French designer Pierre Cardin dies aged 98

French designer Pierre Cardin dies aged 98

Pierre Cardin, who upended fashion styles in 1960s and 70s with futuristic looks, died in hospital near Paris just before the New Year. Pictured here is my French friend Patrick outside Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris where I first exhibited three art works (pictured) in a large group show. Patrick was instrumental in introducing me to the organiser of the show.

 

The story behind all that is more interesting than the paintings were. The tale includes a Rothschild and the Pretender to the French throne in the mix. Heady times and a lesson that I like to share with budding artists and filmmakers today: it's not just about seeing every painting ever painted or film made. It's about living your life so that you have something to make into art, a film, or write about. I am presently waiting for some publisher or series editor brave enough to want to get behind the publication of these stories. They are gems, every one of them! They need to be collected and told again in print.

“You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories. -Garrison Keillor

"Our life stories are played out in an entrenched heterosexual culture & society, producing not only our angst, insecurities and complexes, but also the variety and richness of our alternative lives and lifestyles".

 

I am getting old enough now that I finally realise that certain times/moments in my life were pinnacles, not predictors of things to come. I recall the dizzying heights of firsts: the initial film that spoke to me personally, the foundational book that changed my thinking, that earliest piece of music that clutched my heart and made me cry. I thought that such moments would continue through life ad infinitum.

 

Over several decades, I have written nearly 100 articles and book Chapters for academic publications. These outpourings were full of information, citations and a certain amount of passion as well. I wanted more that that, however. One result of the current academic climate is that I am less interested in writing that does not communicate directly with an audience and include my “self” in that narrative. Somewhat reluctantly at first, therefore, I began to explore auto-ethnography and autofiction and their potential for more personal communication with an audience. I looked for platforms that I might use in order to reach that audience, including fiction, scriptwriting, poetry and storytelling.

 

It was by writing for my blog, KIPWORLD, that I began to experiment with this new kind of writing—personal, concise in word count, often open-ended and leaving room for the reader to engage. I used this writing space to visit memories of my past as exploration of social issues, often gay life, coming out, fitting in, and standing out. These are the unconventional treasures that I hope to share in this book.

A Novella, a Memoire, an Autofiction, Chances Are, is conceived as a compilation of my personal stories from KIPWORLD and elsewhere organised into more or less a ‘life story’ format (chronologically for the first time anywhere).

Tag: Chances Are A gullible youth on a roller coaster ride of loss of innocence and coming out in the flux and instability of 1960s hippy America and the life that followed.

Beginning in the 1960s, Chances Are's themes include being different, the celebration of being an outsider, seeing oneself from outside of the “norm”, and the interior conflicts of “coming out” within a continuum as a (gay) male in a straight world. These observations are set within the flux and instability of a period of great social change, but which are often viewed in retrospect as consistent and definable. Being straight or being gay can also be viewed in a similar way within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture. Through the device of the fleeting moment, the stories interrogate the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity. The stories, scripted scenes, poetry and short interjections congeal to take the reader along with the author from the complexities, concerns and confusions of his life in the 1960s onward through the following decades, seeking resolution, or at least less confusion!

This is not previously "unpublished" material in the sense of academic papers with scientific breakthroughs seeking justification by peers through journal or book publication. Heavens no! The compilation of stories in Chances Are resemble in a way how Charles Dickens wrote (and rewrote) his stories.  His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction. He thus first produced sections of his novels for publication in weekly papers for a general audience.  He then frequently lectured and performed the stories extensively to enraptured audiences throughout the county.  After this, his novels were finally taken up by his publishers and printed as books. Any publisher with an understanding of writing as this kind of creative process will grasp this very similar journey for the development of the narrative material for Chances Are.

"A Summer Holiday, Three Books and a Story. "More than 46K have read this story on KIPWORLD. http://kipworldblog.blogspot.com/.../summer-holiday-three... …

I hope that by sharing these stories with a wider audience in book format, readers are encouraged to look at their lives in their own particular way and produce creative outputs from them.

There is a magical quality in listening to a story.  We listen because we want to know how a life can be different from our own, or how it can be exactly the same.  Stories compel us to compare.

If anyone is aware of a publisher or editor who might be interested, please have them contact me: kipworld@gmail.com Any help is gratefully appreciated!