A Holding Space but in A Different Place

 

I first came across Wicked when I read the novel, in the early 2000s. I enjoyed the book’s story and themes, questioning whether are people born evil, made evil or just painted as evil. Isn’t it so easy just to have a villain? We saw the original London West End production of the musical, back in 2006. And last month we saw the first film, in the two film version of it. I enjoyed the film as much as the book and musical, though they are all different, and found myself swept along with the story, but I wasn’t the only one.

During a press junket with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, journalist Tracy E Gilchrist asked this question:

“I’ve seen this week people are taking the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ and really holding space with that and feeling power in that”.

This produced a very emotional response in Erivo and Grande. “That’s really powerful,” said Cynthia Erivo, who played the lead role, Elphaba, in the film. “That’s what I wanted.” Ariana Grande gripped her co-star’s hand as she spoke.

Gilchrist later said, for her, “holding space” was “being physically, emotionally and mentally present with someone or something.” This has all gone onto to be a meme on social media.

Defying Gravity is a very powerful song. It’s sung by Elphaba, the Green Witch of the West, at the end of act one of the musical, and the end of the film, Wicked Part One. Elphaba is fighting back against ignorance and intolerance. She literally flies above it all. It says, no matter how much you try to push me down, I’ll raise above it. It is a great end of act one/part one song and Cynthia Erivo performs it perfectly.

But for me, my “holding space” moment happened earlier in the film, when Elphaba sang “I’m Not That Girl,” performed heartbreakingly well by Cynthia Erivo.

This song comes after the handsome but rather shallow Prince Fiyero (Played with wonderful style by Jonathan Bailey) aids Elphaba in an act of rebellion. As they part ways, Elphaba realises she’s in love with Fiyero, but he loves Glinda (the perfectly blonde Ariana Grande). “I’m Not That Girl” is a painful song of unrequited love, Elphaba knows she isn’t the “girl” for Fiyero, and never will be, but she still loves him.

Sitting in the cinema, hearing Cynthia Erivo singing that song, and I was swept back to being sixteen again. I was hopelessly, secretly and stupidly in love with a straight man who couldn’t see what was happening. To him, I was just a friend. I would never be his “girl” and I left with emotions I had no experience how to cope with. Back then I saw no way out of it.

It’s over forty years ago that I was sixteen, I’ve been with my husband for twenty-six years, yet that song drew me right back to that horrible and painful time of my life. That is the power of a well written song, capturing a specific emotion.

As I sat there, in the cinema, watching Cynthia Erivo’s singing of “I’m Not That Girl,” I was taken right back to being sixteen, to those hopeless emotions. It caught me off guard, I hadn’t expected those emotions and for a moment I remembered that pain.

It was a surprise to have my “holding space” moment, watching Wicked. I’d seen the stage musical, in which I saw “I’m Not That Girl” performed by Idina Menzel. But in the cinema, with the framing and close-ups of Cynthia Erivo’s singing, it heightened the emotions. It certainly dragged up those memories for me.

But that is the power of great songs, to draw us into the emotions and story of a song. Don’t we all have one song or another that is special for us, a song that will take us back to a certain time, a song that can remind us of something good or bad that happened to us, a song that always reminds us of a certain person. This is the power of combining the right music and lyrics, to invoke emotions and/or memories in others. It’s a skill I don’t have.

I wish I could write songs, and I have tried in the past, but they were really awful. So instead I’ll carry on writing fiction about screwed-up people and writing essays from my life. If I can create a “holding space” for someone with my writing, that would be worth it all.

 

Drew

Another Man Called Drew

 

He was the first Englishman I met who was also called Drew. I had met several men called Drew when I visited America, but he was the first other English Drew I met.

Growing up, I hated my first name, and the very common abbreviation of it, which people frequently called me by. I felt trapped by my first name and dreamed of when I could be old enough to change it, though I had no idea what to, my choice of name would change almost month from month. Then, in my middle teens, I read an American novel were one of the characters was called Drew. At the end of the novel I found out that Drew was a different abbreviation of my own first name. Drew was different, unusual and I really liked the sound of it. I wanted to be a Drew.

When I came out and later moved to London, I decided to change my name to Drew. I was entering a new life, a life were I would finally live as my real self, so I needed a name that was my name, a name I liked and was comfortable with, a name that suited me. Drew was that name. In Britain, Drew is a rare name, I’d not met anyone else with that name, it made me different and more memorable. Drew would help me be different and to embrace my difference.

I’d been known by my new name for eight years when I met another Drew, during that time I’d not met any other British men with the same name as me, so meeting Drew was a surprise and a delight, finally someone else shared my name.

