Writing for Nothing Read online

  MARTIN CRIMP

  Writing for Nothing

  with an introduction by the author

  Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Writing in Prose

  The Play

  Stage Kiss

  Writing for Theatre

  Party

  In the Valley

  The Iron Rice Bowl

  Vaclav and Amelia

  The Art of Painting

  Advice to Iraqi Women

  Messenger of Love

  Writing for Music

  Into the Little Hill

  Part One

  Part Two

  Written on Skin

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Lessons in Love and Violence

  Part One

  Part Two

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Introduction

  When you begin writing, you write – from necessity – for nothing. You don’t expect anything in return, and you don’t get anything either, not for many years, unless it’s your own satisfaction. Decades later you will discover the Chinese concept of ‘the iron rice bowl’ – similar but not quite the same as ‘job for life’ – and of course accepting this perpetual bowl of rice, especially as an artist, means accepting to be controlled. So while it is good and fair to be paid to write, a virtue in fact, to work hard and be paid for it, it’s nonetheless reasonable to be wary of the effect of money, even quite small quantities, and to remember that most writers – not that you are one of them, really you’re pretty fortunate – write and will go on writing for what, essentially, amounts to nothing – with the advantage of keeping the impulse pure.

  How glorious it would be to begin your introduction in this way! To raise the spectre of this ideal artistic non-instrumental nothing – pitch up in your first paragraph like Noah in his ark on Ararat, the irritating mass of humanity conveniently destroyed, and, while the dove goes flapping off looking for plant life, seize the moral high ground!

  Not so: these short texts are as grubby as all writing – whether fiction, plays, or designed for opera. Most have been paid for, only a few have not. Some, it has to be said, verge on the exquisite – especially when set in the gleaming armature of music. Others, let’s admit it, have all the allure of body-parts.

  But – seriously now – is there not some hope the writer may, well once in a while at least, still write for the ideal nothing? – that he or she might once in a while at least remember that first pure impulse? – fall back in love with what he or she makes, just like the sculptor in the fable, and – if I might put it this way – head once again no place for no reason other than the word?

  MC

  November 2018

  WRITING IN PROSE

  The Play

  When I heard the play read, it turned my stomach, but later that night I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The writer was a little bitch, that much was obvious. I’m sick to the teeth of people who make their work so personal – and you could see it all there in the play – these characters were people she knew – the businessman who unzips his trousers and forces that girl’s head down was clearly her own father – you don’t need to be a psychologist to work that out. And if you want my opinion the girl is her, down on her knees, down on her knees with tears in her eyes. Okay, we know these things happen, but is this really what we want to see in the theatre? – particularly when you bear in mind that over the next sixty or ninety minutes or whatever things degenerate to the point where I would draw the line at describing them. People these days think that any kind of personal sickness or private abuse entitles them to be an artist, they think that art is simply a transcription of what they’ve suffered – not only that, but their own suffering completely fills the frame. If a woman has been raped by her father, if a young man has had a bad experience in prison, or at the hands of the police, then they think they have the right to reconstruct the world (and what is a play if not the rebuilding of the world?) around this event. Politics and history are made invisible. What we see on stage essentially are people of either sex being fucked up the arse. And while this happens I always notice a strange silence in the audience – a terrible gravity.

  After the reading there’s a similar silence, then a little applause. The actors close their scripts, take their coats off writing in prose the backs of the chairs, drink from water-bottles, check for messages. It’s not a public reading, but one held behind closed doors, allegedly for the benefit of the writer, but in reality to give the theatre management a chance to assess a script they’re undecided about. This is why despite the superficial informality of these events – cups on the floor, smiles between friends – the atmosphere afterwards is always slightly tense, fraught with judgement.

  Outside in the corridor the Director asks for my opinion.

  — I think it needs more work.

  — More work?

  — I think it’s trying too hard to shock the audience.

  — What about the language?

  — It’s confused. One moment it’s brutal, the next it’s romantic.

  — Isn’t that what makes it exciting?

  — Produce the play as it is and you’ll be taking an enormous risk.

  — We’re here to take enormous risks, says the Director, a little artificially, as the focus of his eyes adjusts so that he’s looking over my shoulder.

  He takes hold of my arm and lowers his voice:

  — I respect your doubts, he says, but the fact is is we’re going to do this play.

  — Without making changes?

  — It’s a brilliant piece.

  — I think you’re making a mistake.

  Our conversation stops completely at this point because the writer has appeared beside us. The Director takes her arm exactly as he took mine – except hers, as a special mark of favour, he strokes a few times, close to the shoulder. I’ve always found the instant physical intimacy of the theatre repellent – which isn’t to say I haven’t occasionally benefited from it.

