's and 60's. My Father loved Jazz and played the Tenor Saxophone so Home Rehearsals were always a Comedy Routine and a Battle of Wills over what would be played in the Live Sets, my Father cursing
the Irish Content and my Mother my Father's attempts to Jazz up Irish Music. They were both Trained Reader's and had played with Show-bands before the Economic conditions of 50's Ireland forced them to emigrate. I think it was G.K. Chesterton who said of the Irish that "All their Wars were Merry, and all their

Songs were Sad". "Green Water" is
more about my own capacity to feel love deeply after being frozen by loss for a very long time than it is actually about sadness. It is also a paean to the loss of deeply experienced love for my exes and my children.

I

7.  What were the last three books you read?

I suppose to be honest I can't say I've read any of the last number of Books I've been reading as they are all Poetry
and in my experience Poetry changes every time I read it so there is no actual "Read" involved. On the other hand I read a vast amount of Genre Fiction particularly John Connolly the Irish Supernatural Author whose books I found really beneficial right from the first one in that they dealt with the same issues (apart from all the violence) as those that preoccupy  me. John lives locally and we run into each other locally all the time so he knows the impact books like the "Killing Kind" ~"Bad Men" etc have had on my own process. I have the kind of mind that cannot learn much by rote but can learn volumes from someone else's description of a state or experience and John's Books are so well researched that the conditions described (while in a fictional situation) are in fact real experiences related to the Author by people who actually experienced those events.

8.  Why did you stop painting for eleven years-what has given you the motivation to start again.  How has the business side of art, selling and buying pictures changed in the laat decade?

I felt that I was continually repeating myself. I was commanding larger and larger Prices fro my Work but felt that I was conning people. That I had reached the limits of whatever skills I had and I needed more. Circumstance dictated things as well. I moved and had nowhere to paint and couldn't afford a Studio. I wanted to work big and the Computer Generation has meant that Studio Space is measured by the Square Foot rather than the needs of the particular Artist. The Movement toward Animation etc and all the things which can be done Online has impacted on Space and Proce of Space enormously. I personally hate small Paintings unless they are a use for waste Paint from another Picture. I painted anything up to 25 Medium to Large Paintings at a time when I lived in Kerry. So I stopped. My Songwriting was vastly
improved by Painting as I wasn't trying to squeeze the inexpressible into a mode of expression any more.

9.  You have written a long poem entitled “Falling for A Dolphin”, about the arrival of Funghi the Dingle Dolphin.
  Can you talk a bit about how swimming with Funghi impacted you?  How can swimming with dolphins have a healing impact on people with psychological issues?  Did you sense a higher level of intelligence in dolphins than in say, dogs?  Did you feel a sense of bonding from the dolphin to you?   

I was involved with the whole Funghi explosion in Kerry and met Dr Horace Dobbs, one of the Pioneer's of the Research into Dolphins healing capabilities but never swam with Funghi myself. I also DID NOT write "Falling for a Dolphin", this was written by the English Actor and Polymath Heathcote Williams whom I had known in the early to mid 70's in London where he was involved in the Anti Jubilee Festivities and also acting in Derek Jarman's Films of the time. I saw the obsession with Dolphins and Healing in a lot of people as a form of transference or substitution in much the same way animals substitute for children with some people. While I understood the principle of "innate healing" within certain creatures I certainly didn't partake of it myself. I think I was too involved with working out how
to deal with my problems internally that I didn't want to invest emotional energy in an outside Agency animal, vegetable or mineral. The "Dolphin Song" was inspired more by the Ancient Greek ideal that Dolphins are harbingers of good luck, good health and a boon from the Gods than swimming doctors. I think the presence of absolute innocence in the animal sense is also a contributing factor

