The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Heimweh

Heimweh, April 1, 2002

I’m becoming quite irked by Douglas Botting’s biography of the writer and aristocrat Gavin Maxwell. The irk is in the similarities. I have already quoted the paragraph of his liking for ‘nostalgie de la boue’, but there is a passage written by Gavin Maxwell’s ex-lover, Thomas, that I could relate to and am disturbed by as reflecting my own unease with the here and now.

‘Gavin cut a very romantic, adventurous figure in society but this was only one side of him, for in reality he was two different people – the respectable publics figure, (the aristocratic painter, author, ex-Guards officer and member of learned societies ,and the less respectable one, (the homosexual, the outlaw, the fearful, repressed, inhibited man). So though he was not schizophrenic he often behaved like one – he separated his personalities into two distinct parts and led two compartmentalised lives like everybody who has an unresolved emotional problem, he was a role player (…) Gavin was too fearful to live in his essence, so he lived in his ideal, and, like many people in conflict, he lived as he wished to be, not as he was, he faced life seeking rather than being- for only an integrated person can be – and in this sense he was a genuinely romantic figure, like a knight on a quest.’

The writer, lover or biographer doesn’t take into account the fact of his Chinese star sign; Year of the Tiger. Those born under this restless sign are just that, restless. They are natural loners destined to shift, often loveless, from one adventure to another; boredom being their worst enemy. Reputation is all important to a Tiger and works, creative or otherwise are periodically meted out lest one be entirely forgotten.

There is another quote somewhere about creativity only possible at the place of one’s roots. Gavin Maxwell has to return from his travels and from London to the Western Highlands in order to write.

I’m going in the opposite direction, Western Lowlands towards London. I have never had homesickness before, but looking at my diary and the map of London, I had sudden nostalgia for places as crushingly mundane as Deptford, New Cross, Brockley; basically, the familiar grot that is south-east London. I am so familiar with London it is incredible. I have, in various guises, walked its streets and riverbanks; in love, broke, with friends, after dinner, before and after the theatre, in exploration of a new venue, on a mission of sleaze, desperate, familiar, suited on the way to work as an interpreter, on the way to a gig or a coffee house, the British Library, (the old one), with Alfie, Laurence, Keith and among strangers. I’ve walked tirelessly, like a pilgrim, the route from Earls’ Court to New Cross and back again on a mission of self-destruction mingled with creative revelation; pearls in pigswill. I’ve walked Sundays with girlfriends, through trendy markets with other bewildered fashionable couples; Camden, Greenwich, Pettycoat Lane looking at things I could never afford, lips pursed in arrogance. London, the trail from Nick’s to Wickham Road, to Gary’s to Ben and Jo’s to Keith’s to Soren’s to other people’s lives; to Scotland!