An artist friend said to me once: "Every morning I wake up and thank God for giving me the desire to do art."
It occurred to me then that all our cliched views of how passion is a key ingredient of success fail to ask the most important question: Where do passion and desire come from, and what happens if they are lost, or if they were never there in the first place?
This is taken from Rachel Seiffert's latest collection,
Field Study. Those of you who have not yet come across her work may like to start with this book of compellling, strangely
homeless short stories. Or, if you prefer your literature longer and more sustained, try her novel,
The Dark Room - shortlisted for the Booker Prize when she was only 30!
i kowtow in a greenness of envy.
ArchitectThe architect was young and enthusiastic, energetic and ambitious. He had a quiet passion for space, for dimensions, for awe. For comfort, for splendour and for ease. This passion was undimmed by the pragmatics of fire escapes, minimum sanitation requirements, cost-effective building materials, and optimum car-parking arrangements.
The architect's designs were singular. His drawings and his gracious manner somehow inseparable. Bureaucrats with construction millions would comb their hair and run a checking tongue across their dentures in preparation for their meetings. Those clients who fell for his designs invariably also fell for him.
Small articles had begun to appear in specialist journals, respectful in their appraisal. The architect was treading a unique path and considered himself a lucky man: success and all its grand gestures, though still distant, seemed inevitable.
Today, however, is different.
All week the architect has struggled and strained, but what he has produced bears no relation to his expectations, and he feels critical of every line he has drawn. Although he can name each fault, he cannot make improvements.
It has never happened before and he is determined not to let it worry him.
Another project requires his attention. A simple matter of redrawing the car park. Twelve executive spaces are required, not ten. He allows this task to stretch over three working days. A minor incident on the face of it, but his boss is puzzled. Upset, even, though he does not show it. The partners discuss the architect over pub lunches and the secretaries start sugaring his coffee in sympathy, falling silent when he walks by.
The architect tells himself it's nothing, that he just needs a break. He rings his brother and goes for the weekend. They are drunk, they are sober. They talk women, politics, work out an old grievance and resolve again to visit their father more often. Each feels happy with the time spent together.
The weeks go by, as they do, and the architect keeps busy. Long hours with little time for brooding, reflecting. Returning home from a conference, he reads his first newspaper for days. A new public building on the front page. Half the world throws hands up in horror, the other half claps hands in praise, and the architect skims the articles, avoiding the fact that he has no opinion.
Evening falls and he allows himself another look at the newspaper. The building is a puzzle to him, a shape. He cannot assess scale, proportion, quality. His mind's eye sees no interior. A cold cloud gathers in his belly. He cooks dinner and watches TV.
At work, two glaring errors in a recent front elevation have been noted. The boss wants a word. The architect retires to the associates' washroom to think matters through. The elevation was done before. Before what? Before.
He starts crossing the road to avoid construction sites. He takes unpaid leave. On the telephone he tells friends that he is pursuing his own interests. He learns of others' successes and tastes his first bitterness. He wants to confess. If I could laugh about this with someone. But he is ashamed of his feelings and buries them deep where they hurt most.
The days fall by, all swift and exactly the same. He can no longer read newspapers, much less journals. Television is distressing rather than distracting. His savings are dwindling and the mortgage is a worry. He considers other careers. Each seems attractive for a day or so, an hour or two, but nothing lasts. At night he dreams structures, wakes hopeful and forgets them.
He asks his father for a loan, and it turns into a row.
- I'd like to see what you're designing.
- You wouldn't understand it anyway.
- If your mother were alive.
- If you were the last person on earth.
The dismissal notice from his boss - brimful of disappointment and regret - rests behind the clock on the mantel. Barely read, unacknowledged. It didn't happen. He never had that job.
The architect spends as much time as possible outside, driving out to the country at dawn, and only returning after dark. He turns no lights on in the house, and fantasises about being found dead on a hillside. Flat on his back, arms outstretched against the damp ground. He imagines the last thing he'd see would be sky, blinkered by the long green grasses fluttering against his cold pink cheeks.