10. Please talk a bit about government funding of the arts in Ireland.

I think the main problem with Arts Funding is one you have already pointed out and is one that troubles me a lot. Control. True Creativity is beyond all social control and merely reflects the Society it manifests within. The Artist or the Organisation becoming the Art is nonsense of the highest order. It results in a political landscape of people scrabbling for position, grants and titles, visibility at all costs. Art will happen whether there is money or not. It is not a thing to be trifled with or boxed off into Categories or into dry Semantic platitudes and concepts as is currently happening with the Graduate and Post Grad Class. They have developed a language and a sense of being apart which is neither good for Art nor for emerging Practitioners. What needs
to be remembered is that Art must be separated from the Establishment for it to develop properly. The collusion between the Establishment, Trinity, D.I.T. The Abbey and the Gate to make Art in all its forms a safe preserve for the cultured few is what is killing creativity. This applies across the Board from incomprehensible (to me) Academic Texts to equally incomprehensible to me Arts Criticism. The Irish are particularly prone to this horrible habit of applying a Snobbery Quotient. a Music for Middlebrows attitude to Art which would reveal infinitely more were it left to be a mystery and thus outside all the intellectual juggling and mind games that go on.  Not that I wouldn't mind being inducted into Aosdana because some very fine (and uncontrollable Artists) whom I know personally are numbered among its Fellows.

11.  Who are some of your favorite authors?  what writers do you find yourself returning to over and over again?

Charles Bukowski, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Michael
Hartnett, Brendan Kennelly, Michel Vassal, Kate O'Shea, Kit Fryatt, Oran Ryan

12.  People say Shakespeare killed the English theater -did Yeats do something similar to Irish poetry?

Shakespeare didn't kill English Theater, he created it to a certain extent and certainly expanded it out of its then shape of rabble-rousing Pro-Government Policy. Post-Modernism killed English Theater. A lot of the Playwrights of the last 100 years have run out of Idea's and certainly in the last 50 started to emulate current Film-making as in dumping nods and references to other Writers/ Director's/ D.I.P.'s all over their Work to the detriment not only of the Work but to the forward motion of Film and Theater. The extremes in Irish
Playwrighting are exactly the same, the present mixing of multi discipline themes together in the hope of getting a bit of originality via contrast and juxtaposition or Homage is a prime offender. It has made Theater a pain for me and Film an irritation. I don't go to see things that have been done or Pastiches of things that have been done. I go to see what hasn't been done. Yeats for all his faults viz a viz Celtic Twilight and proper Therapy for Mother Issues not being available in his youth was incredibly honest emotionally. His use of Noh Concepts was revolutionary and his calling of the emerging Bigots and advocates of Violence equally valid. I know a number of Yeats Poems by heart and can see why he would be so misunderstood by peop-le that have never learnt how to use their minds properly. Hartnett had a very valid point also in his condemnation of Yeats and his very clear understanding of Yeats as being and belonging behind the Pale Ramparts and
poaching on native Irish Cultural territory from there and other questioners of Cultural Identity in Ireland such as Hartmett and Brendan Kennelly. That by no means cheapens or demeans Yeats' contribution to the visibility of Ireland as a serious contender in the framework of World Arts. A  lot of the Native Irish Writers and Poets saw Yeats' metaphysical concerns as a sort of inverted snobbery, an "Us and "Them" mentality applied to the entire Country but that has more to do with the "Plain People of Ireland" being sat on as a subject race and very little to do with Yeats's search for the core Identity of the Irish. What people tend to forget is that all of Yeats' work was Poetry, not just the Love Poetry but all the Dramatic Work as well. I always advise people that Yeats continually changed his work as he said himself  A Paraphrase) "I do not simply remake the Poem, I remake myself".

13.  An experiment-please make up your own question and answer it?

Q: "Whats the best way to see over the horizon?

A: "Get off your knees"  

14.  How did you first get involved in writing, song and poetry?

I wrote a Book based on the Adventures of Spartacus after seeing the Kubrick version of it when I was 6. I wrote my first Song when I was 7 when I was given a Harmonica to help with asthma

15.  What is your latest project?

My latest Projects are a Book of Poetry
and a Triple Album Part 1 of which I am hoping to release in September 2013

16.  Quick Pick Questions

a.  Samuel Beckett of John Synge:  Beckett

b.  Dogs or Cats? Neither

c.  Day or Night:   Night

d.  last movie seen? Djago Unchained

e.  RTE or BBC?  Both useless

17.  Tell us a bit about your educational background, please.

Attended Convent School St Ita's in Newcastle West, also National School in Newcastle West. Secondary Modern St Gregory's in Kenton Middlesex U.K.  Left St Gregory's at 15. Hated every minute I spent at School.

