Kate O'Brien seems to be popping up at the moment.
On Monday night we saw the film 'Talk of Angels' (1998) which, despite the presence of Academy Award winners Frances McDormand and Penelope Cruz, doesn't get a mention in my Time Out or Empire film guides. The film is set in Spain and based on Kate O'Brien's book 'Mary Lavelle', which was banned in both Ireland and Spain when it was published in 1936.
On Wednesday morning I started the book 'The Leaves on Grey' by Desmond Hogan (1980), which I bought recently in the little antique shop in Ramelton. The book opens in a town very like Hogan's native Ballinasloe. It's far from Kate O'Brien, a Limerick woman who died in England in 1974, and further from the Basque country.
However, a little idle curiosity about the identity of a woman artist in the first chapter leads straight back to O'Brien and to Spain.
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The more attention you pay to coincidences, the more likely they are to appear, which means you begin to gain greater and greater access to the messages being sent to you about the path and direction of your life - Deepak Chopra, 'SynchroDestiny', p27
The artist in the first chapter of Hogan's book has designed a stained glass window depicting Saint Teresa of Avila. There is such a window in the church in Ballinasloe, but I haven't found out who designed it. The narrator says, "Afterwards I learnt that this [artist] lady was actually a devotee of St Teresa and had travelled many times to Avila."
Another clue comes when the artist falls ill. Before her death she declares, "I had two real relationships in my life. One with the sea. The other with Spain."
These clues don't seem to fit with any Irish stained glass artist of the time, but then again this is a work of fiction. However, it emerges that Kate O'Brien does fit the bill, albeit as a writer rather than a visual artist. She had an affinity for Spain for much of her life. She worked as a governess in the Basque region and the novel 'Mary Lavelle' draws on her experiences there. And Kate wrote a life of Teresa of Avila.
That random film and that random book are linked.
Look closer and you find that Desmond Hogan wrote the introduction to the Virago re-issue (1996) of Kate O'Brien's book 'That Lady' (1946), also set in Spain.
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Coincidences are like road flares, calling our attention to something important in our lives, glimpses of what goes on beyond everyday distractions. We can choose to ignore those flares and hurry on, or we can pay attention to them and live out the miracle that is waiting for us - Deepak Chopra, 'SynchroDestiny', p126
There is a problem with 'SynchroDestiny' - what does it all mean? What's the significance of that film being followed by that book (well, the first chapter). We were in Spain recently, in Nerja, and enjoyed it. Perhaps Spain deserves a closer look? Maybe we should be investing in Spanish phrasebooks? Or maybe for starters I should read the rest of Deepak Chopra's book . . .
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I read a good book in Nerja, 'Duende', about a young Englishman who came to Spain to follow his passion for flamenco guitar. It ends with him meeting guitar great Paco De Lucia while having a pee back stage at a festival. So on the way home from Nerja I bought a CD featuring Paco and put it on in the car. The next day came the news he had died of a heart attack at 66. Now I hesitate to put living artists on the CD player.
A coincidence (often stated as a mere coincidence) is a collection of two or more events or conditions, closely related by time, space, form, or other associations which appear unlikely to bear a relationship as either cause to effect or effects of a shared cause, within the observer's or observers' understanding of what cause can produce what effects. [not the most clear entry in Wikipedia][ . . .] From a statistical perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively. [Wikipedia]
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All this chat about Kate O'Brien sent me to a lovely book I bought recently, this time in Foyle Books in Derry, 'Three Men on an Island'. It's 1951. The three men, all artists from the North, are on the island of Inislacken off Roundstone in Connemara. Of course they have to visit a writer living in Roundstone. Kate O'Brien.
One of the artists was Gerard Dillon (1916 - 1971). This got me thinking about the painting I saw of his in a gallery which used to be on the Mall in Ramelton. It was the beginning of a closer interest in art for me.
That was yesterday evening. Last night I noticed that a gallery has just moved back into the Mall.
Another of the artists was George Campbell (1917 - 1979). He designed stained glass windows for Galway Cathedral. He played flamenco guitar and spent much of his adult life in Spain.
