The Obsessive Diary

Because every good story needs a sacrifice and something lost. Jesus – devilish handsome, funny and sweet, an electricity coming off him like fire – god we’d had fun that summer; the sparks of something forbidden, an escape from a commune that had taken over and a marriage I hadn’t meant to make. In the normality of the Director’s house I laughed and ate ham and felt like just a girl. Jesus was my escape hatch and now he was missing. My husband at home – generous, majestic, kind, who loved me, who’d waited saying not a word while I’d gadded about without a thought in my head for him. And I didn’t think of him that night either, the night before the show. I remember the lights being low in the Director’s kitchen, it was dark outside when the Producers arrived, angry, not looking and looking at me. It had happened before, a missing Jesus, but before there’d been no heathen. Hurried conversations of which I was not a part, a car sent off to a den in Brixton. I went home. The next day I turned up on set, walkie-talkie and boots and so did he in robes and readiness for sacrifice and resurrection, chastised, head down, concentrating. I left him with the costume ladies and went to check props. The Producers in a Gator pulled up beside me. They told me to get off the land. Christianity was not happy. I returned to the commune, a stone circle almost built, a husband who knew, who called it before I did, had the guts I didn’t. We had been married for less than a year. He suggested we end it with a trip, we took acid in the recording studio, This Is Hardcore powering from the speakers, my Angel man and I who wasn’t mine anymore, who never had been, who I’d thrown over for a Christ with a wicked smile. There were endings coming, my marriage, the stone circle, a Wiccan life, the commune but Christianity wasn’t done with me yet. First, they sent a priest and a mallet.

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Not the real Jesus, obviously. The actor playing Jesus, and the effect he had was unholy. It was instant, that thing I didn’t know I’d been missing. With the Director, who still makes me laugh to this day, I found a real friend and with Jesus I found something biblical. It fizzed. It was alive. From the moment we locked eyes. I remember walking into the Director’s kitchen and thinking, S**t. These shows were no amateur productions, a cast of hundreds, an audience of thousands, the actors trail the story over a park dedicated to the spreading of the word and this Jesus had been playing the part for many years. He was well known and well loved and he was treated like the actual Jesus so the extra thrill when we’d come off set and drink wine in the Director’s kitchen and try not to touch because I was married was crack to my devilish heart. Jesus also liked actual crack, a fact the Producers, who were very Christian indeed, drew a veil over. But he would go missing sometimes and I would stand in for him at rehearsals and tech runs, a cross dragged on my shoulder, a surreal afternoon spent crucified on the hill of Golgotha. I knew this about him and I didn’t care, I too was an addict although I didn’t know it. And I never once thought of the feelings of my husband at home and I couldn’t wait to drive away from the commune which lumbered on, fractious and barefoot to the Director’s house where Jesus waited. It was the distraction I’d been looking for. While my husband made music in the studio we’d built, his tall frame bent over the mixing desk his parents had given us for our wedding, I put on a tool belt and boots and discussed the logistics of rolling a stone from the mouth of a cave and how to walk on water. I didn’t know the Producers knew who I was and what I did, where I came from, a stone circle near completion, the pagan soul of me. But they were watching, too. They were well aware of a heathen striding about their land with a walkie-talkie distracting their Jesus from his lines. When he disappeared the night before curtain up, they blamed me.