18.  What jobs have you had outside of artistic/literary musical work?

Printer, Greengrocer, Council Worker, Laborer, Organic Farmer

End. I offer my great thanks to Martin A. Egan for taking the time to provide us with such interesting responses.

Mel u

John the Revelator by Peter Murphy (2010, 272 pages)

Set in contemporary Ireland, John the Revelator by Peter Murphy is fast becoming a classic coming of age story. I really liked it a lot. (for a while my blogging time will be limited by my brother and my tour of Ireland so some of my posts will be very short). Raised by a chain smoking mother single mother with serious interference by a neighbor woman, it shows his passage from early adolescent speculating about the bodies of the girls at school, his brushes with trouble with the law, the influence of a more advanced troubled friend, to a prolonged illness of his mother during which the neighbor tries to take over down to the death of his mother. There is a lot to think about in this book. I could easily see it becoming a classic one day. There are well informed theological reflections inherent in this work. I enjoyed it a lot and I endorse it to all.
I am looking forward to reading his second novel.

Peter Murphy is a writer from Enniscorthy in Co. Wexford, Ireland. His first novel John the Revelator was published in the UK and Ireland by Faber & Faber and in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and was nominated for the 2011 IMPAC literary award, shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Book Awards and the Kerry Group Fiction prize. His second novel, Shall We Gather at the River, will be published by Faber in January 2013. He is also a founder member of the spoken word/music ensemble The Revelator Orchestra, whose first album The Sounds of John the Revelator will be released for download this autumn.
Peter’s journalism has been published in Rolling Stone, the Irish Times, the Sunday Business Post, and Hot Press magazine. He has contributed liner notes to the remastered edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music and is also a regular guest on RTE’s The Works. His short story The Blacklight Ballroom was included in the Faber anthology New Irish Short Stories, edited by Joseph O’Connor. Another story, The Gloamen Man, will be featured in a forthcoming New Island anthology edited by Sinead Gleeson, due for publication in September 2012.


Mel u

The Field by John B. Keane (1965)

Recently my brother and I were in Westport, Ireland when he spotted a poster advertising a performance of the play The Field by John B Keane, a highly regarded playwright and fiction writer. My brother recalled it was made into a very successful movie starring Richard Harris in the lead role of Bull. We decided to go and it was very well acted by the St Patrick's Westport Drama Society. There was not a false note in the performance. The play was staged in the meeting hall of a public school. The budget was of course low but the stage settings were great. The plot is well known. A widow decides to sell at a public auction some land that the hyper-manly Bull has been grazing his cattle on for years. The fair market value of the land s 800.00 Pounds. Bull and the auctioneer conspire to rig the bidding so he can buy it for 200.

The play fits very much into the themes of Irish Short Story Month Year III, recently over. All business dealings and conversations are completed in a pub over a whiskey. The auctioneer is a typical weak corrupt father. The loud thunderous Bull is your standard Stage Irish figure, given to lyrical rhetoric and violence. Bull lost his wife to a traveller. The auctioneer's wife is a dominating woman who has cheated on her husband. The play deals with the deep love of land and the role of the priest in Irish life. Seeing this play in Ireland was a great experience for my brother and I.

Mel u

"What Slim Boy, O Pyraha" by William Wall - A Short Story

I am very proud that William Wall has allowed me to share one of his wonderful short stories with my readers.  "What Slim Boy, O Pyraha", from his collection of short stories, No Paradiso, is an amazing multi-layered work that I really admire.

Author Bio

Born in Cork 1955 | Grew up in the coastal village of Whitegate | Educated at University College Cork | Degree in Philosophy & English | Married | Two sons

William Wall has won the Virginia Faulkner Award, The Sean O’Faoláin Prize, several Writer’s Week prizes and The Patrick Kavanagh Award.

He was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was shortlisted for the Young Minds Book Award, the Irish Book Awards, the Raymond Carver Award, the Hennessy Award and numerous others. He has received Irish Arts Council Bursaries, travel grants from Culture Ireland and translations of his books have been funded by Ireland Literature Exchange.

