V: The Call of the Wild

Heart has had an overwhelming and pervasive fantasy about living somewhere remote, surrounded by what’s left of the natural world. Is this because it’s been a very rainy winter in London or does it go deeper? Because Head is fully adapted to this country and has never had seasonal blues. It loves walking in the rain, thick sweaters and finds London summers equally, if not more oppressive than the short winter days. Its ideal temperature hovers around 24 degrees Celsius, and certainly not above 27. And it’s not really about weather; this year the whole country has been dismal, including the rural bits with their 100 year-old oaks and red squirrels. The feeling (more than a pang) that there is something missing has so occupied Head (and Heart) that it is bleeding into creative production. Head wishes to map body onto geography. A geography that isn’t trapped under concrete, glass and town planning but is instead linked to naturally occurring waterways and untouched strata. Does such a place exist? This is a fantasy, after all.

Head and Heart moved to London to attend art school, and as one might expect, one comes for art school and stays for the artist communities, studio providers, national collections, museums, private galleries, project spaces, teaching and other useful jobs. Of all the cities the Head has ever visited, London is the only one it can countenance living in (bar perhaps Rome). But discontent prevails. Is it a grass-is-always-greener conundrum, such as during that Covid 19 lockdown, when many moved out of London and bought price-inflated country dwellings before resuming normality and moving back again?

Every time Heart has spent a period out of London; say for a residency in Ayrshire or Norfolk, the Head has relaxed. It has not experienced any loss of the conveniences and buzz and social opportunities London can provide. But three weeks away is not a good test. A year would be realistic. The perturbation has probably been exacerbated by having had children; of having to travel some distance for these small people to tread dirt paths or experience open sky that’s not squeezed between and above concrete tiles. It’s not so much a desire to investigate motherhood so much as to re-engage with wonder anew and simple experiences; revisiting the fairy tales, nursery rhymes and myths that developed the Head and dreaming of the countryside in which they came into being.

The Head can’t decide whether this daydream is a utopia or a dystopia. There are definitely monsters – they haven’t left the studio yet – but they are not the absolute worst specimens. They have layers. And their land is one that is almost lost, semi-mythical, far, far from the city, possibly far from this island, but can sometimes be glimpsed through a window-like container painted in trompe-l’oeil.