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Among The Bohemian’s - Experiments in Living 1900-1939 has been by my bedside since Christmas, thanks to Leah.
It has strong links to my learning biography, written by Virginia Nicholson, the grand daughter of the artist Vanessa Bell (sister of Virginia Woolf).
It is a direct link between:
- My life experience
- Moving to Sussex
- Studying the MA in Person-Centred Education.
Among many other threads (creativity, food, friends, livelihood, travel), it looks at the education of “bohemian” children during these years and at Bertrand Russell’s and AS Neill’s small school communities, among others. AS Neill founded the Summerhill School, which inspired the Lance Holt School (primary) and The Community School (secondary) my brothers and I attended for various lengths of time.
It references personal, unpublished papers from the lives of progressive artists and thinkers Virginia is intimate with.
I visited Charleston with devotion just after moving to Sussex - home of Vanessa, her children, lover, husband and communal friends. It’s just down the road.
I wanted to go my own, and felt a very strong connection. Infact we are planning a spring/summer house party in celebration of its creative, communal call. This was decided before I would allow myself to visit. I could not abide the possibility of mere voyeurism. The call of its inhabitants - and life itself - seems so much more.
My own upbringing was different to this, yet similar in many ways. There was a spaciousness for new ideas and ways of being. I was born in 1968 - ‘the summer of love‘. We marched with my Grand Mother against Vietnam, I had an “I love Gough (Whitlam)” badge.
There was, in my own childhood, a bold sense of life being for the living. That conformity was not necessarily the way to nirvana. That ideas could be challenged, and new ones emerge, that experimentation was essential.
Naturally, this changed as the years went on, and my mother (an educator) in particular, became (thankfully, perhaps) relatively more conservative - but still very open-minded and able to converse freely with people of all ages.
My father’s love of olive and red wine won him the dubious nickname “Donny the Dago”, an affectionate reference to post-war Italian immigrant culture in Australia, prior to which garlic was completely unknown and ‘cuisine’ unheard of. The most well worn cookbooks in our collection where Elizabeth David and Robert Carrier. Similar to The Bohemian’s, I grew up with Mediterranean food and culture being held in high esteem.
A darker side was, I guess, his insistence on growing and smoking pot, which had repercussions throughout our lives. Alcohol was certainly overused too, but what conversations we had! Even at a young age, we were invited to share in the passionate pronouncements of what really mattered to a large, extended family and friends over many a fine meal.
When I was very young but still cognisant, my grandmother Pamela held court. I am searching for a tape recording of her voice during one session where communal living was the issue.
This was at the same time I imagine she had returned to university to study philosophy and was reading John Macmurray.
She was quite clearly in favour of it, and advocated my family and another, the Gare’s (themselves from a partly-Quaker tradition) set up life together on 100 acres of bushland we had near cousins in the South West of Australia - which became one of the country’s greatest wine producing regions! So many good times camping and exploring. So much learnt about what really matters, things that can only be learnt in nature.
Another snapshot I share to help illustrate my childhood was the amount of cheese and biscuits we ate. The exhibition openings, gigs and album launches of all the painters, sculptors and musicians in our close circle gave ample opportunity for dinner and freedom.
I thought everyone lived that way, until I ended up at a conservative ladies college and realised this was patently NOT the case.
My grandmother dying was the first big change in our social lives, then much later, my father dying. Now we find ourselves starting our own family and looking to create anew. Looking back, they seem like halcyon days. Perhaps childhood always does. So much has changed, personally, politically. Smaller families, fragmentation, neo-conservatism and more movement being part of that.
Finding this book has felt a little like coming home. It will continue to bring up the light and the dark of an ‘alternative’ childhood and is just wonderful food for thought. Thank you dear Leah, soul sister, framily.
Excerpts from Among The Bohemian’s
Review (The Guardian, November 2002)
“Woolf represented a generation which sought to let light, colour and garlic into their lives. They rejected monogamous relationships and mahogany furniture. They preferred absinthe to abstinence. They blazed with creative inspiration and burned candles at both ends. In short, they became the inhabitants of the mythical and ill-defined realm of Bohemia.”
