Briefest view from the top and a false start.

Only a brief moment of respite, having climbed the mountain, planted my flag, exalted in my primacy and taken in the view, before heading down to join the unfamiliar fray of literary agents, publishers, writers, bloggers  and sundry camp followers.

A reality check: up one mountain and lo and behold another one to climb! 
Next week.
Fast forward-fast rewind;  I though I'd already reached the summit in January; not exactly popping the champagne corks but printing off multiple copies of the manuscript to hand out to friends (my beta readers), now only useful as single sided scrap paper―a huge stack cluttering up the side of my desk― after a writer friend of mine in Melbourne, whose opinion I value, sounded the alarm and suggested the ms needed more work.

My heart missed a few beats when I opened her email, eager to know  but dreading what she thought...

Dear Nino,

Let me start by saying how much I enjoyed reading the manuscript. Your writing voice is immediately accessible and inviting and I just wanted to keep reading – I can tell you, this is no mean feat, I read heaps of scripts where it’s a torture just to keep going! With this, I never stopped wanting to read on. 

Phew! Over that hurdle. Fluttering at this point but then came the spoiler (2 pages long).

I am not going to go through everything I loved/liked – I really did enjoy it all – I think it is in fact more important to talk about where I think there needs to be further thought because I do feel that there is still quite a way to go if it is going to be picked up by a publisher...

Finishing on:

The next step, I think, is to really work out what it is that you, the writer, want to say. Your take on it. The thing that you must say, want to say, need to say. That has to inform your next draft – cos, yes, you have to do another draft – and then quite likely, another one after that! 

Oh no! On the job again, a full time occupation for the last two years and I blame J my editor for the premature celebration, declaring the memoir was "a page turner" an "airport book"! If only! But I think he was punning on the title Flight of Faith and anyway, catching a plane, would you buy a book with that title? 

I am fortunate to have J, a Yorkshireman, as my editor for these reasons:
(a) He lives in Italy and is bilingual, which means he can correct my deteriorating Italian (I moved to Australia 10 years ago) and he is happy to undertake fact checking missions for me to Cortona.
(b) He is a friend who features in my story, we shared a tower in Cortona once, and he can refresh my memory and fill in the gaps, even unwittingly provide some of the dialogue, as did other friends when I questioned them via email or on skype. 

By the end of July with three complete rewrites under my belt, I was in danger of becoming deranged. (Think The Shining: "All Work and No Play makes Jack a dull boy"). The great art in painting is knowing when to stop, which I suspect is not the case with writing; there are infinite ways of saying the same thing, endlessly pecking at words, honing, polishing, diffusing chapters, then trashing huge chunks in a single, emotionally charged key stroke. Why is it that the passages you desperately try to hang on to are the ones destined to go in the end?  

This didn't make the final draft, one of my favourite anecdotes:

I had a terrible night, crashing at Marc’s apartment, puking out of the third floor bedroom window with the room whirling around me, and later stumbling to the kitchen― I couldn’t find the bathroom in the dark― shovelling penne out the window by the hand full with the sink filling up so fast.

Very early the next morning I am woken by a persistent sound of scrubbing and―bleary eyed peering out―I can see the old lady on the ground floor washing down a stone bench directly beneath.  She spots me and angrily waves her scrubbing brush up in the air at me, shouting, “Was this you?  You animal! What a disgrace!”  And pointing to the bench I had spewed over from a great height, “this is my husband’s favourite seat!”

I mumble an apology and duck back inside, trying to recall the confused events of the night.  I feel mortified and quickly dress, scribble a brief note to Marc that explains nothing except I have gone home and steal out of the apartment.  Exiting the palazzo I notice bits of pasta lodged on top of a car parked in the piazza in front of the building.

Marc calls me later in the afternoon sounding irritated. “Hey, buddy, what the hell was going on last night?  What’s the story with the old lady downstairs?  I thought she was going to attack me in the hall, and it was only her husband being stretchered out of their apartment at the same time that saved me.  Apparently he had a heart attack!”

She must have mistaken Marc for me and I have a terrible sinking feeling: was it my fault?  What if the old man was sitting there on his favourite seat and had a heart attack when I started raining down on him? 

