Jarman - At your own risk: a saints testament

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Epub ISBN: 9781473559028

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VINTAGE

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Copyright Derek Jarman 1992

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 by Hutchinson in 1992

First published in Vintage in 1993

penguin.co.uk/vintage

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

Spanning his entire life and divided into decades from the forties to the nineties, this book brings together Jarmans poetry, prose, memoirs, photographs and film transcripts and includes newspaper extracts on aspects of gay culture. The result is a rounded portrait of homosexuality through the twentieth century seen through a fiercely personal perspective.

At Your Own Risk is angry, entertaining and humane, both a powerful argument against homophobia and a wild celebration of an individuals sexuality and freedom.

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: Sebastine (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

The Last of England

Modern Nature

Editor: Michael Christie. Research and conversations: Chris Woods. Design: Derek Westwood.

I would like to thank: Pascal Brannan, Paul Burston, Dr. Matthew Helbert, Neil McKenna, Bob Mellors, Malcolm Sutherland, Peter Tatchell, and my friend H.B. (who thought of the title), for all their help.

The extract from by Tom Driberg is reproduced by kind permission from Quartet and the Estate.

Alexander Walkers review of in The Evening Standard, and subsequent correspondence, reproduced by permission of Alexander Walker and The Evening Standard.

I would also like to thank Capital Gay and The Pink Paper for permission to reproduce headlines and extracts.

Derek Jarman

January 1992

The cold night breeze is up. Its two hours since you went to bed. I pick my way through the wood in the shimmering orange light, over the dead autumn leaves in their ghostly marbled pattern.

The blue smoke from the bonfire drifts in the branches, silhouetted against the clear winter night. A jet roars through the cold stars. I hug myself to keep warm.

At the fires edge strangers stand motionless. The trunk of a great tree burns, an open book where the saw has cut five fiery wounds. Ember pages shoot showers of sparks high into the night. My mind flows with the blue flames that flicker across the wood. Fire hisses the winter death of the great tree, the circles of its years reduced to ash. We are all dying here with the old tree, shedding its years to warm us.

A man strikes a light for himself in the night when his sight is quenched. Living, he touches the dead in his sleep. Waking, he touches the sleeper.

Heraclitus

Landscapes of time, place, memory, imagined landscapes. At Your Own Risk recalls the landscapes you were warned off: Private Property, Trespassers will be Prosecuted; the fence you jumped, the wall you scaled, fear and elation, the guard dogs and police in the shrubbery, the byways, bylaws, dos and donts, Keep Out, Danger, get lost, shadowland, pretty boys, pretty police who shoved their cocks in your face and arrested you in fear.

Last night was the first night of winter. We flew a kite round the moon, loop-the-loop, the leaves were falling off the trees.

I dont know how long I spent there. My mind was racing. I was writing my book in the dark, angrily.

Squadron-Leader L. E. Jarman, R.A.F., and Miss E. E. Puttock.

The marriage arranged between Squadron-Leader Lancelot ElworthyJarman, R.A.F., second son of Mr. and Mrs. H. E. Jarman, of Christchurch, New Zealand, and Elizabeth Evelyn (Betty), daughter of the late Harry Litten Puttock, of Calcutta, and Mrs. Puttock, of Northwood, will take place quietly at Holy Trinity Church, Northwood, on March 31, at 2 p.m. All friends are welcome at the church.

I was born on the 31 January 1942 at seven thirty in the morning at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood.

For the first twenty-five years of my life I lived as a criminal, and the next twenty-five were spent as a second-class citizen, deprived of equality and human rights. No right to adopt children and if I had children, I could be declared an unfit parent; illegal in the military; an age of consent of twenty-one; no right of inheritance; no right of access to a loved one; no right to public affection; no right to an unbiased education; no legal sanction of my relationships and no right to marry. These restrictions subtly deprived me of my freedom. It seemed unthinkable it could be any other way, so we all accepted this.