He is not a member of Aosdána – if you’re wondering why, please read Riding Against The Lizard.pdf. His work has been translated into many languages, including Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Latvian, Serbian and Catalan. He has a particular interest in Italy and has read at several festivals there including the Tratti Festival at Faenza, the Festival Internazionale di Poesia di Genova and at the Pordenone Legge festival near Venice. He has translated from Italian. William Wall was an Irish delegate to the European Writers’ Parliament in Istanbul 2010. In March 2010 he was Writer in Residence at The Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco. He was a 2009 Fellow of The Liguria Centre for the Arts & Humanities .

A must read-Riding Against the Lizard-on the implication of government funds of the arts in Ireland

A Wide Ranging Question and Answer Session With William Wall

What slim boy, O Pyrrha

by William Wall

I give you the image of a man running naked into battle. Not quite naked, because he wears his helmet. Why do we feel he is peculiarly vulnerable? As if his uniform of coarse cloth could protect him against a high velocity rifle-round or a stream of bullets from a Maxim gun. The period, of course, is 1914-1918 – the Maxim gun is the key. Is he an officer or a private soldier? And why is he naked?

Say, his trench has been surprised during the night and now that the initial raid has been repulsed he leads his men in a counter-attack. Carpe diem! he shouts to them, although they do not understand the language. Carpe diem. He has a battered copy of Horace’s Odes (Everyman Library Edition) in his kit. He waves his revolver above his head and they grin and say the old man has finally gone bats.

The image has certain engaging qualities: a naked man (under the mushroom-cap of his helmet) stands on the lip of a trench and urges his men to attack in Latin. But they follow him because he is the old man, because he talks to them in some foreign lingo, because he’s starkers and he doesn’t give a tuppenny damn. They pour over the trench, chuckling affectionately, and into the brilliant artificial day of no-man’s land and the bullets fly and the star-shells pop and hiss. The men hear the bullets that do not have their names on them whispering suddenly in the air, but nobody hears the bullet that has his name. It nips the jugular, holes the aorta, or slips in above the ear and exits into the helmet set at a jaunty angle filling it with brain.

At some time in the half-hour of this particular battle the naked officer stands above the corpse of a German soldier who has been shot through the eye. Another distressing image. A bullet in the eye is a barbarous wound. The naked man looks down at the one-eyed un-seer.

Now that his sexual organs have come into our field of view, the issue of his sleeping naked arises. It is well-known that officers in the front-line trenches slept in their uniforms. We are familiar with descriptions of the damp dugouts, lit by a single candle, full of the thunder of the cannonade, in which sensitive and insensitive men of various ages sit about or doze, in uniforms of various ranks the highest usually being a major. The officer who packs Horace’s Odes before leaving Blighty is also a familiar figure. He may well have started the war with Odi profanum vulgus, but will end it, if he survives, with occidit occidit spes omnis. The vulgus will become closer to him than the people of his own class and he will emerge into civvy-street a hopeless misfit or a revolutionary. He inspires fierce loyalty among his men who refer to him by various insulting names which are, in fact, terms of endearment, such as ‘The Old Man’ or ‘Mad Harry’.

But this beats all. Even his batman is shocked by his appearance on the lips of the trench. They are all looking up at him and from that angle he is an impressive figure, almost sculpted in the heroic mode. He might have graced a pedestal in Rome or Athens. Various comments about his genitalia (are they large or small? Something to come back to later if we have time) that pass along the sap in the few moments before they realise the mad bugger wants them to counter-attack, are silenced by the non-commissioned officers.

But now to explain his nakedness necessitates a deliberate switch in time. We consider the possibility of a nostalgic passage encapsulating the memory of an incident which led him into this aberration and realise immediately (or after a few hundred words) that the effect will be to slow the narrative without adding in any way to the suspense. Nor can he reasonably be expected to begin telling someone a sub-narrative at the height of an attack. This is a story and devices available to novelists – interleaving chapters in a complex time-frame, for example – are not appropriate here. In the end, because I want to get on with it, I type three asterisks and go straight into his memory of the day he said goodbye to a certain woman in Beaulieu (it is pronounced Bewley, and, surprisingly, is in the south of England, not France) on a languid summer afternoon in 1914.

