by David Yeadon
Beka rose and fumbled under the bed. “Are you ready…?”
Anne and I sat in rapt anticipation.
“Hope you’re not queasy types.” She laughed as she slowly pulled out what at first looked like a large, long bundle of weatherworn plaited ropes intricately bound around…a real human skeleton!
“Oh, my God!” whispered Anne, retreating to the far corner of the room.
“Jeez!” I think I said, or something equally inane.
“One of Dad’s early masterpieces!” Beka giggled.
And I must admit that once the first shock had passed, I became intrigued with the incredibly complex binding patterns and tendonlike rope trusses of Steve’s creation. The skulls, the hands, the legs and feet, the carapace of dried and sewn animal skin, the locks of horsetail hair—all cocooned in endless but meticulously crafted tangles of twine and braided rope. Words again proved redundant. We all just sat looking at the…creature.
Frightening, proud, bizarre—like a huge African tribal idol. And I remembered something Steve had said quietly in his dust-shrouded studio: “My creations are kind of arks that sail through time…” And his other written comment: “I began to wonder if I was getting into something dangerous…”
I wasn’t too sure about the “danger,” but we all certainly sensed a dark, timeless totemic presence and power in that figure. Something that even another pot of tea downstairs with Beka and her parents couldn’t quite dispel.
It’s amazing what keeps popping up on the backroads of this strange little island. We’d suspected that, in a small-pond-big-fish kind of way, we’d discover excessive narcissisms here, twittish and tweedy one-upmanships, gonzo literati, and aesthete-harridans from Hades. And admittedly we did find a few “little emperors in grass castles” preening themselves with clip-job lives, and the intellectual quackery of artificially constructed egos barricading their carefully constructed—but usually utterly undeserved—reputations. But, in this curiously unpeopled island, we left them to float on in their fragile ego-crafts down into the drowsy half-dark. We enjoyed instead the company of those who seemed to have true vision and the willingness to undertake the hard work that shapes their arduously crafted meditations and creations.
Islands can offer moods of sweet, benign latency—an immense dreamscape of possibilities—a constant search for “there must be more” insights. And this we found on Harris. In abundance.
19
Visiting the Bard
AN ARTIST, A SCULPTOR, A photographer—but, so far, no writer. Then, as soon as I read that first paragraph of Alasdair Campbell’s book Visiting the Bard, I knew I’d found a true island voice—a Hebridean James Joyce with all the lilt, insight, crackle, and bite of a visionary poet:
Back on the island, on a loose scree clifftop at the back of Aird, flat gray skelfs of Lewisian gneiss shift, clattering, under your feet, as your rig boots seek then secure a purchase, the district of Ness extends to your right in a blue haze, a darker blue stripe of road running through it, and under a high flaring sky, the Atlantic, streaked with tidal rips and currents, stretches beyond the faint curving rim of the world, impossibly huge in the glistening space of afternoon light. Over the limitless waters, a deep-ocean wind sweeps cloudshadows, snaps the trousers against your braced legs, brings tears to your eyes. Confronted with this immensity, a primeval fear bates your breath, turns your stomach to ice—where is your defiance now? where is all your arrogance?
The Outer Hebrides have lured and nurtured more than their fair share of celebrated writers—Martin Martin, Johnson and Boswell, J. M. Barrie, Compton Mackenzie, Finlay J. Macdonald, and more recently, of course, John MacLeod, Alison Johnson, Derrick Cooper, John Murray, Norman MacDonald, Angus Peter Campbell, and the Nicolson family—Nigel and his son, Adam.
But many of these individuals were outsiders. What the islands invariably lacked, certainly in recent times, was their own true born-and-bred bard with a cadenced voice as strong and resolute as the ancient rocks here, and a vision that mingles detail, tone, emotion, and Gaelic-tinged humor into a magic mix resonating with truth and power.
Alasdair Campbell is that bard and I wanted to find him. Badly.
“Och, he’s a hard man to pin down…always moving about…,” I’d been warned by one of my local informants.