Any good coincidences? Drop me a line on martinmcginley65@gmail.com
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Ancillary stuff -
The Vanishing Man
Desmond Hogan seems a strange and unusual character himself, a very talented writer who has regularly vanished from view. There's an absorbing article on him by Robert McCrum on the Guardian website called 'The Vanishing Man' - http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/nov/14/fiction.features2
However, a current search for Desmond finds him in the headlines in recent years, most recently in 2012 - 'Convicted child abuser walks free from court' - following his conviction for sexually assaulting a 15 year-old boy. Judge Moran called the case 'complex' and said society would be better served if Hogan continued treatment rather than be sent to jail.
See whttp://www.thewhitereview.org/interviews/interview-with-desmond-hogan/
An artist in Ireland
In 'The Leaves on Grey' (1980), the stained glass artist has a place of importance in the opening chapter - maybe a device to throw light on some of Hogan's own ideas on his art. Dressed in black, she tells a crowd at a reception: "[. . . ] The artist needs to create, needs freedom. [ . . .] Now you men of Ireland let us, the artists, put our truths together, our life, our search." At one point she comments: "I have made a window so that light can come in a little better." A reminder of the Leonard Cohen line,
There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That's how the light gets in
Or, as Groucho put it, "Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light."
The artist goes to stay in the west. The teenager narrator describes being taken on a visit to her by his neighbours the Kennellys. She looks towards the direction of Tir na n-Og, the land of eternal youth, and says; "I have felt this pain in my right breast for a long time. Who knows but that my time as an artist is up." It's later in hospital that she says: "I had two real relationships in my life. One with the sea. The other with Spain."
The narrator continues: "I thought of the dust roads in Castile and the house by the ocean and wondered about her art, stained glass windows in churches all over Ireland depicting the apostles, Christ, St Brigid, wondered why she didn't mention them, thought to myself that the real artist is an anonymous person whose art is unbeknownst to him."
At the artist's funeral, her friend Mrs Kennelly, a beautiful Russian, quotes St Teresa of Avila:
'Not a friend was by his side
When his cross he did embrace
And to us came light and grace
Through Our Lord the crucified.'
By the end of the chapter Mrs Kennelly, "beautiful and rich in life", is herself dead. Unhinged by a love affair, she walked into the river, "always rushing, always tempting, a wild river". "It was approaching Easter Sunday when they found her."
'The Leaves on Grey' has an epigraph from the Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva, described by Nadezhda Mandelstam as having the most tragic fate of all the poets - 'The abyss has swallowed my loved ones,
and my parents' home has been pillaged.'
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A special book
'Three Men on an Island' is about three artists from the North, James McIntyre, George Campbell and Gerard Dillon spending some weeks together painting on the island of Inislacken off Roundstone in Connemara in the early summer of 1951. It's written and put together by James McIntyre, looking back from 1996.
Part of what makes it special is the freshness of his recollections - "I was young, skint and spearing a breakfast sausage and tatie bread as the letters clattered through our brass letter box, skittering across the linoleum onto the old bristle mat", the book begins.
The book is also packed with drawings, paintings and photographs, mostly McIntyre's work but also the occasional contribution from his two friends, both now long dead and well ranked among Irish artists of the 20th century.
McIntyre fondly recalls two nights socialising in the home in Roundwood of Kate O'Brien. She would then have been in her mid-fifties. Originally from Limerick, she spent much of her life in England and died in Faversham near Canterbury in 1974.
"I had imagined that anyone who lived in a house of this size and elegance would be aloof and distant with the likes of us, but Kate O'Brien greeted us warmly and with such friendliness that I forgot my good intentions [to stay quiet and avoid making 'daft comments'] and was soon babbling away."
Spain was on the agenda on their second visit to Kate O'Brien.
"Both he [George] and Kate had a passion for Spain and the Spanish way of life. They were soon enthralling Gerard and me with tales of their travels in that land which, at that time, had not yet been invaded by the 'sunshine and chips' package tour industry [ . . .] Kate asked George to play some flamenco music on his guitar to remind her of the balmy evenings she had enjoyed in Spain. For once he needed no coaxing. He played well, although we would never have dreamt of telling him so. Soon he was strumming and finger-tapping his way through his repertoire, head net low and cocked to one side, oblivious of everything except the music. We listened, entranced, conjuring up visions of haughtily profiled gypsies, their staccato heels clicking and exotically coloured dresses swirling. Kate was ecstatic in her appreciation of George's playing. In fact, so were Gerard and myself. This was George the extrovert in full swing, highly entertaining and marvellous company."
