Evening in the Studio
Point 1 - the impact that past events have on our current lives. Not taking the blame, for who am I to judge them? But accepting that it is a part of me.
Point 2 - Can you know someone you have never met? Someone who has been dead for the past 200 years? In reading thousands of letters written by one man who lived over 200 years ago a strange relationship is formed. It is completely one sided, voyeuristic but not dispassionate. I experience empathy for him, whether I like it or not, in a way that I cannot for those who lives are less well recorded. I know him. Evening conversation at the dinner table after another seven hours closeted alone with a bundle of his letters, “oh, he met so-and-so today and went to such-and-such a place”. It is a haunting. He will never be more than a shadow, and if his portrait did not survive, then his image would exist in nothing but the scratches of his pen. Yet, for all this, he was real. I open the letter and he is there.
Point 3 - See Celia Paul letters to Gwen John.
Point 4 - Sorry Alexander Douglas.
