THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL “I Was Young” An immersive autobiographical journey into the troubadour tradition. being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in the University of Hull by David John Tomlinson, M.A. October 2016 2 Abstract There are two key problems in the field of autobiography: (i) How does one choose which scenes from a life to include? (ii) What is the most effective way of presenting those scenes? This thesis investigates structures that address these two issues of autobiographical content and presentation. It deals with the question of what to put in, and also examines the related concerns of who presents the content (narration of self) and the techniques by which they present it (style). The primary research questions are: (1) Is it possible to construct a coherent and involving piece of memoir if the author relinquishes some degree of control over the book’s content and, instead, is prepared to make decisions about what goes into the book based on the guidance of an external device? (2) Is it possible to reveal more of the author’s character and also enrich a reader’s emotional engagement with a memoir if, along with the written text, the author also expresses aspects of their life through a second creative voice? The creative element of this thesis is a memoir that engages with the past in order to build a present and future narrative. Its starting point is a lost path: the one my nineteen year-old self embarked upon when he left law school in the hope of becoming a pop star. My fifty-year old self then reengages with the intervening years and asks what happened? and what might I and others learn from what happened? I was a professional comedy writer and I use comedy to engage the reader in my story, but comedy can also be a way of evading deeper issues. My motive for writing a 3 memoir was to learn how to stop evading deeper issues and start revealing them, and to find a voice that could encompass human frailty in a way that might have value and resonance for the reader. The chapters are coupled with an album of related songs, which represent my second creative voice. The exegesis examines the interactive process of joint creation and how, in the case of a memoirist, a second creative voice might deepen that of the primary writing one, or, at least, deepen the impact of the memoir as a whole for both author and reader. For my external device I used the song categories of the medieval troubadours. The arbitrary dictates of the song categories (celebrating youth, offering political comment, lamenting dead patrons, etc.) not only provoked a re-evaluation of my past, but also propelled me into immersive, forward-looking research. Focus on the troubadours’ secular breadth of commentary led me to examine how, in practice, I might exemplify some of their social relevance to develop a form of memoir that looked out as well as in. This practical application of an external device and a second creative voice create possible new frameworks for a memoir that aims to push the field forward. 4 Acknowledgements On the many occasions that I doubted, Professor Martin Goodman continued to brim with creative and constructive confidence. He inspired me to start, inspired me to keep going, and inspired me to finish. His help ranged from the practical to the sublime, and, most important, it was always, always, available. My thanks to Doctor Bethan Jones for such scrupulous academic guidance, and to Pru Wells and the rest of the department’s administrative team for their clarity of correspondence and infallible service support. Thank you to Tom Townsend – record producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist – without whose prodigious musical talent I may never have dared let these songs see the light of day. I am also in the ever loving debt of my beautiful mum, Mary, and my indomitable brother, Jim. They kept me buoyed when emotions and finances were low. And where would I be without my dad, Good Old John Tom? Departed in life, but alive in these pages. Finally, a boundless thank you to my partner Julia, at my side throughout, in word and deed, in person and in spirit – in love. Thank you everyone. 5 Gender bias apology I have used the male third person throughout. It was a creative choice, and I hope does not cause any gender offence. As it is a thesis centred on autobiographical writing, I wished to keep a sense of my authorial presence in the mind of the reader, even if only on a subliminal level. 6 Accompanying CD Please find a CD of eleven songs attached to this page. Each song corresponds to a chapter in the creative part of the thesis called: I Was Young. To enjoy the concept as intended, I would be grateful if you read the chapter first before playing its song partner. The songs are also available online along with the university’s publication of this thesis. Thank you for listening. 7 I WAS YOUNG TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One I Can Hear Voices 13 Chapter Two Until You 29 Chapter Three Catch That Train 45 Chapter Four Good Old John Tom 75 Chapter Five Samba Turn 113 Chapter Six Skimming Stones 147 Chapter Seven Fellow Traveller 176 Chapter Eight I Was Young 204 8 Chapter Nine Blue Sky 239 Chapter Ten I’m Reminiscing 264 Chapter Eleven Let Love Come 301 9 EXEGESIS TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 305 Chapter One How creative can one be with creative non-fiction before it becomes more ‘fiction’ than ‘non-fiction’? 309 Chapter Two An examination of the everyman voice: connecting the “I” of the narrator to the “I” of the reader. 335 Chapter Three The second creative voice. 363 Chapter Four An examination of the literary theory behind the incorporation of an external device and the ultimate linguistic constraints on personal expression. 401 Conclusion 409 Rationale for the interviewees 413 Appendix i Song lyrics 416 10 Bibliography 431 11 Vida (The troubadour’s biography) The fifty-odd years of David Tomlinson David Tomlinson was born at Westow Nursing Home, deep in the countryside of North Yorkshire, on the 4th November, 1961. It is perhaps no coincidence that the life of this obscure man should start in the back-end of nowhere. David was a forceps delivery, which left him oddly shaped and purple and with a lifelong distrust of salad tongs. His pre-school years were unremarkable, save for an obsession with all things American – in particular, Bette Davis. This trans-Atlantic fervour in a four-year-old disturbed David’s dad, but was indulged by his mum who, misguidedly, let him attend the Saturday morning pictures dressed in a white (Las Vegas period) Elvis Presley suit, complete with green silk scarf. As a young boy David excelled at a number of things that would, in future life, be of no use to him at all, such as the St. Martin’s Primary School fancy hat competition and miming Greensleeves on a recorder. His teenage years were a hormonal chaos of one embarrassing incident after another, for which he is still apologising. However, there were two sources of constant solace for David during those years: his parent’s portable typewriter and his granddad’s piano. In I Was Young David writes and sings about his life in the hope of making peace with whatever remains of it. 12 I WAS YOUNG 13 Chapter One I Can Hear Voices (Gap: the troubadour song category for boasting) Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, various and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgement on him which is steady and uniform. Michel de Montaigne I was sitting in a Chelmsford pub on a summer evening in 1981, and I was happy. It was only my second pint, so the beer couldn’t take all the credit. Leaded windows spread soft squares of sunlight over the walls and the table tops, and my thoughts were as airy as the floating motes of dust. I was happy because at the age of nineteen I had discovered something important: I knew who I was. I was a popstar. Comforted by the pub’s conversational hum, I settled into my new identity. The old one, that of law student, had been officially terminated, dispatched along with all the other adolescent aspirations such as actor, dentist, playwright, novelist, investigative journalist, RAF helicopter pilot and dress designer. I had vacillated from the sensible to the silly, not because I chose indiscriminately, but because I was by nature a boy of unresolved predisposition – just clever enough to entertain a profession, and just stupid enough to run away with a circus. I had teetered between worlds, formless and unsure. But no longer. Now I was a popstar. And that was final. 14 I was one pub behind the rest of the pub-crawling gang of law students, alone in a corner, sitting on a worn, red velvet bench, flicking beer mats. Some of the lads could flick and catch several mats in one go. I tried it with two. One of them ricocheted off the ash tray and the other skimmed over the head of my pint and into the lap of a large middle-aged lady. “S-sorry,” I said, more Jerry Lewis than bad boy of rock. I leaned over to retrieve the beer mat, but thought better of it. It was bad enough that I had pelted the lady’s pudenda with a coaster; probably best not to shove my hand down there as well.