Two Occupations

My working life is neatly divided between the roles of paid listener and unpaid scribe (unpaid that is until the first royalties for my contribution to EIGHT HOURS come dribbling, I mean flooding, in.) The two jobs share certain things in common, not least the ability to conduct both from the comfort of my own home; a fact which saves on travel costs but means I constantly have to remind myself to get out more. More significantly, both occupations are essentially concerned with storytelling.

As a therapist or counsellor (they're ambiguous, umbrella terms that conceal a multitude of dark, and sometimes beautiful, arts, and more than a little old flannel) I listen to many stories: personal tales of love lost, or given in vain; of betrayals, by parent, spouse, partner, or self; of long-standing chips on shoulders; and of stoic fortitude and forgiveness in the face of whole catalogues of grief and pain. And just when I start to think I've heard it all before, along comes a new one to take my breath away. My current clients range from a 20-something woman to an 87 year-old man. Of course, I do more than just listen, otherwise they might as well save themselves the money, and, like Shirley Valentine, talk instead to the kitchen wall. I suppose my role is a mixture of audience, critic, and editorial assistant. I ask the storyteller, "What's with this title? Who's responsible for the script? Why is this, or that, particular episode, given such scant attention? If you could re-write one chapter above all else, which would it be? What do you make of the main characters in your story, are they really as one-dimensional as you suppose? And what of the narrator, how do you feel about him, or her? What's the moral of your story, and what of the chapters yet to be written? How do you see it ending, and does it have to be that way?

As a writer, of course, I am the storyteller, and, like many emerging writers, I began by writing my own story. Born on the Monopoly board, albeit down at the cheap end, above a baker's shop along the Old Kent Road, I was the product of an unlikely coupling between a 50 year-old English Protestant baker, and an auburn-haired, Irish Catholic barmaid, a generation his junior. Early one autumnal morning, not long after my fourth birthday, I awoke after my father had gone to work, crept into my mother's room and snuggled in beside her, as usual. Except it wasn't as usual. Her tired body was impervious to my vocal pleadings or the rough persuasion of my boy-arms and fists. I couldn't wake her up. To make sense of it all until my father came home, I told myself stories: that this was like the Rip Van Winkle fairy-tale, or the Sleeping Princess, or a pretend game like the one she used to play when I was tiny, and that if I waited long enough she would spring into life like jack-in-the-box. She didn't, and by the time I was 12, my father too was dead. Losses leave scars, and gaps. But they also create compensations, one of which being the development of a large inner world of imagination and feeling, where rust and rot do not set in, nor burglars come to steal. Not bad soil for the roots of a therapist, or writer.

I moved on from writing about my boyhood, to writing fiction, about relationships and therapy. Therapy is such a grand setting for drama, with its artifical and closely defined structures, the absurdities of its language, the small rituals and paraphernalia of the therapy room, and its mercurial capacity for healing and growth; and also, of course, the uncomfortable parallels between it and prostitution. The results? A short story, FIFTY-MINUTE HOUR, published in Legend Press' new collection, EIGHT HOURS ~ about the experience of a 30-something police officer, who, after a violent altercation with his teenage stepson, is dragged along to Relate by his female partner in one last, desperate attempt to save their ailing relationship. And, an as yet unpublished novel, LISTENING IN, about the conundrum of authenticity in the relationship between therapist and client, and the impact on a therapist's professional self when the cracks in his private life widen such that his very foundations start to tremble.

The best fictional short stories about therapy (other than my own!)? Definitely Irvin Yalom's 'Love's Exectioner'.
The best movie about therapy? Definitely 'Ordinary People'.
If you haven't read or seen them, catch them both whilst waiting for my novel to appear!

Kevin Chandler

Comments

[Candi Miller]

I really enjoyed reading and reflecting on that, so trust you won't think I'm accusing you of anything unprofessional/improper when I say 'What good material' re: the work you do.
No doubt stories you hear are altered in your imagination and by the process of crafting fiction, to an extent that even Kevin Therapist wouldn't be able to tell what the genesis was. Nevertheless, does it not strike you that we writers are like spiders - sucking the essence from stories that stray our way, then spinning them into a web? That always gives me a guilty tingle.(I'm sure I have a screenplay about that in a bottom drawer somewhere. It's tellingly titled: "And sat down beside her".
Will you be at the Legendary party on the 12th? If so, we could toss for the roles of Miss Muffet and the spider.

[Kevin]

Yes. The spider image is powerful and carries an uncomfortable measure of truth. Love that screenplay title by the way! It would also make an alternative title for my novel (don't worry... you got their first, it's yours!)

Yep, I'll be at the Legendary bash. Is this the moment to confess I'm scared of spiders?

[Candi Miller]

It's only the female of the species you need worry about...

[Kevin]

Thanks for the warning; I'll bear it in mind. All I need now is a crash course in spider sexing.