This past weekend I have an unveiling of a portrait which a talented painter and friend Richard McWhannell painted of me.
It was a lovely occasion, held at the home of my friends, Tim and Steph.
In the 'poem' below there are two
references which might need explaining. "Bess" is my mother. And the "frolicsome poof" refers to Oliver Messel who designed the scarf which I draped over the portrait. It was a coronation scarf dating from 1953.
I dedicate this blog to other 'debutantes of disaster'....
On Sitting for a portrait @ 60
As a child I always hungered
for the portraits of ancestors.
Reading English books
this was what your walls wore.
It made you original
to have an original.
Lacking these devices
as an author and filmmaker
I set out to create a family of images
surrounding myself with living ghosts
feeling at home
in the whare of faces.
So
it seemed
when I was harpooned
captured by the hook of time
I came face to face
with what was missing:
a portrait of me.
2.
There is vanity
in thinking an image of self
matters
but no Dorian Grey,
at sixty I can claim
only a register of fissures
faultlines and an iron seam called endurance.
În this sense
this portrait is
a port I have already left behind
embarking
on the new old adventure
down
a corridor of faces
each one shedding
as I move forward
passing a younger self along the way.
3.
Which brings me to this moment now
its lovely presience.
Surrounded as I am
with faces I have seen
like my own
grow more into themselves
and lose the mask of youth
in which we hid
our secret selves
so tender and unformed
needing the dark to grow
till this late stage
when we emerge
with the hardiness of survivors
alert to disasters
which we chronicled
by simply outliving them
debutantes of debacle
scorners of fates which did not fit
like clothes we dropped off
at a charity shop
secretly praying
we won’t have to come back
and find ourselves on the rack
unable to afford
clothes we can no longer
actually
even fit
I salute you
kind friends
who walked into this changing room
awaiting the...reveal...
4.
So I come to this
veiled portrait.
I sat
during the making of it
somewhat sad
as my beloved Bess
had momentarily lost herself.
I took advantage of the
opportunity of sitting silent
greedily
like a damaged blackbird
repairing himself
by simply nestling in the rain
welcoming its warm wet
flicking off the drops from
my outspread wings.
Richard painted away
squinting frowning
hemming puffing
as he climbed up the slope of
self.
All I had to do
was sit there
and allow my physical self
some egress
under the protection
of his skill.
5.
So now I
it
he
the thing
which duplicates a self
sits here veiled
fittingly in a lovely old scarf
borrowed from Doug
the capturer of butterfly shells
a scarf
done by a frolicsome poof
to celebrate
a young queen’s outing
now almost lost to time.
6.
So
with a twitch
I will dislodge
this self
which I thank Richard for
and our kind hosts
dear friends
Steph and Tim
for allowing me this space
and
with the time immemorial words
beloved of magicians
I set this self
which will live longer than myself....
free....
pooff!
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