Self Portrait 14

It seemed really easy at the beginning – one-month, a theme, and self-portrait.

Easy.

I had a photo, a drawing, I could do another – and if I got stuck for inspiration I could always run through body parts; surely there are enough to fill a month.

Then the outside came in!

First by laying down a challenge – “Will you strive to be revealing with some instances of deceiving? In between your arriving and leaving, unheard stories we'll be receiving.”

Then, when I rhetorically questioned how I was doing, particularly about the having been revealing part, the answer came back –“No you haven’t”

Oh.

I thought I had.

I have hinted at deception at least twice and I even posted a photo of my bum!

Clearly, not enough!

I’m reading a book at the moment – Driving Home by, hang on, I’ll go and look…..

Jonathan Raban.

It’s subtitled An American Scrapbook.

Incidentally, I had a friend once called Johnathan. Johnathan Nutall – we must have been about 9 or 10 years old.

He was my mate, but he could be troublesome at times.

I was fairly tall for my age and skinny, he was little and skinny and wore a huge pair of national health spectacles.

He might even have had one of the arms of the spectacles held on with a big plaster.

What was particularly annoying was his habit of trying to stand up to the local louts – we would be walking along and have to pass a group of adolescents. They would invariably start to mock us, jostle us etc, I would invariably put my head down and get ready to run ( I new I was fast) and Johnathan would invariably stop and try to stand up to them.

No.

Come on, let’s run.

And he would peer up through his glasses and tell them off.

We, or me -being the taller one - got beat up so much.

Our friendship did not endure.

I’m not sure why I told you that – probably I’m trying to engender sympathy.

Anyway – in the book I’m reading – the other Jonathan talks quite a lot about reading.

In discussing a writer – William Epsom – he observes; “He was equally alert to the way in which language so often betrays the writer.”

Good point, and one I’m painfully aware of.

It’s all about reading between the lines folks.

And all will be revealed!

Mr Raban goes on to say – “revealing what is really at the back of the writer's mind when he tries to assert the opposite.”

Somebody else, whose name I can no longer remember, said, “all great art is made with an audience of one in mind”.

It might be true of lesser art too.

Or attempts as lesser art even.

Or at peering-through-national-health-spectacles level art perhaps.

Or attempts there-at!