Expanding the moment
Annabel Abbs wrote Windswept: Walking in the footsteps of remarkable women (Two Roads, 2021) about some famous and not so famous women who were serious walkers at times when that was unusual and often dangerous. (It’s back in the library before I took a photo, so another of her books I discuss below features in the picture.) In Windswept she explores the lives of Simone de Beauvoir, Daphne Du Maurier Frieda Lawrence, Clara Vyvyan, Nan Shepherd and painters Georgia O’Keefe and Gwen John by travelling in their footsteps.
In the spirit of Gwen John she began sketching as she walked rather than photographing what she saw. It was a revelation:
Our profligate use of cameras – too easy, too fast, too careless – means that instead of capturing the moment, we lose it. When we draw or paint we expand the moment, creating space for all our senses and fixing the memory with blade-sharp clarity.
(p. 125)
Windswept sings with fascinating observations about history, creativity, feminism and more. ‘An insight into influential creatives,’ wrote Wanderlust Magazine, categorising the book in its Best Travel Books 2021.
It is a memoir also of the author’s own life and how important walking has been for her. It should be important to all of us.
Our bodies, with their springy tendons and shock-absorbing joints, were built to walk for hour upon hour, day after day. The human heart, say experts, “evolved to facilitate extended endurance activity”. Sedentary people have smaller hearts with thicker walls, less able to pump quantities of blood for long periods. But we can rebuild and reshape our hearts merely by adopting an endurance activity like hiking. (167, 8)
Annabel Abbs has also written novels based on the lives of Frieda Lawrence (Frieda: A novel of the real Lady Chatterley), James Joyce’s daughter Lucia Joyce (The Joyce Girl), and others, such as The Language of Food and Miss Eliza’s Kitchen.
Under the name Annabel Streets she wrote the energetically inspiring 52 Ways To Walk. I love her writing for its original expression and profound insights. Her father is poet Peter Abbs and her own writing is lyrical and succinct, with its fluent exploration of ideas transporting the reader to see the world in a new light.
It’s always interesting to discover why a writer chooses her subjects. Annabel Abbs wrote about her novel, The Joyce Girl, based on the life of Lucia Joyce in The Irish Times:
Lucia’s story was particularly interesting because she very much wanted to be a modern woman, and yet her parents retained a strongly Irish sense of propriety – in spite of Joyce’s image as a radical writer changing the face of fiction. It was here, in the father-daughter element of the story, that Lucia’s story resonated at a more personal level. Like Lucia, I grew up with a poet-father who exiled himself in order to pursue his art. The Joyces went to Italy and adopted Italian as their lingua franca. We went to Wales and learned Welsh. Like the Joyces, we lived in relative poverty, moving frequently during the first 10 years of my life.
The story of Lucia Joyce is fascinating, with The Joyce Girl’s setting of 1920s Paris avant-garde and our introduction to figures like Samuel Beckett and Zelda Fitzgerald. We witness some of Lucia’s psychological sessions with Carl Jung in Zurich in 1934.
The title is apt because Lucia’s struggle, among others, was one for her own identity. Sexist assumptions and the unhealthy way that her famous father used (one could call it ‘abused’) her talent tangled with other detrimental factors to destabilise her.
These things would have destabilised anyone, let along someone with artistic sensibilities like Lucia. Some might think of this concept as self indulgence but I don’t. I’m reminded of seeing a documentary about Brian Wilson, the musical genius of The Beach Boys, who also had a domineering, draining father (see my blog of 17 February 2017). James Joyce was draining in a different, apparently more benign, way but that over-involvement of a parent is still unhealthy for that child. Brian Wilson gave the impression that all his nerves were on the outside and I’ve seen other talented people whose sensitivity seemed as extreme.
Lucia’s teacher Monsieur Bourlin said that she was his most talented student. ‘Modern dance is the alphabet of the inexpressible,’ he said, and ‘dancing is the writing of the body and you instinctively understand this.’ (p. 84)
I’d love to write more about this wonderful book but I won’t spoil it for you. It’s easily available online and in libraries, along with Annabel Abbs’ other books and her works under the name Annabel Streets. Look them up – you’ll be glad you did. She’s a talented writer who explores fascinating subjects in her fiction and non-fiction books. Her new book Sleepless is available soon and I can’t wait to read it even though insomnia is rare for me, luckily. https://www.annabelabbs.com
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