My mother died two weeks before my 33rd birthday. She died at 68 of a cancer that in all likelihood she would have survived if it was now and not 1980. She might have lived at least ten more years, which is my age now, 78. Her illness reduced me slowly over the two years of its progress until I was pretty much back being a child by the time she finally died. Some months after she died my daughter, who was seven at the time, on going to bed said to me “Goodnight, my daddy who looks like a schoolboy.” I was wearing a grey shirt and black trousers, and she probably saw deeper than that, to the boy I had become, feeling lost without my mother to advise and guide me, or more to the point, to give me some sense of direction, that feeling that parents are supposed to give their children, a sense of security in their choices, the backup of the parents even when you make the mistakes that we all make on the way to making our best decisions. Within three years I had changed my career, gone back to my first career in animation, where I stayed until I finally retired in 2013. Then I started writing again. I say again because writing had been my occupation and ambition, alongside drawing and painting, until out of the blue I got the chance to become an animator and took it.
A few months after my mother died I was walking through the backstreets off Oxford Street in London when I happened upon a church and on a whim I went in. It was Good Friday. It had struck me that I was the same age as Jesus when he was crucified, according to the myth or story (depending on your belief or lack of it), and I realised how young he was. To have taken on that responsibility and that painful sacrifice at my age, when I could hardly focus on my work and my family seemed almost impossible to imagine.
I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, educated by Benedictine monks, but after a lifetime of travel and work around the world, among cultures of all the major religions, I can't say any one of them strikes me as more likely to be true than the rest, and they may all be nonsense. I cling to a kind of agnostic hope that I don't feel is reliable; maybe death is just lights out and gone, or maybe it is something else, but what else, it is idiotic to guess. I'm with Iris Dement, in her song, I too “choose to let the mystery be.”
Nevertheless, we have this weekend of remembrance and the embrace of family and friends as we send and receive greetings for a Happy Easter. Thinking about the events of the original days of this festival, happy seems an unlikely term for it. And how did chocolate get involved, or eggs, or, for heaven's sake, rabbits?!
For me Easter always brings memories of loved ones who are gone, friends and family, too many to count now, and it reminds me that one day I will be a memory too. Hopefully a good one, with much laughter in the conversations of those doing the remembering.
Easter is a time of sober recollection and a time to reflect on the things that give life value. I am not a practicing Christian, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or Moslem, though all of those religions have their philosophies, aspects of which I admire, and I will always have an affection for Shiva and Buddha, as well as Jesus, for the positivity they bring me. In a world where negativity has become a bit too prominent in the actions of some politicians and their nations, these figures remind us that we are better than that, if we can only find a way to act out our positive selves, bring happiness and comfort to those who need it, and not callous dismissal of those we don't know or understand.
Anyway, enough of that. Today I read an article here on Substack by the thoughtful and interesting writer Maria Haka Flokos (https://open.substack.com/pub/mariahakaflokos) which she titles “Niche” and it set me thinking about my occupation with writing.
The article is about the requirement among publishers, presumably feeling it is required by the readers, that writers need to find their niche and stay there. I have so far managed to get one play staged and another recorded for Audible, but the rest of my writing, not counting Substack, remains unpublished. I have a novel about a man going through his midlife crisis (as my brother David once remarked to me, if it isn't a crisis , what's the point of midlife?); I have another novel that is a science friction story, part one of a short series, of which I am currently working on the second episode, and a memoir called “Gone East” that is about coming of age in the 1960s and the hippie life and travels it led me into, which I won't attempt to publish unless and until I have published other books. After leaving the animation industry I also spent a couple of years writing about future technology for online sites and the magazine/website Computer Graphics World (https://www.cgw.com/), based on interviews I managed to get with some of the leading researchers whom I met at FMX, a festival of film and its associated media held in Stuttgart, and elsewhere.
And there are these articles that I write for your entertainment. On top of all that, I have written a number of screenplays with my wife, of which we at last have one project that is being taken seriously by its producers, and if they can sell that series, maybe they will be able to push one or more of the other scripts we have stashed on our computers.
I like this image because the bird looks squashed into its niche nesting box!
In other words, if there is a niche for me I have no idea what it is or where to find it. And truth to tell, I don't want to find it. I write for my own pleasure, and my mind has sufficient capacity to encompass all the arenas I have so far touched on and I don't mind if my next idea is an historical drama or a cosy romance. One of the things I enjoy here on Substack is the range of subject matter. Maria moves through many subjects, and another article I read today, by Mary Roblyn under her Substack moniker Writer, Interrupted (https://open.substack.com/pub/maryroblyn), takes the form of a letter to her deceased husband. It is moving and unexpected, ranging from her own grief to include the experience of everyone who ever lost a loved one, with humour and asides that make one feel personally addressed. Meanwhile over on The Ink and the hugely important writing of Ken Klippenstein one is thrown into the morass of modern American politics. They have a niche, it's true – politics - but the range of their commentary goes beyond that. This is an amazing forum, and I look forward to exploring it further as time allows.
Happy Easter everyone, and thank you for reading this slightly erratic stream of thoughts!
First of all, I would like to thank you for your very kind mention and your generous words. I can so understand the resistance to being pigeonholed. Because, of course, we are not one dimensional, and we change. What was core in the past, may no longer be, or may resurface years later.
Loss leaves one untethered, I went through this too with my parents. In a way, it creates a sense of being left without a nest. Now a nest, in the sense of Niche, can be restrictive too. But I think that creative people have a trick up their sleeve. They have a way of making nests of their own, way more than one, as facets of their work draw others who share their fascination. Instead of being pulled into that one spot, they can make an imprint of their interests for the world to see. Lots of little nests, that would make up their profile were these painted on paper by an Impressionist!