We weren’t close, I didn’t know him well. He was a friend-of-a-friend. He was a friend of my friend Tim and Tim introduced us one Sunday night. I often went with Tim for a drink, at the South London gay pub The Two Brewers, and Drew was part of Tim’s circle of friends. He just seemed to appear one Sunday evening. He was tall, thin framed, with short, neat dark hair and an equally short, neat moustache. His plain featured face always seemed to wear a serious expression, his lips held together in neither a smile or a frown, and his dark eyes seemed to watch everything before him. But when he smiled, which wasn’t often but worth it for those moments he did, his whole face lit up with that smile. He was the tall, quiet man who stood at the edge of the group.

I liked him but I wasn’t attracted to him, but if I had been I would have kept my feelings quiet because Tim was very attracted to him. I could see that in the way Tim behaved towards him, how Tim showered him with happy attention, but Drew didn’t return Tim’s feelings. He wasn’t nasty or standoffish with Tim, as I had seen happen before, he was friendly and warm towards Tim, but he just didn’t return Tim’s affection. I’d seen this happen before, Tim always seemed to fall for men who weren’t interested in him, and it was all so sad. Tim was a good friend and I hated seeing him chasing after affection that was never returned. Tim deserved a boyfriend of his own.

Then one Sunday evening, Drew wasn’t at The Two Brewers pub, but he hadn’t been there other Sundays because of his work, the way I missed some Sundays because of my work. The following Thursday I met Tim and he looked terrible. I asked him what was wrong. Three days before he’d spent half a day in a police station, making a police statement. I was shocked and asked what about. He said Drew had been murdered and he had been the last person to see him alive.

That weekend, London’s two gay weekly newspapers contained stories of Drew’s death, calling him Andrew Collier. Over the following weeks, the mainstream newspapers also reported Drew’s murder because it was the fourth one by the serial killer Colin Ireland. Ireland’s three previous murders, all of gay men, had been unconnected by the police, so he killed Drew to make the police take notice of him. He wasn’t caught until he’d killed for a fifth time. Drew’s murder was caught up in all the press coverage of Ireland’s killings, Drew himself being left behind.

Drew’s murder shocked me, so sudden and so cruel, but the aftermath of it shocked me more. Tim was so hurt and brought low by it. I watched his grief and it was so unpleasant to see. Tim didn’t wear his heart-on-his-sleeve, no public displays of high emotions from him, but I saw how much it affected him and it was hard to watch.

Up to then I had read a lot of detective fiction and fancied I wanted to write detective stories. But the plots I created saw murder as little more than a puzzle, the character’s murder having little to no emotional effect on the other characters, no one really mourning or shocked with grief. Drew’s murder showed me how messy and horrible murder is, how it effects and hurts the innocent and, in Drew’s murder, the guilty showed so little remorse. Tim showed me how a murder disrupts and hurts the lives around it. I felt guilty and shamed for wanting to create silly puzzles from something so painful and disruptive. I abandoned that stupid idea.

I didn’t go to Drew’s funeral, it seemed prurient and voyeuristic to do so, I hardly knew him, he was a friend of a friend. I don’t know if Tim went, I don’t know if he was even told when and where it was, I didn’t ask him, I didn’t know how to. Back then, I didn’t know what to do about Tim’s grief, I just didn’t have the skills.

I lost touch with Tim twenty years ago, when I moved from South to West London. It was only a short move in distance but was such a big change in my life, and Tim was lost in that change. A stupid loss.

Drew was murdered in 1993, he was 33, six years older than me. His death left such a deep effect on me, such a pointless and horrible death. He was a gentle man, a warden in a sheltered accommodation scheme, he had a cat, he was tall and dark haired, he had a smile that lit up his whole face, which he used sparingly. In the years since his death the person he was has been forgotten. Now, if he is remembered, it is as passing reference in a true crime podcast or TV series, that dwells on the gruesome nature of his death, but makes no reference to his life. It is so unfair.

 

Drew

I Forgot My Mother’s Birthday

 

Last month I forgot my mother’s birthday. I was writing on my computer, glanced down at the bottom right corner of the screen, and saw the date. It was my mother’s birthday, or it would have been.

My mother died twenty-three years ago.

At first, after her death, I used the date of her birthday as a time to remember her. Using the date of her death for this was too much, too morbid and too negative. Her birthday was in January, in the cold winter after Christmas, and was always celebrated quietly. When she was alive, I would arrange to post a card and present to her, in time for it. After her death, I would take time, on what would have been her birthday, to remember something about her. I would remember some story or anecdote about her, good or bad. It was my way of remembering her, of keeping her memory alive.

