Derek Jarman - Smiling in Slow Motion

Derek Jarmans creativity spanned decades and genres painter, theatre designer, director, film maker, writer and gardener.

From his first one-man show at the Lisson Gallery in 1969; set designs and costumes for the theatre and ballet (Jazz Calendar with Frederick Ashton at Covent Garden, Don Giovanni with John Gielgud at the London Coliseum, The Rakes Progress with Ken Russell at Teatro Communale, Florence); production design for Ken Russells films The Devils and Savage Messiah; through his own films in super-8 before working on features: Sebastiane (1976), Jubilee (1978), The Tempest (1979), The Angelic Conversation (1985), Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1989), The Garden (1990), Edward II (1991), Wittgenstein (1993), and Blue (1993); to directing pop-videos and live performances for Pet Shop Boys and Suede.

His paintings for which he was a Turner Prize nominee in 1986 have been exhibited world-wide.

His garden surrounding the fishermans cottage in Dungeness where he spent the last years of his life remains a site of awe and pilgrimage to fans and newcomers to Jarmans singular vision.

His publications include: Dancing Ledge (1984), Kicking the Pricks (1987), Modern Nature (1991), At Your Own Risk (1992) Chroma (1994), Derek Jarmans Garden (1995).

Dancing Ledge

Derek Jarmans Caravaggio

The Last of England

Modern Nature

Queer Edward II

At Your Own Risk

Wittgenstein

Chroma

Derek Jarmans Garden

Up in the Air

Kicking the Pricks

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Epub ISBN: 9781473559066
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Copyright The Estate of Derek Jarman 2000

Derek Jarman has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published in Great Britain by Century in 2000

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Derek kept his handwritten journals in thirty-three black-bound handmade watercolour books, just small enough to slip into his jacket pocket. All bore the legend Reward if found, although two volumes were lost and have yet to surface.

He seemed ambivalent about publication, once instructing me that on his death he would like them to be burnt, yet he continued to write and each volume bears a tentative title: Hearts Ease, A Fit of Amnesia, A Great War of Poppies, Saints Days, Shot Down in Flames, A Chill in Utopia, And the Day Grows Old Derek had always laboured over titles. In a lyrical description of one of Dereks former lovers, who had subsequently appeared in his first feature film, I discovered the title in the only underlined phrase: Theres a moment in Sebastiane when he surfaces from the water smiling in slow motion .

Derek worked on the first volumes of the diaries himself, characteristically revising and re-revising. I was fortunate to assist in the editing of two of Dereks earlier autobiographical volumes, Kicking the Pricks and Modern Nature, and stuck to the same methodology here. I have coalesced some fragmentary biographical sketches, removed some repetition and for legal reasons have excised some sections. The rest remains in Dereks vernacular, its coherence like his once beautiful handwriting degenerating with the progression of his illness.

Derek would keep his journal on most days, only twice resorting to dictation when too ill to lift his fountain pen. In the final diary he wrote without vision, his semi-legible scrawl only possible from his memory of the scratch of nib on paper.

As I transcribed this last volume the writing stopped mid-sentence at a pages end. Perhaps Derek had been distracted by a phone call or a visit from a well-wisher, maybe exhaustion had set in. I took this to be the end of the diaries until months later, showing this page to a friend, the same thing happened to me that had happened to Derek some blank pages had stuck together. I turned past them to discover that in a pain-filled parody of his calligraphy there were three final, heart-rending pages.

Writing in better health at an earlier time, Derek ended an earlier journal on a more eloquent note:

Please read the cares of the world that I have locked in these pages; and after, put this book aside and love. May you of a better future, love without a care and remember we loved too. As the shadows closed in, the stars came out.

Derek Jarman, At Your Own Risk

For days now I have tried to start this diary, but the clatter of my existence has interrupted; the first mark on the page eludes me, it is easy to put off.

HB drove to Dungeness, it grew so cold we muffled up to visit the swans nest, at the Long Pits, with its seven small cygnets. A dead fox decomposing in the shallows, a swaying mass of green algae surrounded by flotillas of voracious black tadpoles, devouring it to the bone. HB throws a stone in the water, sending ripples through this predatory army. Father Nature, he says, the destroyer. The cold weather with its biting easterly has pinched me to the old stove that roars, white-hot, through the evening. A cruel sore throat, coughs and a deep depression have left me darting hither and thither, mop and duster in hand, indecisive paintbrush dipped in Venetian red, even my new overalls, the colour of faded brick, and my suntan hardly cheer me.

I watched TV out of the corner of an eye and sank deep in the ruined sofa with Pepyss Diaries which I crept through with little enthusiasm, at the pace of a snail.

Today dawned blissful, not a breath of wind, warm and the sun out, a great silence. The nuclear power station which normally hums and splutters has not been brought on-line. Heat shimmers off the shingle, weeks of soaking rain have left the Ness a hopeful green.