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Remember the girl we sprang from Hackney Marsh psychiatric unit where we danced to the broken strip light in the lift? We returned from Scotland to a chaos expressed by her – pyramids of used teabags all over the fields, and in the house, wedged into corners, teddy bears facing mirrors. She’d broken down. My man disappeared into Vispassana, meditating twice a day but I had no faith. And the stones went in, one by one, heaving their way toward completion through winter into spring. As the circle came together the commune fell apart, dividing into factions which fought and bitched. The metal barn complained that the house thought they were special. Those in the house said the metal barn lot were unfriendly. The tipis, yurts and benders assumed they knew best. Arguments at weekly meetings, the talking stick travelling. Was it right to keep an owl, eat wheat, let anybody in, even the ones who’d gone mad. The pixie girl who’d broken down disappeared into the woods. Fruitarians arrived, their skin and hair a matching grey. Breatharians sneaked biscuits in the middle of the night. Too many women in the kitchen. A baby was born. The Portuguese Wiccan who had once been May Queen got thinner. Across the hill was another commune of sorts, not a hippy pagan one but a Christian evangelical one; a hill of Golgotha, a cave with a stone, a cross that an actor dragged over his shoulder once a year in a Passion Play that stretched four hours, brought thousands of devotees to another religion, a life of Christ played out in the Surrey hills. The Director asked if I’d like a job, he was gathering cast and crew, he needed a stage manager. I drove my pink camper out of the commune to his converted barn, clean and bright, a different piece of England a mile down the road where people wore shoes and worried about the shopping, where there were no loincloths except on stage, and there, in his kitchen, met Jesus.

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I was on the phone to Suzy. She mentioned Joe Dispenza, who I’d never heard of. It’s my last day in NYC, I woke crazy early and after the call I pottered about for a bit, packing, then came down to the salon at 4am, as has been my habit this past week, with my bag of mushroom coffee where the night porter sorts me a pot of hot water. As the lift doors opened I heard the voice of a man talking about intention, and the importance of sending clear messages to the fabric of this universe. The night porter was listening, I asked him who it was, and he said, Oh, I don’t know, I just turned it on. A few minutes later, here I am by the fire, a pot of coffee, lap top open, and he walks over with a post it note. This is who it is. Hello Joe Dispenza. Hello listening fabric.

So, let’s figure this out from Sunday. Met David for a lovely early morning walk in Central Park. Sights (the Friends fountain!) and talking in sunny weekend weather; dogs and bikes and books and suddenly a field of pink t-shirts, breast cancer running. We looked out over lakes and green. He is the most generous spirit. Took a cab downtown to meet Adam for brunch (have you written it yet, Adam Nathan? 😬), eggs and tea and glorious deep dive into our worlds. We could have been in Paris. Parted on a street corner, I headed off to meet Matthew for lunch. Our place looked deserted, Should we worry we’re the only ones I hear? It used to be somewhere else, and better, a Japanese shoes off sit on the floor bowls of rice. But the truth is it didn’t matter. Our catch up mattered. My oldest friend. We are family.

We too, parted on a street corner, I headed off to Westbeth on a hunch sent by Margaret that it would be interesting. By chance it was open studio that day, and tours were happening around the factory turned largest artists community in the world. It houses over 700 residents in what was the HQ of Western Electric (which vacated in the 60’s to Jersey, a new building where Severance was filmed). A creative warren of industrial proportions, a vast and cavernous nest of creative feathers, everyone there lives and breathes the artistic life. I wanted to move in immediately.

Monday I walked up town to meet Peter for lunch. Last saw him in Scotland, and we updated over soup in the park. In homage to my mother, I went home via The Breuer Building

Note the cock-mobile parked bottom right next to the trash can. Jeez.

Tuesday dawned, the main event, the Empresses gathered. Kim, Alisa, Heather, Erinn, Shannon and Betsy. Me. We kept saying the whole night and into the next day, admitting out loud what we kept thinking, Look at these women! How did I get myself here?! It was a covenous spell of multiple proportions. It was power. We took a car to David’s, the night began, Debbie our gracious hostess, and she did the biscuits again and the napkins and Jason was there drawing cartoons. The room filled with us and us and us, new friends and old friends and connections weaving again and again. Kirsten and Kim took their seats beside David, he held the conversation as it flowed. I was listening too much, enjoying too hard to take photos, so this is all I got…

A celebration of Kimberly Warner in all her glory and the sea swell love for her memoir took us through fairytale and magic to the shores of witchery and belonging. Kirsten Miller injected fuel for the engine of our growth, and Kim carried us home.

It was a night of women which picked itself up again at breakfast where we gathered for frittata and coffee refills and Empress chat and each other. What a collection. Again, the thought, Kim and I laughing that we were both thinking it; how did I get here?

