Dear Shadow Alive and Well, How can the Body Die?

How can the body die?

But I have never felt any comfort in the idea of eternity. Perhaps this is a reflection of the melancholic personality, the personality that experiences life as the experience predominantly of suffering.

I cannot imagine the soul. I cannot sense that there might be a quality of me that is essential. I feel myself to be too mutable for the concept of the soul with its essentiality. And it seems to me that physical pain is too close to mental anguish for the notion of a pure, unsuffering "core" to be credible.

I cannot, like Fleet Foxes, the author of these lyrics, find my own mortality strange:

Through the forest
Down to your grave
Where the birds wait
And the tall grasses wave
They do not
know you anymore

Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true

In the town one morning I went
Staggering through premonitions of my death

Indeed, the thought of eternal death comes as a relief even if, paradoxically, I doubt my ability to experience it. And I confess that I have thought also of the deaths of others with a definate relief at times.

Sometimes I think about what will happen to the things I own after my death. My body happily burnt, my ashes dispersed, no-where too undignified I hope.

I see men in overalls, taking the paintings I've painted down to a skip and flinging them in recklessly: they've served their function as repository for my ego needs and as an aesthetic passtime. The books go to dealers; the are clothes burnt.

The clothes burnt, I hope, for the thought of another man in my coat or shoes is appalling to me. I think of that and imagine a sort of identity theft taking place, my userper's skin close where mine was, adopting my mannerisms, my motions, going where I used to go, consuming what I consumed, watching the same films, laughing at the same jokes- like the oft-despised presence of an unwanted younger brother, copying me: a doppelganger.

The clothes bear witness to my life, they went where I did. They show stains or wear marks which correspond to how I live. what I eat and how my body moves. Please burn them so my presence can't be stolen and I am truly no more.

I used to have these fantasies of invisibility, I no longer do, but perhaps those fantasies compressed and trasnmogrified into my dominant social modus operandi, manifesting themselves as a sort of non-presence, like a tipex-ed blank on a typed page, so I am aware of myself as hiding - withdrawn or masked - among others.

I'll finish by saying that I always felt myself exposed in the UK, but here in Brazil I feel myself invisible, because I can hide behind a series of popular assumptions about Britishness, a quality that any true Britons knows to be so amorphous as to be no guide to personality at all.

Before the Party

Before the Party was painted back in 1993, when I was living in Maude Road, in Camberwell, London.

It shows four men- three are dressed to go out, while one remains in bed. He is ill, or sleeping. A putto urinates in one corner; there is an elephant, a fantastical bird and a giant snail in the room too. A demon lurks behind the bed.

It was a breakthrough painting for me, bringing to a close several years of doubt about what sort of creative art I should be doing. I had graduated unhappily, knowing somehow that the art I'd made for my graduation show did not do what I knew in my gut art should do, which is, in Hamsun's words, to reveal the "unconscious life of the mind".

I'd been oscillating uncomfortably between art that was essentially impressionist and art that was very directly autobiographical and illustrational for some years. I'd wanted to incorporate elements I'd gained from the sort of literature I like - (fables, fairy tales, Kafka, Bulgakov and Waugh) - into my work but hadn't been able to find a format. I think I'd felt embarassed about how close my work was to children's book illustration, as if that wasn't sophisiticated enough.

The themes of the painting are friendship and strangeness and death, but I do not understand it entirely myself. I made it very instinctively, following no sketch. I think sometimes art is made like sleepwalking, following deeply set patterns of movement and consciousness. Perhaps it's a false idea that art can be "understood", anyway? No-one would talk about "understanding" a game of football or a plate of asparagus, other sensory experiences.

Artistic breakthroughs are solutions, but the solutions they bring bring problems, -artists often get stuck repeating the same solutions for their entire lives (the worst case being Chagall, I think, whose work turned into a a series of catch-phrases with the same forms, colours, settings, faces and hands used over and over again from 1930 until his death in 1985. Miro likewise, alas). For me the risk was that I would do "room" paintings forever, and I baulked against that, going on to produce a lot of architectural pictures in a sort of realist style, while continuing to work on these more idiosyncratic images.

