Juvenile intentions

I walk past the River Tillingbourne most days. I have seen it running high with spring rain, angrily chasing itself towards its destiny in the North Sea. I have seen it cooling the legs of dogs, horses and children in the warm days of summer. I have seen it carrying the autumn leaves downriver, some speedily, others lazily, like an unwatched and never-ending game of Poohsticks. I’ve even seen it iced up in winter, though never fully frozen over.

And it’s the same river, though philosophers have famously argued otherwise. The fact that it changes doesn’t stop it being the Tillingbourne. In fact, I think it’s because it changes it’s the Tillingbourne. The river just adapts to seasons and circumstance, and keeps being itself.

Maybe people are rivers. And music is the soundtrack that marks their changing seasons.

The first musical memory I have was when I was maybe three or four years old. After playgroup I would go back to stay with my Uncle Nigel and my Aunty Eileen. I think now they were newly married, helping my parents out and practising being parents with me. Bodmin Drive in Bramhall. The soundtrack to those moments was Marvin Hamlisch’s The Entertainer. It’s only now I learn it was from the soundtrack to The Sting. I think it was the way they kept me happy and stopped me asking where my Mum was. I probably had a dance.

It was the summer of 1986 when Billy Bragg’s The Saturday Boy became the soundtrack of that version of me. Sixteen, lonely and wandering the streets of a strange new city my parents had relocated me to. Durham was a beautiful backdrop, but that summer it wasn’t my city. And no-one understood me.  I’d walk down New Elvet, around Palace Green, along the banks of the River Wear, barely raising my head as Billy spoke to me on my Walkman. I was so happy being achingly sad. It suited that me. 

The Stone Roses The Stone Roses came out on 2 May 1989. I remember now that it came out at the perfect moment. We had finished our first-year exams at university in Bristol, but term hadn’t ended. Those few weeks were the best years of my life. And the Roses were the soundtrack. Not just my soundtrack, but everyone’s. All the windows were open around the Quad in Churchill Hall, Ian Brown’s voice appearing from every one of them. Life was a film. 

Sally became Sally because of The Stone Roses. I think that was me being me. She was born in the summer of 1996 and Oasis’s Don’t Look Back in Anger was already ubiquitous.  So, everyone asked if she was Sally because of that song. But she wasn’t. That would have been the wrong story. Too neat, too predictable. She was Sally Cinnamon, maybe as a memory of the importance of The Stone Roses. I still wish I’d won the debate about her becoming Sally Elizabeth Cinnamon Hayward. But whatever the certificate says doesn’t matter, I know. And she does.

Now I can see that my musical memories hadn’t moved forward. Sure, I was listening to new music, I kept doing that. But the music that resonated with me was the music of the 1980s. We all think that the music of our coming-of-age years was the best music. Mine certainly was. I listened to the new, but if I wanted to really listen to music then it was The Specials, or Japan, or Talk Talk, or Billy Bragg, or The Smiths, or The Stone Roses. Different versions of my 1980s. Adolescent me, with juvenile intentions.

Then I found Italian indie music in my fifties. Who said you can’t step in the same river twice? I could listen to music that was somehow familiar, but with a different hinterland. I didn’t necessarily understand the words, but then I’m not sure I ever understood everything Morrissey was telling me forty years earlier. I understood how it made me feel. One day, I was driving to my Italian lesson in Guildford, with Fuori dall’Hype by Pinguini Tattici Nucleari playing at teenage volume in my car. “Perché noi siamo, FUORI DALL’HYPE… FUORI DALL’HYPE… FUORI DALL’HYPE.” I was busy singing along, trying to get my accent right and at the same time not really caring. So I forgot there was a speed camera there. The result: a speeding ticket and a £60 fine. Worth every penny for the memory.

Which of these people are me? What’s the thread running between the young boy dancing wildly to The Entertainer and the man in his fifties singing along at full volume to Pinguini? I don’t have an answer. Or maybe I don’t want to think too hard about it and risk losing something that music makes me feel. Music can take me back to where I was and who I was at that time, and it can take me to who I am and where I want to be now. The same person, adapting to seasons and circumstance. With a banging soundtrack.

L’eco di ‘C’

Non mi ricordo molto di lei. Ma mi ricordo il modo in cui mi faceva sentire, cioè…

In realtà, è una sensazione che è molto difficile da descrivere. Anche in inglese: enchanted, overawed, unworthy, speechless, besotted - but not in the usual teenage boy way. È a malapena un ricordo. Al massimo è l’eco di una sensazione. 

Che cosa riesco a sentire in quell’eco? Al di là della mia sensazione, quali sono i fatti? 

Ce ne sono tre. 

Primo, era bellissima. Non intendo dire che fosse carina. Non intendo neanche dire che fosse semplicemente bella. Anche in italiano, la lingua dell’amore, non c’è una parola. Viveva su un altro piano, un piano al di là della bellezza. Emanava luce. E quella luce era bella. Mi sentivo come Dante quando vide Beatrice per la prima volta. Ma Dante era un genio e riusciva a descriverlo. Io no. Era bellissima.

