Breathe

S1E9

“I don’t know whose parrot that is, but I’m going to go see it.” Max brilliantly declared as we finished our gelato in the seaside city of Brighton and I headed for a quick bathroom break. When I’d emerged from the subterranean restrooms and back into the light, there was Max with a massive blue and gold Macaw on his arm with a beak nearly the size of his head.

This was just one of many delights of what had to be the most jam-packed day yet in my London adventure (and that was saying something given how I planned it). Part of the delight was that I wasn’t in charge of planning. Max, who I had only met over a computer screen months prior, had offered to take me around town while I visited. A day removed from him moving into a new house, we serendipitously had time for me to zip down from London for 3/4 of a day and he was gracious enough to be any part at all. Meeting me at the train station with a hug I instantly fell in love with Brighton with every turn. Max’s effervescence and connections helped, of course, but as anyone who has ever been will tell you: it’s a city that is very easy to fall in love with.

Small alleys that gave way to a copse of shops, or a hidden cafe, or a club, or the most bizarre mash-up of a two-hundred year old a royal residence, or most of the time: a gorgeous seaside expanse and a Victoria-era pier we’d chat and stroll on like many before us. Within the charms of its shape were also the most delightful people and sentiments of progressive togetherness I’d ever felt. It was like the promise of San Francisco, the quirk of Greenwich Village, and the unanimity of Glasgow all rolled into a sweet treat for anyone to enjoy.

I was - and am - determined to return. I could see myself, my entire family, spending a whole vacation there. Hell, I could see myself spending months there in a writing retreat or working-from-afar context. I was instantly sending my daughter photos and encouraging her to visit. I was entranced.

Brighton - and Max, truly - are brilliant. But in a way I don’t mean that in the most English version of the term because it also has a connotation I don’t mean. I rather like the more English sentiment of “brilliance being brief.” I once heard a cricket legend comment on another, that they don’t “…want to be brilliant, they want to be great” (this was legendary English bowler Sir Jimmy Anderson commenting on Joe Root). So with that in mind yes I found Brighton and Max brilliant but what really seeped into my skin that day was that if you just regarded its brevity of brilliance you’d miss that the underlying energy and always-on magnanimity made it great. Capital “G” Great.

I was sort-of there for work too! The whole reason I had met Max was so we could potentially find projects to work on together both individually and our respective companies. I can think of no better way to talk about that potential than how we did it, plodding boardwalks, trotting cobblestones, sashaying sidewalks.

We ended our tour at a lovely bistro for lunch, which also happened to be the 150-year old icon English’s built into a Georgian townhouse that was somehow even older. We were early, to be sure, and some of the first patrons to stake a claim to an outdoor table with a thin oceanic breeze streaking in between the curved streets nearby. We talked family, work, life, art, a little politics, but mostly about how to ensure and assure another’s sanity. And that was before we were joined by a famous commercial videographer and filmmaker who also happened to have had a hit single as a rapper in the 90’s.

Right. So there we were, In only the most appropriately Brighton way, chatting for hours about everything from rap videos to celebrity run ins and back again to life and art and more. I glanced at my watch and we had, in fact, been there for four hours and my train home would depart soon. A hurried but enthusiastic goodbye was exchanged before I climbed into a short cab ride to the station.

I was back in time for my play at Donmar Warehouse.

It was like it was all a little dream down a rabbit hole.

The Tale of the Tape: The Prodigy - Fat of the Land

(London - “Breathe” and “Firestarter” singles 1997)

Making space for yourself. Protecting it. I feel like I’ve only recently gotten any good at this at all. When I was younger I was crap at it too, but occasionally there were flashes. Like I was working at learning it. It didn’t stick.

I did it well once. In 1997.

When I had first landed in London with the college group we were desperately tired but somehow also terribly wired - from a combination of all-we-could-drink coffee and Bloody Marys for hours on our young Virgin Atlantic flight. (“When in Rome” my seat mate would chuckle when we found out that as soon as wheels went up in NYC we were technically in UK law-space and therefore able to drink at 20. I busied myself with the NES controller in the back of my seat for my first-ever transcontinental flight with a TV screen. We couldn’t believe they played Bjork when we boarded - my parents’ flights always had Neil Sedaka.)