It was painted at an odd, lonely juncture in my life, but after I painted it things improved for me, at least temporarily.

Battlefield

The scenery here reminded me of First World War battelfield paintings by Paul Nash.

Of course, timber is a crop like any other, but the sight of trees felled, and the destruction of the terrain that that entails has an especially emotive effect.

Perhaps this is connected with the depth of identification that it is possible for humans to feel with trees.

Beth, or The Missing Girl. Part 3

A strange meeting.

I hovered about. I lit a cigarette. The 'phone was on a console table in the hall. A picture hung on th e wss, the image of a bowl of Longhi lilies. The picture was painted by Fantin -Latour and was inherited from a great aunt. For a moment I just stood there smoking and losing myself in the darkness of the painting.

There was an ashtray on the table next to the phone. The ashtray featured the face of the pope milling and waving. I squashed out my cigarette on his nose.

I dialled 1471, then the number the automated service gave me.

"Hello," I said. "Is that Cath?"

"Yes," said the voice.

"This is Clancy Smiles."

"Hello Clancy"."

"What do you mean, Beth is dead?" I asked.

"I mean, she has died," she replied.

"How?" I asked.

"I think you should come here," said the voice.

"My God," Is said, "who are you? Why are you being so...so damn...mysterious?"

There was a pause. I lit another cigarette.

"Clancy." The voice was slow and quiet. "I think you may be taking this badly."

She gave me her address. I wrote it down on the pad.

Before I left the apartment I looked over to the dining room. The dinner things were still sitting there on the table. The light from the windows behind caught them, bouncing off their hard surfaces sharply. I could see the sombre facades of the buildings across the road, huge caryatid orders flanking tiny, feminine balconies.

Then I put on my overcoat. I turned to a mirror. I saw my face. It was wet: I had been crying.

I shivered even with my overcoat on outside. I held the address In my pink hands and read it: 11 Silesia Road, Hackney. Too far to walk.

What was Beth doing living in East London. It did not seem to be the right sort of place for her; too harsh.

I travelled to Islington, where I crossed over to the platform to wait on the North London Line. There were bits of litter blowing about outside on the platform. Someone had torn the timetable off the wall. A bearded man wrapped in innumerable layers of clothes like a huge ragged pupae shuffled about, then drawing a bottle form those wrappings, poured a coppery liquid into his tiny red orifice. Three teenagers, all pubic moustaches and menace eyed us as we waited. The train came in slowly: I got in: thankfully the teenagers stayed behind.

I felt a kind of shock when I came out of the station: the place was in a terrible state. All the buildings needed renovation and there was an aura of collapse everywhere, An old woman, head down, bumped me, then turned and apologised with a dreadful cringing.

"Can you tell me the way to Empire Road?" I asked her.

"Empire Road?" said the lady, "down there on the left." She scuttled off.

Did she think I was going to beat her up?

I walked on down the hill. The sky became suddenly bright with a silvery pallor. Then clouds blustered across, all gormless again.

I reached a giant Victorian block. I pressed the buzzer. Presently, a voice came from the speaker: Cath's voice.

"Come on up. First floor, right hand side."

I climbed a huge, steep staircase up the dingy interior. The door was slightly open: I knocked on it, then went in.

I arrived in a hall with marble floors, hung with green wallpaper: a motif of vines.

"You've arrived" I head a voice from my left,

"Yes," I said. "Good afternoon. Are you Cath?"

She was not taller than me; her posture was good. There was something austere about her. Hs e had dark hair which was put up and held in place with a golden clasp, in a style better suited to a much older woman. Her dress was green with a paisley print. She wore a black choker round her neck.

"Yes, "said the woman. "I am. You are Clancy, " she added.

"Yes. I am, " I answered. "I am Clancy Smiles".

"Come this way." She spoke as we walked down the corridor to a room overlooking the street. "You know, Clancy, we have met before."

"You said," I said. "But I can't place when for some reason."

"We attended the same lectures," she said. "We both studied at Vale's."

I did not mention that I still did not recognise her.

