Reckless, impulsive, immoral... Or, as Irwin corrects Dakin, amoral. Not traits that we would necessarily want to have or be thought to have. But the joy of writing fiction is that you can have your characters be those things, if it feels right. Early on in the books, Longshawe is, if not reckless, then certainly brave, perhaps assured by his own physical strength and prowess that he is safe in battle. De Winter thinks little of tricking Mary by engaging a religious man to persuade her to remain in England when she considers leaving. For all sorts of reasons, recklessness is not something you encounter very often in everyday life, and so the other-ness of it becomes part of the fabric of the fiction. The focus of a particular chapter or scene becomes the moment when one of the characters, to borrow a cliche, throws caution to the wind and just does something impulsive.
Real life, with all of its complications and consequences, doesn't reward the injudicious very often. Occasionally people with what appear from the outside to be very limited decision-making skills end up by pure chance (or by robust backup!) making choices that make them wealthy or powerful. Donald Trump seems to be a case in point, where he seems for all the world to be a someone of limited intelligence who for some unfathomable reason is not only very wealthy but also very powerful. Most people who clattered through life behaving as he has done would be destitute and probably very bitter at the world. For me, that is the beauty of the fiction, whether it is mine (of limited beauty at best) or others (with Dumas at the top of my personal list). One can live, in imagination at least, in a world where someone can ride across France chasing a lost lover or ride into battle without armour knowing that death is the only possible outcome, and because it is fiction, death is without pain and indignity. These choices can be made in fiction because the author is there to manage the outcome. In Dumas' case, of course, there is the recurrent criticism that Providence has too much of a hand in a lot the the events. But, as he well ought to, he can counter that the purpose of the fiction is to excite and entertain, so if Providence does need a little help here and there, who would he be to deny it? Providence is absent, though, in real life, and we cannot expect it to provide for us the coincidences, the narrow escapes, the sword point that grazes along a rib rather than finding its mark between them, to get us out of trouble. I have, as Kate Bush (and, as my first point of contact with the tune, the Futureheads) sing, always been a coward. I could never, for example, run my own business, because I just have no sense of risk beyond that I avoid it. I am not, except perhaps for the odd thing said in fear, anger or exhaustion, impulsive. I try to avoid immorality, and I work hard to direct other people away from amorality. But I can create, in my characters, people who are impulsive, or reckless, or who just don't respond to the fear of consequences. I think, perhaps, that is why I write. To inhabit those minds, to see what their experience of the world might be, to step outside the ordinary and inhabit the extraordinary for a few hours a week, that is what writing is to me. Three years ago, give or take a day or two, I had to be off work for about a month with crippling anxiety and depression. I've written about it on occasion before, but it's worth remembering it, thinking about it again, and seeing it through the lens of life subsequently. Some folk are what we might call mental health deniers, in that they question the existence of mental health problems as something that a person might need help with. I might even have been in that category myself, at least as a younger person. I didn't recognise them in myself as a teenager and a young adult (though, undoubtedly, they were there, on and off, and might have been taken seriously if I had not hidden them). I didn't have any issues with my mental health as a young adult, and I suppose I forgot what it felt like to not look forward to anything, or to fail to take any enjoyment out of even the enjoyable stuff. So around three years ago, as a relatively grown-up person, to find that my mind had deteriorated to the point where it didn't function properly was as surprising as it was debilitating.
I have thanked, tried to thank, and perhaps failed to thank a number of people who, at the time and subsequently, have helped, joining me on that journey whether for a day or two or for the duration. So, if you are among that number, thanks again. It can be difficult to persist in trying to help someone when their mind is ill, because it can often seem so futile. But my observation in my own case and others is that even so, it is worth it. Kindness can be really tough, both on the person being kind, and the person who is supposed to benefit. Several people I have spoken to would confirm that the process of trying to get back to mental health is often punishing, painful, shot through with backwards and false steps, and even when going well, hard bloody work. And as the outsider looking in, you occasionally end up taking a blow or two for your troubles. So if you've taken one for/from me, sorry! One curious aspect of my experience has been how I have become susceptible to a sort of flood of crying, prompted by anything from a line in a song to a news story, where previously I would have dismissed the same thing as sentimental, or perhaps steeled myself against it and carried on with the classic British stiff upper lip. Crying is an odd thing, because it can be so cathartic (and I mean that to carry its 'cleansing' sense), but it is also so thoroughly unhelpful when trying to make a point. It's something that old-fashioned sexism would probably say isn't right in a man. I am hopeful that the persistence of those adverts on facebook, the shares of messages of support, the general trend towards recognising mental health as just as significant as physical health, that all of these factors combine to make the world a better place to get better. Better? It's a question asked at workplaces whenever someone has been off and returns, but it disguises a distinction. Generally when I go back after illness I am at best improved, rather than returned to full health. So I am improved, certainly. Over three years, you learn how to lessen the impact of the things that hurt. What I know now that I didn't before I got ill is that it is possible for things to hurt - desperately in some cases - and that being better doesn't necessarily mean the absence of those things. |
Andy RichardsonWhen to the sessions of sweet silent thought Archives
March 2022
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