In a short poem from 1957, the English poet Stevie Smith homed in on precisely this split between public smiles and private pain. She imagines a man drowning off a beach. Onlookers see his frantic signals but imagine he is just larking around. And, finally, Smith gives us the dead swimmer’s haunting summation of his existence: ‘I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.’ The phrase is compelling because we are, all of us, much more distressed than the people around us realise. And, the flipside of this same coin, other people are much more distressed than we allow ourelves to discover. We don’t pick up on the quiet references to ‘difficulties’, we assume things must be fine, because it’s just so much more convenient that they be so. We were not part of this actor’s life. Many of us are spared his specific troubles. But we are, in some corner of our souls, still a little bit like him – and so are all the people we know; not waving but drowning.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 12:38:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015