Talking to myself

After my Part III exams at Cambridge, I decided to teach myself German.  I did this in my room at the top of the Queen’s tower, opposite the chapel and clock tower.  From its windows you had one of the best views in Cambridge, looking out over the plush sward of Trinity’s Great Court, with the Great Hall on the left and the porters’ lodge in the top right-hand corner.  During the month that I had to learn the language, I would often sit in the alcove, watching the world go by, and talking to myself.

In fact I spent most of that period talking to myself in one way or another.  Much of the time it was in German, since I need the sound of a word to learn it.  Interspersed with my constant repetition of words and phrases, mostly out loud, I would commune with myself on nothing at all.  Since my friends had already gone down, I rarely spoke to anyone else.  I can honestly say that during that month I had some of the best conversations ever, and found my mind pullulating with ideas and thoughts.

Similarly, I have found other times of my life when I have been alone fruitful in this way.  Whether this was when I had just moved down to London, and was unemployed and so had nothing better to do, or when I was on holiday wandering the Greek islands, at such times I have found anything and everything was liable to send my thoughts racing after some mental butterfly, only to relinquish it at the sight of another, yet more brightly coloured or elusive.

I remember those times with fond affection, partly because like most memories, they are bathed in a warm glow of nostalgia which smooths out the rough edges of inconvenience, and partly because like youth, they represent a lost time to me.  Today, in the hustle and bustle of my very full yuppie life, I am rarely on my own and never idle.  It is therefore a long time since I have had a really good heart to heart with myself.

Though my present lifestyle has ample compensations, I do miss this talking.  I miss the immediate understanding I can offer, the absence of any need to fill in details or sketch their background. Instead, I can proceed with concocting thoughts at their most fresh and daring.  With myself, the feedback is so instant that the inspiration is rarely lost.  Bouncing an idea back and forth between my split yet unitary self is like an image in two parallel mirrors, shadowing itself to infinity.

I feel less fecund as a result. My thoughts and inspirations are few and far between, I must husband them.  Inevitably my work eats up many.  However, at least those that are left, poor as they may be, become all the richer for being rare and more occasional.  Perhaps that is why I produce these essays when I can, why they represent no drudgery, but an almost self-indulgent luxury.  Often they are sparked off by one of these little illuminations.  After chewing on it for a few minutes, savouring its particular insight, enjoying the afterglow of minor creativity, I will often try to fix it by committing it to a written form.  In the course of filling the page, new thoughts may, sometimes, emerge.  If these thoughts start to match up to the initial inspiration, I begin to feel again the old joys of the interior monologue.  And so do I.

(22.6.86)

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