And then Times Square which was like a rollercoaster with your best friend in the mood you want to be in to thrill the full excitement of wind whistling glory. Me and Kim & Alisa, a cab uptown. New York in all her car horn shout. Crowds. Everywhere. Buildings soaring, glass reflecting and the billboards dancing for our eyes. The thrill of heads up and waiting. The countdown clock counting. And then suddenly, there it was.

Unfixed: A Memoir of Family, Mystery, and the Currents That Carry You Home on the big screen!!! The sea, the fathers, the book itself; holy moly. We laughed, we cried, they hugged - the starburst that is Alisa in the arms of the river of love that is Kim. It was the most glorious, enchanting moment. What an achievement. Over excitement doesn’t cover it.

Thank you, all you phenomenal friends who held me, the space, each other in this week which culminated in a billboard in Times Square. To mark all that has happened, I took myself off to Hidden Rose in the east village for a tattoo. It’s on my wrist, healing, so that I never forget the wild. There’s been an upgrade.

Eleanor

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Shall we take a breath? Because it’s hard, this memoir business, and what happened yesterday and twenty-six years ago, was painful. A man died on my wedding day and we never talked about it, Angel man and me, at least I don’t remember we did, not how I would now when something scarring like that happens. I know we were in shock but we were also young and without the tools and wherewithal to understand that taking a breath is vital. Without it, it’s impossible to know where to go next, without it one just stumbles on which is what we did, to Mull. But wait, before we go, I want to say this; that writing a memoir is like pulling out thorns one by one. I didn’t know it when I began – like starting a commune or building a stone circle or getting married in a wood, I started by accident of idea unthought out yet every morning I wake at four and I write and thorns work their way to the surface. All sorts of friends have come forward to lend a hand and pliers; yesterday the Dakini goddess wrote to say how angry she was at the time when she heard of his death and it was another thorn removed.

I had never heard her say that. But a man died leaving a wife and two children and they deserved more than an announcement in a wood, a pain unspoken, a party carried on; I didn’t know that my new husband was crushed by the grief inside, he had such a gift for holding everything lightly I mistook it for not caring. I didn’t know how to take a breath but I am taking one now. It was terrible. I have cried. Yet twenty-six years ago we headed off on honeymoon to Mull, to the house of a friend who told me yesterday he’d missed our wedding on strict instructions from another friend to get the house ready for us, sorry about that, and we spent ten days or so up there in that beautiful place, Scotland in my blood, but I don’t remember much. I remember the train journey. I remember sitting on opposite sides of the carriage. I remember not speaking.

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It’s true, I rode side-saddle, barefoot, silk butterflies tied to my toes, glass jewels about my eyes, a white slip hemmed with pearls and roses, a Victorian veil, a crown of flowers, nine maidens. Our guests divided, the women with me, the men with you to the wedding circle high on the hill. Flautists in the trees, drummers on the path, gongs hanging from branches made echo in the wind, a late-summer, warm September day in Surrey, a stone circle half built. My father and mother waiting for me in an archway, he, eccentric, loving it, she, moved and likely worried, the rest of my family dispersed amongst guests amused, probably, the latest ridiculousness, what next, this, a pagan wedding in the woods. We walked the ribbons, you and I; yellow and blue, I the sun and you the moon, your dog running, me on the arm of my father, he wore a tweed suit and wellies, a pheasant feather stuck in a deerstalker hat. My veil trailed over the woodland floor, snagging on brambles, the maidens blew bubbles, our audience of guests, propped on fallen logs, watched a choreographed ceremony of us. A Megalithic Giant and a Dakini goddess to bind us, the altar a tower of stone and twist of candles, clouded in incense and not yet broken. We read vows, swapped rings and were married. I didn’t notice that your best man wasn’t there. There was so much cheering. We descended together through the woods to the party at the farmhouse; champagne, food and speeches, you sang on stage, we partied all night but the next day there would be a phone call which you took quietly. You gathered me up, back to the wedding circle, I remember twelve of us sitting where you and I had married, you said you had something to say. Your best man’s wife had rung. At the hour you and I were married when he should have been there, he had instead dressed in his full regalia, placed his ceremonial knives about him, sent his wife out for orange juice and milk and taken his own life. He left her, his twelve-year-old son and baby daughter. He left you. And I remember thinking, You should have told me first. I knew then it was over before we’d begun. I know now what shock does.