I was led to a room with a sofa, a chaise longue and some easy chairs. There was a music system too. But the most impressive thing about theroom as giant stuffed pig on a mahogany case on a giant sideboard.

"Yes," she said.

"How did she die?" I asked.

"She drank vodka and took some paracetamol."

"I'm sorry, " I said, uselessly.

Cath stood up. "Let me get you something. A gin and tonic?"

"Thanks."

She went over to the sideboard; she came back with the drinks.

"suicide?"

"Probably, " said Cath.

I drank the gin.

Cath sat down opposite me again. " I do not know how close you were to Beth. We were not close. She did not tell me about what she did or how she felt. She did leave this note, however."

The note read: "No-one should feel beholden to me. I cannot live with the burden of myself. I am no stranger to myself, and the knowledge that I have is too troubling to bear. I shall not go on."

"Is that is?" I said.

"Yes," said Cath.

"How did you know to contact me?"

"She told me about you."

"Did she?"

"She was in love with you."

"If she was in love with me then why didn't she contact me before?"

"I cannot answer that," said Cath. "We were not that close.

I stared at the pig.

"The funeral is on Saturday," added Cath.

I returned home.

There was a riddle to be solved. It was the riddle of Beth's demise.

Beth, or The Missing Girl. Part 2

I set out the dinner things in my dining room before leaving for work that morning in anticipation of our returning there. The day passed quickly. I worked in a travel agency which specialised in tours for elderly people. Often their tours had a cultural element: I was responsible for setting these elements up; finding guides and organising itineraries. I had spent the day in discussion with the Austrian Board of Tourism. They were going to find a guide who spoke English for a day in Vienna. That day would be concerned with the Secession in Austria.

My desk was at the back of the hop. At the close of day I heard the door open.

I looked across: it was a woman. But it was not Beth.

She turned to me: hello

Hello, I said

Do you do any trips to Russia, she asked.

Madam, I said, I strongly advise you against visiting Russia. It's government is scarcely legal and the whole place is awash with cannibals.

She broke into a laugh. I've been to Russia many times. I want to know about going to St Petersburg. My mother wishes to go to see the Hermitage.

I went to get her the brochures.

She left. Ten past six. No-one.

Perhaps Beth was late. I decided to wait. I went through he racks straightening things. I went into the kitchen and tidied the mugs. I got a cloth from there and a can of furniture polish and I sprayed it on the surface of the desks. Then I polished them with a cloth.

I got sick of waiting. I dialled her number. No reply.

I went out of the shop. There was no-one standing outside.

Then I got a call at home some days later in the morning at 9am.

"Is that Clancy?"

"Yes," I said

"Maybe you don't remember me. Its Cath."

"O."

"I'm Beth's sister."

"Ah," I said

-Well," she said, "You should know something."

"What," I said

"Beth is dead," said the voice.

"O," I said.

"Yes," she said.

She put down the phone.

*

That can't be right, I thought.

Beth, or The Missing Girl. Part 1.

I want to tell a story: an entertainment or a diversion; something to delight you or make you think.

But all I have on my mind is Beth.

Some months ago my mother forwarded me a letter from Beth. The letter was quite general. She was now living in London, in Hackney. There was a telephone number too.

I called it immediately.

"Hello, it's me, Clancy."

"Clancy! I wondered if you would get my letter."

"Yes, I got it today. How are you? Long time."

"Yes," said Beth.

"You're in London now?" I asked

"Yes, I moved some time ago."

-What are you up to?

"Nothing much. This and that."

"Okay," I said. Something about her reply made me feel guilty; something in the tone of voice, as if I had betrayed her by not making more effort to keep in touch. That sense of guilt impelled me.

"Do you want to meet for a drink?"

"Ok," she said. I didn't recognise the tome from the person I knew. There was something listless about it.

"Why don't you meet me after work?" I said. "What about tomorrow, or today if you're free."

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Ok, I said. "There was a lag in the conversation.

"Meet me after work. 112 Farringdon Road."

"What time?"

" I finish at six. Come then."

"Okay," she said. She put down the receiver, It feltoddly final about that. I didn't get it.