Stamp - The ocean fell into the drop: a memoir

The Ocean Fell Into the Drop

The Ocean Fell Into the Drop

TERENCE STAMP

Published by Repeater Books
An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd
19-21 Cecil Court
London
WC2N 4EZ
UK

www.repeaterbooks.com

A Repeater Books paperback original 2017
1

Copyright Terence Stamp 2017

Terence Stamp asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover design: Johnny Bull/Francis Bacon

Typefaces: Garamond/Frutiger

ISBN: 978-1-910924-53-2

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-910924-54-9

Printed and bound in the United Kingdom

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Ive worked for Pinter
and Stoppard, Id be happy
to work with you.

Thank you, Lois Stein

FOREWORD

Just in case you have wandered into one of my favourite booksellers (they all are) and this carefully bound volume is in your hand: before you fork out your hard-earned cash, lets be clear about its content.

One of the early blessings in my life was the clarity regarding my path through it, courtesy of Gary Cooper; it was to be an artist in the arts. As I am closer to the end of life than the beginning, these are the recollections I am hoping to relate to other creative artists in the busy, tough world out there.

I have a bright nephew who has inherited the looks and street smarts of his grandfather, my Dad. He is one of the future stars in Londons great City, and he told me categorically that 98% of the worlds wealth is owned by 0.1% of the population. This fact is so overwhelming it does look like there is nothing the individual can actually do about it.

Yet recently, at one of his appearances, the Dalai Lama was asked:

What can we do about the crazy havoc in which we live? His terse reply was, Attend to the crazy havoc inside yourself first.

Coincidentally, in the land of the lakes where they really appreciate the value of cash, the Swiss have completed a 17-mile underground Collider circuit beneath their borders with France at a cost of $4.4 billion, where they bombard 115 billion protons every nanosecond at the speed of light, in anticipation of finding a semi-mythical particle whose status implies a world of hidden dimensions. $4.4 billion. One wonders what value Alan Turing would have put on the man-machine. Yet as a gentleman and poet once wrote, If a leaf on a green tree turned red, the whole tree is changed.

Ego vir: pars verissima esse myta bilia, sed ominia sunt beterna mutato; obstretat.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was Hu. It would probably be more accurate to say in the beginning was the sound, as it was the sound about them, the wind, the bird in flight, and later in the tolling of bells, that the ancients called Hu: it meant divine. In Sanskrit the word man represented mind, so the early humans considered themselves divine minds.

All Toms kids inherited bits of his DNA in the looks department

Growing up I had little contact with the divine mind that was my father, as he was at sea stoking the coal fires that propelled the merchant ships in the Second World War. Whilst I was lucky enough to inherit Tom Stamps bone structure, the earliest conscious male influence was from Gary Cooper. My mother was an inveterate moviegoer, yet deprived of this pleasure by my arrival apparently decided she couldnt miss Coops latest, and I was trundled alongside her, aged three years and six months, to the Old Grand in nearby Barking Road, E13. The film: Beau Geste. A saga in the desert with Cooper as a legionnaire. Was it destiny or luck that my initial experience of the silver screen exposed me to the peerless Cooper?

Both, is how I view it today. One of the most handsome men God ever put breath into had the profoundest effect on me. The feelings released in me sitting in the dark of the one-shilling-and-ninepenny seats was to set the course of my life. The timeless part of him he gave to the camera reached into me as if there was no separation. The desire to be like him, initially a legionnaire, and later an actor, matured as I grew, remained my secret. A secret kept for sixteen years, when our first telly arrived.

My Mum packed me off to school prematurely when I was three, but this was later reprieved until I was five. However, although the primary school was a really nice modern building, the area we had located to from Bow, Plaistow, was quite middle class when it was invaded by the hordes trying to evade the bombing of the East India docks; yet the actual method of teaching us five to ten year-olds was mostly learning-by-rote, to which my particular brain wasnt suited. The contrary, in fact. Of course, this led most of the teachers to consider me a dunce. This fortunately was offset by the fact that lots of the other boy and girl pupils did seek me out on Mondays to enquire how I had spent the weekend.

John Stamp, my younger brother, with the Irish side of our tribe in the hop fields

My Mum, unlike my instructors, had no such doubts. Her eldest had her complete faith. She would bolster my introversion yet counter my shyness with her own philosophy. I recall her once asking me what I wanted to do with my life. I guess I was about eleven or twelve and had miraculously passed the eleven-plus. Never dreaming of sharing my innermost aspiration, I asked her what she would have become given the opportunities.

Something there is only one of like a Pope.

It never actually occurred to me just how poverty-stricken we were until I started being invited into other boys houses and I noticed they had carpet on the floors. I dont recall anyone outside of the family being invited indoors. It later emerged my mother was ashamed by our furnishings, or lack of them. She counteracted this by ensuring we were always spotless and as well turned-out as possible. This probably was the reason later in life I was included in the Best Dressed Man in best-of-Britain lists.

When my mother passed away and I was spurred to scribble an autobiography, some of the girls I had attended Plaistow Grammar School with contacted me. They all agreed they hadnt considered how hard-up we were as I was always so smart and clean.

Chadwin Road housed the roughest kids in the neighbourhood: the cheapest always does. None of us were truly content there. A bit like those seats in the new buses that faced backwards, artistically designed to make you feel nauseous. There was much to be said for Plaistow. It had an open air lido at our end of the Beckton Road Park, the park where it was claimed seven winds blew; fact or not, it must have extended the direction of the fine aspects of my breath. A library in Prince Regents Lane where I initially went with my Mum, and later under my own steam came upon Edgar Wallaces