There Will Be This

The Obsessive Diary, 10th - 13th Feb

photo by @jacobi_pov taken in Bruno’s cafe, Soho

On the tube yesterday it struck me, this splintering of reality, so many versions, one for every passenger moving along the platform. It wasn’t always that our politics divided us, there have been eras when a shared reality went all the way up the tree and only at the very edges did one person say the world is flat while another said it was round. Mostly we shared a lens. Mostly we saw things, in larger groups that is, from the same angle. I sat on a bench remembering how mice used to run about the tracks and the whistling underground wind brought a train screaming out of darkness and every person around me carried a reality in their head and I thought about statements that we could all agree on without getting into a fight.

We are humans. I thought that was a pretty safe bet. And then I couldn’t think of a single other that someone wouldn’t take issue with. I think that’s why I operate from there in focused intent when meeting anyone. It’s the only shared reality I can reliably take as read. (Apologies to any aliens reading this, please do let yourselves be known.)

I came up to London on Tuesday afternoon like a packhorse of rare things - a suitcase for three nights in the city, J’s camera bag with a bamboo steamer squeezed in it, his jacket stuffed sideways and my own leather rucksack from Venice that never fails to remind me of that Alice in Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass week of the biannual when the black box had opened and I’d lost my mind. I’d been planning on an early night but J rang as I got off the train. “Come to a life drawing class.” And so I did, crossing London to dump my stuff then straight back on the underground to Oxford Circus where we met for early sups and played for time till 7pm in his favourite Soho cafe, one of those rare, untouched places so very hard to find; the ghosts of Francis Bacon and The Colony Club in the ripped green leather banquets. A place where if you ask for a tea they deliver a mug of builders with no questions asked about milk or caffeine or do you have herbal? Where the very idea of gluten free or lactose intolerant would be thrown out on the dirty, rushing Soho pavement along with your ideas of feeling special.

Open deli sandwiches on display in the long, wide glass counter. A high board and a menu that’s never changed. A narrow gap for the proprietor to turn sideways through, in and out of the kitchen, plates of meat and two veg, customers come alone to eat before returning to their studios to paint masterpieces. A man beside us in baseball cap read a script, eyes down. Another, white hair in a booth across the room, was interrupted from his dinner by two young fans who knew he’d written / photographed / created greatness and wanted to tell him so. A man and a woman stood about pointing at the sepia images covering the walls and talking of how it used to be. This was the Soho of Quintin Crisp, one last vestige remaining.

And then we went Life Drawing.

A large, hot room in Covent Garden, chairs in an ellipse to the stage, easels set up behind them for a double row of students. £10 gets you a board to lean on, paper and pencils and two hours practicing looking. I was instantly fascinated by lines. I found I wanted to let my hand follow my eye without dropping my gaze to the page. I liked that I found lean in her back and weight in her seat. I noticed how the relentless practice of noticing that I do all the time as a writer, storing up and studying, came out in this other discipline. I want to go again. I want to make life drawing classes a habit. It was two hours of antidote to this shouting that says my reality is more true than yours. It was forty people in a room sharing the reality of a human form and producing their version without contesting the version of the person beside them. It was forty truths quite different yet quite happy to live side by side. We all belonged.

Wednesday began early with a breakfast meeting at the Ivy Club with SD. Always and ever fascinating. Spent a happy hour with the Tudors at NPG, got caught in the rain on my way to meet VG, another happy two hours discussing The State of the World and our antidotes (excellent costume jewellery and sparkling eighties fashion are hers. I applaud and salute and in all ways love her.)

To the tall cold house in London where I collected the last of the chattels from my mother’s estate. No, I didn’t want the paintings she left me, they were two of the scariest pieces of art I’ve ever seen and haunted my childhood - VG is convinced I should write an article about the things our parents leave us… I’m not sure I can bear to look - but here’s one of them:

The other was a dim portrait of two women, one behind the shoulder of the other as if following, both looking out with the clear message that they were behind me, don’t look. They hung on a turn of the stone stairs, and I would spend my life racing past them. Thanks, mum, but no thanks. I did however rescue Babar and Arthur. They are coming home with me.

Yesterday I had what looked like a blessed clear day, uncommon in this post-AC reality of mine where there are no checks on my enthusiasm for work. I thought I’d spend it editing - this new novella in process is shaping up - and I tried but a bone tiredness overtook me, as did admin. I realised last night I’m going to have to set up some clear parameters for when I’m on and off the clock. This brave new world will have no emails before 8am or after 6pm and none at the weekend. There will be life drawing. There will be pens down and eyes up and filters set to fine grain.

There will be this:

Sent to me by BT ❤️ Goddess that she is.

Eleanor

p.s. - I’ll be in conversation with <Mary L. Tabor> this afternoon only on Substack LIVE discussing her new novel Who By Fire. Join us at 6pm GMT.

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p.p.s - Luke Deasy has come up with the brilliant idea of AskMyStack. It’s a tool for bringing your substack archive into the present, making it easy for readers to navigate their way into it and find out more about who you are and what you write about. Have a look at mine and tell me what you think. It’s in development, and Luke is keen to hear feedback. You can contact him directly or leave comments here.