This month, to celebrate
my two year anniversary as an abba blogger, (I know. Doesn’t it?) I’ve decided
to do something different. For once I’m not going to waffle on but invite you,
the reader, to use what follows as a reflection space. I hope that in doing so
you will be able to find just a little bit of quiet in your every day and it
might then encourage you to do more of the same and grab a few more
opportunities than you usually do.
Before I do that
however, I need to talk about the Welsh concept of Hiraeth.
Hiraeth is one of those
indefinable words – impossible to actually pin down and yet we know its essence
when the word is both spoken and described to us. It is variously - longing, yearning, seeking or wishing to recapture someone or something which has gone. There are correlations with similar words and definitions in other languages, but being more of an instinctive person than a wikipedia one, I prefer to leave it to the individual.
My own first experience
of Hiraeth was rather an odd one. A few months before I moved from Somerset to
Wales, I attended a friend’s book launch in Glastonbury. I bought a copy of his
book and made like a fan so he could sign it. What he wrote in it was this.
‘Lift high the cup of
Hiraeth.’
He doesn’t remember
writing it, or where the inspiration to do so came from, but long before I knew
the word, those few words of John's had managed to convey and even predict the future I would have when
I moved here to Meifod and the beautiful Vyrnwy Valley – an ever changing web of inspiration and sadness, beauty and loss.
I love Wales and
especially the place I live, but it is often hard. Sometimes that’s just how it
is – the places we love are those that most challenge us. I remember standing
by the bridge when I first arrived and wondering where the sadness I was
feeling was coming from. When I found out about the concept of Hiraeth, it all
began to make sense.
The myths and stories of
Wales are full of sadness of course. In one of the most famous, the story of
Branwen, Daughter of Lir, the second ‘branch’ of the collection called the
Mabinogi, there is a famous sequence involving a singing head. Essentially, Bran’s disembodied head keeps the only seven survivors of a great battle both
entertained and enchanted for over eighty years, until one of them Heiliyn
Gwyn, opens the door to the West. In doing so he lets in not just the natural
elements but the power and sadness of all the terrible memories that the
enchantment has so far held at bay.
Perhaps there is nothing
quite so sad as a good spell that has been prematurely broken, especially if the reasons for casting it in the
first place have been kindly and therapeutic. We cannot unmake the past and our
sadness no matter how much we might wish to. Only the arts are able to do this and perhaps in doing so, gift us with a therapeutic base on which to build our
future. Literature is full of sadness and occasionally there are places
where the sad and those not quite healed of their griefs and the horrors
and traumas they have witnessed, can go. I wonder whether Tolkien was aware of the
concept of Hiraeth because in The Grey Havens he surely provided a place where
the ring bearers, as well as the retiring elves, might be able to escape from it.
And so much of music too, in all its forms and varieties, is about sadness, about relationships failing and unrequited love. At the beginning of the
film of Nick Hornby’s, High Fidelity, Rob, the main character
played by John Cusack, reflects on whether parents ever really understand just
how dangerous it might be to allow their children to listen to all that stuff about love and death. The answer, I suppose, is that of course they do, as they probably did the same thing
themselves.
Maybe there is something
to be said for such a form of therapeutic sadness, exposing us all to the
ideas from an early age through the eyes and minds of others, so that by the time we come
to realise it for ourselves, we will be that much readier. And of course that's what you find in so many fairy and traditional tales, and why it is all the more vital that children continue to read and engage with them.
This time last year I
posted about my partner and her on-going struggles and about how this connected
with the futurelearn course I was doing on mental health in literature. I was
very moved by the many responses, but even gladder to share people’s
recommendations for poetry which reflected the many aspects of this, and how they felt. It was the
power of poetry which on that one occasion most helped Rosie and which, I have read - time and
time again – has done the same
for others.
So here
are a few pictures of the place where I live in Wales, and where the gift of Hiraeth
is sometimes overwhelming. Perhaps you
can think of some lines of poetry which any of these images remind you of, or
you might simply take the space to reflect on the idea of Hiraeth and maybe
with it the places, people or memories which particularly tug at you.
Of course it might also encourage
you to dig through your own photo collection and find the ones which most evoke
such feelings and maybe some poetry which goes with it. Thanks everyone for the last two years and I'm looking forward to more.
Steve Gladwin - 'Grove of Seven' and 'The Year in Mind'
Writer, Performer and Teacher