He talks to no one and worries about the need to be something worthwhile, meaningful, substantial, good. He worries about being boring.
His brother is impatient, irritated. Why doesn't he get some work, stop sponging off Dad, think about other people for a change, get on with it. The architect sells his house, his car, his record collection, and moves in with his father. Back in his old room with the Meccano under the bed, the architect feels much better.
His days are spent sleeping and eating. His dad takes him to the allotment and sets him to digging, so as the boy will get some movement. He discusses sowing patterns with his son, and weeding strategies. Frosts and pests, composts and companion plants. And though the architect is quiet, his father is glad to have him around because he loves him very much.
His brother comes to visit regularly, and even brings his girlfriend once. She has a thoughtful manner and lovely hair. His dad is happier than he's been in weeks, cracks jokes and opens an extra bottle.
After dinner, she washes while the architect dries, and he asks her to take off her clothes. She is charming, unfailingly polite and ignores his request. The rest of the evening passes without incident, but his brother comes round the next morning with harsh words. On the way to the doctor's, his dad tells the architect that he really mustn't say such things. At lunchtime, his father's eyes are red, but he heats the soup as usual, and they even listen to some music together.
Three months later the medication is reduced, although the twice-weekly hour of silence with a counsellor continues. The architect doesn't tell her that he no longer has ideas. That floor plans make his chest ache. That he dreams of staircases crumbling beneath his feet. He knows all these things himself, and he also knows how banal they are. Instead, he cries a little, and after she expresses approval, he cries a great deal.
He starts looking in the paper for jobs. Wills himself to seach through the architectural appointments, but finds his mind stubbornly closed to the idea. The shame of this is almost too much to bear, and he is regularly nasty to his father. Both know this is uncalled for, neither says anything about it.
In job interviews he cites an elderly parent as a reason for leaving his last employment. A change of direction was needed, he smiles, confesses. Dad was the catalyst, really. The old charm trickles back again from the brink, and the managers understood crossroads, family commitments, appreciate the honesty, the evidence of storms weathered. Not all of them think this makes him employable, but he soon has a job.
A month in, over dinner, he tells his father and brother about it. That he is enjoying his new work and feels relevant too, in an engaging but not too demanding way. Dad is pleased. It is exactly the life he wanted for his boy. But his brother is angry. What has this whole bloody crisis been about? They argue in hissed whispers in the kitchen, so their father can't hear. A glass is smashed to diffuse the tension. His brother is ashamed, sweeps up the glass and leaves.
The architect rents a flat nearer the office and starts sleeping with the girl who lives downstairs. He visits his brother to patch things up, and soon they are making up a foursome at weekends.
Some time later, he realises he has been walking in and out of buildings without thinking about them.
He visits his dad regularly, too, and they often spend their Sundays working together on the allotment. On one such visit, his father expresses concern about his tomatoes. They are suffering from the unseasonal cold and urgently need protection.
The architect looks around at the other allotments and is shocked and amazed by the ugly ingenuity of crooked panes and corrugated iron. Sodden, splintered window frames forming crude but effective structures. Plants thriving below warm condensation.
He gather materials from a tip, from skips, from the wasteground by the canal. Dad potters happily, tying up the runner beans, only half-aware of his son, who sits in the doorway of the shed with a brown paper bag and pencil, and sketches a rough idea in the early afternoon sun. By evening, a splendid construction surrounds the tomatoes, complete with a hinged door for ease of picking.
Dad is overjoyed. Son is proud and pleased and also sad. The sun still shines, but the wind has picked up, and the rawness of a day spent outside is in his face and fingers.
The doubt that came from nowhere and disappeared again without reason. The turmoil and confusion, concession and healing. The arguments, bitterness and lessons learnt. All these have left the mark of compromise on him. He is stable and disappointed. No longer an architect.
......
