A Eureka Moment

On Sunday I went to Liverpool to the British Association's Big Bang event at the world museum, to get more people's ideas on this project (in between tasting cheese, modeling viruses and playing with knots).

On the bus on the way to the station I suddenly recognised the parallel between the process of inheritance and the stories I've been collecting.

I'd put together a book to put the stories in. On the front I'd made a representation of the diagrams which show the possibilities for the inheritance of a single genetic characteristics. It looks something like this - http://www.biotopics.co.uk/genes/crosses/gendia.html except the circles are mirror beads and the lines are ribbons.

I'm one of life's fiddlers, so I was playing with the ribbons as I sat on the bus. I noticed that there were fixed points and linking threads. The fixed points represented the gene, the connecting thread the possible ways that gene might be inherited. In a similar way I'd made a copy of my family tree and stuck sequins on to represent the people. Again there was a fixed point - a person - or in a conventional family tree - a name. Then there were lines connecting them. I remembered my discussion with Jeanette and how she'd talked about the role of the imagination in constructing the family tree. It seems as if those threads are something fixed - but in a way they aren't. People who follow the lines pick the lines they want to follow, they take a walk through the possibilities. Even seen the other way up, until someone is born those lines only represent possibilities.

In people's stories there are fixed points and there are connections. There are facts and supposition. Someone I spoke to knew that their great grandfather was in Walton Gaol on the date of the census in 1911. They have no idea why - or even if he was there the day before, or the day after. All that is speculation.

People notice traits that pass down in families - but they guess the reason behind it. I've had quite a few conversations about tallness and the contribution of both genes and environment. And though we might guess fairly accurately that someone inherited their red hair from their dad, it's harder to say for sure whether they've inherited his temper and how and why.

So, somehow I think I will need to separate out from the masses of text I have the fixed points and the linking threads - and Lynn will have the challenge of find a way of representing that visually.

Here's the list I made on the bus - rather raggedly. Is it just Manchester buses that make you feel as if you're on a dinghy in the middle of the Atlantic?

MOSI 20-22nd August

I'll be at the Museum of Science and Industry on Liverpool Street in Manchester, from 1-3pm on the 20th, 21st, August.

You can find me in the learning space which is at the end of the finishing platform of the textile gallery.

I'm hoping to talk to as many people as possible about their family stories, about what they think gets passed down in families, and how important they think that is - and about what they think makes them who they are.

If you're around please come and join me!

On Not Being Oneself

This is a bit of a rant really.

I've often noticed that when people do something stupid, something they regret, or make a bad choice, they say "I wasn't myself" or "that's not me".

There's a range of behaviours that they associate with their idea of themselves, beyond those boundaries the things they do are seen as abberations.

But it seems to me that it's not that simple - those behaviours are precisely "them". They are the choices those people make and the way those people react to certain situations.

I'd like to say that I wasn't myself on Friday morning when my internet connection went down and I got frustrated and just a little rude with the man from Virgin media. But the truth is I am the kind of person that gets very stressed when I can't get onto the internet, and that I'm the kind of person that can take that frustration out on someone on the phone.

I'm not proud of it. I shall try and control myself better next time. But in all those many many tiny facets that make up a person there's one labelled 'nightmare customer'.

I was as much myself then as I am now, when I'm feeling all calm and benevolent and at peace with the world. Especially now I've had my rant.

Who are You? Lewis Carroll

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

`Who are YOU? 'said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'
`What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!'
`I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.'

`I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.

`I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, `for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.'
`It isn't,' said the Caterpillar.
`Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet,' said Alice; `but when you have to turn into a chrysalis--you will some day, you know--and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little queer, won't you?'
`Not a bit,' said the Caterpillar.
`Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,' said Alice; `all I know is, it would feel very queer to ME.'
`You!' said the Caterpillar contemptuously.
`Who are YOU?'

Various thoughts

"I AM"

This caught my eye the other day - orange's latest advertising campaign based on the lines such as " It’s the people we meet and the experiences we share that make us who we are."