“Well, dear me, now, I’m thinking he’s way up in Ness—way, way up,” another one told me, making that little outpost at the northern tip of Lewis sound as if it were lost somewhere in the deepest Arctic.
“He’s not a very patient man,” said a third, implying that I would likely not receive a warm welcome even if I went “way, way up.” “Oh—an’ he’s got a great love o’ the Gaelic…an’ the bottle…so they say.” Doubtless a suggestion that even if I made the journey, I’d be unable to decipher even a word of what he said, either due to great gushes of the native tongue or the confusions of a whisky-laced brain.
I thought a judicious phone call might indicate the appropriateness of an impromptu visit.
“Who d’y’say y’are again?” a deep voice with a distinct burr asked.
I explained for a second time.
“And y’want to do what?”
“I’m reading Visiting the Bard for the third time and I’d like to meet its creator.”
There was one of those distinctly pregnant pauses.
“Third time, eh?”
“Yes. And who knows, maybe even a fourth. It gets better each time…”
The voice warmed and laughed. A genuine, hearty laugh. “So, when are y’comin’ up?” Alasdair asked.
“Tomorrow. Day after. Whenever.”
“You’ve got that much free time, eh?”
“For you—yes.”
More laughter. “Nice jammy life y’ve got there!”
“I guess you could describe it that way.”
Warm chuckles and silence. Then, “Ah, well. How ’bout tomorrow. Around one o’clock.”
“Great!” I gushed. “And thanks.”
“Well, we’ll see about the thanks later…”
I detected a slight menace in the chuckling voice.
My informant was right about Ness being “way, way up.” But it was a fine, clear day over the North Harris ranges, across the vast bronze-olive wastes of Barvas Moor and up the arrow-straight road toward the cliff-bound tip of Port of Ness and the Butt of Lewis. I passed surprisingly hay-rich, Irish-green croft fields sprinkled with sheep and the occasional Shetland cow. Compared to the croft houses of Harris, their Lewis counterparts seemed larger, whiter, and altogether more prosperous. My landmark was “a wee kirk” on the left side of the road at Dell and then a rough track to “the largest house around.” “Y’can’t miss it,” Alasdair had told me “…an’ it’s not mine. Writin’ books doesn’a buy a place this size!”
Alasdair Campbell—Writer
Actually, there was no need for such modesty, as it wasn’t that much bigger than many of the “improved” crofts I’d seen on my journey. But I quickly realized that despite his celebrity as the “Lewis Bard” and a host of BBC playwriting and teaching credentials, the man had a genuinely modest outlook about himself and his reputation.
He stood waiting at the door. Tall, distinguished—almost professorial—and smiling.
“So—you made it all the way from the sweet sands of Seilibost?”
“A superb drive. For a change. After two weeks of gray glop.”
“Ah, yes, the joys of our Hebridean climate…come on in. Park y’self by the fire.”
Yet another fine peat fire—glowing amber with a faint traditional earthy “reek”—in a cozy room filled with worn leather armchairs.
“So—tell me again. Who are you and whad’y’want of me?”
The first part was easy. I gave him a minibio. But the second was not. What did I really want of this man whose two books—Visiting the Bard and The Nessman—had given me more insights into island life and ways than almost anything else I’d read? And I’d read a lot. Ou
r little cottage was awash with books on the Hebrides. I’d relished them all, but something in the verbal power, pungent Proustian imagery, and almost tactile characters of Alasdair’s work, possessed deeper and far more poetic resonances. How to tell him all this without sounding unduly sycophantic? In the end I just told him the truth: “The first pages of my copy of Visit- ing the Bard are an utter mess of underlining and scribbles—in fact, I should really buy another. I can hardly read the text with all my comparative notes about James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan—I think there’s even a mention of Henry James alongside some of your longer sentences—oh, and sometimes flashes of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs…”
Iron Age Carloway Dun
Alasdair looked a little embarrassed. Maybe, despite my honesty, such comparisons with other oracles of fine oratory were a little overwhelming. “Well, anyhow,” I said, moving away from all the name dropping, “you write as if you’re on a real high—and it makes me high just reading it…”
He roared with laughter. “It’s a good job there’s no bottle around or we’d be toastin’ that remark!”