I love the element of tragic-comedy and also the fact that it portrays me in an unfavourable light, resisting the temptation to gloss over, show and tell. (Fortunately the man's heart attack had nothing to do with my nocturnal exploits). 

One advantage of being an artist is that nobody is proscribing how much paint you use or the size of the canvas; the equivalent of the ubiquitous word count for writers.  Another would be having everything spread out in front of you, unlike writing and having to endlessly check back and find the page your train of thought is buried on.  

What I have learnt thus far: I need to get out of my studio into the garden more, heavy with the scent of Angels' trumpets at the moment, and enjoy the new view after a huge fig tree in front of the house was blown away in a storm, literally upended and somersaulted down the hill, like losing an old friend. 

And a new resolution: hopefully now that I am no longer chained to a computer and can start painting again, I will also quite smoking.

The long road to completion-an introduction.

I am an artist with no pension plan, trying not to look too far into the future because i can't afford to and anyway it would be scary. Ignorant bliss doesn't mean i'm stupid, though, but becomes a saving grace, a zen moment, stepping off into the abyss eyes skyward (like the wanderer/fool in my favourite Tarot card), which is how i started life as an artist in the first place, with a head full of dreams and absolutely no idea where i was going.

I am lazy at heart and no doubt, 35 years later, if i had known then what i know now, i might never have left home.  No, not really- I'm only kidding- but it's just as well i have a short memory because it has taken me 9 years to write my memoir Flight of Faith. It never really occurred to me how much work was involved, but stepping blithely into it and further down the road, there suddenly comes a point when you realise you are in so deep that retreat is no longer an option and advance offers the only way out.

It's excruciating bridging the gap between what I will to happen and what actually is; what I'm capable of and what i want to be capable of, what i see compared to the words i write.

Here is an embarrassing example from 9 years ago, lifted verbatim from the very first draft of Flight of Faith (It refers to London in the seventies and the flat i lived in):

'Life was just a gas-even if you had a 9-5 job. I remember a party in Queensgate terrace- and the  neighbour underneath had complained about the noise and the fact that his ceiling was vibrating violently-everyone was sniffing poppers and were jumping up and down to the music. G was on acid. The police came. G flung open the door,he wears a beard and was dressed in a lime green tutu. The policeman, unphased, asked him to turn the sound down and politely refused the invitation to join the party!'

And this is how it has turned out:

'Officially I’m not supposed to be living in Queensgate; nor is Tish, who sublets from a French friend, Alain, after he split up with his boyfriend and moved back to Paris.  A shame really.  No more heaving dance parties in the flat, dropping acid and snapping poppers, having group heart attacks, no more bearded ladies in lurid wigs and tutus opening the door to police officers and inviting them in, with the neighbours complaining downstairs.'

What I have learnt thus far in the creative scheme of things is (a) durability and (b)the crucial role confidence plays; not con-fidence or the manufactured kind but that supreme moment when you have learnt to ride the bike and can point it down hill, sit up in the saddle and let fly with no hands.

The long road.

Flight of Faith. 1984. Oil on canvas.

 
First the painting now the book! Flight of Faith. A memoir of life as an artist in Tuscany.

Living the dream and surviving the reality. The 20 years i lived in Tuscany before moving to Australia in 2000, form the basis of this memoir...

...Ian drops by the studio now and then, cradling his newborn baby girl, Paula.  I sketch her fussing in his arms and when she finally allows him to put her down, he poses as the central figure in the large painting I am working on, giving expression to my current upheaval.  Ambiguity is one of my hallmarks, the Pisces in me, and I have found a good title for the painting: Flight of Faith.  Is faith being routed or taking wing?  Am I running away, fleeing, or am I about to soar?  Ian charges towards us down a long alley of cypress trees, caught in the headlights of a car at dusk like a startled rabbit―caught outside his rabbit hole?  Has the spell finally been broken?  His arms are outstretched as if he is preparing for take off.  The lower half of his body is dematerialising, becoming transparent, hinting that he might soon be invisible.  Cortona is perched above the remnants of the sun on the left hand side of the painting and 'the valley' is buried in the opposite corner with the ploughed fields in the foreground appearing like a swelling sea, giving rise to further interpretations: Moses parting the waves and leading us to the promised land, or is he leading me out of the promised land?