An airport HMV near the bathrooms we all hit before exiting held a bewitching array of CDs threatening to destroy what little money I had before I’d even make it in the country proper. Special editions of albums I’d never seen and singles upon singles from acts I loved that never made it to the states. A few years prior I’d scored a copy of Faith No More’s Real Thing that came with an extra live concert CD I’d never heard and it made me hungry for prized finds like these. I browsed for maybe ten minutes and already found something: an all-new single by The Prodigy I had never heard: “Breathe” with a fish on the cover. Later in the trip I’d score “Firestarter” as well with its amusing granny-with-a-Molotov cocktail cover.

But “Breathe” was that early find that stayed trapped in my Discman most of the trip, whirring recklessly on the spindle and throwing its breakbeats into my orange-foamed factory headphones with the silver band that always caught in your hair. It was harder, faster than earlier Prodigy work. Maybe “edgier” too. It felt like Prodigy’s version of NIN’s Broken - not so much a departure than a mode they would arguably never snap out of (thank goodness). It was better. Surprising.

Of the few CDs I brought with me, it was the only one I would take on a meaningful but admittedly brazen trip I’d planned for one of the weekends of the month we’d be in London. My Stonehenge trip originally involved others who bailed - this one was all me. Shunning the rest of the group and heading out on my own without invitation, I’d planned a trip entirely for me with a dubious target: visit the grave of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

“Who the fuck is that?”, I was asked through the 1990’s smoky haze of the Columbia Hotel’s bar. My fellow travelers were perplexed - so was most of the band Phobophilia except for the singer who wryly smiled and answered after a beat:

“Why that’s Lewis Carroll.”

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the real name of Alice In Wonderland’s author, had been a bit of an obsession for me up until that point in my life. When I was eight my family had taken me and my grandmother with them to London and then to Oxford where my father’s scientific conference at University of Oxford’s Christ Church allowed then to peer through keyholes and toast in rose gardens that all inspired the classic tale. I was already a fan but became more of one and doggedly pursued every last word and book through my teen years. When I graduated high school my parents carved out a stopover in Oxford on our way to a work trip to Sweden. They used their connections to allow me to visit the special collections and hold - impossibly - a first edition Alice in Wonderland which held a signature and dedication from Charles Lutwidge Dodgson to a boys dormitory on campus; it was incredible because no one knew Charles had written the book - it was seen as an inscription of a gift book, not authorship. I’d soak up every bit of that trip, research every inspiring location (the Sheep’s shoppe, the fireplace sculptures, the riverside of the Golden Afternoon).

There’s a favorite family story from this trip as well that gets trotted out with the adage, “if you don’t ask, you don’t receive” even if the more appropriate line might be, “even if you don’t ask you might be cajoled into committing theft.” We were in the famous dining hall at Christ Church - famous then for its opulence, age, and connections to Wonderland; famous a few years later for Harry Potter filming - where some sort of guide or University employee was pointing out the aforementioned fireplace references to Alice’s elongated neck (as she opened up, “like a telescope” in one of the scenes from the book less often depicted in other mediums). My Mom admired the plates set out for some such special lunch later. The smallish China flatware included the Christ Church crest in the center and was gilded in gold and black. The employee, a jovial man in his fifties who wore some sort of sash and a name tag, seemed bemused that we took so much interest and told my Mom such as he watched her goth-y teenage son poke around the hall in awe. (Later when I returned with my daughter no one was bemused at the crowds trying to get a look at Potter filming locations and inspirations.) Eventually, when we’d exhausted all connections and time in the long dining room, the man would approach my mom and subtly ask her to open her purse. She looked shocked. Was she being held up? “Open your purse,” he repeated from the crook of his mouth with more than a little obvious a nod. She did as asked and the man retrieved one of the special plates from a wooden bin under the stained glass windows and snuck it in. “For you to take back. For someone who appreciates it.” He nodded toward me, oblivious, still checking out the fireplace. The plate remains with me to this day. And it wouldn’t be the only pilfered prize related to the author.

Oxford was ground zero for nearly everything Carroll.

Nearly.

Except his grave.

