Wise Words Project

Introduction to the Wise Word Virtual Blog. 

Sometimes when you respond to a suggestion, make a commitment, and begin without first really understanding what is likely to happen, the result is surprising.  I did just that, commit myself, writing and camera, to a project run by the two Canterbury based Universities named Wise Words.  The objective was to involve older and younger people in the same group (for my part) and encourage them to share their own words of wisdom.

The wisdom was to come from the young to the old and from the old to the young in equal measure including, for our group, taking pictures to relate to what we wanted to say.  To say that the result was surprising was the least of responses.  In effect what happened on my part was that I enjoyed the writing, the company of the group and the revelations emerging not just from the other participants, but from my own virtual pen.  The two facilitators added their portion to the exercise which culminated in having a part in the Wise Words Anthology, along with other groups, trainee teachers, and a sound engineering student, and an exhibition of the works and ideas as part of the 2012 Canterbury Festival.

Who would have thought that by responding to an e-mail that I would have embarked on yet another creative journey?   Yet here it is: an idea to develop work from the Wise Words project with a view to carrying on a similar project based on the idea, and to put it into action on the Isle of Sheppey.

And as for the title?

Briefly, what happened was that in response to a question posed:  write to your sixteen year old self as a person of eighty - what advice or directions would you give them.

I chose to create a hard copy blog - a non-virtual blog - which looked like a blog page, was written in similar fashion, including the inevitable photo, which seemed to work.   In these pages I will replicate these pages in electronic form with the originals ready for view, and extend the project further.

Clever, eh?

I hope you will enjoy them.

About the Shed

The Garret - a false and idealistic retreat.

In my father and his sheds I attempt to explain how I feel about living as I am now, as an older man.  The attraction of the angst ridden artist is encapsulated in the minds of the 19C and early 20C novelists whose depiction of the TB afflicted artist reveals a sympathy with the tragic, heroic failure in order to create a romantic notion of the suffering artist whose every brush stroke is dragged out of him, or whose every word is an agony of creative effort in order to emulate writers of the latter era, Virginia Woolf for example whose avant garde status was the envy of young writers, and highlighted the vibrant energy of the first half of the 20C.

Community Radio - communication to the people. 

I do not contribute to that idea but love the thought of being considered a little eccentric.  Maybe I am, maybe I am a very ordinary person, but I know that what I like is the freedom to be myself, and also the knowledge that if in partnership with somebody else having that freedom to be in isolation to work whenever I want, but aware that, like a commitment to whatever I enjoy doing, I would be committed to such a relationship.  In this I am also like my father.

However, there is no way that I would want to be in a garret situation and starve for the sake of art that may not be recognised.  I would rather pursue any such enterprise as a hobby or interest, and allow it to develop as it may in order to live and be part of the community.   The fun is being accepted by the community in one way or another and getting involved.  Shutting myself away is not the answer.   In other words, failing in public is much better than failing in isolation - at least you know you are a failure, but the chances are you may turn out to be a success.

In other words, be an ordinary person.

I think I am too old to retreat to a garret.  

My Father and sheds

Retreat. 

It was always understood that my father liked sheds.  Whatever house we lived in, rented or  owned, I remember that not long after we moved in, a shed would appear.  Whether the construction was used as a workshop, a cover for the motorcycle and sidecar favoured by my father, or for the car, there was always provision for garden tools, a lean-to for logs and another for storing his collected junk. 

My father lived in the woods for a time in a hut he built for himself.  The reason for his retreat was that his father took an irrational dislike to him driving my father from the family home.  The cause was a brain tumour which went undiagnosed until it was far too late to save him.  In the meantime here was a paradise for a young man whose lifestyle could embrace a certain freedom.  It was assumed that it was then he learned to like sheds and, as you do in your formative years, he became set in his habits.  From then on my father built sheds. 

My father outside his shed 

The shed was my father’s retreat.  It was there he worked on whatever project he thought may be important, producing for us a well built pedal car, gates, cumbersome furniture, and of course it was the place where his motorcycle and sidecar was maintained.  Later, when we were more affluent the family car was rested up for the winter and the necessary de-coke and valve grind was completed.  He did not watch television, nor was he capable of sitting long enough to listen to the radio without fidgeting.  My father was what many would call ‘rough and ready’ but that description would do him an injustice; he was a sensitive man, quietly romantic, a man who loved my mother and loved us, and loved cats, that was, on his side of the family a common trait.  I suppose that, like the cat who walked alone, there were times when he needed to sit quietly by himself.  A romantic notion on my part to imagine my father alone. 

