Human Flower Project

Pruner’s Diary


Photography, teaching, reading, riding, fund-raising can’t crowd out the gardener in John Levett. Out come the pen, and shears, just in time.


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Essay and photos by John Levett

This piece of writing is not about gardens. More follows.

I have the advantages of retirement—state pension, teacher’s pension and time. I spend most of the first on train fares but still have some left over for savings which will go on Istanbul. The second, time, I fill with all the energy and inefficiency that I did whilst working for the pension.

I have projects. Getting up in the morning is a project. Walking to the shops is a project. Sitting in the summer garden, in the deckchair, reading is part of the ‘Ten histories and ten biographies by the end of March’ project. My photography goes according to the project—even if it didn’t start as one it finishes as one once the final click clicks.

I currently have the benefit and no small honour of being a Visiting Researcher of a college of London University. This came completely out of the blue and is better for that. I have the added benefit that I can enjoy all the academic benefits bestowed by a fine college with none of the exams that my last stint in a university had attached to it. As I wrote in my letter of grateful acceptance, “Thank you for this opportunity to fill my boots!”

It also means that I have more projects. I walk into a university for the first time in forty years, look at the lectures, seminars, proposals, collaborations on offer; take a tour of the library; sit in on a casual meeting with the next desk occupant; pick up the latest departmental publication, read the latest email digest—how can one not have projects?

imageThe wondrously other thing about my elevation is that it comes with being exclusively associated with photography. I study, research, talk, participate in, work with, do photography.

This is why there are no gardens here. This month, no time.

No time for gardens! Not exactly. I’m pruning. Since three months ago the Fen part of UK has been universally covered with grey with a variety of stuff falling from it—real snow, imitation-can’t-really-be-bothered snow, mist, almost mist, a miscellany of rains. Still gotta prune.

This is a problem. I know when to, how to, how far to, what to. But the garden is changing. I’m trying to think and picture five years from now. I want more variety, more space for sun at the roots, something that fits ageing of me and garden. I hate that last bit but …

The other ‘but’ is how to garden & do projects. (I know the garden is a ‘project’ but the garden ‘project’ is partially to evolve it into a ‘non-project’—less work, less production, more potter.) I now co-ordinate two photography groups of significantly different composition, chair a weekly economics seminar, lecture, am at the beginning of a London-wide two year photography initiative, have two exhibitions coming up, a third to organize. I love it. I love busy. But want the non-doing bit too if only to relax & decide in comfort what the next doing bit will be. I’ve never had the habit of Zen.

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Rather, I want the bits of Monet that fit. I want his garden and his ease with his art and his ease with his mates. I think I’ve currently got the frantic. Hence no gardens here. Hence I’m writing this on my deadline day. This morning I’m up at four, do the morning bits, eat, write mail, send mail, catch the six-fifteen out of Cambridge, arrive around seven-thirty at Kings Cross (it’s a stopping train), find a coffee shop (no names to protect the ethically-challenged), drink espresso, eat an almond (heavily-sugared) croissant and write a poem. The poem’s a project. At the last photo meet, one of our group presented a poem; we’re interpreting the poem, writing one too. I’m here in Euston Road writing my poem. I’m writing all day today. No gardens.

My college is in south London. South is different from North. It’s got different criminals and an audience (still) for Freddie Jackson. My college is out south on a limb; a lot of people still think south’s not so much London, just somewhere you pass through on the way out of it. When I was doing a bit of growing up in south London (after the Luton years) my college was just a tad faded. It was known as a teacher-training college and not for much else. Then came the ‘80s and BritArt. Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Liam Gillick, Steve McQueen, Michael Landy, Richard Patterson, Simon Patterson, Sam Taylor-Wood all from the college. It became the only place to be. It has a buzz that’s like nowhere else. Admittedly I’ve been away from college for more than some people’s lifetimes but I’m challenged by more possibilities than I ever had in the last; questioned more, doubting more, acquiring more, challenged more, working more. Filling my boots.

