Bumping into God in Kent
I had a very tricky time as a writer in the Nineties. My main market – the TV single play/film in television - had dried up and the old BBC Drama Department, which had nurtured me, was dismembered. Producers were more anxious, less in control. In the new age of multi channel TV, ratings ruled. I’m not interested in series or serials – I’m short winded: prefer one off dramas, the TV short story or novella. These come expensive, of course. Hence the commissioners’ switch to ‘returning’ drama, which can tie the writer up for years. I don’t want that. I stare at box sets with gloom, though I occasionally try – and give up – even on ‘Mad Men’ or ‘The Wire.’ I realised recently the cleverness of a writer like Aaron Sorkin not through ‘The West Wing’ but via ‘The Social Network,’ which I’ve now seen, with admiration, three times (‘returning drama?’) I struggled on in television for a time trying to turn myself into a good professional and writing what producers suggested (rather than working on, as previously, what I wanted to do – the producer picking up the project as s/he thought fit). But I started losing my soul – certainly what I seem to call my voice. I became depressed, could barely get out of bed some days. To counter this, I started ‘enjoying’ myself more than in all the time I’d lived in London – getting out and about: late nights, Soho, clubbing, plenty of booze, a few drugs. The work wasn’t exactly sidelined but I didn’t believe in it any more. I sold my car – things were getting hairy financially. And then, in the middle of the Nineties, I let out my flat and started going down to Kent. ‘Chilling out’ might be the term. Some friends had a cottage not far from the sea – or more strictly close to the Swale Estuary. It was the start of a long association with Kent. I cycled, walked, worked (gently). One Sunday morning in May I set out for Canterbury on my bike and, in the middle of the Kent countryside, resting by a gate, something happened. I’ve described the experience – or attempted to – a couple of times in plays. I give my experience to the playwright (later priest) John Marston,* with some shifts in the location and seasons, in an early scene in ‘The Pattern of Painful Adventures’ Later in the play, it’s described (with a touch of irony) as ‘bumping into God in Kent.’ I knew something had happened – what it was I couldn’t say – only that it felt as if it came from the outside and I was caught up in glory. It was too good for imagining. I knew pretty well by then what the chemical bliss of Ecstasy felt like. This was of a different dimension, and freely given. It lasted a few minutes, maybe only a couple of minutes, no more. I cycled on. My friends in Canterbury later said that they knew ‘something’ had happened to me. It was the day a filly of Dick Hern’s won the One Thousand Guineas: otherwise ordinary. I didn’t say anything to anyone – was frankly a bit puzzled. When I did talk about the experience months later I burst into tears. What convinces me that this was the most important hinge in my life was the feeling of content I had for months afterwards. People pooh-pooh this kind of ‘moonshine’, but this was a sober Sunday morning. The sceptics are more careful in rubbishing the common experience of falling in love. Which is what my experience felt like. In time, I started reading theology, and realised what had happened to me – ‘epiphany’ is one of the terms for it – is also reasonably common. Kenneth Clark, the art critic, describes something similar in one of his volumes of autobiography. He says, interestingly, that you can decide to do something about a moment out of time like this – or not. I did – made a choice. It gave me the confidence to cut my losses in London, sell my flat, and go a long wander. I’d long been a house-sitter for various friends and, generally, preferred writing away from home (fewer distractions/ different walks to go on/ the vague feeling of being on ‘holiday’). I gave an edited version of the occasion for this radical change of life in an article in ‘The Guardian’ reprinted elsewhere on this website. The Guardian piece came with the unfortunate headline of ‘I sold my home to house sit.’ I didn’t. There was at that time – I was in mid life - what felt to me a straight choice: did I want to continue in a smart flat and churn out scripts for series or did I want the near complete freedom, underpinned by profits from the flat, to continue being the writer I had set out to be? I had no dependents. It was a no brainer.. it was the writer’s life for me...
* MARSTON: Something happened to me. It’s difficult to explain. When I went down into Kent, it was January, there was snow. I had to put up at an inn. You were glad to get somewhere for the night. It was clean, comfortable. But there’s no chance of travel the following morning. Still dense. I had a fire lit, settled in. I’m at the casement, on the window seat. There’s nobody stirring much, it’s all very quiet. And it seemed to me that someone was there with me. I mean a sense of presence. It was as real as if someone had touched my arm or spoken to me. I don’t mean a ghost. This was …wide and more benign. Everything fitted, came together. It was like music, a sudden harmony. I could see beyond the room. The world was a thing of beauty and I was caught up in it. I was both inside and outside my body. No feeling of …Marston, and yet it was me, but as if I had escaped myself, the misery and corruption of my own soul. The feeling was of such joy and certainty that this was the way the world is. God? Heaven? Here.. and now. And I was a part of it. And then my own self came back. Like my head escaping the waves, surfacing. For a moment I was relieved that this was the familiar me, the room, the fire. And ever since then I’ve wanted it back. This glimpse of perfection. Of love. I feel it’s something I have to respond to. I’ve been reading philosophy, theology. Trying to change my ways. It was like nothing I’ve ever known before. Too good for imagining.
* MARSTON: Something happened to me. It’s difficult to explain. When I went down into Kent, it was January, there was snow. I had to put up at an inn. You were glad to get somewhere for the night. It was clean, comfortable. But there’s no chance of travel the following morning. Still dense. I had a fire lit, settled in. I’m at the casement, on the window seat. There’s nobody stirring much, it’s all very quiet. And it seemed to me that someone was there with me. I mean a sense of presence. It was as real as if someone had touched my arm or spoken to me. I don’t mean a ghost. This was …wide and more benign. Everything fitted, came together. It was like music, a sudden harmony. I could see beyond the room. The world was a thing of beauty and I was caught up in it. I was both inside and outside my body. No feeling of …Marston, and yet it was me, but as if I had escaped myself, the misery and corruption of my own soul. The feeling was of such joy and certainty that this was the way the world is. God? Heaven? Here.. and now. And I was a part of it. And then my own self came back. Like my head escaping the waves, surfacing. For a moment I was relieved that this was the familiar me, the room, the fire. And ever since then I’ve wanted it back. This glimpse of perfection. Of love. I feel it’s something I have to respond to. I’ve been reading philosophy, theology. Trying to change my ways. It was like nothing I’ve ever known before. Too good for imagining.