My father and I are alike.  We both like cats.  We both emigrated and returned to the home country.  He chose Canada, and I went to New Zealand and lived and worked there and in Australia.   The romance began with an unexpected life change which forced me out of regular earnings and I was caught in a downward spiral that meant low income, rented rooms shared with my cat.  I began to write and mused often on the idea that here I was in a virtual retreat, living in a series of latter day garrets, the one room isolating me from society where I could suffer for my art like any youthful artist of an earlier time.  The picture is one of the struggling artist giving up his last scraps to feed his devoted cat, living in hope that one day he will be recognised, but until then the modern garret room will do. 

Isolation, like the retreat of the hermit, concentrates the mind, if not as sharply as one who faces a violent death, as a soldier, or perhaps the knowledge of some terminal illness, but will help in the creation of the finished work.  Our pale faced, consumptive garret tenants may fashionably deplore the hardships of living for their art; for we must accept writing as an art, which draws towards itself the rational and the tortured alike, yet as a means of producing good quality work is a useful writer's tool.  

I should remember instead the reason for my father’s isolation, and that when his father died how he was welcomed back to the family to take his place as the ‘man of the household’ loved by his six sisters and his mother.  Some of the sisters were working, others at school, and those who were at home, like him helped my grandmother with the smallholding.  He was no gardener, I discovered that; to him a garden was where you grew food, or built a shed. He liked trees.  In the last house we had as a family, our back yard was steadily filled with Christmas trees, and once he had made room for the shed, we had to make it obvious where the vegetable garden was.  I suppose he got the practical deployment of space from my grandmother who managed the house at Kits Coty estate focussing on crops that paid, and sold egs, chickens and plants.  My father learned his trade as a bricklayer, built the chicken houses, cucumber frames, repaired and erected the fences, did much of the digging and left the rest to the women and girls.  He learned to love cats from his mother.  

My mother wasn’t a cat person.  She made friends easily, loved the church and loved us.  She also loved my father who returned her love with devoted attention yet was bemused by the constant need to be part of the social life of our extended family.  He liked to retreat from it by working on some project, mainly physical work where, like the gardener who digs the soil for planting, he could be alone with his thoughts.  I like to do that.  Digging is a way of retreating from the world to a place where the mind can run its course.  The slow process of the activity is conducive to taking care to sort out the ideas that clutter the corners, and like the felon condemned on the scaffold concentrates the mind.   

The hut he once lived in has all the elements of my ideal place: isolated, close to the land with a verandah roof, and suggests going back to basics such as growing my own food, bartering for meat and the means to heat the place.  That romantic notion ignores the reality of how hard it is to live off the land; taking little account the hard graft of cutting wood, digging inhospitable soil, the fragility of the chosen crops, ablutions and of course access to medicine and health services.   

The alternative is the shed in the back garden serviced from the house with power, isolated from the telephone and other distractions in which to work.  Some can manage that.  I like the burbling radio, music, the luxury of untidiness, erratic mealtimes, suddenly succumbing to a need to sit and gaze, or to play with the cat, a must for the hermit writer.  Not for me the Paris room and angst ridden suffering; no, I want more than that.   Ideally I would want a place based on the good old New Zealand  ‘Bach’, the holiday home that in its conception served also as a place for men to live when working in remote areas.  Today, the Bach is a beach holiday home, as it was intended to be; a place where a family could stay near the beach in the summer and live in a little more comfort than camping.  

An old friend had a family Bach at Torbay on the North Shore where she lived for many years.  She took me in for a time when I needed a place to live.  Typically it had a porch-way for gumboots and coats, a small WC one side of the entrance and a shower on the other.  A door way opened out into a space where there was a kitchen, and a living room with French windows opening out onto a patio garden, a washing area and beyond that two small bedrooms.  Single story, as were many NZ houses, it was timber framed, clad with fibrolite under a sheet iron roof on a flat section.   

I like the idea of a place close to the sea.  Barry Crump, a man I admired for his ability to hit the spot with the ‘Kiwi Bloke’ , the author of  the popular book of short stories entitled Bastards I Have Met, lived in a bach at Piha north of Auckland.   I liked his place, and I guess if my father had seen it, he would have liked it too.   But the real experience was being invited to visit Frank Sargeson’s Bach in Takapuna by Riemke  Ensing, author of Dear Mr Sargeson..., and seeing how Sargeson had adapted the place to suit his writing methods and lifestyle.  I am sure my father would not have agreed or approved of Sargeson’s sexuality, but he would have felt vindicated by the man’s rough carpentry and practical furnishings.  I liked the study, the place where he wrote, with its view over what was once a sea shore.  Sargeson’s bach was far enough from the shore to require a walk to the water’s edge offering a different exercise when no more digging can be done. Riemke’s little book of poems did not prove popular but the chance to read where Sargeson had worked made up for the disappointment.   