My mother had been ill for a long time with cancer and I had told myself I was prepared, I knew what was happening. Shortly after her diagnosis, she’d had surgery and radiotherapy for it. I wasn’t able to see her, at that time, and didn’t physically see her until two months afterwards. When I did visit my parents I was shocked at how tired and worn she looked. She was sat in the house’s conservatory, reading a magazine, when I arrived, and she looked so old and frail, sitting there in that armchair. Everyone had told me how well she had done since her surgery, how well she had recovered and how she had returned to health, but looking at her, that day, I knew she was ill, I could see it. I kept quiet though, everyone, including her, were being so positive, and how could I rob them of that? I kept it to myself, but I knew my mother was dying.

She declined slowly over the following six years, her health failing her, as my father failed to cope looking after her. I lived two hundred and fifty miles away from them, and I was the only healthcare professional in my family, so my role fell to providing advice at the end of the telephone. I told myself to prepare, to be ready for when she would die. To prepare myself for my family’s reactions, to be the strong one because I had seen this coming.

She died in a hospice, were she was comfortable and well cared for. I had seen her two days before and said goodbye to her, it was clear then to everyone she was dying. I received a call, from my brother, that Tuesday morning, that she had died. She had died in one of the few moments when no one was sitting next to her bed, in a quiet moment when she was left alone. I was prepared for this news, I wasn’t shocked, I was expecting this. I called my partner and told him.

The next day, I was due in work and I was prepared. I had accepted the fact my mother was dying, her death was just the final part of that. So I went into work. I spent the first hour or so of my shift just wandering around the ward, but I wasn’t connected to why I was there. Mid-morning, I went into the ward’s office, where my manager was. She looked up at me and in surprise asked me what was wrong.

“My mother died yesterday,” I replied.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said.

"I don't know," I said and burst into tears.

She sent me home, telling me not to come back to work until after the funeral. She was right.

Grief is a strange and messy thing. I thought I was prepared for it but I wasn’t, how could I be because I didn’t know where it would take me. I didn’t cry at her funeral, sat there in the front pew next to my partner, but I did cry when I was set off by stupid, little things. The sight of her favourite flowers in a shop, the memory of her suddenly leaping into my mind, the sound of a piece of music that she had loved. The strange, physical things that made me remember her.

I had thought I was prepared because intellectually I knew the course of grief, I had studied it, I knew the theory and evidence behind the stages of grieving. But I didn’t know them emotionally, I hadn’t lived them.

Losing a parent is never easy, I found it especially hard because I was only in my early-thirties. I was at the age when people were beginning to expect their parents to retire as they entered “old age”. But my parents were in their early forties when I was born. When I entered my thirties, my parents were entering the end of their lives. I felt cut off from my peers, they couldn’t relate to what was happening to me, their parents were alive and well, were I was living through this too soon in my life. Fortunately, my partner knew exactly what I was facing, he’d lost his mother when he was sixteen. He knew about feeling too young for what was happening.

But as time passed, that grief faded, as all emotions do. Marking what would have been her birthday became less and less urgent, and at some point I forgot to do it.

I can’t remember when I did last mark my mother’s birthday, I stopped doing it so long ago, but I didn’t forget my mother. She had been such a large and dominating part of my life for so long. She had shown me and taught me so many different things, most of which she never meant to. She had been a woman of very strong opinions, opinions that were not to be questioned, and faced with this I had learnt how to argue. My mother, unwittingly, had taught me to argue, because if I wanted to do what I wanted, as a child and adolescent, then I had to win my arguments. The first time I won an argument against her I was fourteen, and it was a glorious moment. I had learnt how to use logic to defeat a steadfast opinion. It is a skill I have used many, many times since.

Watching my mother, as a child, learning why she held her opinions, showed me how to watch and understand other people, a skill I am so grateful to have because it aids me so much as a writer.

So many things still remind me of her, and I have a partner who I can share these with, even if it’s just a short memory, and he does the same about his mother. We keep those women alive in our memories.

That day, as I looked at the date on my computer’s screen, it occurred to me that if she was still alive, it would have been so easy to buy her a birthday present. I could have gone onto Amazon, found the gift I wanted, bought it, and had them gift wrap it and deliver it straight to her. So much more easy. But my mother died before e-commerce became such an easy part of our lives. So much has changed in our world in the relatively short time since her death, would she even recognise our world? Would she even like our world?

When I realised what the date was, I texted my partner and told him.

He replied, “Blimey, how old would she have been?”

“94,” I texted back.

 

Drew