Rufus Stone: 3.

-->

‘Tall, dark and handsome’ was always the first response to Rufus Stone. Six feet, two inches tall, his thick, dark brown curly forelocks cascaded on his brow. It was the intensity of his electric blue eyes, however, on which most strangers commented enviously.

Upon arrival in London at 18, his youth and good looks could have been his meal ticket. Nonetheless, Rufus concentrated on his love of photography and eventually got a post as assistant to a Notting Hill photographer. He consequently went on to take his own pictures of some of the most famous celebrities of the Sixties and, from those connections, later moved into advertising then television production—first as a cameraman, then an editor and later a director of some important documentaries made at the BBC.

Rufus never had problems attracting men, or women for that matter. His looks, talent and career were the calling cards that engrossed his admirers. He is one of the lucky ones, because as he aged he held on to his good looks too. In fact, some compare him now to older stars such as Terrence Stamp or even Sean Connery. His hair is now silver grey, but he hates the nickname, ‘Silver Fox’, with a passion. He still possesses those chiselled cheekbones, a slim build and his famous blue eyes. At 70, Rufus continues to turn heads, both male and female.

His country upbringing produced by necessity a quiet boy who turned into a quiet-spoken man. In the hustle and bustle of London, this actually became another asset. A man of few words suggests that he means what he says and this is a welcomed relief from the insincerity familiar amongst some Londoners, particularly in the midst of the glitterati of television and film. Rufus’ most famous remark in response to the luvvies in the film crowd, when asked if he enjoyed meeting celebrities at the Groucho Club, was his admitting, ‘Never been’.

∞

Whenever I prepare the motor for a long trip, it reminds me of those Saturday journeys to the market as a child when we neatly packed my father’s automobile with wooden boxes of vegetables. There were so many boxes that there was hardly room in the back seat of my parent’s saloon for me and my sister Ellie.

Today I am stuffing the back seat of my Mini with my cameras and boxes of photographs and a few bits and bobs that wouldn’t matter to naught but me for the long trip back to Chadsford Village in Somerset. I am returning to my birthplace after 50 years of London life and its adventures. The removal van went down to Somerset a day ahead of me with my furniture and the rest of my belongings.

London is now just a routine to me, nothing to get excited about these days. After years of fighting the Tube, the crime and grime, the congestion charge and getting around London, I am ready to leave it behind. The rushing, pushing and shoving—‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’—that hollow apology ringing out from every pub, street and shop, I’ve had enough. I think I am now ready to finally return to a quiet life in the countryside.

When my parents sold their Somerset farm, quite a few years back now, they bought a small cottage in the nearby village of Chadsford to live out their retirement. My father passed not long after. My mother recently died, but not before she had one last go at me over the telephone about what a disappointment I had been to her and my father and how their life in the village was made a misery after that ‘fuss’ around the ‘filthy’ business that I stirred up just before I left for good. She said that she never would forgive me for that. I suppose I was still 18 years old in her mind, even though I was by then approaching 70. Perhaps if she had forgiven me all those years ago, she would have died more peacefully and I might not be making this journey now. Time will tell.

The money that remained from the sale of the farm went to my sister who emigrated to Australia. She married out there and has three children. My parents' small worker’s cottage was deeded to me along with my grandfather’s tall case clock that I am particularly fond of. Their generosity took me by surprise, actually. I don’t think it had anything to do with their forgiveness though, more to do with family duty and doing what was expected of them, doing the “right thing”.

Fed up with London, I decided to finally retire to Somerset and that cottage. Most of my friends say that I am mad and will regret it. Still, they promise to come down for long weekends if I will entertain them properly. Most are involved in television production or the theatre. They would create quite a picture invading conservative Chadsford! At least I think they would, since I haven’t lived in the village of Chadsford for half a century.

As I prepare to head out of Islington and make my way towards the A-4, I wonder if I can go back. Can we ever go back and expect things to turn out differently? Of course, I am not the same person today. I have a lifetime of experiences, working as a photographer and making films for television, and the relationships that I have had certainly changed me. I am no longer that young lad who was driven out by the villagers because of their ignorance and my fears all those years back, that’s for certain.