I remember my father retreating to his shed emerging sometimes with useful things, and at others with monstrous objects intended to make my mother’s life easier that were fit only for firewood.  I can identify with my mother’s chagrin, and my father’s misguided good intentions, and thankfully for those around me, I have learned not to emulate him.  I suppose in a way this is my father’s legacy, his filal wisdom, the ability on my part to learn from mine and other’s mistakes.  

The lesson I have learned is to take time out from the world under my own terms if I can, or to adapt to the circumstances the way my father did when he was forced to retreat from his father’s wrath.  He found his place, built it to suit his needs and waited until once again he was accepted, learning the wisdom of patience.  I learned that wisdom too but had to suffer physical pain, a change of lifestyle and career to do so.   I think my father’s hut in the woods and my metaphorical bach have parallels in the effect it had on both our lives. 

My model, and ideal retreat has the loftiness of the garret, the isolation of the hermit’s cell yet is close enough to the sea to command a view of passing ships and to allow beach combing.   It is essential to gain a reputation for eccentricity, adding curiosity to isolation.  I would add, electricity, the telephone, the internet, preferably with fibre optic cable, an indulgence to enable me to keep up with current affairs, the way my father did in his hut, living close to the family and keeping in touch.  Television, in this ideal retreat, is not an option being too much of a visual distraction, especially when a garden, books, wildlife and the sea are the main attractions.  A boat would be fine; just to potter around in; to fish perhaps.  

It is not isolation from the world that I seek, but as my father before me, a place to go to be myself without imposing my eccentric ways on others.   My father worked on his vehicles and some of his creations in his shed.  I am sure that living in this flat on the Isle of Sheppey you could say I live in my retreat, happy to be with my cat, meet up with people outside knowing I can return there, safe and comfortable.  I like to be part of the world, but I still want that sense of isolation.  

In my ideal retreat, one room would need to be a well lit studio in which to paint, and my bedroom would be a writing room.  And naturally, the place will have to be cat friendly.  The disease I prefer to be wasting away from is anno domini – I think I could handle that.  

Wise Word Project

Introduction to the Virtual Wise Word Blog:

Sometimes when you respond to an e-mail message inviting you to take part in a project the results can be surprising.  I responded to a call to take part in a Wise Words project, a writing and photography course run by lecturers from the two Canterbury Universities, and part of the Canterbury Laureate scheme of the Canterbury Festival.


I did not know what to expect other than the idea that there would be a mixture of young and older in the group who would be encouraged to share their words of wisdom, both in the written word and with the camera.  Keeping an open mind, I embraced the concept, listened to the facilitators, used my camera as I do, and started to write in response to the directions suggested.

Wise Words Launch Night

Although the course was structured, there was a great flexibility as we were urged to be creative, to think of ways to represent our work in non-conventional forms.  The result is seen in the Wise Words anthology along with the work of the other participating groups, including the Canterbury Poet Laureate, Sarah Salway, and the facilitators.  The result was to produce some excellent and varied work that I am proud to be involved with. I was also proud to have my picture of a dandelion seed head chosen as the cover photo for the Anthology.  Most inspiring!

But this blog is not about the Wise Words project; it is about what happened to me during the writing, and what I would like to do with the concept.

The question was asked: What advice would you give at age eighty to yourself at sixteen?

My reaction was to consider that today I communicate mostly by e-mail, blogs, web-sites, or the telephone, so a letter was out of the question, yet when I was sixteen a letter or a card would be normal.   I decided to carry on a conversation with my younger self using the blog and the comments box that goes with it.

The blog is in hard copy with a simple blog page layout, hence the title Wise Word Virtual Blog,  this blog being the real event in today's technology, and the hard copy on paper being the representation of the technology the late 1950's.

These pages will duplicate that exercise, to a point that is, with the idea of developing the Wise Words idea in the Isle of Sheppey community.   The intent is to bring age groups together, and other groups on the island to share experiences, and to eventually produce a piece of work that will reflect the thoughts of Sheppey residents.

The Non_virtual Blog

Facsimile of the Home page

This was my response to the scenario:  "As an Eighty year old person, what advice would you give to your sixteen year old self?"

It seemed appropriate  to use a method so readily available today for this virtual conversation.  I indulged in a little pompousness, a thing I despised when I was sixteen, and discovered that those things I had an inkling of when I was that age have developed into a philosophy that I can follow.

I will post all of the blog sheets in different forms and link them to this page.   In these forms I will have the pictures used, plus others as part of the idea, and of course the complete text. Wiseblog