* * *

The sun is low on the evening of a perfect day. The cypress trees cast long irregular shadows on the manicured lawn. In the distance the pock of mallet and ball can be heard. (Or perhaps the pock of bat and ball? The villagers have come to the house of the rich man – the lord? – for their annual cricket match against the tenants. They linger in the edge of memory, in white, doing very little for long periods and then rushing about in inexplicable patterns. The whirling arm, the swing of the bat – pock.) Down the cypress walk you go, from shadow to shadow, following the woman and the man. You hear their tender conversation. He wears the uniform of the Hampshire Regiment, and with a gasp you realise that this is the first time in the story that you have seen him with his clothes on. It creates a peculiar kind of intimacy which you find contradictory. At first you see them at a distance, moving elegantly among the trees. Then you approach more closely, and finally you are a secret third party to their conversation, the ghost of the future standing with them, shoulder to shoulder.

It comes as a shock to discover that their conversation is salty and sexual. They are reliving an actual sexual encounter in detail. The language they use is pure D.H. Lawrence. Because you are a ghost you are privy also to the man’s actual thoughts and I have given him certain phrases from Catullus and Ovid (we have already established that he is a classicist) which confirm the universality of the terms. But her thoughts are out of bounds because it suits the direction of the narrative to have an inscrutable heroine. She is always other in the story, an object of his thoughts, his memories, his fantasies. And yours. After a time the subtle interplay of the still, warm evening, the gentle sound of the cricket game, the sex and the Latin, create an extraordinary, sensuality, a Mediterranean languor set against the battle-field images with which the story opened. Now the felicity of that switch (indicated merely by three asterisks) becomes clear. And because we have really moved in time – rather than merely moving into memory – the detail can be piled up to add to the overall effect. What do they look like? She is tall and slim and moves with a fluid grace. He is taller, thin because he is a scholar, with the stiff back of the stoic (or the officer). He thinks poetically, seamlessly, in several languages, but he speaks haltingly. His words are clipped, uncertain, hesitant. His accent is Anglo-Irish, hers is Swiss finishing school via Chesterfield Ladies’ College. When he is required to utter complete sentences he stutters as though he is aware that he is a foreigner in several tongues. He loves her madly, of course. At least this is the way he thinks of it, the precise phrase in fact. When he is away from her he dreams constantly of her body and certain parts of it in particular. Now, as he walks he moves his hand to his face and smells her on it and she laughs because this is a shared joke. She knows where his hand has been. Even at dinner table, or at stilted gatherings in her father’s drawing-room, or in a railway carriage, he only has to make the shadow of the same gesture and she smiles. We know she likes to use the most vulgar terms for parts of his body and hers, the coarseness itself exciting her – her face is a little flushed now – and all of this is somehow related, in an extraordinary way, to her elegance and refinement.

They walk side by side but not arm in arm because there is something that prevents them being seen as a couple. In fact, there are two things. Firstly, of course, she is the daughter of a lord, a millionaire who has made his money in the shipping business and now sails a yacht in the same races as King George and the Kaiser. On the other hand he comes from a middle-class family of university teachers, clergymen and scholars. His family may construct the way England thinks (a hundred years before, Ireland too), but England, or at least it’s rich, use the construction to ignore or despise anybody who thinks at all. Her father has envisioned a marriage of alliance for her, with the son of a man who owns, among other things, a commercial insurance company.

The second impediment is a more subtle one: they are cousins. The term scion is appropriate but vastly over-used in relation to the English nobility, a metaphor drawn from the practice of grafting plants and redolent of a certain vegetable quality in that class. Equally, the term distaff side, a metaphor drawn from the manufacture of clothing at cottage industry level, is not entirely appropriate. I leave the construction of the relationship for the re-write. Suffice it to say that he is from the Irish branch of the family which labours under some disgrace incurred during the eighteenth century and which the stern and dour behaviour of six or seven generations has not been sufficient to erase.