∞

Rufus turns on the SatNav in his red classic Mini, happy to rely on a posh but strict recorded woman’s voice telling him which way to go. He has named her “Sadie”, after his deceased mother. Such nomenclature is a London kind of cheekiness that would have provided Freud with a field day in this case. For Rufus, the decision to leave is finally no longer in his hands, but has been taken over by a programmed voice. “Sadie” knows what’s best for him and what he should do and what his next move should be.

As he turns off early morning Upper Street, it’s cafés’ workers cleaning up the pavement real estate occupied by drunken revellers the night before, he turns on the radio. The Adagio of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G is playing. Rufus makes a mental note to himself that this piece of music would provide a perfect soundtrack for some film of the more rural segments of his journey. His mind is never far from the editing room. Rufus sinks into the Mini’s leather upholstery and deeper into his memories. His driving becomes routine.

Who is it that keenly waits for a conclusion to our story of Rufus Stone? Is it us, impatient for a happy ending? Is it young innocent Rufus who wants to finally go back and change the ending of this story of his first love? Does he believe that by making this return in time and place that he can reignite the love, passion and intimacy of his youth? Or is it wiser and older Rufus who has realised that what matters most to him is to come to terms with the past at the end of his days? Can he even, perhaps, find forgiveness in this tiny pastoral corner of the earth? Can we ever go back “home”? Or is it our memories, with all of their twists, turns and imaginations that propel us into an abyss created by our (re)constructed pasts?

Rufus reconsiders the countryside of his youth as he drives.

It is a memory of a five-year old boy sitting on his grandfather’s lap. Granddad’s hand, rough and worn from working the land, his thumbnail somehow permanently split, reaches into the pocket of his tattered woollen trousers and magically produces a cellophane-wrapped peppermint sweet for the boy. The tall case clock ticks in the background, the same clock that ended up in his parent’s farmhouse hallway. The sound of this clock has always provided Rufus with comfort in times of crisis. It is recollections of his grandfather that most warmly represent the countryside to Rufus.

Rufus recalls pushing his sister’s pram up dirt paths on the hillside, away from the family farm and the village—as far away as he could get the two of them. He remembers the feeling of searching for his own private landscape where his thoughts could finally be free and be his own.

Later, he remembers walks along the railway tracks with his sister. It’s the majesty of the sky and the smell of wild grasses mixed with the scent of oil on the railway sleepers, more than a revisualisation of their footsteps, which provoke his recall. It is the sounds of the train approaching, spewing and hissing steam—these sounds as much an invasion of their privacy as they portend the thrill of travel to unknown, yet-to-be-seen places.

He remembers getting to know the workers on that independent rail line and one of them taking him into the signal box that day. That was the day he learned about the physical stirrings that his body provoked in others and acts that are prohibited between a boy and a man. Pleasure, guilt and the forbidden became joined-up thinking from that day forward for young Rufus.

And it is Flip. Oh striking, beautiful Flip. Years of searching have never produced such innocent attractiveness again. If Rufus could only experience it again, to be in his presence, to walk with him arm in arm!

Rufus imagines one last attempt at resolving his youthful crisis somehow. He knows that he still must seek acceptance in order to love openly and freely amongst his peers in rural England. The law may have changed in his lifetime, but acceptance is still not a legacy for him and his kind and particularly not for his generation in the countryside. This is the kind of tolerance that is fundamentally socially constructed by one’s peers. Life has taught him this hard truth. In his imaginings, Rufus hopes, at least in his case, to make this finally possible.

This is the way in which our story now twists and turns. By consulting his memories, our Rufus is now gambling on his imagined past. This is probably the bravest risk of his entire life, or the most foolish one. This is the way in which he decided to return to Chadsford.

∞

Rufus makes stops at several lay-bys and overlooks along his route to take in scenic views. At each of these breaks in the journey, he gets out his cameras and shoots some pictures or video of the bucolic English countryside with its well-represented patchwork of hedgerows and fields. Particularly noteworthy for Rufus are the points along the narrower roads where they suddenly turn and reveal sweeping vistas.