In secondo luogo, era ricca. Per i lettori italiani, il sistema scolastico inglese sarà probabilmente un mistero. Da ragazzino andavo a una scuola ‘normale’, cioè una comprehensive school. Non si pagava, non c’era un esame per entrare e ci andavano tutti i ragazzi della zona. Ma gli studenti con i genitori più ricchi andavano a una scuola diversa: una private school. Così cominciava il processo del mettere ciascuno al proprio posto. A noi inglesi piacciono le gerarchie. 

Però c’era un’altra categoria. Non avevo mai conosciuto nessuno di quella categoria, ma alcuni ragazzi andavano a una scuola residenziale. Cioè un boarding school. Per confondere tutti si chiama anche una public school. Ma non è pubblica, è per persone di un altro livello.

E infine arriva l’università, un’ulteriore opportunità per mettere ciascuno al proprio posto. Gli studenti delle public schools andavano a Oxford o Cambridge. Se non riuscivano a superare l’esame di ingresso, andavano a Bristol o a Durham. Se non arrivavano a quel livello, andavano a Exeter o St. Andrews. Queste erano le regole. Non erano scritte. Ma tutti le seguivano.

C’è ancora qualcuno che mi sta leggendo? Mi seguite ancora?

Ecco, all’Università di Bristol, alla fine, c’ero finito anche io. Ero un pesciolino fuor d’acqua. E c’era anche lei. Lì, avevo conosciuto tante persone più posh di me. Ma questa ragazza che splendeva…  era più posh di quanto potessi immaginare. Non sapevo che ci fosse un altro livello. Il suo livello. 

In terzo luogo, mi ricordo il suo nome. Un nome che era tutto suo. Si chiamava ‘C’. ‘C’ in inglese, si pronuncia come “sì”. Non conoscevo il suo vero nome, ma lei era troppo posh per usarlo. Catherine? Clare? Caroline? Cecilia? Assolutamente no! Era ‘C’. La rendeva ancora più misteriosa.

I miei amici universitari non la ricordavano: Charles mi ha detto che forse è frutto della mia immaginazione. È strano perché non seguiva le mie stesse lezioni e non viveva nel nostro Hall of Residence. Infatti non mi ricordo come l’abbia incontrata. 

Tuttavia, esisteva. Mi ha invitato a un dinner party. E sarebbe stato il mio primo dinner party. L’avevo visto in televisione. L’avevo letto nei libri. Ma sarebbe stata un’esperienza nuova per me. Ho indossato una giacca e ho comprato una bottiglia di vino e un bel mazzo di fiori che non potevo permettermi. Ci sono andato. E una parte di quell’esperienza è alla base della storia del film. Ma solo una parte. Il resto, si: è certamente frutto della mia immaginazione.

Con la lingua

It would be hard to get across how much I hated languages at school. I was a self-declared anti-linguist.

Maths and sciences came easily enough. I loved history, especially when it became so modern that it was really politics. English never felt like work because I was always reading anyway.

But French. French was torture. And two terms of German were, if anything, worse.

Every Tuesday afternoon there was a double lesson. Another single one on Friday morning. Mr Collins battled manfully with teenage mayhem, school cuts and a Yorkshire accent to teach us the basics. Sophia, thanks to a French grandmother, would politely correct his accent, replying to his questions in effortless French. Depending on my mood, I would skip class, play the fool, or sullenly stare out the window.

Did I mention how much I hated French? And Sophia. Though I think I had a crush on her really.

Looking back, I was scared. I had moved to Yorkshire from Manchester a few years earlier, and my accent made me stand out and got me into trouble more than once. I changed my accent a little. But I also learned to keep my mouth shut so as not to expose myself to ridicule. So, I was scared of the language. And I was certainly scared to tell myself how I felt about Sophia. Never mind tell her. I told myself I hated French. It was easier than admitting I was frightened of speaking it. Easier still to pretend I hated Sophia.

Then I got busy with life. University. A career. A marriage. A family. There was no time for learning a language. And, besides, I was terrible at languages. Wasn’t I?

At times I would hear others speak another language. I would sneer, but, Lord, I was jealous. They were in a world I thought I wasn’t allowed into. And much as I told myself I didn’t want to go there, I would catch a glimpse of something that I was missing. It was like walking past a packed pub on a Friday night, convinced everyone belonged there except you. So, I walked on.

Then I turned fifty.

I’d left my first career behind. My family had grown up and needed me less. I had time, which meant I had no ready excuse. And I wanted to face my demon. But not the French démon. And not the German dämon.

I’d loved Italy every time we’d been there. We’d even bought a house in Tuscany. I loved being there, but I was an outsider. It was time to find the demone, call him by his name, and see if perhaps we could become friends.

Several years later, I can happily spend my days working in Italian, even if I'll never mistake myself for a natural. I have completed a Master’s in the language, culture and history of a country that now feels like a second home. I have written a bilingual screenplay and have embarked on both a novel and a stage play that also plays with both languages.