They are cousins and therefore the odour of incest permeates their bed. This is an inappropriate and an illegitimate relationship and is therefore doomed.

At this point you realise that the young man will die.

He can never return to find his lover married to a boring fart who drives a Bugatti or a private aeroplane. She would be miserable and he would feel futile. A tragic as opposed to a depressing ending has become a necessity. When we last saw him in the battlefield he was standing (naked still) with his revolver by his side, looking down on a German soldier who had been shot through the eye. We return now. No asterisks are necessary. Perhaps they were not necessary in the first place.

A momentary silence has fallen over the battle-field. His men have seized the enemy trench and so, as usual, the silence indicates that the enemy is re-grouping. In a few moments they will return. In this silence he gazes down at the dead man and various allusions are placed in his mind. He thinks, in fact, about one-eyed monsters and the ill-omens that attend them. He shivers and is suddenly acutely aware that he has no clothes. He looks down at his genitals and wonders did he lose his trousers in the course of the fighting. He has seen a man, stripped bare by the force of an explosion, walk away from a near direct hit by a trench mortar. Then he notices that the physical activity of killing has caused a tumescence, not quite a full erection, but a happy state of engorgement such as exists immediately after coitus. He thinks of the woman he has left behind in Bealieu and laughs softly.

The counter-attack must be now or never. The very first round fired will strike him in the chest, just slightly to the left of the heart but close enough for the bone splinters to rip it open. He spins and falls. The very simplicity of his nakedness, the apparent savagery of it, the barbarian disregard for the niceties of twentieth century warfare, made him the number one target for German sharpshooters. There is irony in the iron inevitability of it. His revolver and his disregard for his own safety marked him out as an officer. Later he would get a posthumous award for leading the charge and survivors would chuckle over their pints in 1925 and say, If the brass only knew, or, They wouldn’t have known where to hang it.

Where to next?

A brother officer, a scholar of the same college at Oxford arrives to gather his effects. The chaps in the dugout (a major is the highest ranking officer) point them out. He was mad they say. He always slept naked. Of course, the CO never mentioned that when he wrote to break the bad news. The major says that he hardly thinks it necessary to bother the poor family with the fact that we was ballocks naked when the Hun got him. Nobody laughs. They all loved him.

In a small notebook, in a pocket of the tunic he never put on, the brother officer finds the following words from Horace’s fifth ode of the first book: quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa/perfusus liquidis urget odoribus/ gratto pyrrha sub antro.  And in an often-worked translation underneath: What slim boy, O Pyrrha, perfumed and drenched in rose-water, have you pressed into service in your privacy now? From the crossings-out it is clear that he has already translated and rejected certain words in certain ways: ‘smells’ for odoribus, for example. Urget was rendered as ‘forcing’ at one point and ‘ravishing’ at another. In particular perfusus liquidis was given, in one version, as ‘drenched by your juices’. The brother-officer understands nothing of the background that we have given his friend, but he understands the pain well-enough. And when he finds her letter his understanding is complete. It is, of course, both unnecessary and unworkmanlike to reproduce the contents of the letter in our story, but we can be certain that they would explain why the officer slept naked, went into battle naked and died naked. And so we return to that initial image.

Why is it that the idea of a man going into battle without underwear or a serge jacket seems so abhorrent?

End

This story is protected under international copyright law and cannot be published in any fashion without the consent of the author.

Again, I owe my great thanks to William Wall for allowing me to publish this story on my blog

Mel u

"The Sex Lives of African Girls" by Taiye Selasi (2012)

I first became aware of Taiye Selasi when Judith Mok mentioned her in a Q and A Session as someone she was currently reading.  I was very happy to find that her very first work of fiction, "The Sex Lives of African Girls" was included in a book I have, The Best American Short Stories 2012.  (It was first published in Granta in 2011.)

"The Sex Life of African Girls" by Taiye Selasi is set in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, in the grand home of a very rich man, the uncle of the central character.  The opening sentence of the story is "The sex lives of African girls begin, inevitably, with Uncle".  This is a very sensuously rich story, one can feel the heat, the rain, taste the fruit and visualize the women and men in the story.  I hate to tell to much about this work as it is beautiful and at the same time a heartbreaking tale of cruelty and the power of the rich in a very poor place.