His journey makes it way, first, through the less familiar Thomas Hardy country of Dorset and then on to Henry Fielding’s Somerset. Here, it is as though he is seeing his birthplace for the first time. After almost 50 years, it may as well be. He laughs to himself when he sees the cows in the fields lying down and remembers that this means that it is going to rain. Once a country boy… He remarks to himself how nothing much has changed, except for the condition of the roads themselves.

--> The A303 starts at the M3 motorway south of Basingstoke at Junction 8, as a dual carriageway. It heads south west, crossing the A34 road near Bullington before passing south of Andover. It bypasses Amesbury. The route then becomes single carriageway before passing Stonehenge. After Winterbourne Stoke the route once again becomes dual carriageway, meeting the A36 at Deptford. There is then another section of single carriageway road, before a further section of dual two lane road near Berwick St Leonard. It enters a valley through the village of Chicklade. From here it follows the terrain up to Mere, where it runs north of the town as another dual carriageway bypass. Continuing west, it passes south of Wincanton and then north of Sparkford to a roundabout where the road reverts once more to single carriageway. At Yeovilton the road becomes dual two lane again, and connects with the A37 which joins it until it reaches the end of the bypass. This final section of dual carriageway ends at South Petherton. It runs north of Ilminster where it meets the A358 road. After this, the route is more south westerly through the Blackdown Hills, where it is a narrow road following the contours of the land.

-->

Rufus continues on the narrow road from Blackdown, which will then take him past the farm where he grew up. He next motors through the village of Chadsford with its Norman church, graveyard and village hall. He arrives just the other side of the village at the two adjoining cottages stepped back from the narrow road itself by small front gardens—the cottage where he will now be living. These are modest dwellings, untouched by any recent re-gentrification or ‘in-comers’.

As Rufus pulls up, he notices the net curtains rustling quizzically in the adjoining cottage’s front window. Rufus smiles as he begins to unpack the back seat of the car. Could it be possible that, after all these years and all that has transpired in his life in the meantime, that he is lucky enough to have inherited the cottage right next to Flip’s? Of course not, for this is not where our story ends. Rufus must confront his past, not just be absorbed into it. He has been dreaming for most of the journey and this fantasy ending is just Rufus’ daydream finale. We must be patient as an audience and not jump to conclusions ourselves.

Rufus takes his box of treasured cameras from the car and carries them to the front door of his new abode. He fiddles a bit with the lock on the door at first, but it then swings open to reveal his furniture that arrived from London yesterday. These few familiar possessions from his London life make him feel somehow more at peace with his decision and he goes inside. Rufus sees the case clock that has been left to him standing the middle of the front room. It is not ticking. The first thing he will do, before he even removes his coat, is wind it and get it running again.

In the adjoining cottage, still twitching the net curtains at her window and hoping for a better view of this handsome stranger’s arrival, Abigail White begins to grin. ‘What luck!’ she thinks. As she see this stranger enter the house next door, she reaches for her trademark crimson lipstick and applies it hurriedly, hikes up her bra straps and throws on a cardy. She is ready to make her first move.

About to go out the front door, she remembers, returns to the kitchen and fetches a bottle of Chardonnay to take as a welcome gift. As long as she is in the kitchen, she might as well down the remainder of the glass of wine from the other bottle that she opened earlier that morning.

Fully armoured now, Abigail goes to the cottage next door to meet her new match, or at least she thinks so.

____________________________________________

Read the first instalment here:

Rufus Stone: 1.

Read the second instalment here:
Rufus Stone: 2.

Well-known Filmmaker Josh Appignanesi has been chosen to direct our film, 'Rufus Stone' at Bournemouth U.

Press on choice of Appignanesi and plans for filming Rufus Stone this Summer.

This is the third instalment of the background story for the short film, Rufus Stone, to be produced as the key output of our three-year research project, "Gay and Pleasant Land? -a study about positioning, ageing and gay life in rural South West England and Wales ". The Project is a work package in the New Dynamics of Ageing Project, "Grey and Pleasant Land?: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Connectivity of Older People in Rural Civic Society" and funded by the British Research Councils.

