Writing Privacy

How much can you put yourself into the mind of another individual? It’s not a trick question: though I ask it a lot, I seem to do it a lot too.

My work on Marvell and Private Lives took up most of 2011, and it’s been a wonderful introspective process because the way I’ve symbiotically linked our biographies together has given me license to think as deeply and darkly as I please.

But now, just as I come to wrap this up, there’s something quite subtle which doesn’t add up.

Marvell almost always strikes the reader as the shy, demure sort. Occasionally women are abruptly visible, but otherwise they are teasingly distant, obscured, or absent. He weaves threads of complicated desire behind fastastical themes and layers of honeycombed language.

But perhaps that’s just his writing. After all, his publishing history is thin, and there’s little sign that Marvell placed a great deal of value on the majority of his own poems. Perhaps he’s even embarrassed by them. Why would that be?

Because for all his privacy, secrecy, and eloquence in writing, Marvell never seems to have lacked confidence as a person.

• He disappeared off to Europe for three to four years in the mid-1640s, and mixed with a group of royalist poets on his return.
• He worked in private and public capacities for the most important men in the land, Fairfax, Cromwell and Thurloe, throughout the 1650s.
• He sought a place in government in 1653, and eventually got it in 1657.
• He became an MP in 1659, a position he held until his death 19 years later, and he travelled on embassies with the aristocracy in the 1660s.
• Evidently, he wasn’t shy of saying (or demonstrating) anything, home or abroad.

Perhaps he’s like a slightly more anonymous Tom Watson. [The January 2^nd tract reminds me of Marvell in prose. If you make a stand, you’re fair game - especially if you’ve got skeletons.]

There are obviously reasons for his intense privacy and secrecy, but a lack of confidence isn’t one of them. Back in the day, I imagined Marvell and Fairfax as a socially awkward friendship; one that communicated more in writing than it did in voice – MSN style. But there’s presumably plenty of substance to it. Marvell writes about landmarks within the vicinity of the Nun Appleton estate that he must surely have seen himself.

The connection between land and self in Marvell’s verse assumes, to a degree, that Marvell knew the character of Fairfax well enough to formulate the epic Upon Appleton House with the presence and power that it eventually assumed.

This confidence is where our connection appears to end.

Confidence is a flighty and fickle abstract entity. Where it comes from and what governs it are personal mysteries that I cannot begin to fathom accurately. Occasionally, if we’re fortunate, we recognise chains, of people and places, that bring and maintain positivity.

But ‘confidence’ doggedly eludes me. It shows its glaring absence in such a way that lets me witness it, like viewing treasures through a window.

It’s confusing, because I’ve been the exhibitionist in my time: singing, dancing, featuring on a DVD, performing a lead role, speaking on radio, and even compering a three-hour show. And yet, they’re all just day-release from prison, figuratively speaking. The net is closing back in.

• Three months ago, I spotted a tremendous opportunity that would have presented me with a prestigious international client. I didn’t take it.
• Last month, I offered to write up minutes of an event I attended concerning internal university politics. I didn’t send them.
• Last week, I was invited to do this class again. It’s already prepared, with no travel involved and good money. I’ve turned it down.
• Last night, I left a good crowd after just one hour. A house-party invite tomorrow has been declined too.

Crowds, communication, couples, are all difficult at the moment. It’s a place of increasing insularity and deterioration that makes me less comfortable all the time. It’s accepted, though, because the damage from last year warrants whatever defence mechanisms my psyche commands. Eventually, we know better than to try and defy what keeps us stable.

Willy Loman said in that wonderful play: ‘Man is not a piece of fruit’. Fruit is where we notice bruising because it’s prominent and never recovers. While a bruised apple can be thrown away, man is supposed to hang around that little bit longer, though he has to hope that his bruises will find ways to mend.

There has been talk about matchmaking for me recently. It’s deeply touching, because one suspects that’s the only hope I’ve got left, and because I don’t expect anyone else to care. Unfortunately, that method doesn’t match my copious failings. I don’t know what to say; I don’t know where to start; I don’t know how to ‘be’.

That extends digitally, too. I don’t add on Facebook now. With very rare exceptions, I wait to be added – my proof of mutuality. It’s the prime example of passivity that finds nothing but dead air and lost opportunity. I only know how to write, and under my own sovereignty. (Perhaps A.M. is looking down and nodding after all.)

But here’s the deal. (It’s not a nice thing to write, but I do so with composite calm.) After November’s catastrophe, the thought of me being attractive to anyone is so far away that I’ll take whatever measures I need to avoid adding further proof to the mountainous stockpile. We should base our lives on reward for effort; not punishment for effort.

Confidence
Is a great seed
Planted
In a great need.

I spent December wanting to stay out, drink, and not come home. Now, I’d rather not drink and just be home alone. Dreams of being a sociable, appealing, decent being have to be shelved for the moment. I recoil to my garret, as Marvell always did, consoled that keeping myself away is doing less harm than good.

The gorgeous secluded music of Crazyshow. I’m dedicating this post to a lovely lady in the US whose courage in speaking from the heart about difficult subjects inspires me to write these days when it would be so much easier and safer not to. X