In
January to March 2013 I attended a course in Life Writing/Memoir at Cardiff University’s Life-Long Learning Department,
led by the excellent tutor, Amanda Rackstraw. It got me writing again after a half year or so
slump.
I’ve found the process fascinating. Amanda
used the senses primarily as her stimuli for writing exercises. I produced
several short pieces and completed a 25 page piece interweaving my experience
in Indonesia with my earlier childhood. I also did a lengthy piece on my career
and approach to activism. It’s as if the past has become the present and I can’t
distinguish them. I’m re-living my past in a way that makes me feel like a time-traveller. Or am I getting dementia?
Certainly, I’ve become obsessive finding out more about the current lives of people who were
important to me and those that shaped and influenced me forty or fifty years
ago.
Some of these people have died quite recently and
that’s triggered my thinking about the nature of friendship,memory and
connection. My attachment issues raise their grubby backsides again! Some have reached lofty places in their
careers. Some have married, had
families, got divorced. Some of these people are hard to trace, while others, through the internet, could be a phone call or email away. But what would be the
point? What would be the benefits to me and them? Would they even remember me? and, What might be the unintended consequences of re-connection?
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