The first of several articles on the research process is now available: 'Connecting Participatory Methods in a Study of Older Lesbian and Gay Citizens in Rural Areas' in the International Journal of Qualitative Research.
A second article, 'Exploring Sexuality, Ageing and Rurality in a
Multi-Method, Performative Project' is now available electronically from the British Journal of Social Work.

Two short A/V pieces we created for conference/workshop dissemination are also available. They both give the background and an overview of the methods used in the project.
Gay and Pleasant Land?
Exploring sexuality, ageing and rurality in a multi-method project

Rufus Stone: 2.

--> It happens at sea. The lapping waves and the water’s surface with its shiny viscosity created by the light prompt me to recall those moments. I remember more clearly then, what those flashes of innocent intimacy were like.

Memory is not text, not even remembered action, really. The past is recreated by recollections of an atmosphere, a sound, a temperature. Remembering the arrangement of the furniture often reveals more to me about a moment than the people sitting on it. So is the nature of key moments in our story of young Rufus and Flip.

Images such as dappled sunlight are not a routine physical reality. They are as much a precise instance in the lifecourse as a particular sixteenth birthday. Our first experience of mottled sunlight is a rite of passage, a singularly unique occurrence in our young lives.

Roll the film. Capture it.

Close your eyes and recollect this patterned lightness on the patchwork English country landscape and you will see young Flip—dark, tan, laughing—happy to be with you. There has been no other instance in your life like it. You wish that this moment will go on forever, but, even in your youth, you know it will not be so. You have been taught this in songs and they are sad ones.

Your soul has always been an old man’s, your cautious, fearful, doubting heart. We are forged as we will be early in life and spend the rest of it unravelling that fact. The child somehow knows that as a man you will seek to recreate this moment over and over again and so you prepare yourself for such a journey, even in your youth. Play the Mahler 5th. You understand it intimately.

You and Flip walk over hills towards a wood. This is not a memorised landscape, however. It is a recollection of a three-dimensional physicality consisting of the soil under foot, the sound of the swish of tall grass, and the crunchiness of pebbles mixed with earth. The intensity of the English sky’s summer blueness creates a light pressure against your skin. The warm country air is more uncontaminated than any you will ever breathe again. His arm around your neck as you walk is the last uncorrupted act of commitment that you will ever experience. This is the purist state of coupling.

You are in the stream at a point where the water, the great purifier, creates a deep pool. The chilly water laps against his body, as you will lap against his. The surface of the water makes a fluid partition that allows grazing against his body beneath it seem easier, less obvious, but still dangerous. The pretence is played out above the surface, the risk and the release beneath. If he ever objected … but he never did. The physicality of your relationship remains in its purist state.

You can smell him on his shirt that you have innocently taken home with you. That night in your single bed under the farmhouse’s eaves you lay next to this piece of worn cotton clothing and dream of his unpolluted perfect being. The shininess of his young dark skin, his naturally sun licked hair, his smile’s innocence, his warm arm around your neck, laughing, always laughing.

Flip’s mother rings your mother. Her shrill screaming coming from the telephone reverberates around the farmhouse kitchen. Your father is uncomfortable situating himself so intimately next to your mother who listens with the receiver away from her ear. She turns her back on you as you stand in the doorframe, bracing yourself for what your unfounded guilt convinces you is the earthquake to come.

Flip’s mother says that she has found the dirty letter that you wrote to her son. She screams down the phone line that you are a filthy unclean pervert and she is coming to your parents’ farm with a kitchen knife to sort out the whole family. Then she is going to make sure the entire village knows about their evil son and your wicked intentions. She is going to report you to the police for the criminal that you are.

Your mother is crying. Your father slams the kitchen door and walks out into the barnyard. You can hear him near the barn shouting and swearing, thankfully muffled from inside the kitchen where you remain. The tall case clock in the hall ticks away its heavy unrelenting passage of time. It seems more strident than ever tonight—even louder than your father’s shouting or your mother’s crying.

You know that tonight is the end of innocent intimacy. It is probably the beginning of something else, but you are unsure of what that is.

The next morning, very early, your father tells you that you must leave the village. He will drive you past the junction where you and Flip met up so many times to the railway station in the nearby town. He tells you to pack you clothes. He will give you the train fare to get to London, but then you are on your own.

