The meaning of something you create can change over time.
The thing itself remains the same, but how you look at it, what it says to you, alters. That’s because the circumstances have changed. And so have you.
The film that’s up next in the series started a year before the pandemic, in a park, in Glasgow.
I was in Glasgow because I’d just done a show for three weeks up at the Edinburgh Fringe, and before heading back to London I’d gone to spend a couple of nights with an old friend from university who lived in the city.
Frankly, I was knackered. 2019 was the first time I’d done a full run at the Fringe and great though the experience was, it does drain you. So by the time I’d got to Glasgow I felt like I never wanted to do anything creative, ever again.
But it’s a massively sunny day, I’m waiting in a park to meet Martin, and I’m collapsed on the grass listening to John Coltrane on my headphones. And I catch sight of something playing out between two small boys and one small bike.
I get out my notebook and scribble down a phrase that’s come into my head.
Sometimes that’s how things start for me. With a phrase. Over the years I’ve learned to hang on to these phrases, and then try and figure out why The Gods Of Story have put them into my head.
The words becomes the start of a path. And I just need to walk down that path and see where it gets to. But often it’s not really about the destination, it’s about what happens on the way.
For the next six months, whenever I’m in a park, I keep my eyes open.
I write down the world I see. I write down the world I imagine. I try not to judge too early, I just trust the path.
I end up with a poem called ‘Park’ that, when I recite it, runs for about 15 minutes. I’ve never written a long form poem before. I may never write one again. But that’s okay. Maybe I was only ever supposed to write this one.
Then 2020 turns up and meaning of a park changes.
A park becomes the one place we can go to get our daily dose of exercise. So these places that we blithely took for granted before ‘It All’ morph into places that grant us a bit of sanity. A bit of respite. A bit of peace.
There is a saying that ‘You can never walk into the same river twice. Because the river has changed. And so have you.’
After 2020 I understand that saying more than I ever did before.
I find an actress to perform ‘Park’ in Scotland.
In Edinburgh, actually. And that feels appropriate as the poem had started up there. When I had performed ‘Park’ in the past, my voice had the unmistakeable feel of London in it. Sarah Magillivray’s voice has the most gorgeous soft Scottish accent. Frankly, it’s got the kind of musicality that makes any piece of writing sound way better than it is.
I thought Sarah would deliver the poem straight to camera. But she had other ideas. Other, much better, ideas.
So, while she recorded the words, she also filmed her daily walk in her local park. And remember this was when the only time we were allowed out of our homes other than to buy food, was to go for a walk for an hour.
Then she cut the film to the words.
Genius.
The end result is a black & white, slow motion, meditative, contemplation of what a park is, that through its carefully curated images, catches something really quite intangible about just how strange was the world we walked through in 2020.
Obviously I’d like to claim the credit for the film’s mesmeric beauty. But I can’t. I just wrote the words. The rest is all Sarah.
Well, there’s a valuable lesson in there for me. Or, possibly, two valuable lessons:
Trust the actors.
Get out of the way.
Anyway, watch the film, see what you think.
Coming next week: If I can work with actors anywhere, why not New Zealand?
But before that here’s Sarah Magillivray’s fabulous film ‘Park’.