ANECDOTE HOUR 2
From a Report of a project entitled ELDERSTORY

The meeting of earth and sky is a most potent image. It is pretty well the first of all images. It is the father and mother, here; it is the horizon and what’s beyond it, there. In Hesiod’s Theogony Uranus, the sky god, mates with Gaea, the Earth, and from their union come forth the twelve primeval gods and goddesses known as the Titans. One of these goddesses is, in due course, taken to bed by Zeus (the youngest son of another of the Titans, Cronos and, of course, himself a later sky god). They sleep together for nine consecutive nights, and beget accordingly the nine Muses - goddesses of inspiration in learning and the arts, and thus the founts of inspiration for poets right up to the present day and, hopefully, beyond. The name of this goddess is Mnemosyne. Thus, the mother of the nine muses of antiquity and, therefore, an essential benefactor of poets of all time, turns out to be none other than the goddess and personification of memory. If poetry comes to us via the grace of the muse, it comes first to us by the grace of the muse’s mother, which is memory.

This extrapolation from myth that the faculty of memory might be a pre-condition for the creation of poetry is interesting because in people with dementia it is this faculty - the faculty of memory - that is damaged. And yet, in talking with someone who suffers from dementia, it becomes markedly clear that what one is listening to is anything but un-poetic. However, the poetic flow of words is typically muddled and incoherent and, therefore, unsatisfactory either as communication or as effective self-expression. The problem seems to arise (as far as I can see) because the speaker no longer appears able to hold intact that critical control over the elements of language which would formerly have been used to bend the utterance towards his or her will or intention. So, although there is poetic expression in abundance the words take an unrecognisable direction.

It seems to me that if the immortal muse nourishes the mortal poet it is memory, the mother of the muse, whose intercession might be invoked when the kind of mental breakdown associated with dementia occurs; for it is memory that is the central hub holding in place like a magnet all the surrounding interwoven and interdependent features of language which might otherwise fall apart “loosing mere anarchy upon the world”; it is memory that is the co-ordinating and controlling factor rendering manipulable all the myriad wonders of the human faculty for voice, speech and language, for song and poetry. Memory is at the heart of the creative process.

The faculty of memory viewed practically as the effective centre for the organising skills of language is an exciting notion because it could suggest a way in which someone with a memory intact could be of service to someone in whom that faculty is diminished. And, vice versa. Truly, the favour is mutual. There is a famous story in which a blind man with perfectly good legs, and a lame man with perfectly good eyes, team up to form a partnership, which involves the blind man going about with the lame man sitting upon his shoulders. The one lends his eyes to the other; the second lends his legs to the first. Because of the loan of the eyes creative purpose is restored to the blind man’s legs; because of the loan of the legs, the lame man may once again put his eyes to profitable use.

The samples of poems in this collection are taken from a number of similarly symbiotic collaborations which occurred between myself and a number of elderly men and women each medically diagnosed as suffering from dementia. My role with them was a storyteller’s role. It was, with their permission and good will, to endeavour to make available to a wider audience what they still had to say but no longer possessed the organisational means of saying. The idea as I came to interpret it was that where I was able I was to provide as a resource those skills associated with memory which are indispensable to the expressive process. The elders, in their turn, were to supply the words and the poetic impetus.

My task was to engage in dialogue - always, of course, a collaboration - and as a result of the ensuing conversations to produce poems and other texts which could be read from the page, and appreciated by a wider audience.

One of these ways was out of our talk with each other to note down verbatim whatever the elders said, as they said it. One technique used here was to continually and repeatedly recall for them the words and phrases they had just uttered. In recapitulating their words for them, over and over, I tried to make a point of strongly emphasising the vocally rhythmic qualities and the diction present in their speaking (whilst, of course, keeping my manner of speech reasonably natural and congruous) - thus, hopefully, validating and encouraging these ways of speaking out. Sometimes, this method would yield whole, spontaneous poems such as THE HORSE and THE LITTLE SOD from ----The poem THE TWO ROADS by ---- is another example.

I ought to mention that in the case of some poems, such as THE LITTLE SOD and THE TWO ROADS, I hit upon the device of adding the last line (though, only the last line) myself. This seemed to give the effect of integrating the ideas in the poem and of summing up the content without my having to make any further alterations. In this way, I hoped to keep faith with the speaker whilst making the material more accessible to the reader.

Decisions as to how the words reached the printed were of course taken entirely by me. As I listened, I found that it did not seem difficult to hear the speech in terms of written lines. Each speaker seemed to evince his or her own personal verbal rhythm which not only made translation to the “literary” page easier for me but also, as I became more familiar with their individual patterns of speech, helped me to listen and understand with increased awareness.

In this first category also belong numerous little poems, riddles, sayings, aphorisms and jingles characterised by their shortness of duration, pithiness of content and completeness of expression. Once again, the utterances were not interfered with by me, in any way - my part being limited solely to coaxing them out, and arranging the words upon the page. -----‘s memorable haiku, in which she is surely advising me as to a way in which I might more effectively listen to what she is trying to say, is a perfect example of this:

“A little bit of
air taken with the words”

Notice the missing last line of five syllables, representing the “little bit of air”. The absence of this line, together with the subject matter itself, suggests to me the kind of minimalism associated with Japanese culture, of which haiku is a well known example. Now, this may well be a literary accident on ’s part, and a bit of indulgence on mine, but no less exciting for that!

Or, again, -----’s proverb: “ a rose on a road: all work tomorrow ”.

Or, from-----, a plaintive call, a lament, seeming to mourn a fading of the ownership of one’s identity - a sense of loss I would guess to be predominant in the experience of dementia:

I didn’t see
Why they wanted
To get rid of
My “hello"

.. The enigmatic cerebral challenge, with it’s preposterous sense of humour, issued by ---

You can have a
cat instead of
a dog

but you can’t
have a dog
instead of a horse

Or the children’s jingle generated by ------and others during a session in which several of us sat around and indulged in some good old banter:

How many birds fit in a tree
One for You
And One for Me

Or when -----, -----(one of the carers) and I jokingly composed

-----: Who’s come
from wherever
they’ve been ?

-----: It’s wherever they’ve
been they’ve
come from !