In one of his novels in the “hitch-hiker’s guide” series Douglas Adams introduced us to the “total relativity vortex” which (if I remember it correctly) gives the person who looks into it the experience of understanding everything in relation to everything else. Not surprisingly, the consequence of this is not one of reflective understanding but rather complete disorientation. I have to confess that I feel a bit like that today.
I was contacted over the week-end, quite out of the blue, by a former colleague from my time as a University teacher. We haven’t seen each other for many years, principally because he has been teaching in Canada. He is touring Britain at the moment, catching up on various friends and family, and because he was in Yorkshire for other purposes decided to look me up. Today he came over and we spent the morning together, before going off to the South Square Centre for lunch.* It was great to see him again, and we had a really good yakkety-yak together. I have to admit that there was a weird aspect to the experience.
Suddenly, I was thrust back into a world I had left long ago. This was not, however, an experience of memory simply as a recovery of facts that had been filed away. The different phases of my life, as academic and as artist, quite suddenly seemed to be running in simultaneous time, commenting on each other, and qualifying each other. This was not an experience of nostalgia, by any means, but a sudden reminder that activities and experiences once had a meaning and value that no longer obtain in my life today. In turn, however, the “me” that exists today was suddenly placed under scrutiny by the person I once was.
I suppose that the oddest element of this reflection was the question it raised as to how I am doing today in comparison with how I was doing back there. Am I really an artist, or somehow an academic who happens to have come adrift? Or am I an academic who managed to escape? Perhaps I’m actually just “hiding” in art, waiting until it is safe to come out again. Had my friend found my hiding place?
I’ve scuttled back to my studio, and perhaps if I can get into painting again tomorrow this sense of a disturbed identity can be overcome and re-ordered. We shall see.
*He also happens to have taught my wife, on her degree course.