  — Well done, he says, stroking her arm. I think it’s a wonderful piece. Shocking of course, but what I hadn’t realised when I first read it was just how beautiful and redeeming it is.

  — It’s not meant to be beautiful, she says with a smile, it’s meant to be ugly.

  — In that case, I say, you’ve clearly succeeded.

  When she looks at me, there’s an appalling clarity in her eyes. Something’s burning there, just as there was something burning in the play. Where does this self-confidence come from? Normally if a young writer was discussing with the Director and myself the reading of their first play, she’d be looking for reassurance and advice. We’d feel a gratifying sense of responsibility and power. But in her case it’s different. We’re the ones being judged by this quiet burning arrogance – or at least that’s what she wants us to feel. And all this does is confirm my suspicion – and she can stare as much as she likes, her eyes can burn and burn – because all this does is confirm my original suspicion that she is not a writer at all. This play of hers – which is like a living body being slowly stripped of its skin – simply represents a public act of self-mutilation.

  — How d’you mean, she says, succeeded?

  — In being ugly. It seems to me that despite what Nicky says no one is redeemed. Your characters live in hell.

  — Is that a compliment?

  — On the contrary: I’m afraid it’s a criticism. Once you reach hell, no change is possible. And if no change is possible, there’s no drama.

  — No drama.

  She grins.

  — No.

  — You obviously do
n’t live in hell then.

  — I’ve no wish to.

  — Because I do – and there’s plenty of fucking drama, believe me.

  The Director laughs and strokes her arm.

  She lights a cigarette.

  — Plenty.

  I’m always surprised that the cigarette – delivered by the slick machinery of capitalism: produced by the cheapest possible labour, sold at the highest possible price to the most vulnerable consumer – can still be worn like this as a badge of rebellion. But when she holds out the pack – a strange gesture when I’ve been so deliberately hostile – I can’t resist taking one.

  I bend towards the flame she offers me, feeling like a badly written character, not sure of my intentions.

  That night I had a dream. You could call it erotic, except that word suggests pleasure, and there was none. I was shut in the dark in a shallow cupboard behind a wall. I could hear a bird flapping its wings, knocking itself against the door. The person I was with was a typical dream-person: very clear in the dream, but in reality impossible to identify. The bird went on scraping and struggling: its beak struck sparks against the surface of the door, which made me realise it must be made of metal, steel perhaps.

  I woke up and was relieved to see a faint frame of light around the closed curtain. It was five o’clock. I found Madeleine in the kitchen.

  — What are you doing here? I said.

  — You were thrashing around. I couldn’t sleep.

  — I had a nightmare.

  — Oh? she said. Was I in it?

  She presented this as a witticism and left it to me to savour the underlying bitterness. She was smiling though, and took off the reading-glasses she knows I hate.

  — I’m sorry if I woke you up.

  — I think I was awake already. After all, it’s summer.

  This sounded quite reasonable, as if she was used to getting up at dawn, like a peasant.

  — Have you fed the pigs?

  She looked at me: she didn’t seem to be following my train of thought. This was odd, because normally she could read my mind with horrible clarity. She was supposed to say ‘What pigs?’ which would be the cue to elaborate my rural conceit. Instead she said:

  — Are you alright?

  — Why?

  — You look strange.

  — I feel fine.

  — You look tense round your eyes.

  What she was doing, of course, was trying to shift the attention on to me. Because I didn’t look remotely strange – what was strange, as she well knew, was her sitting there in the kitchen at five o’clock in the morning when it was quite normal for her to still be in bed at ten o’clock or even midday.

  She was right about summer, though. The sun streamed in from the east and raked across the piles of junk: the books, the postcards, the scripts, the leftovers, the crumbs on the table, the knife in the jam-jar. It would soon be unpleasantly hot because there were no blinds on the tall windows, which were spattered on the outside by the weather and on the inside by cooking fat. On the window-ledge a comb with hair in it threw a long tangled shadow. I said:

  — We should clear some of this stuff up.

  — What stuff?

  — Well that pile of magazines.

  — I’m keeping them. I need them.

  — We could put them somewhere else. We could file them.

  — File them?

  I’ve managed to make her laugh. This means the day will be bearable.

  But don’t be taken in by the squalor. The squalor in which Madeleine and myself live is purely cosmetic. Underneath the crumbs and stains is a solid and valuable property in one of the city’s most desirable districts. Sitting here quietly on my own sometimes I feel the value of the house thickening around me until it starts to press against my ear-drums. I’d like to say that I was the one who resisted this gift, that it was me who foresaw the poisonous nature of so much security, but the fact is I was all for it, and completely failed to understand why Madeleine opposed her father’s generosity. It wasn’t as if his money was tainted. He produced commercial comedies and musical entertainments in theatres inherited from his own father: hardly exploitation. He was rich but benign. And like the kind of plays he produced, there was something harmless – appealing, even – about his shallowness. Compared to my own parents, with their bottled fruit, their home-grown salad, roast meat on Sundays and cold meat on Mondays, deference to doctors, bedtime prayers, grace before meals – compared to their suburban intuition that life was inherently difficult and shameful, Madeleine’s father seemed to imply that on the contrary life was simply a series of presents waiting to be unwrapped. Why shouldn’t we accept the house?

