My imagination would give me pictures and, look, I’ve done that, too. China and Istanbul dates this place to my near-past. I stare at Basquiat on the wall in my eye-line. Or perhaps Aaron stares at me. I wonder what my younger-self would have hung on these walls?
An older work colleague was house-hunting in South West London back in the time when buying a house there was possible without tripping over Oligarchs and Bankers.
He described a process where his wife had free reign over the choice of the new home other than two things: the finances, which were his exclusive concern, and a stipulation that the chosen property had to contain a study for him. A study on the ground floor with access to a garden and a study with a lock on the doors which meant wife and children were allowed only under sufferance and only ever by invitation.
I love my study as much as he loved his, ‘though perhaps his planning was a search for a selfish space rather than one of homage to his exclusive domain, and although his casual misogyny made me laugh out loud I whisper to myself a quiet admiration for his end, if not his means.
If I was to furnish his study to reflect him it would be all fishing rods and shotguns, all leather and gentleman’s club chic. I imagine clusters of silver framed photos of the family he so cheerfully excluded. I try to picture a computer in there but find a tantalus fits my mind’s eye better. I try to imagine books, know I am a fool for the attempt but give him a tattered Johnson’s World Wine Atlas just for the sake of it. If I’m going to deal in cliché’s I may as well go the whole hog.
If I envy him the peace of the place I’ve imagined for him it’s only because I’m too slow to count my own blessings, so let me get the grass-greener jealousy out the way first. My room is a basement, I face a wall. A reluctant ooze of light and what little warmth gets below ground come through a door behind me that’s also the main carriageway for a winter wet dog, a cheerful chatty wife. I steal from Day-Lewis:
‘Oh, did I interrupt you? I’ll go’
‘Yes, but you’ll leave the interruption behind’
But in my mind, not my mouth. My privacy is of a quieter sort than that of my long-lost colleague.
If I let my mind’s eye furnish this room for me, it would start with books and shelves. Oh, it did.
Maths tells me I have 25 million printed words on these shelves. How many typed at this desk, I wonder? How many spoken? How many thought?
My imagination would give me pictures and, look, I’ve done that, too. China and Istanbul dates this place to my near-past. I stare at Basquiat on the wall in my eye-line. Or perhaps Aaron stares at me. I wonder what my younger-self would have hung on these walls?
Flea-market small Greek busts, Asian brass gods and Buddhas dot equally-rummaged old wood, intriguingly stained with stories untold of accidents and memories of their lives before me. Michel de Montaigne looks sterner than he should – he has a Périgord stone tower, after all, while concrete floors my loftier thinking.
One chair looks old but isn’t – comfort before authenticity – and one looks old and is. And is rarely used. Perhaps consequently.
A carved stool - drinks table – ladder for the upper shelves. Three-in-one to satisfy William Morris’ two-in-one: beautiful and useful. Two cushions, neither beautiful but useful enough not to flunk the test. One old, red and American; one white, new and Irish. The old one sheds feathers that make me sneeze but if making me sneeze was enough to be discarded the dog would have to go as well, so sneeze I must. Consistent if not healthy, then.
Beyond wood I have glass.
The oldest glass contains wine from the first mixed case of ‘proper’ wine I ever bought. Southwold in my mind. I could be wrong. Remarkable after all the other rooms I’ve worked from, all the other things I’ve discarded or lost, that it’s with me still. The wine was never very good, aged beyond tasty drinking twenty years ago, but the old friend has been witness to many other passing bottles and mentors the dust-free newbies, prepares them for their fate.
How odd that this is the thing in the room that’s clung to me for longest and how useless is an un-drunk, un-drinkable bottle of claret?
There’s a guitar I can’t play, paints that mock me when I wave them at paper, old sail-boat coasters that cost two dollars under Brooklyn Bridge. There’s running shoes. I burn incense to pretend to hide from the smell but it’s really to scare the dog and the wife away. I quite like smelly running shoes.
I can’t tell you what this room tells you about me. How can I know what you know? I can tell you what this rooms tells me about me.
But I’m not going to.
KJB
