Derek Jarman: A Biography

9. If You’re Anxious for to Shine

9 If You’re Anxious for to Shine At the close of the summer of 1962 and the start of his final year at King’s, Jarman moved with Michael Ginsborg and his schoolfriend Dugald Campbell, now studying architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic, into a purpose-built block of flats in Coram Street, just north of Russell Square. Three months shy of his twenty-first birthday and ‘free of parental guidance for the first time’,1 he was finally bidding adieu to ‘the never-ending boredom’2 of Metroland and stepping properly on to the road to adulthood. Although the tensions at Merryfield remained well hidden from Jarman’s friends, Betts confided to her brother Teddy’s first wife that she could not bear the atmosphere generated at home by the two men in her life. And when, through the offices of Teddy, who lived in the block and could therefore keep an eye on the youngsters, Jarman and his two flatmates obtained a year-long lease on 11 Witley Court, Betts’ words to Pegs were: ‘It’s better, darling.’ A typical example of early 1930s architecture – square, spare and functional – Witley Court tended to house sedate academics, making it less than ideal for students. Nevertheless, the trio lost no time in stamping their personalities on the flat: ‘At Witley Court we began to redefine our living space . . . we were very aware of the look of our rooms, after those of our suburban parents . . . White paint blotted out the past. The fifties fad of painting every wall a different colour was obliterated.’3 Jarman’s newly painted walls were a blank canvas against which he could artfully arrange his antique reading chair; his books; his paintings; two gold candlesticks of carved wood bought in the flea market in Rome; the ‘friendship’ plant he had been given by Güta Minton; and, of course, the wind-up easel which had come to him from his Aunt Pegs. Money was tight and the three flatmates did not go out a great deal; to concerts always; to films occasionally, especially continental films and what was showing at the Everyman; less often to the theatre; least often, certainly in Jarman’s case, to the pub. With the exception of rare invitations to join Uncle Teddy and his wife, meals were invariably prepared at home and eaten by candlelight. More important, though, than either the food or the lighting, or the classical music invariably playing in the background, was the talk. There was a youthful rivalry between the friends that resulted in an endless and excited exchange of ideas as they jockeyed to establish and define their personae. A revealing and earnest diary entry gives a flavour of what exercised Jarman’s mind during these conversational marathons: I believe great artists paint solely for themselves and the idea of audience participation is irrelevant to the act of creation. Witness van Gogh . . . the artist’s life is one of self revelation and destruction, he destroys his identity and is consumed by some ungovernable force, he might wish to lead a normal life but is incapable unless he destroys that which is his own existence . . . I would like to think I believed in nothing except the sanctity of life, and my own personal experience, [yet] I am muddled . . . and I am afraid to become unmuddled . . . You know you are alone when you paint, you know it is a solitary experience, you know it depends for its end on you alone, yet you are still afraid of whether or not you are noticed or the judgment of the passer by – this is the weakness, van Gogh overcame it . . . It is only when you have If You’re Anxious for to Shine 79 had the courage to sacrifice the opinion of yr audience, to produce a painting which you believe to be true in the face of opposition and to cling to it as yr only hope that the isolation is complete, the way is open. Pity the day you have a retrospective; you know you are in the grave. Roger believes in Christ, I cannot, the step is too great, it needs complete denial of self to suprahuman concepts, I believe only in my own experience . . . and at this stage I can only feel failure at my own inability to release this self.4 In Modern Nature, Jarman paints a vivid, detailed, yet oddly impersonal...