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Yesterday a package arrived from my brother’s office, a file of things my father had kept, the notice of my birth, letters from me to him, addresses of all the places I have lived from Zimbabwe to Australia, and among it all was the newspaper article about my wedding in the woods. That’s what happens when you open cupboards, all this stuff flies out, brothers, without warning, send you packages they meant to send you years ago but forgot. That’s when you know you’re onto something. We announced the wedding at the Bonnington Café and pandemonium broke out which in hippie speak means we sat around smoking spliffs and dreaming big. A hand fasting. A three-day party. I would ride side-saddle. His band would play. The commune set to clearing a place high up in the forest that gave a small platform of flat; it was thick with bracken, it was where the biggest sequoias grew, still grow, I stood there yesterday and remembered. It’s a sea of dense green again now and the altar has crumbled, just a stone sticking up like a lighthouse if you know where to look, but twenty-six years ago four hundred people gathered there in all their finery, ribbons and an altar and a horse and you and me; you in a suit made from your granny’s curtains and me with silk butterflies tied between my toes. We planned everything, how your granny would be carried in a litter built by the carpenter, how I would ride side-saddle through the woods dressed in white. You invited everyone. Friendly chats stopped at traffic lights resulted in invitations being passed out of windows. Your best friend and guitarist from the band was to be best man. And this is why I must tell it in parts, just a little today, the build-up, the dreams, and tomorrow what happened because no matter what we planned other plans were happening too. While I learnt to ride side-saddle on my mother’s horse, rehearsing the balance, you rehearsed the songs you would sing to me and he rehearsed something else, he must have, it was so orchestrated. And the energy built and the sequoias towered and the band practised and I know why this is so hard to write, and so do you.

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On the way up 7th from the west village, a man whose jaw stuck way out said, “I like being abused.” His lower teeth prominent like tombstones on a shelf, the opposite of buck. His friend nodded. On the way back, at the same spot, a woman behind me said, “Where do you even keep a horse in New York?” And in between these golden nuggets, hundreds of thousands of people, banners held high, marched in protest of a pretender, while across the pond a Duke was beheaded of title. This is today. I have landed in New York.

I love a protest march, and if you’re wondering if they work, it’s cumulative, and a crucial exercise of right. That’s why we do it. The Suffragettes, The Civil Rights, Anti Apartheid, and Greenham to name only a handful - they all succeeded in the end, even though there is no end and this dream will keep spinning scenarios through waking hours of nightmare and beauty until the collective dream changes.

Jet lag had me waking at half past two this morning when I put on Pod Save America and fell asleep with the overwhelm real. When I woke a few hours later it felt as it often does when I stand on the tracks; this train is barreling and there’s no stopping it, which doesn’t mean, do nothing, but does mean keep perspective; easy to say in a warm and comfortable bed in a hotel in the west village, but I’m saying it anyway. There’s a million ways to frame what’s happening here, none of them include pretending the detail of what’s happening is okay, but keeping honey on my tongue keeps me afloat. And there was honey today in the comedy writ large in humanities voice. The banners, the costumes, the bands. Greenham was won on creative ways to say no, and it was just as alive and kicking in NYC today.

I got squeezed in Times Square, the crowd wasn’t moving, I slipped into a restaurant that would normally have been full and spent a while upstairs in a glass fronted room, a perfect view, and ate soup with a native New Yorker called Debbie who’d spent her career selling Pepsi.