“Okay,” I said, finally adopting my role as interviewer as our laughter subsided. “Let’s go back. How did your writing begin?”
“All right. Well I wrote m’first…novel, if y’can call it that…when I was in university. I had a tutor—friend of Dylan Thomas. Good critic, though he couldn’t write himself. Encouraged me a lot but, thank Christ, I lost that book. But I banged out another one…possibly the worst thing I’ve ever written. Got rid of that one too. But he wanted it published—his critical faculties were definitely suspect at that time—but I think he enjoyed being my Svengali. He said it had ‘real truth’ in it…”
“Why—are most of your books autobiographical?”
“Not autobiographical, but it has to be pretty close to your own experience if you’re writing fiction. It’s based on characters I know—but a character goes its own way once you start writing. People point out ‘that’s so-and-so and that’s so-and-so and that’s you’ and I tell them it isn’t because, well, for a start these people are Gaelic speakers and I’m writing in English. Some could barely speak English. Bits of it I did in Gaelic and I’ve written quite a few Gaelic books—but Nessman and Bard reflected the fact I was doing plays in English for BBC Radio Four—the afternoon plays, y’know. Then I stopped doing them and I’m pretty sorry now that I did. I lost touch because I was doing a Gaelic radio drama for three years…something like The Archers, that English radio series that’s been running forever. I set mine in Harris because I lived there—in the Bays, Drinishader—four years, when I was married. My wife was a teacher. And I was staying in the schoolhouse there, but we were a bit low on production budgets. I even had to kill off one actor because we couldn’t afford to fly her home from Stornoway every week! And I found out you can’t live by plays alone—or by novels for that matter! Currently I’ve got a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to do six one-act plays in Gaelic and we’re thinking of starting a drama group in Ness.”
“Is The Nessman a popular book? Did it sell well?”
“It certainly sold well regionally…but I don’t really pay much attention once a book is finished. It’d be nice to get rich on royalties, but that’s not the way it usually happens. You’ve got to keep on working—get out, round and about. I was just down at a book festival in Wigtown recently—y’know, reading and signing. First time I’ve done it. Terrible panic at the beginning but after that I found the audience was very friendly—they weren’t throwing cabbages and the like. I was in there a couple of hours and most of the time I was okay. But it’s a wee bit nerve-racking. It’s the way of the world now. You have to be a performer. Seems to be that way. TV talk shows. Bookstores. You get to feel like a traveling salesman. Performing and writing don’t really go along together. The performer takes over. Dickens killed himself doing that—especially on that American tour. Dylan Thomas too…and James Joyce.”
“I told you I could sense flickers of all those and other writers in your books.”
“Well, I don’t imitate them. But inevitably your style is formed by what you read and admire…it’s probably what Robert Louis Stevenson called ‘the imitating ape’ in me. I have to be very, very wary when I’m writing. Whoever I happen to be meeting at the time is goin’ to come into it…and then I have to make sure I don’t let style—the influences of other writers—mold the actual words and experiences. Y’have to clear your mind of such influences as much as y’can—but they’re still there. I certainly admit that Joyce is an influence on my writing, but there again, almost every writer who came after him has been affected by him to some extent. He liberated the language…the thoughts…the whole approach to what writing really is. I mean, he truly is the giant of the twentieth century.”
“Do you use a word processor? My editor believes the computer has done enormous damage to writing in general.”
Alasdair threw his hands in the air and shouted, “Oh, yes! True, true, true! Ah…the ubiquitous computer…it’s very dangerous…all too easy…looks too neat…you can’t see the bad stuff at all. The problem with many writers is there’s a helluva lot of superfluous stuff you have to wade through…the computer has made that much worse. Too fast—too finished. With prose writing, y’have t’keep revising it…y’have t’keep going back to it…removing the superfluous, the weak parts, the stuff in it that maybe makes you laugh but doesn’t get the story out…and in a lot of prose writing, exorcism is vital!”
