(Mis)Remembrance of Things Past

 The Way of Swanns....

Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.

Marcel Proust

Swann's Way

Stack, 2022-2024, Nicole Eisenman

I am taking tea in the sumptuous drawing room of Trent Park, where Sir Philip Sassoon, looking relaxed in a blue silk smoking jacket and slippers of zebra hide, offers me a Madeleine with a clipped sibilant lisp [His offer, I assume, not the Madeleine? Ed.]

And with me in this effete temple is Sir Philip's sister, the beautiful Sybil, later to become the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, grandmother of David, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, of Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Sybil tells me of her friendship with Ruth Roche, Baroness Fermoy, Woman of the Bedchamber to Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and mother of Frances Shand Kydd, herself the mother of Diana, the subject of a recent book by her brother..... 

Small world? 

[Six degrees of separation? Ed.]

What I didn't realise was that we were being overheard. Every utterance of that clipped sibilant lisp was being recorded in the basement:

Where the tea was not being served in madeleine moments:

Rather it was part of a programme of edited involuntary memory - not-so-precious fragments of the essence of the past, though even with the recordings, the chink of a tea cup, the snuffling of a dog, the accuracy of the account could be impaired.  A word mis-heard here, the tone mis-interpreted.  We are such stuff as dreams are made on - nothing is quite what it seems.....

Times change.  The world spins on.  In Trafalgar Square the latest plinth-hopper strides away from the past, into an uncertain future, in search, perhaps, of lost time - time to make reparations, or time to forget.....

Lady in Blue, Tschabalala Self

And now I am in Dulwich, at the Picture Gallery.  Here images of American Cities pose a selection of by-products of other memories.  

It's an inspiring exhibition, 

But the title is misleading: it is neither a portrait of A city, nor is it a comprehensive century of American photography. No mention, for example, of Lee Miller.  Nor Ansel Adams.  Nor Cindy Sherman.  For example.....  Though Garry Winogrand has plenty to say.....

But on the back of this show, I roam the busy streets of London by night, looking for images, taking photographs, however stupid the term.

Taking photographs....  [You can't give them back.... Ed.]

And then, as if by magic, I find myself enjoying omelette norvégienne (Baked Alaska) with my friend Nicola.....

But don't ask me to explain.... I cannot remember everything....

Ah well.  Nothing is complete.  As Marcel Proust said, Always try to keep a patch of sky above your head.....  Which is what I cannot quite achieve in the Serpentine Pavilion the following morning:

Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA atelier

The shadow of a Praying Mantis.....

Then, last Saturday was my paternal grandfather's birthday.  I share the date with my brothers, for we remember, fondly, the old man at the head of the table, his tongue-twisters, his bald pate a skating rink for flies....  He would have been 141.  He died at the age of 86.  Do the maths (as they say), but we still remember.  We cannot forget.  He died with a piece of German shrapnel lodged in his left humerus (it wasn't funny).  His troop ship had been torpedoed and sunk off Malta.  He had been run over by the British Consul in Alexandria.  He had dysentry in India.  But nobody needs to know this.  It's just involuntary memory - precious fragments - and I will keep them to myself.  It's not for sharing.....

I walk by the Serpentine, lost in my thoughts.  Water here.....

No water here:

But it is still beautiful - peaceful - and is still a part of the collective consciousness.  If you don't recognise it, never mind, it won't make a difference.  The swans on the Serpentine glide by, elegant, temporary but timeless.  No need to explain.  No need to probe their self-identity.

My grandfather was my grandfather.  Had he not married my grandmother - had he married someone else - he would not have been my grandfather, and I would not be me.  The world spins this way, or it spins that way - it just depends on how you look at it, or where you stand.

I have just been to the Coop. I went to get a newspaper, some bananas and some cream. It's a step away. I came back with a newspaper and some bananas. I had misremembered the cream. I can remember my grandfather. I cannot remember the cream. Is my hippocampus just a circus ring? Or am I merely fallible?

Is the past just one person's story?  Or is it the work of many people collectively sharing someone else's story?

Which, inevitably, will never be the whole story......

But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?

W B Yeats

The Wild Swans at Coole

Anna Pavlova was my mother's godmother. She was, in many ways, a swan.....

And then, gradually, the memory of her would fade away, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.

Marcel Proust

Swann's Way

This one is dedicated to my friend's family.....