This is a model of identity that is created socially - neither nature, or strictly speaking, nurture. It's also a model that suggests our personality is continually developing, shaping and being shaped, by our experiences and our choices.

No more "Give me a child when he is 7 and I will show you the man." You might give someone the man at 37 and still not see the 47 years old.



INTROVERSION

Part of the poem about my people (below) is about introversion. It's something that's fascinated me since I saw the lemon experiment on television programme. Suddenly the thought that I'm someone that reacts very strongly to the presence of other people made sense of a lot of things for me. It doesn't worry me to think that introversion is a given in my personality, though I think that it's partly the way I have adapted to being an introvert in a world of extroverts that has made me who I am.

I can't help but think that we'll discover more of these genetically coded fundamental brain reactions, that while they don't define our personalities, may well underpin their development.


IDENTIFICATION

Here's Darian Leader on identification.
"At the simplest level identification means that we become like another person.... most of the time (identifications) take place outside conscious awareness. We become like others without knowing it.... Children will identify with aspects of their parents from the very start.... as their identity is forged different traits are borrowed from their parents.... A further kind of identification occurs at the moments when an intense emotional relationship is broken or put in question... the child may start to adopt some trait or behavioural detail of a precisely the parent who disappointed them. The pain of disappointment is dealt with by incorporating some aspect of the other person themselves.... Analysts have shown that if an illness appears in different generations of the same family, identifications may be the underlying mechanism.... Children don't just inherit their parents' genes they inherit their parents.


THE IDEA OF OTHER PEOPLE

Also from the same book
"Study after study has claimed that the fewer one's social relationships, the shorter one's life expectancy and the more devastating the impact of infectious diseases.... One of the first and most famous large-scale investigations of this phenomenom was known as the Roseto study. This time in Pennsylvania had a population of around 1600 and was founded in the late ninetheeth century by immigrants from Roseto Val Fortore in Southern Italiy.... The death rate from myocardial infarction was only half that of the neighbouring towns or the US in general. Yet their diet wasn't particularly healthy, their cholesterol was about the same as their neighbours and they smoked a fair bit. But what struck the researchers was the cohesiveness of the comunity.... If it wasn't the diet of the smoking the answer seemed to lie in the organisation of social bonds...
"Studies of the eldery, for example, made the surprising finding that the amount of contact with the rest of the family is far less imporatnt than the expectation that someone is there for them. Knowing that family members are contactable and available my matter more in many instances that actually receiving regular visits. What we mean by 'other people' can thus include their physical or their potential presence."

When I read this I thought of my conversation with Jeanette and her suggestion that in searching for their ancestors people might be replacing a cohesiveness missing from modern life. Could it be that the idea of the ancestors they discover (or in fact create) was as therapeutic as any real people in their lives (and possibly a lot less annoying... )


PERSONALITY AND IDENTITY
I notice I've been using these two terms pretty much interchangeably. I'll straighten that out at some point. But I think what this shows is that for me, they are more or less the same thing. Who I am is the sum total of what I do, what I think, how I feel.

The Family Face

Here's Thomas Hardy on the subject of Heredity

Heredity
I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance -- that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.

First residency poem.

It wasn't part of the plan for me to write poems this residency, but there's nothing like saying you won't for making you want to. This one came out of a writing exercise at Commonword based on Kona McPhee's poem 'My People'.

My People

I would know them at first by the way they know cloth,
speak the language of selvage and warp and weft,
their way of holding the fabric and letting it fall
to check that the weave was true. And each would have
their own body’s measure – the turn of the head that gave
them a yard from nose to thumb’s end. Their eye are sharp
but the world fades away - beyond the street the edges
are muted, birds disappear as they land in trees and trees
themselves have no leaves until seen from beneath.
I could walk amongst them, they’d be somewhere else,
they would clutch at their chests at the sound of my words
and even then they would look without seeing for a breath
of two, always in aprons, interrupted, wiping their hands.
But up close I’d see their hands are like mine, restless birds
in a roomful of voice and wishes, finding their roost
on the cloth, on the paper, on the wood, or the keys