In 2005, I went to an art exhibition in Edinburgh. First, I wandered around a high-ceilinged hall, gazing at paintings by Paul Gauguin. I stopped at each painting and marvelled at the colours and details. The deep, dark greens of a Breton peasant dress, with hints of light in the painted material. The way a child’s clog, in another painting, seemed to rest softly on grass. A field of green with yellows, that seemed to glow like a summer day. And, in another scene, a blue mountain in Tahiti, with tall trees, and Tahitian women, walking with a confident barefoot rhythm; although, of course, they were not actually moving in the painting.
Later, I also looked, shyly but from inches away, into the eyes of a young peasant woman, painted by Gaugin’s friend: Vincent Van Gogh. I felt I was at the same time and place as the artist, and I was almost shocked when I glanced away from the painting and saw other exhibition visitors milling around, dressed in modern clothes and clutching mobile phones.
Different eras reach out to touch one another through paintings, words, and other things. I suppose it happens all the time. For me, it happened that afternoon in 2005, when greens, yellows and blues, all painted in the late nineteenth century, reached across the years to touch me, and the colours glowed freshly in my mind. Then, just a few days ago, I came across an old diary with my note of that exhibition, and through the words the colours glowed again, or at least a glimmer.
Last year, in November, in a journal where I sometimes write down anything that’s bothering me, I wrote the following:
‘In my life, I’ve had a great deal of anxiety. It comes and goes. At times, it’s like big waves crashing on the shore of who I really am. Sometimes, I feel that I may drown or be washed away. Other times, it’s much more manageable. It may reduce until it’s only faint background noise, like distant traffic. And, occasionally, I feel no anxiety at all. Life is just life, and I live it with hope and joy.’
Writing when life feels difficult seems to help me. I know that keeping a diary or journal helps other people too. Then, we can sometimes see that the ‘now’ we felt trapped within had a doorway, so we could walk out of the situation that was getting us down.
Of course, we can all feel trapped so strongly that time itself seems to stop. A relationship collapses. We lose a job. Debts creep up on us, like weeds choking a garden. Or perhaps a loved one dies. Our thoughts become repetitive. Around and around in our heads like a grey train on a circular track our thoughts remind us only of the bad thing that happened. To people observing us, we may seem to be staring for a long time into space. But in our heads, we’re staring at a grey train of thoughts rattling around and around. It’ll never get better, we may think. I’m not good enough. I’m a failure. I’ll never get out of this. I feel so guilty, I’ve let everyone down. In such low moods, it may seem that there are no vibrant colours, no blue rivers or green forests, and no bright yellow sunflowers.
Over the years, whenever I’ve helped people to find their own way out of staring at grey trains of thought, it is always wonderful to see colours coming back into their lives. A man may look hopelessly lost one second and then he sees a way out, and brightness that was not there in his eyes is suddenly switched on. “Of course! Why didn’t I see that?” Well, it’s hard or impossible to see a beautiful landscape when we are hypnotised by a grey train going around and around on its tyrannical tracks.
When I was writing some of this RAINSHINE, in a café in the Overgate Centre in Dundee, I had two unexpected visitors. My granddaughter Rosie appeared with her dad, Rory. We ended up in a seating area, where Rosie danced, waved to delighted passers-by, and chuckled when she pressed my nose and I felt obliged to go “beep”. Rosie decided to press my amazing beeping nose several times, but that was okay because time stopped. In a good way.
Later, the same day, I went back to writing, and thinking about things reaching across time to influence us from times past: paintings, songs, stories. I looked at a list I’d made of things I might use in examples of this kind of mental time-travel. As well as the art exhibition and my old diary which I’ve already used above, there was a hotchpotch of other things: a few photo albums, books published recently and books published centuries ago, and a map of Dundee streets. I’ve been using the map the last few weeks to help me plan an outline of storylines for a novel I’m writing. It’s called Shelter from the Storm, and it’s set in Dundee, in and around a fictitious community centre called the Morel Centre. Anyway, the map is also useful for thinking about places I know where things from history touch our lives ‘now’. Gravestones with pirate like symbols in the Howff Graveyard – a calming place in sunlight; sad in the rain; ghostly in the moonlight. Old warehouses in the dockyard, which always remind me of my dad who was an apprentice in the long-gone Caledon Shipyard. Or, sometimes I remember the voice of a long-retired firefighter I interviewed once, decades ago, who told me about huge jute fires in the warehouses, which had to be doused with water for days as they were so hard to put out. And, looking at the map of Dundee, I noticed other places and remembered their ghosts or hints of distant times touching our own. Like an exhibit, in Balgay Observatory, of James Bowman Linday, a pioneer of electric light. And, I remembered one evening, walking down the wooded hill, after seeing old photographs of Lindsay and of his multi-language dictionary, and the details of his electricity experiments; and, looking out across the city, with its thousands of street lamps and lights in the windows of houses and offices, and I was thinking – all over the world, there are millions and millions of those lights, and in a way it all began here.
Sometimes, I find myself thinking about mental time travel in another way. Rather than thinking about times in the past reaching out to touch us, I think about our time reaching out to touch the lives of people not yet born or who may not be born until hundreds or thousands of years have passed by. In what ways will things we do now, or things we make, influence those future people? Will we have become as mysterious as the Picts are to us? Will the rhythm of these words, or the actual words, become so archaic and strange that they would need to be translated before they could be widely understood?
Perhaps a useful way to think of the far future, if we think of it at all, is to simply consider the next generation and the generation after that. If those generations can be influenced by anything done or made in these years, then that influence may encourage other, later generations. And, to start with, that may include our own sons and daughters and their children. They may see paintings we painted today and be encouraged to make their own. A song written today may inspire another musician in 10, 20, or 50 years. And simple acts of kindness: a gentle word, a hug, or even listening can stay with a person their whole lifetime.
The other day I was moseying around in a charity shop in Dundee. I overheard three young women speaking about 1980’s fashion. One said: “I think we should all have a day when we do nothing but go around buying 80’s stuff. I love 80’s stuff!” And I heard excited cries of agreement from her friends. By then, I was leaving the shop (because they didn’t have many books), but as I went into the street, which was sunny and busy, I thought: how strange but good it is that times I think of as gone forever are rediscovered and made new by new generations. And as I wandered along the road to a shop where I knew I’d find many books, I thought – I need to write something about time and… But that was far as it got at that moment, because I’d reached Oxfam Books, and I was already wondering: do I have enough space on my shelves for any more books?
HARVEY DUKE 