I meant to write this ages ago, back when I went to visit the exhibition, but life got in the way. It was a raw December day, I was tired and angsty from too much red wine the night before and had arranged to meet a friend in Islington in the afternoon, but as soon as I got the paper and saw that there was a new show of paintings by Mamma Andersson I knew I had to just get my act together, get on the train and fight my way through the crowds of Christmas shoppers around Oxford Circus to go to the Stephen Friedman gallery. I have the place to myself and it’s heaven in there, to feel the strain of my swollen hangover brain easing as the nurofen finally kicks in, and to know i have time to walk around slowly and write. When I went to the large show at the Camden Arts Centre last year I filled pages with feverish ramblings about how her paintings made me feel. My notes this time were a little more restrained, but no less infatuated. I might dig them out and see if there’s anything worth transcribing here – but for now, here’s this. Something else that leapt out at me from a Saturday paper – a poem by Kathleen Raine that I loved on first sight and though bits of it almost make me cringe, it still hits a note I like a lot – sums up a feeling I know well.
I believe nothing – what need
Surrounded as I am with marvels of what is,
This familiar room, books, shabby carpet on the floor,
Autumn yellow jasmine, chrysanthemums, my mother’s flower,
Earth-scent of memories, daily miracles,
Yet media-people ask, “Is there a God?”
What does the word mean
To the fish in his ocean, birds
In his skies, and stars?
I only know that when I turn in sleep
Into the invisible, it seems
I am upheld by love, and what seems is
Inexplicable here and now of joy and sorrow,
This inexhaustible, untidy world -
I would not have it otherwise.
· From The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine (Golgonoonza, £20)