He then mutters bitterly, “That’s where your kind go, don’t they, Rufus?’

The surface is broken.

______________________________________________

Read the first instalment here:

Rufus Stone: 1.

This is the second instalment of the background story for the short film, Rufus Stone, to be produced as the key output of our three-year research project, "Gay and Pleasant Land? -a study about positioning, ageing and gay life in rural South West England and Wales ". The Project is a work package in the New Dynamics of Ageing Project, "Grey and Pleasant Land?: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Connectivity of Older People in Rural Civic Society" and funded by the British Research Councils.

The first of several articles on the research process is now available: 'Connecting Participatory Methods in a Study of Older Lesbian and Gay Citizens in Rural Areas' in the International Journal of Qualitative Research.
A second article, 'Exploring Sexuality, Ageing and Rurality in a
Multi-Method, Performative Project' is now available electronically from the British Journal of Social Work.


Two short A/V pieces we created for conference/workshop dissemination are also available. They both give the background and an overview of the methods used in the project.
Gay and Pleasant Land?
Exploring sexuality, ageing and rurality in a multi-method project

PHOTO: Mikaela Maria

Rufus Stone: 1.

It is a typical Somerset January day—the frost-hardened ground, brown and grey, mimicking the sky above. Rufus and Ellie Stone take the trail to the rail junction through the bushes, littered with the rubbish that is now frozen into the mosaic of the landscape. The junction holds a special meaning for Rufus.

Rufus is seventeen, his sister Ellie just ten. She loves walks with her brother because he usually brings his camera and gets excited when he talks about taking pictures. Rufus is her protector—tall, with a shock of curly hair that falls on his forehead—and strong from working on their parents’ farm.

The rail line splits in two at the junction, one part going to the north through a small village. The other line swings east along the ridge to the nearby market town. (Five years later [1963] this rail line would be closed by the infamous ‘Beeching Axe’, but no one knew that then.)

Ellie and Rufus sometimes spend their Saturdays in the town selling vegetables at their parents’ market stall. Ellie likes going to town because she gets to dress up. Rufus hates its and just sees it as more hard graft with no pay.

A six-foot post sunk into the gravel mound between the two rail lines at the junction is topped with a small greyish box. This sheet metal container has a lid on it, but more like a small door. Rufus imagines that the box was used for some signal wiring at one time, but now is empty.

Rufus’ mate, Flip, is olive skinned, dark-haired and shorter than Rufus. He is two years younger and lives along the rail line in the nearby village. The boys met two summers ago when Rufus was walking in the hills collecting berries. They have been best mates ever since.

Flip’s real name is Philippe. His younger brother is Antoine. Their mother comes from the nearby town and married a local villager. Being from the town and having ‘airs and graces’, she insisted on giving her children French-sounding names. Philippe quickly became Flip after a few rounds of bullying at school and Antoine’s father almost immediately shortened his younger son’s name to Tony.

One afternoon, Flip and Rufus discovered the metal box at the junction about halfway between their houses. The lads agreed to use it as their ‘secret hiding place’. From time to time, Rufus and Flip leave small gifts, photos and notes in the signal box for each other. Ellie is the only other person who knows about this secret place, or at least Rufus hopes so.

Flip has also become interested in photography. The lads have spent many days walking the Somerset landscape together, taking photographs with Rufus’ camera, and, on hot summer days, swimming in a nearby stream together.

Flip and Rufus love each other. At first, Rufus didn’t know what these feelings were. Both had always known, though, that being with each other mattered more than anything else in their young lives. They use any excuse to spend time together, particularly in the summer when school is out of term.

They love to lie in the deep grass on a hillside next to one another and stare at the clouds in the sky, making up animals and characters out of the billowy white shapes. When Rufus happens to brush up against Flip or touch him almost by accident, electricity courses through his whole body. This delights him, but almost immediately causes him shame too.

One particularly hot day when they were swimming, Flip didn’t bother to put his T-shirt back on. Rufus hid the worn, white shirt in his canvas army rucksack. He took it home and slept with it next to his pillow that night. He could smell Flip on the shirt and this made Rufus both happy and frightened. Because Rufus is the older of the two, he feels particularly responsible about his growing feelings for Flip. He knows innately that these stirrings could lead to something dangerous or forbidden in his small English country village.

