Ancestors of Book
When I started work on Druidry and the Ancestors it was as a deliberate response to the work of Graeme K Talboys and Ronald Hutton (more on that another day). I’ve recently realised there was an unconscious ancestor in the mix and I thought that would be a good topic today, because I’ve just re-read the book that it turns out, significantly contributed to mine. It’s Graham Swift’s Waterland, and is, amongst other things about the Fens, history and the end of the world. I’d re-read it because I remembered it talking about the death of history and my topic for Druid con in a few weeks, is Druidry at the end of history.
One of the things I did with Druidry and the Ancestors was to think about the kinds of overarching stories we tell about history. The big two are history as progress and history as decay. I knew, when writing this, that it wasn’t entirely mine but I could not think where I’d got it from. Waterland, is the answer.
It’s a beautiful, mournful book, about the strange historical connections that get us to where we are, and the circular nature of history, and the way thing flow back upon themselves. Reading was also a reminder of how many influences we absorb, and how easily a thing can become part of us and we not know its source. That was also one of the things in Druidry and the Ancestors, wanting to explore how we build a sense of the past, what we take on board unquestioningly. All those stories that are so deep within us that we no longer realise they are stories. Waterland was one of those, for me, it was the story of the making of history stories and from it I unconsciously made a history story and then, for an event where talking about my book is on the agenda I suddenly, irrationally wanted to talk about this book as well, and re-read it, and there it all was.
Another moment of strange cyclicalness. Cyclicity… is there a word for this? The book has been full of them, bringing with it a journey that goes forwards as it goes backwards, that has taken me deeper into my sense of self and taken me forward. Back I go, into a book that I read for A level English an then again during my degree and which, coming back now as a parent reads completely differently. At seventeen, how could I understand a fifty something male history teacher, childless, and the theme of children? Can I understand it now? Maybe more. Books change you, and as you age and grow and learn, when you read the same book again it too becomes different. We bring so much of ourselves to books, that I think it might be fair to say that, as with the proverbial thing about getting into rivers, you can never read the same book twice.
