There is a story that
you are always going to write.
But you don’t write
it, because something is missing – deep within you or in the few people you
really love. It’s an odd feeling. You have the idea, you have the shape of it.
You can tell everyone you’ve got it, but in fact you are not even close. It’s
like you haven’t lived enough to realise it just yet. It’s like some jigsaw
puzzle with a few vital pieces missing. Might actually be one piece. But you
are blocked.
There is this Russian
story I’ve always wanted to write. However, every time I got close, it wriggled
in my hands and slipped away. Time after time after time. And then suddenly,
just the other day, I heard “The Clarke Sisters” while walking down my street.
There’s this wind, nippy and kind of pointless in mid-April, and on the right I
see a landscape that is like El Greco’s amazing View of Toledo. And that haunting beauty, at that very moment. And
suddenly I remember that great video of Robert Forster playing “The Clarke Sisters” in Regensburg.
And suddenly I have
the story.
