I was prompted to think about the passage of time during today by the sad news of the sudden death of a friend and former neighbour. We got to know each other first when we moved into the street in which they lived more than fifty years ago. (We both had small kids of about the same age: they are now in their fifties our even sixties!) Her passing has been on my mind all day, particularly as I decided to write a letter of condolence to her husband. As the day went by my thoughts began to coalesce in a curious and unexpected direction.
Suddenly I came to realise that, without my being aware of it before, there does appear to be a consistent underlying concern in my art. It’s all about time, in one way or another. Projects which have been very different from each other in appearance in retrospect turn out to be explorations of our relationship to time, in one respect or another.
My early engagement with rock-climbing as a subject has no obvious link to this theme, but very soon I left that behind. The “Holy Stones” series, in which I was interested in pre-historic stone circles, was the obvious starting point. This topic arrived at the centre of my attention with my commitment to the Four Quartets project, which was really an exploration of autobiography using T.S. Eliot’s poetry as a lens through which to find a focus. The theme can be traced, either in full view or in some kinds of subterranean passage, all the way to the work on Malta, where there is a consistent preoccupation with durability and endurance.
It would be tedious to excavate the evidence for this connection throughout all of my work, but the more I reflect on the matter the clearer it becomes that there is indeed a consistent thread running through the whole. A good part of the integration of ideas has been linked to the poetry of Eliot. This is an organic connection, and not an arbitrary imposition. I first became acquainted with his poetry when I attended a series of extramural lectures from Liverpool University, on the subject of modern poetry, while I was at Grammar School. My preferences for poetry were very much shaped by that experience, and I became particularly attached to Eliot.* So, I don’t believe that it should be surprising to discover that his great obsession with time has been transmitted to me.
I spent a part of the afternoon re-reading his Ash Wednesday. I suspect that in one way or another I will be ruminating on these connections over the next few days.
*Another poet from the same period to whom I have been consistently attracted was Louis MacNeice.