Greetings to You for 2022!

I've never really got the whole calendar-change celebration. We grew up with Rosh Hashana as our new year, with the other thing being a chance to stay up late to hear Big Ben bong and maybe get a sip of champagne. On the other hand, my father always said that one should take up any opportunity to make a fresh start. So here's to 2022! May we all be healthy and happy.

Drawing Together Ends 2021 Brightly

The Graphic Medicine's monthly Drawing Together group met again today. After losing the plot a couple of meetings ago, when I got stuck once again on my lack of technical drawing skills (and yet I still don't try hard enough to improve them!), I was encouraged to return by the artist leading this month's session.

The Zoom invitation included a few words from Judith:

"Learning to draw, or more accurately, realising how to look at things, for me marked the beginning of being an artist.

For this Drawing Together session, I have prepared a sequence of prompts with which you will explore when you learned how to draw and how you formed a unique sense of yourself as an artist.

As the New Year begins and the days grow longer, let's draw closer to the light, together."

Asked to recall our first memory of ourselves, what came to mind was sitting on the floor in our flat on W 116th Street, watching Bugs Bunny on TV whilst eating a piece of cheese. We had just under 2 minutes to draw this one.

The second prompt (4 mins) was a bit more difficult at first - I had absolutely no memory of the first time I knew that I liked to draw. I started to get anxious again but, thank goodness, other options were then offered, including "whatever it is that makes you you". And I looked back and saw my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, and remembered how much from as far back as I go that I love taking pictures.

[the earliest QPR pic of mine I've found was taken with an Instamatic!

]

Judith concluded with a story about a woman she'd visited in a nursing home who had told her a story. The story made the woman very happy. She told it again. And again. In the end, it was the only story she told, but it always made her happy. Judith spoke about keeping ourselves in the light, and asked us to draw a favourite memory, perhaps the one story that we would tell when we were in the home.

Dithering about which memory would steal drawing time, and we only had 10 minutes, so I took the first that came to mind.

It was the day a congregant invited my dad to view the local derby with neighbours QPR in an executive hospitality box at Stamford Bridge. I happened to be a QPR photographer on the pitch that afternoon. In those days there were few, if any, women shooting football matches, so I usually got a lot of abuse from the crowd. However, the R's fans began to recognise me after a while. At half-time I walked towards the away end, and some fans began chanting my name. My father was so proud and excited - his favourite team, his first-born on the pitch, her name being sung by several hundred fellow fans. I sometimes wonder if this was just a bit better than the day he blessed me in front of the ark when I was ordained. So, this is the drawing. And even though it probably wasn't on that day, I drew the floodlight, shining down on the away end.

In between each prompt we got the chance to look at each other's drawings, and hear the stories behind them. I love this group - people are kind and supportive and encouraging. I hope it continues in 2022!

PS Sorry about the faintness of the pencil. You might see the drawings better if you click on them. They get bigger too!

Routemaster Piglet

I do so love an old Routemaster, especially when it is a Number 9. Piglet is also clearly riveted, and posed for me I think when we saw a stationary example on the Strand one afternoon. Approaching the end of 2021, my mind is wandering through random memories. 

Seeing this photo reminds me of when there were no traffic lights at Hyde Park Corner, and you could stand on the platform as the bus took the Corner, holding onto the pole with one hand, and leaning out to swing round with the bus, jumping off as it turned left into Knightsbridge while the conductor shouted at you. Hard to accept how long ago that was!

Remembering Lionel

Today marks the 5th anniversary of Lionel's death. The greatest tribute that I can pay him is that when speaking to people at the cemetery as we waited for his funeral to begin, it was clear that each one of us felt that we were his favourite, his spiritual child. And, being Lionel, maybe we all were. Missing him dearly, may he rest in peace.

Guardian obit

RIP Sir Antony Sher

It was thanks to one of my sisters that I first learned of the talent of Antony Sher. Not only did she encourage us to see him in any and every production on the stage, but she also bought one of his drawings, which hung on the wall of her bedroom for many years. I think it was of himself as Tartuffe. Or perhaps as the Misanthrope. I remember it was mischievous and dark and flashed a bit of bare back bottom.

Sher will certainly be eulogised for his classical roles as well as his range of characters. For me his most memorable live performances included Primo, which I saw on Broadway in 2005. Alone on a simple stage, Sher drew pictures with words and filled my mind with images of Levi's experience. After leaving the theatre, I found it difficult to reenter the world and wandered the streets until I found myself in the Swedish Seamens Church where I was able to sit quietly until I found some equilibrium.

20 years earlier, my sister and I bought orchestra seats at a London theatre for Torch Song Trilogy (actually we saw it twice, first with Antony Sher and then again when Harvey Fierstein took over the role. Although Fierstein was the author, it worked much better with Sher). In those days it was a pretty groundbreaking story. I really had no idea about my own story, but Sher (who wasn't out either at that point) 's performance got to me.

And then there was the obscure film my friends Andy & Janet rented from a Shenandoah Valley library:  Genghis Cohn. Made in 1993, it was based on a 1967 French novel by Romain Gary, La Dance de Genghis Cohn, about a German policeman after WW2 who is investigating a series of murders in a small town whilst being haunted by the ghost of a 3rd-rate Jewish comedian he had murdered during the Nazi era. I don't know why so few people have heard of this production. I think it's an important perspective on the Shoah, particularly for 2nd & 3rd generation folk.

My sadness at hearing the news of Sher's death today, at the relatively young age of 72, is also infused with gratitude. His performances could push past the solid rational defences of my mind, and helped me to find some of the feelings I needed to face. I was blessed by those experiences. 

May his husband be comforted with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. And may his memory be a blessing.

BBC online reports his death.

Guardian obit

photo gallery from the Guardian

a nice tribute from the Daily Mail

The Times obit

from the Royal Shakespeare Company