Rufus finished school at sixteen and has worked on his family’s farm full-time for the past year. He hates it and wants to get away from this strict country life. Flip is now in his final year at school.

Rufus recently decided to confess to Flip about his feelings for him. Rufus thinks that maybe they should both leave the countryside together when Flip finishes school and find jobs in the town, or even move to a city where he could try his luck at becoming a photographer. Rufus has decided to tell Flip that he loves him and share his plan with him. He wrote a short, painful note and left it with a photo of the two of them together at the junction box a few days ago.

Today, Rufus is hoping that an answer will be waiting for him.

____________________________________

This is the first instalment of the background story for the short film, Rufus Stone, to be produced as the key output of our three-year research project, "Gay and Pleasant Land? -a study about positioning, ageing and gay life in rural South West England and Wales ". The Project is a work package in the New Dynamics of Ageing Project, "Grey and Pleasant Land?: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Connectivity of Older People in Rural Civic Society" and funded by the British Research Councils.

Two short A/V pieces we created for conference/workshop dissemination are also available. They both give the background and an overview of the methods used in the project.

Gay and Pleasant Land?

Exploring sexuality, ageing and rurality in a multi-method project

Beauty and the Bus

The usual crowd jostled on to the bus home yesterday. No seats downstairs, so the throng scrambled upwards. Nearly full up there as well, but found a seat. A cacophony of foreign tongue contributing to the high level of noise. A guitar playing behind me somewhere, strains of bosa nova and spoken Brazilian Portuguese. An auditory dreamscape.

A teenager in futbal kit, a young Ronaldo, moved forward, speaking to the girls. The girls averted their eyes, lashes fluttering at the sight of him.

Oh, England, you are a wondrous land.

English to Spanish translation

El público habitual empujado a la casa en el autobús ayer. N la planta baja asientos, por lo que la multitud revueltos hacia arriba. Casi lleno hasta allí también, pero se encontró un asiento. Una cacofonía de la lengua extranjera contribuye al alto nivel de ruido. Una guitarra detrás de mí en alguna parte, las cepas de bosa nova y portugués brasileño. Un paisaje de ensueño auditivo.

Un adolescente en el kit de futbal, un joven Ronaldo, se movió hacia adelante, hablando con las chicas. Las chicas evitó sus ojos, pestañas revoloteando a la vista de él.

¡Oh, Inglaterra, que son una tierra maravillosa.

Don Draper and some random thoughts for 2011

Thoughts at sea. These become parenthetical within the rhythm of the waves, the schedule of ports, the resting and relaxation--and the dreams. I report them here in a similar way.

Don Draper is, himself, his own invention. He is, therefore, Everyman or more pointedly, Nowhereman.

He is an idea man and his advertising firm is convinced of his brain-storms which flow like milk and honey from his ever-inebriated lips.

He produces a lot of ideas, but never has to execute them. Luckily, he has a staff of creatives who do this for him.

Which then/who's then, is the creative act?

Art is/creativity is/production is:

• • concerned with the impulse of creativity and the proclivities of production.
  • 
    
  • creative problem-solving is central to creative decision-making.
  • 
    
  • a reflection/a record of the time/space/culture which we currently inhabit.

How I problem solve creatively by listening to dreams:

A Dream at Sea:
The House and the Swimming Pool

Trevor was building a swimming pool next to the post-modern, but definitely retro-modern holiday house that he had designed, much akin to Alain de Botton's contemporary holiday homes. We said that the pool should be at opposite angles to the house, but Trevor insisted on a parallel configuration. We said, "No, no, no! that cannot be right!"

He began to cry and shed his clothes. He looked like a happy Buddha, except that he was crying so he resembled a sad one. We tried to comfort him.

Two rectangles -- how to place them:

1. side by side, length paralleling length
   
2. T-square formation

Change of Scene: Old Japanese woman with greying hair in a bun. I was lying in the grass and finding minuscule flowers, purple and orange--the most outrageous of the opposites on the colour wheel.

I placed the flowers in the old woman's hair.