“Yes, right, ‘kill your darlings’ and all that—but of course you Gaels are not known for minimalistic prose.”
“Absolutely! The Gael is very fond of not using one word when ten will do…the winter nights were very long here and very much in that tradition of the ceilidh. It’s just about dead now, of course, ’cause of that bloody TV box. It was all so wonderful…in this part of the island in particular there were drinking places, y’know, the bothies in the village—a lot of Visiting the Bard took place in those bothies. Not secretive, every village had one or two and that’s where the men went—no women—and you went every night and…it was pretty good, to put it mildly. The stories, well, they could stretch out sometimes over a whole week. Those long stories. They were the real ceilidh spirit! Sammy MacLeod can tell great stories in Gaelic and in English—well, y’know that because he told me you’ve met him. But the stories you get that someone might translate for you—they lose just about everything…it really depresses me. The new people who come here, they don’t make any effort to learn the language or, if they do, they start writing spurious nonsense—some on Skye do it all the time. They’ll never be ‘of the place’—never will be…just can’t do it. My characters are all Gaels…I just can’t get into the head of an Englishman. I wouldn’t presume to do such a thing.”
Alasdair paused. The Gaelic language was obviously a key touchstone of his life and his art—but frowns kept forming on his forehead. “Y’see—this is one of the last places in the world where the language is used on a daily basis. Maybe a little in Wales too, with the Welsh language. But we’re not going to be able to fully revive the Gaelic because we’re being taken over and more and more outsider people are settling here who just won’t learn it. So Gaelic is dying. It’s moribund, despite the efforts to legally revive it. People who sold a leaky garage in London can move into a full croft up here and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no way of stopping it. This is the way of the world and that’s it. I mean, y’re not gonna put a house on the market and stipulate that only Gaelic speakers can bid! Very worthy idea—but no. Och, the remnants of us will be ready for the grave soon, wasted hopes and tattered dreams—jibbering to one another in Gaelic—and no one knowing what we say.”
“There’s a great Gaelic spirit in the way you describe the land, the island topography, the moors…”
“Ah, the moors. I know these moors. I’ve lived on these moors and among all the remnants of ancient cultures a
round here. You don’t have to be very long on the moors before you realize…y’become very quiet in y’self…what Yeats called ‘peace dropping slow.’ The proud Gaelic melancholy of all that wild blackland…and all that silence. It gets into you. It was wonderful on the sheilings up there in the summers—with the cattle. My mother taught me so much…the lowing of the cattle, the birds, y’see the weather comin’ for miles…and all that silence. The silence of the moor. The silence is what the old people always talk about and they all say the same thing about the moor—you didn’t want to come off it, you only wanted to stay. Y’know what it does t’you? When you come off the moor? If y’been in a shieling or suchlike for a month…it’s all so bloody noisy when you come off…why’s everybody so churlish and talking so loudly! All that shouting!
“I know people from Ness—they’d wait for April and then they’d be up there and that’s where they’d all stay until October. Maybe walk back once a fortnight or so for eggs and suchlike. I would love—before I die—to spend a lot more time up there, but the paths we took are now heathered up because there are no sheep left—I’ll need to take a young folk or two to clear the way and someone with second sight to warn us of all the dangers!”
“Second-sighters keep creeping into your books…and ghosts too.”
“Ah, yes—they’re good, good stories. This is what the ceilidh was great for. I mention the ghost stories in my books just as it was in our house. I know Lewis people with second sight. Many people. They didn’t think it was anything special. But today—they’ve really gone and mucked up our ghosts. Electricity, cars, TV, telephones, and all those things—a decent ghost wouldn’t hang around here with all this palaver. How can a ghost survive? What would be the point?!”
Our meandering conversation moved on to other things—stories of Alasdair’s life on the oil rigs in the North Sea, his two failed marriages, and his still optimistic activities to recharge the Gaelic spirit and language against all the rampant odds of a faster, more fluid, open-to-change world.