Charles had been buried not far from where his family had lived in a small town named Guilford. Despite hours absorbing England tourism tomes I could find little reason to go to Guilford other than this gravesite. There was a museum in the old house he once lived in with his family, but that turned out to be three waist-high, unkept virtenes with few artifacts. In fact I wasn’t even fully convinced I could find his grave. In a sort-of pre-Internet era where not quite so much info was available online, I was mostly going off of references in the occasional biographical essay or academic paper reference to his last resting place. (Later, when I’d volunteer for the board of The Poe Museum, I’d really appreciate the attention the home of Poe’s legacy would put toward a legendary author and wish the same had happened for Carroll / Dodgson.)

“Breathe with me…” rang over my headphones as I stepped off the train in Guilford with nary a clue as to where I was going. I had a small blue backpack with a thin loaf of bread and an apple (these were late days in the trip and money was tight), a train timetable, a small notebook, a well-worn copy of Wonderland, my camera with two final rolls of film, and some crinkled photocopies of a map of the town and approximate location of the church and graveyard where he supposedly was. The town was cute and I was astonished to find within a block or two a Games Workshop; I was a fan, poor miniature painter (peaking when my entry came in 10th in a Hampton, VA contest - I won a poster), occasional Blood Bowl brawler, and admirer of their then-all-metal minis as a Dungeons & Dragons player. I popped in, grinned, and popped out as I could likely not even afford a copy of White Dwarf magazine let alone a figure. Luckily, the road it was on was the same or near the one I needed to be on to reach the gravesite. I estimated about a mile’s walk. Oh it was about a mile alright. My concern grew as I looked up and realized none of my Xerox’d maps had been topographical… the mile was almost entirely uphill. Up I went. Up and up and up. This was not a job for the jeans I was wearing, the long sleeve shirt, or the pair of classic black and white Chuck Taylor Converse whose soles were about worn to tissue from this whole trip. Finally reaching the top, I spotted the tiny church. A graveyard of a few dozen graves in various states of weathering laid before me. Time to get to work searching; I had no map as to which was his, only a vague recollection from a photo of his gravestone I’d seen once. I started down a row near the roadside, not far from one of the few benches placed along the perimeter. And the first one I’d come to was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

I couldn’t believe my luck and sat near his grave and ate my apple and my bread. I took the last of a few photos on my current roll and swapped it in one of the remaining canisters. I didn’t take any pictures of myself at the grave as this was about a decade or two before anyone would take “selfies” on the regular. The bells from another church elsewhere in the town indicated the time and sent me consulting my train timetable brochure. I didn’t have long left before I’d need to scramble down the hill and catch a coach back in time for one of the last plays we’d see with the college group and my professor and mentor. I took a few notes as to where the grave was. Replacing the notebook in the backpack I got an idea when my hand brushed my last spare roll of film. I emptied the canister and, looking around (I hadn’t seen anyone for an hour at that point), I scooped a little bit of the dirt from his grave into the small plastic cylinder. Look, I’m not proud of this and I’m sure it’s sacrilegious (at least)… but it really meant something to me. Capping it shut, I tossed it in my backpack and started the journey down. “Breathe with me…”

I made my train (barely). I made the play (barely). Worried I’d lose or mix up the canister with others, I asked the front desk for a marker to mark the one with the soil from Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s née, Lewis Carroll’s grave. Pen options were black or blue and on the black container you couldn’t see a thing. I can’t remember if I asked or the front desk clerk offered, but eventually he produced some white-out and I used the tiny white brush to paint a nearly legible “C.L.D.” on the curved surface in ghastly white. I packed it in checked baggage just to be careful (this was a hard fought lesson from the trip to Paris for Dad’s conference when, upon our return flight, a sword-shaped letter opener with an Eiffel Tower hilt was confiscated by airport security and had to be mailed back - miraculously it did eventually arrive at our house and I think I still have it somewhere). The canister made it back too. It sits on the shelf behind me as I work, just out of view of teleconferencing cameras, and I’ve rarely mentioned it to anyone. I’m a little embarrassed about it, on some levels. But I’m also a bit happy it’s there and what it represents.

A moment I took for myself. And no one else. A breath.