I note now that Arthur Ransome was included in this eclectic cohort. Just now we are reading Swallow’s & Amazons with Bea. My heart yearns to play the games on land and sea (or river) we did as children, inspired by these ravishing tales of children free to roam, explore, imagine and become.
Rousseau’s Emile comes to mind again.
Thank goodness for our annual Buddhafield’s retreat when this all seems more possible. Life in the playground at The Dharma School and Stanmer Organic’s Ecoplay has echoes. I hear there is an outdoor nursery school in Firle and Annan Farm Small School offers a richness of natural connection. (”there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing!”).
But oh for the endless stretch of holidays we had, roaming wild. Canoes, dinghies, hidden lakes to discover. Dropbears to run from. Not facilitated play but FREE, truly free. Some of these experiences have inspired stories I have written, which can be found here.
Perhaps the lake district will call this summer. Perhaps this whole move to England > Europe is actually a pilgrimage to the source of so much inspiration.
How ironic to have come from the stereotype of outdoorsy Australia, land of the great white barbeque. And yet we feel very close to nature here in the Sussex countryside, with the pleasures of Brighton nearby too.
Perhaps it will weave it’s magic, do it’s work then send us ‘home’ (?), back to Australia. Perhaps it will take root and hold us here like others before. Most likely, we will find ways to live between the two hemispheres - North & South. Perhaps their is unity and cohesion in such a way of living… give or take a lack of jet fuel or carbon neutralisation.
Martin Boyd’s (another distant relative) writing about Anglo-Australian displacement came over with us, along with mum’s entire Patrick White collection.
Perhaps we will go communal in France and educate free-style, as tele-commuting, globally-warmed, brave new worlders…
Perhaps we will spend our summer’s touring provocative exhibitions about the future of education, as Bea run’s wild with friend’s at festivals…
We shall see… one thing’s for sure, when it come’s to Education in it’s fullest sense, it’s about a lot more than just your choice of school.
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The book was given by a friend who I think sees me and my family in this vein. This same friend was married last year at Pelham House, and is a central part of my learning community - Leah Landau.
Then there was my experience of seeing the artwork at Pelham House in Lewes, a wonderful heritage building and grounds brought to life by members of the Subud community. Julian Bell (grandson of Vanessa?) being one of the them I believe.
I was deeply moved. I have never seen a collection of work so akin to my own aesthetic and desire to experience art as a connecting, transcendent, symbolic language. Who is the curator I wonder?
One of the sculptors is Stephanie Davies-Arai, who is also facilitating the course in Parent Effectiveness Training I have recently embarked upon, based at Lewes New School (a Subud community school). The course connects with Carl Rodgers work and was developed by Thomas Gordon.
Everything about finding the MA, the Foundation, John Macmurray, Michael Fielding, the other wonderful people I have met, has made this move to Sussex seem destined in some way. There is a songline running throughout it all.
My questions are not yet clear, but I shall be looking for them. There are a great many threads to bring together. One seems to be around:
What is the importance of lifestyle choices (over and above formal schooling) in the education of the whole child / person ?
Auto-didacticism is also a major theme this week, with my perhaps forebear Sir Humphry Davy (another Davy of Devon) and the soul-brother Zen teacher Alan Watts being typical of this experience.
Excuse me while I think allowed. Unless something is deeply personal, I am tending to use this blog now as a place to gather my thoughts for the learning biography - Part One of the MA in Person-Centred Education.
5,000 words due on 19 April. Can I just submit this blog’s URL?
Making sense of a learning life, setting a course for new oceans of purpose and meaning. Hopefully moving through ‘navel gazing’ further into an authentic contribution in education.
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The images are: Top ‘Libby (left) with Sadie & Kate Purser, Western Australia, 1971 (?)’, Bottom ‘Bea (Libby’s daughter) at home, Margaret River, SW Australia. Her placenta is planted under the avocado sapling behind her.’
L
