Rose Garden

In New Age thinking we are either in struggle or flow.  It’s easy to tell when we are in each of these states, but quite how the shift occurs from one to the other is a much more difficult matter.

 

Yesterday I had an unexpected free day and decided to take some time in the morning to decide what I really wanted to do with the day.  First, I spent a little time on housework (which seems to become increasingly satisfying as I grow older), then I wrote a complaint letter that I really wanted to write!  But what was absolutely at the top of my list of priorities was to go to a rose garden. All week, when travelling around London I’ve been noticing roses… erupting over garden walls and hedges, climbing up walls and clinging to trees. I’ve been too busy to stop and stare and inhale the perfume. A full diary of work, night and social life and a sense of time and season rushing by, like the view from a fast train.

 

The best rose garden in London has to be in Hyde Park.  Here I spent an increasingly blissful two hours wandering in circles and figures of eight round every path, walking through each trellised walkway, stopping at each rose that caught my attention. There are a mass of varieties here, nearly all scented. There are roses with a lovely, light uplifting scent, roses which smell of rose hand cream or soap, roses with a very deep fragrance that evoke some audible expression of delight.  The most intoxicating scent was a variety called Jayne Austin.  A single rose can be the most perfect, instant aromatherapy. 

 

This is no formal rose garden with varieties displayed in ordered beds, clearly labelled. This is a real , English garden where the roses are planted among other summer flowers. In one area there are a mass of tall, oriental poppies, many of a deep purple shade.  Then there are intense blue delphiniums, tall spikes of a pale pink flower I have never seen before and cannot name…. plus much more. As I walk through the garden every shade of every colour seems to present itself.  There’s profusion, disorder, abundance… like a summer ball or party when inhibitions are dropping. I think of ball gowns slipping from shoulders, lipstick smeared….  everyone is in the moment…. seizing the day.   A temporary escape from daily preoccupations and cares.

 

Almost instantly, I find myself transported back to flow.  The ‘power of now’ which is easy to know but so much harder to practise.  A newly hatched bullfinch comes close to my feet, chirping and eyeing me expectantly before flying away with sudden swerves in direction (rather as people describe the motion of UFO’s).  There are bees everywhere; some seem almost delirious with nectar.  I become fascinated by the other people and how they are interacting with the flowers.  Many have cameras, photographing flowers or friends.  All stop frequently, some making expansive gestures, arms waving and pointing in the direction of whatever has unexpectedly tethered them to the moment.  A few, like me, stop, lower their faces to some chosen bloom and inhale deeply.  A man sits engrossed in his paper. A resentful child is hunched on the fountain base, waiting without hope for his mother to restore her attention to him.  We are many races, many colours. City people and tourists. All celebrating summer. The sun has come out and it’s unexpectedly hot.

Is this how we find flow? To cut the ties that bind us… to take a moment to connect with nature…. and to find that we have escaped responsibilities, cares and linear time.  Plans seem absurdly unimportant.  All thoughts of work melted away.  Can it really be as easy as this?

Raven Girl

I wondered if I would like this new ballet based on a story by Audrey Niffenegger choreographed by Wayne McGregor as it can be difficult to like work by people whose inspirations are too similar to my own.  The opening sequence was very slow and the sight of Edward Watson riding round the stage on a bicycle did nothing to engage my interest (even though he is one of my favourite dancers). I did love the haunting music by Gabriel Yared. I can see why they wanted to take the audience on a journey from the mundane and routine to the increasingly strange, but some of the audience had no need of this and others were too resistant to ever enter these dark places.

This intriguing and unexplained tale of a raven girl who longs for wings became increasingly compelling. The choreography was beautiful and did evoke the secret life of birds. Special effects, film and costume all added to the immersion in the strange, dark world.  Love and longing, loss and failure were both familiar and unfamiliar. At the end I wanted to see  it again.

The Red Shoes

As a writer it’s important to feed your imagination. Things that do this for me are dance, art,  film, poetry and folk or fairy tales.  Anything that offers a combination of two or more of these is especially potent.  Last night I watched The Red Shoes, the film by Powell and Pressburger, made in 1948, that retells the Hans Christian Anderson story of a girl whose passion for a pair of red shoes leads to her destruction. 

The film is set in a ballet company ruled over by the autocratic Lermontov,  who forbids his dancers to have any personal life.  He is shown as a diabolic character, often living in the dark and only switching on lights when he hears a knock on the door.  The heroine, played by Moira Shearer, is a confident, aspiring dancer whose rich aunt contrives to introduce her to the famous director.  At their first meeting he asks her why she wants to dance and she counters with “Why do you want to live?” He demands total commitment and promises to make her a great artist.  The ballet within the film both fulfils the belief that only art matters and undermines it, as the heroine whirls through increasingly surreal and magical worlds to her death.  But art and life cannot be kept completely separate and ultimately, the heroine’s inability to choose between the two leads to her suicide.  While on one level the film’s message may be that human love and relationship is a necessity, it leaves us craving more of the magic and passion that Lermontov created.

It’s hard to think of any modern equivalent.  The film was a daring and ambitious collaboration with artists from many different fields and the credits include Robert Helpmann as choreographer of the ballet sequence, Leonid Massine, who danced with the Ballets Russe,  with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the orchestra for the ballet.