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It’s mid-morning. I leave college. I’m co-exhibiting in April in a gallery close by. I walk from New Cross down to Greenwich. I’m photographing, not thinking, just illustrating. New Cross becomes Greenwich around Deptford Creek and prices go up. I’m raising sponsorship so I’ve got letters to deliver. Sun’s out, delivering’s fun, people smile, may give. I pop into the gallery, the curator’s away so I talk with an artist who’s repairing walls and pop round to his studio to see recent work. We talk about layers of London, ‘Capital’ by Maureen Duffy, ‘Hawksmoor’ by Peter Ackroyd, painting and photography. I go back to the gallery, drink tea with a friend and talk photography more. I learn much from talking with this friend particularly slowness and pacing myself. I store the learning for now and move off. More deliveries then nuclear-strength tea and and apple and blackcurrant tart in the Buenos Aires restaurant with soft sofas and space to write. I start writing this, looking at photographs of Diego Maradona on the walls wondering what pressure was on him playing in the age of Jorge Videla.

I have a meeting at six with two colleagues from the photography group. This is about my second group exhibition; more sponsorship talk. I’m putting together a piece on Colin St. John Wilson architect of the British Library and almost-architect of Liverpool Civic Centre in the ‘60s before being dismissed (the proposal that is) as ‘Too Fascist’. My piece is a rumination-cum-inquiry-cum-critique on how a building can be ‘too Fascist’ and wondering if being ‘just a little Fascist’ might have got it built.

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Back into central London and out north to Stanmore for the opening of a group’s exhibition on ‘Metroland.’ I’m walking around wondering where art would be if it weren’t sponsored by artists. I’m flagging but uplifted; I’m amongst ‘my people’!

I meet up with the curator, tell her of my poem, she tells me of her discovery on this day of an ancient archive and would I like to work with it. This being the age of filling my boots I say ‘Yes’. ‘Yes’ to everything that comes my way. Get thee out of the garden and say ‘Yes’ to any likely lad, lady and boozy bourgeois. I walk the exhibition and marvel at the changes that my friends have made in their work; it’s good to see people moving on, out of the comfort zone, challenging themselves, saying ‘Yes.’ Someone wants to buy my work. ‘No’ I say, ‘Have it for free.’ It’s another way of saying ‘Yes.’ It saves on carriage costs too.

South to Kings Cross through the nowhere land of Queensbury, Neasden, Wembley Park and Baker Street. Home by eleven-thirty. Fruit tea, pasta salad, soughdough bread. Reading list: ‘The Black Book’ by Orhan Pamuk. I discovered Pamuk at the time of his being roughed-up over his statements on the Armenian massacres. I read ‘Istanbul.’ I was taken by his use of the Turkish word ‘huzun’ to convey the communal feeling of a deep emotional loss but having an undertow of hope and expectation. There’s a complexity about his work that draws me. I think back at the artist I met at lunchtime and the intricacy and difficulty of his work and his ways of looking at the city; of having walked from one ‘south London’ to another ‘south London’ and embracing difficulties in making sense of a short walk. I’m thinking of the day and its bits and they fall together; one brain part trying to pigeon-hole all the parts & another part allowing them to fall where they will. I go back a re-read a couple of pages of Pamuk; they’re a great couple of pages but I can’t remember what they said. Then I think Holden Caulfield had a line about that; about that being some kind of great sentence but he was damned if he could remember it because someone was talking all the time and in my case it’s my brain that’s yet to slow down.

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The thing about days like this is that I’m still thinking that I’ve got to be fitting it all in but knowing all the time that I don’t and that I can drop it at any time and take that long walk to Istanbul. I start to think of Patrick Leigh Fermor who decided to walk across Europe starting at the fag end of 1933 (some year to start taking a last look at Europe) and arrived in Constantinople at the start of 1935 in the company of a couple of books one of which was Horace’s ‘Odes.’ To take an idea and to take off. Drop everything and take off. I kid myself that I could and know that’s not what I’m going to do. I’ll see things out; I have a dependency problem that way. Finish what you start. Eat the last spud on the plate. Finish the book; always finish the book. I’ve put a few down these last couple of years but the guilt still stays. I won’t be walking to Istanbul this year. I’ll be out tomorrow for another sponsorship meetup. After pruning. Gardens tomorrow. None today. Enough. Finished before the end of deadline day.



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