Love Over Scotland - Alexander Hanchett Smith [153]
Antonia reached out for her cup of coffee. “Not at all,” she 320 Antonia Expounds
said. “People misunderstand how writers work. They think that they sit down and plan what is going to happen and then simply write it up. But it doesn’t work that way.”
Angus looked at Antonia with interest. Some of his paintings had turned out very differently from what he had had in mind at the beginning. Light became dark. And dark became light. Was this the same process? He had thought it was simply mood, but was it possible that the work acquired its own momentum, its own view of things?
“Oh yes,” Antonia went on. “The author is not in control. Or, rather, the conscious mind of the author is not in control. And the reason for that is that when we use our imagination we get in touch with that part of the mind which is asking the ‘what if’
questions. And that is not part of the conscious mind.”
“What if?”
“Precisely,” said Antonia. “What if. All the time, every moment, your mind is going through possibilities. Any time you look at things. You’re busy recognising and classifying what you see. Thousands and thousands – countless thousands of times a day. Your brain is saying: that thing has four legs, ergo it’s a table; or that thing has four legs, but it’s got fur – it’s a dog. And so on. That’s how we understand the world. We don’t think of it, and you don’t see yourself doing it, but it’s fairly obvious if you watch a baby. You can actually see them doing it. Watch a baby while it looks at things, and you can see the mental wheels turn round. They sit and look at things intently, working out what they are.”
“I see all that,” said Angus. “But what’s that got to do with . . . ?”
“With writing? Well, a similar process is happening when you write a story. The unconscious mind is asking questions and then exploring possible outcomes. These then surface in the conscious mind, in the same way perhaps as speech surfaces, and become the words that tell the story. And exactly the same thing happens when somebody writes a piece of music or, I should imagine, paints a painting.”
“So art reveals the unconscious?” asked Angus. “Do I give myself away in what I paint?”
Antonia Expounds 321
“Of course you do,” said Antonia. “There’s nothing new in that. Unless a work of art obeys very strict rules of genre, then it’s often going to say: this is what the artist really wants. This is what he really wants to do.”
“Always?” asked Angus.
“Almost always. But there is more to it than that. The unconscious mind reveals itself in the story it creates. A writer who writes lurid descriptions of the sexual, for example, is simply revealing: this is what I want to do myself. Yes! That’s a thought, isn’t it? Some of us are charmingly naive and don’t realise that is what we are announcing to the world. We are acting out our own internal dramas. And that, I suppose, is inevitable and is just part of the business of being a writer. People are going to pick over what you write and say: ah, so that’s what you’re really about! You hate your father or your mother or both of them. You had an overly strict toilet training. You’re trying to recreate your first love. And so on.”
“And your saints? What does that tell us about you?”
Antonia did not answer for a moment. She looked intently at Angus, and for a moment he thought that he had overstepped some unspoken limit in the conversation. Perhaps there would be more to apologise for; but then she spoke. “The problem with my saints is that I was consciously willing them to repre-322 Imaginary Friends sent something. I wanted them to stand for the triumph of the will to good. I take it that you know what that is. The sheer yearning that we have for the good – for light rather than darkness, for harmony rather than disharmony, for kindness rather than cruelty.