What I do is me: for that I came

Last Tuesday, I attended an National Speakers Association New Zealand meeting and the wonderful Irina Yashin Shaw was the speaker. She spoke about how, as speakers, we need to look to our own lives, our own stories, histories and the things we have around us to provide our topics, and enliven our speeches. Irina has been described as a "pocket dynamo", she talks about how the brain works, and creativity (my favourite areas) and I have found another role-model for my "role-model wall" along with Marcia Reynolds (see her sites Outsmart Your Brain and Burden of Greatness ) and Michael Bungay-Stanier of Box of Crayons and ( The 8 Principles of Fun)

As she spoke, I realised how much this particular poem, is one of my "touchstones". It's by Gerard Manly Hopkins, an hedonist aesthete turned ascetic who apparently destroyed much of his early poetry after entering a monastry. I am pretty sure I first studied it in the 7th form, with Roderick Lonsdale, my English Teacher who made sure we did far more poetry than many other classes.

As kingfishers catch fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

My choice to move away from a secure career as a lawyer, to pursue new avenues, to train as an actor, a coach, to work as a speechwriter, speaker and workshop leader, to throw my cap over the wall in many ways stems from an underlying belief that there was more to my talents and skills than I was exercising. What I do is me: and I choose to seek out my purpose rather than stay in a secure rut.

Cities and Ambition: Reflections on Paul Graham's essay

I'm utterly impressed by the quality of thought and writing that Paul Graham shares on his website. His latest offering, Cities and Ambition, posits the theory that there are different kinds of ambitions. What I would call the currency of esteem, of value, varies from place to place, as like attracts like. People who are ambitious in that way cluster in that city.

Cambridge, Massachussets (home to Harvard and MIT) values ideas. New York, money (earned or unearned). Silicon Valley, power to change the world. Paris values style and art, great painters once came out of Florence, or Bruges. Washington DC values connections, as does LA - to movers and shakers in politics for the former. He posits the theory that London is about being more aristocratic, which doesn't quite work for me.

His writing has got me thinking about what New Zealand cities value.

Wellington has the government sitting side by side with creativity. It's not a city where how much money you have matters, it's more about influence, over sub-cultures or other behaviours. So it's about who you know.

Auckland, is more about money, and consumption, where no child in middle class suburbs may return from a birthday party without a few items in the goody bag.

Christchurch I'm still working out. It may be about belonging, of fitting in, and having space. Flashy-ness isn't prized. It's more about lifestyle, having a comfortable home, enjoying the greenery, and easy access to the countryside and ski-fields. It seems to attract incomers by virtue of how it looks - the flat green expanse of space, where you can enjoy an outdoors lifestyle, rather than its vibrancy as an ideas hub (although practical ideas like software programming fit in rather well - ideas which let you do things). There's a simplicity to life here - gridded streets, easy to drive. You're either on the flat, or in the hills, and nothing in between. Maybe it's about niceness rather than greatness. Nice car, house, boat, sport on Saturdays and space to shop, but not to show off. Ease, comfort, enjoyment.

Dunedin also seems not to have money as it's currency. My impression (never having lived there) is that Dunedin has something you can belong to, more of a community feel. There's a badge of pride to have survived the winters, and drunk in the pubs and to not have come from a main centre. To be somewhere where creative people flourish, and people are still down to earth.

Of course within any city there are sub-cultures, and I still think the 8 Tribes of New Zealand is a really good analysis.

Graham says you can't really know a city's ambition unless you live there which may be why I find it hard to get a grip on Dunedin, and why I think he hasn't got London quite right. There's more to London's ambition than being aristocratic. I lived there for 6 years, and I think London is about finding your sub-culture, and discovering who you are, choosing a community to belong to. It's a place to go, find out who you are, experiment with new things and leave.

Success in London isn't necessarily the "It girl" phenomenon, it's more linked into the cultural side of things. It's the sort of city where lots of people read novels on the tube or train, and the Orange prize shortlist can be on prime time TV. Where you go as part of a grand tour, to find the opportunities in your field. The most successful then leave London, having a place outside and just coming in to visit.

Memory and identities in the age of Google

I have has several discussions with my sister or parents where we have disputed vigorously each others' memory (or lack of memory )of a past event in our childhood. Sometimes, I remember something with utter clarity and a family member says "I don't remember that, you're making that up, I'm sure that never happened" On other occasions, my sister will say "remember when you ... " and some memory I'd long since let go of pops back up to the surface. Or doesn't, and in the face of her certainty I'm forced to realise that I've utterly forgotten something.

And yet, I have vivid memories, going back to age 2 1/2, of my sister as a baby newly home from the hopital. How to explain the discrepancy? It seems our brains hold on to some things - most likely those memories that are reinforced over time (or perhaps overwritten in the retelling), and lets go of others.

I've read somewhere that forgetting can be healthy. Part of growing, moving on in life.

But now there is Google. I Googled my name the other day (as you do - and if you don't you should)

And I found this reference in the New Zealand Herald. I have no memory of it. And yet, I definitely am the Rachel Prosser they're talking about.

The other thing I find fascinating is looking at all the other Rachel Prossers of this world (and there are several of us) and wondering which ones are the same. I don't think a casual observer would link me, at Tenancy Services with the Rachel Prosser in London advising licensing committees, or the theatre I did in Christchurch. Maybe they would think me a professional volley baller (I wish, but unlikely given I'm only 5' 2''). Those who know I went to Italy on youth exchange might think I'm now an Italian Translator (again - I wish - I didn't get much past basic conversation, although I'm very proficient at ordering espresso.) Nor am I the Professor Rachel Prosser, who "was a remarkable woman in her own right as Professor of Psychiatry at the UCL Medical School". And for the record it wasn't me who shot a 10-point buck from a stand at about 4:30 p.m on Nov. 11 while hunting in Kittson County.

I'm glad that the Rachel Prossers out there seem to only have done good things (subject to your opinion on blood-sports) . It must be awfully difficult to share a name with someone notorious, particularly now recruiters often Google job candidates.

There are services now to overwhelm Google searches by positive information, but I hope that we can learn to accept that people aren't perfect all their life. We often have multiple roles, and identities, and sometimes we do grow up and move on. Sometimes letting go of memories is a good thing.

And if any of you other Rachel Prossers (Rachels Prosser?) out there read this, do say hi.

Info:Marcia Reynolds has some great stuff on how our brain works, her website Outsmart Your Brain is here. Cordelia Fine also has a great book "A mind of its own :How your brain distorts and deceives".