The story opens on a party.  The central character lives with her Aunt and Uncle.  We get a vivid picture of life at the house, we feel the many class markers prevalent in the society.  There is a heavy rain for a few minutes.  The rich African women are like "Japanese giesha in wax-batik geles, their skin bleached too light. They are strange to you, strange to the landscape of the dark, with the same polished skill-set of rich women worldwide:  how to smile with full lips while the eyes remain empty;  how to hate with indifference; how to love without heat".  

As the story goes on we learn more about the central figure, how she came to live at her uncle's house, what goes behind closed doors or sometimes in rooms where the door should have been closed but was left open.    We how people are exploited, why the poor sometimes hate the poor more than the rich.   It is very much about the loss of innocence without being at all cliched.   

There is really a lot in this story.  I totally enjoyed reading it

You can learn more about the author's work on her webpage

Mel u

A Guest Post by Veronica Li

Veronica Li, author of a wonderful book, Across the Four Seas:  A Chinese Woman's Search for Home, in honor of Mother's Day is making her book free as a Kindle edition.   I loved this book.  Here is part of what I said about it.

Journey Across the Four Seas - A Chinese Woman's Search for Home by Veronica Li (2007, 298 pages)

Journey Across the Four Seas - A Chinese Woman's Search for Home by Veronica Li is a wonderfully done look at the life of the author's mother, Flora Li.   The story opens a few weeks before the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and declare war on the USA and on England.    Flora Li was living in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong (1941) when war broke out and there were immediate rumors of a Japanese invasion of Hong Kong.    The citizens knew of the horrible way the Japanese had treated the citizens of Nanking,  China killing 100,000s of thousands of unarmed soldiers and civilians.   They also made rape a terror tactic of the war.   They knew Hong Kong had no army ready to defend it and they would be captured. 

Veronica Li does a wonderful job of recreating the atmosphere of Hong Kong in 1941.   Her mother was a student at Hong Kong University and did not really have a care in the world.    Flora Li had light skin, a very attractive feature, and was considered quite pretty.    Once this was a great source of joy and pride to her family.   Now her female relatives rub soy sauce all over her face and arms to make her appear darker and ugly in the hopes she could avoid being raped or sent to a Japanese  Army brothel.    In time she realizes she needs to escape Hong Kong for the parts of China that are not controlled by the Japanese.     As the story progresses I saw how much connections, family first then school and regional ties determined to a large extent who survived and who did not, who prospered, and who married who.

Here is her very generous offer to the readers of The Reading Life

FREE MOTHER’S DAY READ: A Mother’s Memoir

Journey across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman’s Search for Home by Veronica Li

(Free on Kindle May 11 and 12 http://tinyurl.com/43ycrkj)

 

Journey across the Four Seas is a true story of my mother’s life.  While caring for her in her last years, I recorded her life stories and wove them into a memoir.  It was my way of thanking her for all that she’d done for me.  The book is about her struggle to get an education for herself, and later for her children.  She believed that education was a means to a quality life.

 

My mother, Flora, was born of a poor family in Hong Kong in 1918.  In spite of being told, “Girls don’t go to school,” she fought her way through the education system and became one of the few women to enter the prestigious Hong Kong University.  When the Japanese invaded, she fled to unoccupied China, where she met her future husband, the son of China’s finance minister.  She thought she had found the ideal husband, but soon discovered that he suffered from emotional disorders caused by family conflicts and the wars he had grown up in.  Whenever he had a breakdown, Flora would move the family to another city, from Shanghai to Hong Kong to Bangkok to Taipei and finally across the ocean to the U.S.  Meanwhile, she gave birth to five children in different places.

 

Throughout her migrations, Flora kept her sight on one goal—providing her children with the best possible education.  For the sake of their education, she was willing to uproot herself and bring the family to the U.S.  Because of her courage, my siblings and I got a good college education and are living out the American dream.

End of Guest Post

My Post on Journey Across the Four Seas: A Chinese Woman's Search for Home by Veronica Li

I am very honored to be able to offer this book to my readers.

Mel u