People often say a second language is a bridge. I always thought the drawbridge was up. It turned out I was the one holding the rope.

But I don’t want to evangelise about the pleasures of expressing yourself in a second language, even though I feel it. I don’t want to go on about how it’s given me access to another world that I’d spent half a lifetime walking past. Though that’s true too.

What I'd really like to say isn't to you, but to the thirteen-year-old me sitting in that French classroom. It's okay not to be good at something. Don't mistake fear for inability. Don't spend thirty years believing a story about yourself that happened not to be true.

The pleasure was never in becoming fluent. It was in discovering that I wasn't the person I'd told myself I was.

Si può combattere il demone con la lingua.

Racconti fondativi

Mi piacciono le storie coming of age. Mi piacciono nei film, nei romanzi, perfino nelle canzoni. Mi parlano.

Però mi sono reso conto che, quando parlo del genere coming of age con alcune persone, il termine può risultare riduttivo. Pensano a Dawson’s Creek piuttosto che a Brideshead Revisited. Non fraintendetemi. Mi piaceva Dawson’s Creek. Lo ammetto. Tuttavia, il coming of age non riguarda soltanto gli anni dell’adolescenza.  Riguarda la trasformazione. Riguarda i momenti che spiegano perché siamo diventati chi siamo.

Mi chiedo se “racconti fondativi” sia un modo migliore di classificarli. Siamo abituati all’idea che le nazioni abbiano i loro racconti fondativi. Gli inglesi tornano spesso alle storie di Re Artù e della Tavola Rotonda e a “la loro ora migliore”, ovvero quando, guidati da Winston Churchill, resistettero da soli alla Germania nazista. Anche se, a dire il vero da soli non lo eravamo affatto, no? C’era un impero che combatteva al nostro fianco. Forse è proprio questa la natura dei racconti fondativi: non cercano di raccontare tutto ciò che è accaduto, ma una versione degli eventi che rappresenti chi vorremmo essere.

Gli italiani hanno i moti rivoluzionari del Quarantotto, la figura di Garibaldi e la lotta partigiana contro il fascismo. Per i francesi, la Rivoluzione e la nascita della Repubblica. Libertà, uguaglianza e fraternità rimangono concetti chiave nel modo in cui la Francia comprende sé stessa. Anche gli americani hanno il loro racconto fondativo, anche se credo che, da questa parte dell’Atlantico, pochi di noi abbiano compreso i motivi per cui il tè di Boston abbia dovuto fare quella brutta fine.  Ad ogni modo, i dettagli cambiano ma lo scopo è lo stesso. Ogni nazione ha le proprie storie a cui torna per legittimarsi. 

E le storie coming of age fanno la stessa cosa, giusto? Quali sono gli episodi, nella vita di un personaggio, che spiegano chi è? Molti di questi episodi accadono mentre diventiamo adulti ed è forse per questo che il genere viene associato all’adoloscenza. Tuttavia, non smettiamo mai di divenire. Il cambiamento è una condizione umana universale. E, proprio come le nazioni continuano a ripetersi i propri racconti, così facciamo anche noi. Forse diventare grandi non è una cosa che succede una volta sola nella vita. È qualcosa che continuiamo a fare. Magari è per questo che siamo affascinati dalle storie coming of age, dalla tenuta di Brideshead, dal molo di Dawson's Creek o da un luogo in cui ancora non siamo ancora stati.

Foundation Stories

I like coming-of-age stories. I like them in films, I like them in novels, I even like them in songs. They talk to me.

But I have realised when I talk about the coming-of-age genre with some people, the term can be reductive. They think of Dawson’s Creek rather than Brideshead Revisited. Don’t get me wrong, I used to love Dawson’s Creek. But coming of age isn’t only about teenage years. It’s about becoming. About the moments that explain why we became who we are.

I’ve been wondering whether “foundation stories” is a better way to think about it. We’re used to nations having foundation stories. The British refer to tales of King Arthur and his Round Table and to our finest hour, standing alone against the Nazis under Winston Churchill. Although, we didn’t really stand alone, did we? There was an empire that stood alongside us. Perhaps that's the nature of foundation stories. They're less interested in everything that happened than in the version of events that explains who we believe ourselves to be.

The Italians have the revolutionary movements of 1848, the role of Garibaldi, and the partisan struggle against fascism. The French have their Revolution and the founding of the Republic. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity remain central to how France understands itself. Even the United States has its foundation story, though there are few of us on this side of the Atlantic who really understand what happened to the tea in Boston. The details differ, but the purpose is the same. Every nation has stories it returns to in order to explain itself.

And coming-of-age stories do the same thing, right? What is it about this character that explains who they are? Not just who they are in that moment, but how they became that person. Many of those moments happen as we grow into adulthood, which may be why the genre became associated with youth. But we never really stop becoming. Change is a universal human condition. And just as nations continue to revise the stories they tell about themselves, so do we. Perhaps coming of age isn't something we do once. It's something we keep doing. Maybe that's why we never stop returning to these stories, whether in Brideshead, Dawson's Creek, or a place we have not yet visited.