  — I don’t want to give him that satisfaction.

  — What satisfaction?

  — The satisfaction of putting us in his debt.

  — I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way.

  — You don’t know anything about my father. All you see is the surface.

  — As far as your father’s concerned the surface is all there is.

  — My father doesn’t invest money without expecting a return. He’s a businessman.

  — He’s also your father. The only investment he wants to make is in our future. A parent doesn’t expect what you call ‘a return’ from his own child, Madeleine.

  I hope our dialogue wasn’t that stilted, but I suspect it was. It’s only years of marriage that have honed our conversations into something altogether more subtle and hurtful. At the time, though, Madeleine started to cry, which put an end – perhaps intentionally – to any rational debate. Her tears were confusing. You have to remember how beautiful she was, and how vulnerable she could look. When she cried her face didn’t collapse the way it does now, it became even more desirable. Usually her tears led to us making love, and there’s nothing more exquisite than making love to a woman in tears because – and this is particularly gratifying for a man – she becomes emotionally naked. This is why I reached out to put my arms around her. I imagined I would kiss away those tears. So I was surprised when she pushed me back with her fists and said ‘Don’t fucking touch me’ in a tight, bitter voice I was hearing for the first time.

  We were in the country. It was Berkshire. She’d walked a little way towards the stream and turned her back to me. Beyond the stream are two horses – chestnuts – cropping the grass. In the distance I can now hear the empty crack of a shotgun, but at the time I heard nothing because Madeleine filled the whole frame of my feelings, and occupied all of my senses. Her hair hung down her back like a curtain of black, brown and gold, excluding me. We might’ve looked like a woodcut by Munch: two still, emblematic figures, distress eddying away from us across the landscape in red and green spirals – if it hadn’t been Berkshire.

  The dull thudding across the meadow was Madeleine’s father coming towards us, his puppet-like stride explained by the steep slope. He’d left those bright tiny figures on the terrace – actors? dancers? – to come down and find us. He was a little breathless, and had spilled some of his drink on the sleeve of his blazer.

  — Well? he said. Is it yes or is it no? John?

  — We’re still talking about it, I said.

  — No we’re not. Madeleine turned and smiled. We’d love to have the house, Daddy. It’s the most wonderful wedding-present we could think of.

  Although she hadn’t touched her face, there was no trace of tears, only a white mask of serenity. Our country-house melodrama appeared to have ended.

  — Well I’m absolutely delighted for you both. Because I know I can be a bit of a prick sometimes, but just because a man’s a bit of a prick doesn’t mean you have to treat him like a cunt, does it John.

  — No one’s treating you like a cunt, Daddy.

  — I’m asking John.

  — He doesn’t understand what you mean.

  — Are you trying to tell me my future son-in-law doesn’t know the difference between a prick and a cunt?

  — Can’t we ju
st stop now. We’d love to have the house. We’re both very grateful.

  — Because if he doesn’t know the difference I’m not sure I want him marrying my most precious daughter.

  — Your only daughter.

  — Only and most precious. Well does he?

  — Does he what?

  — Does he know the difference? John?

  — You’re embarrassing him.

  — Because I’ll tell you something, Johnny-boy, this daughter of mine is no job for amateurs.

  All three of us laughed, although the exchange of obscenities had left me feeling prudish and suburban. We walked together up the slope towards the actors and dancers, the lamps and the drinks.

  We stayed there in the country while the house in town was prepared for us. It took a number of weeks to evict the tenants, whose children had scribbled over the walls, and inside cupboards. We tore down thin partitions to reveal perfectly proportioned rooms full of light.

  — Are you alright?

  — Why?

  — You look strange.

  — You’ve already said that.

  Is this irritating woman hunched over the kitchen table really the girl I fell in love with? She’s doing this deliberately.

  — Have I?

  — You know you have.

  And suddenly it all falls into place: the reading-glasses, the open script, it’s the play, she’s reading the play. She got up at five o’clock in the morning to read the play.

  — You’re reading the play.

  — Yes.

  — Again?

  — Why not again? I think it’s an important piece of work.

  Important? What she means – and I see it all too clearly – is that Madeleine has deluded herself into imagining that just because she took part in yesterday’s reading, she’ll be offered a part. This is what actors mean by ‘important’: important to me.