Back in my hotel later, met Tenszing for coffee and then walked again through the village going west to the meatpacking district on a research mission for a novel. Got snagged and swayed by a street party, beer in plastic cups, hot dogs on the street, a band playing, college kids swaying and screaming and flirting; there will be sex tonight. Weaved through the throng and left them to it, found what I was looking for but realised I’ll have to shift a line. Stopped, on the way back, in a tiny, perfect, delicious Japanese restaurant and ate tiny, perfect silken tofu and peppers and Bok Choy. A woman came in who was greeted by name, her usual seat, a bottle of beer brought without her asking. She opened her novel, began reading. When I left, I had to squeeze out between our tables and said something small and she looked at me and smiled and we exchanged knowing.

Eleanor

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We used to hang out at the Bonnington Café in Vauxhall, but he didn’t propose to me there. He chose a farm trailer parked by the metal barn, straw bales against my back. He’d written a song and I didn’t see it coming. He was always singing something, devoted to his band, they wanted to make it big. My six-foot-seven Angel man; when we’d moved into the farm, I’d gone out to an architectural salvage to find a bath long enough. The piano player had painted clouds in a blue sky on the ceiling of our bathroom, the carpenter had built a plinth, a little spiral of steps, a German couple, obsessed with twelve egg omelettes, had done the plumbing and I probably went there, to that enormous, high-up bath after the proposal, I probably sought out the comfort of water because I shouldn’t have said yes. He took me by the hand and said, I want to play you something, and he was nervous, I could tell and it wasn’t like him to be afraid. He led me to the trailer, settled me against the bales of straw and took up his guitar that was already there, prepared for the moment he’d planned. I listened to the words and then I heard them and then I said yes because he was so gentle and it was so sweet and I was frightened for his heart, how I would hurt it if he didn’t put it back in his chest right now, so I said yes but I shouldn’t have. I should have said, Wait, let me think about it. He will be reading this and he will disagree, he will say it was perfect, what happened, it had to happen like that and while that’s true, it’s also true that I shouldn’t have said yes because the inside of me didn’t match the outside and I was yet to learn how important that is. So while the sun shone and I made all the moves of happy, on the inside clouds were gathering and I thought, What have I done? I knew I’d been proposed to, and I knew he was a good man and he loved me and had not a bad bone in his body. And I knew my friends were shocked because when we held a party at the Bonnington Café to announce our news one of them screamed and covered her mouth.

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I spent a month in the desert of Sedona training to be a yoga teacher. I hung out with a man and his guitar singing songs that sounded like Paris, Texas. I hitched a ride in a camper and drove down through Utah and New Mexico where the rocks are piled like coins. I met an old friend and got hit by a truck on the highway, nearly turning us over. I flew home with yoga fitness to a commune thriving with musicians and healers, my Angel man waiting, a recording studio built in a cabin in the garden, his band rehearsing. Bali happened too, somewhere in all this, a storm on a boat, almost shipwrecked, washing me up on the shores of Komodo. I knelt at a tree and gave thanks and ate rice and stood on a table watching dragons. I was searching, and at home I searched too. Healers laid me on grass, ran their hands through the air and told me I was this or that; it was past life trauma, a trapped soul, a possession, a hex, an entity, darkness – an opinion on each other’s pain was easy. We tore down a barn to release a trapped soul murdered there. We circled the house in crystals and stayed up all night with a crying ghost baby in a bedroom. We cleansed and wafted and chanted and lit, we rebirthed and trailed sage and clouds of glory. We prayed and meditated and channelled and explained. Everyone was on the candida diet. Angel man and I did Vipassana, ten days’ silent retreat in Wales and returned light as air but the meditation had frightened me, the sitting had felt like free falling and I’d written a poem on my pillow with a contraband pencil found under the mat of my room. Gong baths, didge healing, Bowen therapy, I did everything yet still the feeling persisted, what happened, a search for an answer that would answer the sense of disquiet. I had been sad all my life. I had retreated and felt alone. And the stones went up one by one and the year swung round and the disquiet persisted, a trouble in my bones, but it would be put aside temporarily, this search, because coming down the tracks was a wedding.

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