She then spoke, herself in a dream state:

"The pool should be placed next to the rectangular house like a woman lying next to a man, her curves forming the negative space between the two of them".

So the pool should be curvilinear, not a rectangle. It's length should mirror the length of the house, but it's emphasis remain the shapes created between the two.

My father was right.

Alternative Thoughts for Researchers at Christmas

I have been thinking recently about a moment that happened at our Qualitative Conference in September.

In the tangential way that my world works, I came upon photographer, Freya Najade, serendipitously.

Several years ago now, I asked photographer, Richard Renaldi, to use some of his photographs of older people in a community project that we were organising in Leicester. I have also used his project, Fall River Boys, for a short audio/visual piece that I created.

Back to the present, or rather, almost a year ago now, I was reading Richard’s blog and he mentioned Freya Najade’s photographic series, ‘If you’re lucky, you get old’. Since we are currently working on our project on older gay and lesbian citizens in the British countryside and the film that will be the product of that research, I felt that her work might have resonance.

Part of my conceptual scheming for this year’s conference was to see how close to ‘Art’ we could move things, whilst still remaining within some construct of Social Science. For this reason, I invited an African drummer to open the proceedings, asked academic, Norma Daykin, to bring her Salsa Nova trio along to entertain and invited Freya to display her photographs, along with other ‘artistic’ expressions which peppered the conference.

Circumstances dictated that Freya couldn’t exhibit her actual photographs in a gallery setting; it would be necessary for her to ‘present’ them using PowerPoint in a more familiar academic seminar setting. Still, I thought that her work had a message for academic researchers and was willing to accept this more formal presentation.

Freya talked a bit about her photographs and shared them with the audience. Then it was time for questions. The key moment for me was when someone asked: “How did you go about deciding who to photograph and what the pictures would be about?” Freya replied simply, “I picked up my camera and began to shoot. It was through taking the pictures that the story unfolded”.


To me this is a key difference between the way we often work as researchers and the way that an artist works. Artists pick up their tools and materials and begin. They work out the problems through their media. They have an idea or concept, but very much allow the materials, the subject, the time and the place to dictate the outcomes.

Perhaps as researchers we spend too much time ruminating and worrying over the details of questions (semi-structured or not), ethical approval, our methods and so forth before we ever begin. Perhaps we need to pick up our tools and dive in more often. Margaret Meade went to the South Pacific with her questions but not knowing what to expect, then invented a method on the spot.

Romantically, perhaps, I hearken back to the scientist in her/his laboratory with all of its equipment, specimens and supplies. The scientist ‘experiments’ much in the way that an artist does. Perhaps as social scientists, we need to recall this and become ‘scientists’ again.

‘Art and science have a common thread—both are fuelled by creativity. Whether writing a paper based on my data or filling a canvas with paint, both processes tell a story’.

–Richard Taylor (2001), Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon

I very much encourage researchers to pick up their tools and create. In order to begin to do this, we need to adjust our approaches to our work. I am grateful to one of the reviewers of my chapter in Phillip Vannini’s upcoming book, Popularizing Research, for making me think about how this happens. I responded to a particular question by stating: ‘Moving our work to arts-based procedures is not a series of isolated acts; it requires an adjustment in how we approach everything in which we engage—including writing for academic publication’.

With these thoughts in mind, I leave you with a holiday list of inspirations. Perhaps one or more of these will encourage you to pick up you brushes or camera, voice recorder or semi-structured questionnaire, and begin to experiment or at least find alternatives to the way in which we think of going about our work.

• Film: Peter Greenaway’s Rembrandt's J'accuse
  
• Classical ballet: Roland Petit’s Proust ou les intermittences du cœur
• Novel: Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody
• Poetry: Diane Hamilton’s Lizard Licking, Donegal & Other Poems
• Photography: Richard Renaldi’s Fall River Boys
  
• Classical Music: Nikolai Lugansky, Rachmaniov’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini
  
• Classical Contemporary: Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks
  
• Television: Mad Men; In Treatment
  
• Comedy: Modern Family
  
• Magazine: Dazed and Confused
• Downtempo electronic jazz: Nicolas Jarr, Nico's Feelin' Good
  

Happy Holidays!