Porlock

For those who are aware of what has happened over the last few years this posting will seem ironic. Having gone through the worst mindstorm, the closest brush with death, the dissolving of the self and its reconstruction one looks for bouys to cling to in the sea of dissolution. It was as much a creative crisis as a mental illness, as much the reassembly of a passable identity as physical disability.
Some may be familiar with the literary term Porlock. Porlock is the site where the last few years of my creative endeavour has gone. When writing Kubla Kahn, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was interupted by an unwanted visitor from Porlock who stuck his neck through the window and proceeded to insistently talk trivia such as the uncharacteristic nature of the weather. This was endured by Coleridge for some 60 minutes.  'Porlock', is now a literary allusion to unwanted intruders who disrupt inspired creativity.
Kubla Kahn came to Coleridge in an opium induced dream. Some speculate that his story of the visitor is a cover for what is common to all drug users, the feeling of having discovered something great but being unable to produce it. What I believe takes place, and this is the characteristic of halucinogenic creations, they are halucinatory; they only seem to be there. Coleridges great vision is largely forgotten thanks to the unwanted intruder from Porlock.
Thomas De Quincy in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater speculated that the visitor was Dr P Arron Potter who regularly bought Coleridge laudanum, the suspension of opium in alcohol that was popular at the time.
This year, Howard Hodgkin has made a painting called Porlock, his coming in the manner of a phone call. Hodgkins well documented suicide attempt took place on a tubeway station nearly 50 years ago. It was prompted by a poisonous remark from the painter Richard Smith, 'it doesn't matter if you are a painter or not'. This stuck in Hodgkins head.
Last year my life had spiralled completely out of control. To talk of the ingredients of the malaise does little to clarify. Some of them are similar. A creative confusion stirred up by poisonous commentary, dissolution and decent in to substance misuse, suicide attempts and interventions from outsiders in to my work coming out of Porlock.
Hodgkin is now in his 80s and overcame his mindstorm and went on to make great art. I hope to do the same.