The night is made for the young James when he shows Kate some work and she decides to take three sketches - "Three was more than I had dreamt of. I stammered out a price of ten shillings, which was dismissed immediately as far too little. Kate then opened her handbag, rummaged in her purse, and taking my hand, pressed into it three one-pound notes and a ten-shilling note."
Dillon's home in those years was a flat in London, but he rented houses in the area around Roundstone. He said:
‘think of the
West and the life lived there. Then think of my childhood and youth in the
middle of industrial Belfast. Is not the West and the life lived there a great
strange kind of wonder to the visitor from the redbrick city?’
He visited Spain with George and Madge Campbell later in 1951. For the Campbells, the visit helped develop a love affair with Spain, but Dillon preferred closer to home, London at least.
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Worth checking out - lots of paintings
There's a great discussion on Gerard Dillon and his milieu, George Campbell, Dan O'Neill, James McIntyre and many more, with lots of paintings and photographs here - http://www.adams.ie/cat-pdf/20713.pdf It includes Fig. 61 a photo of Kate O'Brien, at fig. 53 a sort of Tory Island painter view of Inislacken by Dillon and at fig. 20 a Dillon work called 'Before the Dance, Culdaff, Co. Donegal'.-------------------------
Tony the man
The last book to talk about in this blog (already miles longer than anticipated) is one bought along with 'Three Men on an Island' in Foyle Books - 'Tony O'Malley, painter in exile'. It accompanied an exhibition around 1983, and has a substantial discussion of O'Malley's career by Brian Fallon. He was the Irish Times' chief critic at that time. He wrote 'Irish Art 1830 - 1990'. I used to run into him at Stephen McKenna openings in Dublin and found him friendly to someone who obviously wasn't an aficionado.
The book cost £10. Ken declared it was good value after he spotted it signed 'To Moira Bond with best wishes from Tony O'Malley 2/5/91'. O'Malley was big news on the Irish art scene for a few years and there was a major retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2005. I like his work - and not just because he played the accordion and mouth organ! I remember him saying he made a painting each Good Friday http://emacl.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/good-friday-paintings/ Good Friday is also a day for art in Donegal, as it's when the open art show launches at the Glebe Gallery in Churchill.
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Speaking of Easter, did I mention being at the film 'Calvary' on Tuesday night? Big performance from Brendan Gleeson, another trad man. Haven't got round to figuring it all out yet, those priest/Christ links.
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There are lots of images of St Teresa of Avila here - http://www.pinterest.com/rebeccamabile/st-theresa/ It seems she is the patron saint of headaches.
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Amusings
Naturally, given that we talking about synchronicity, when I went to look up the book 'Mary Lavelle' the first thing I found was a book blog called 'Musings'. Same title as this blog.
Laura has some interesting reading going on in her blog. One project was to read all the Booker winners and she has some favourites and some she couldn't finish. Generally she rated most of the Booker winners around 3.3 - average!
See her favourites and her DNF (did not finish) Booker winners here -http://laurasmusings.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/midweek-musings-a-complete-booker-retrospective/
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What the Kammerer
More Wikipedia on coincidences -
The Jung-Pauli theory of "synchronicity", conceived by a physicist and a psychologist, both eminent in their fields, represents perhaps the most radical departure from the world-view of mechanistic science in our time. Yet they had a precursor, whose ideas had a considerable influence on Jung: the Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer, a wild genius who committed suicide in 1926, at the age of forty-five.—Arthur Koestler[3]
One of Kammerer's passions was collecting coincidences. He published a book with the title Das Gesetz der Serie (The Law of the Series; never translated into English), in which he recounted 100 or so anecdotes of coincidences that had led him to formulate his theory of Seriality.
He postulated that all events are connected by waves of seriality. These unknown forces would cause what we would perceive as just the peaks, or groupings and coincidences. Kammerer was known to make notes in public parks of what numbers of people were passing by, how many carried umbrellas, etc. Albert Einstein called the idea of Seriality "Interesting, and by no means absurd",[citation needed] while Carl Jung drew upon Kammerer's work in his essay Synchronicity.[4]
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Get cracking
Coincidentally, given our Leonard Cohen discussion earlier, this comes from cracked.com -
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_531_29-mind-blowing-coincidences-you-wont-believe-happened/
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