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Bo Lutoslawski
Curriculum Vitae | Speak your mind | Photographic Workshop | Lectures | Portraits

"Speak your mind" - Stories


Day 1: What's on your mind?

One evening, a few days after a New Year 1980, I went to see my uncle, because emotions were creating havoc inside my mind. He served us tea, we sat in the main room and I told him about my distress in a pretty chaotic way, because I was too upset to make any sense out of it.

Uncle Witold listen carefully, ask a couple of questions, which grounded events in vaguely coherent manner and offered me an apple pie. He was calm, gentle, worldly, elegant and I realised that Witold was purposefully enveloping me in an atmosphere of wise patience.

In those days I always had my photographic camera on me. So I took it out and without altering any lights, as not to disturb the intimacy of that situation, I started to take pictures of Witold. This was my way to show to him that I feel better now and that I appreciate his support.

A few weeks later, just before I emigrated to England, I dropped by again to give him a few prints, but uncle Witold wasn’t around, so I left them on the table.

Seven years later I saw one of those portraits on a cover of a book about Witold Lutoslawski published by The Cambridge University Press. Over the past number of years I discovered that they are used for many publications.
These photographs happened in the most intimate situation any further intentions.

But since January 1980 they evolved into portraits, images, which represent Witold Lutoslawski.

 

Day 2: Is anyone out there interested in my thoughts and ideas?

“Dancing above the precipice – my struggle with cancer”

After a bone-marrow transplant the treatment for cancer came to the end and I kind off wanted to forget the whole thing. Well, it wasn’t to be. At close intervals since that time various people kept asking me about it either out of genuine concern or because their own diagnosis or out of curiosity.

When a close friend, who was suffering with breast cancer (she is fine now), came to me for advice, I realized that it was time to write a book about it. The reason was totally selfish: I didn’t want to talk about it any more, but walk away free from any residue of my illness. I desperately wished to escape all those nightmares from returning to me again and again and again.

I was dreaming that once I wrote my thoughts down, they could be read, instead of me having to describe them in all their frightening glory.

Then, with the publication of “Dancing above the precipice – my struggle with cancer” I had realized that a story benefited many more people then I imagined. Just weeks after publication I have met my readers again and again and again and every single time this was a very emotional and somewhat positive event. People shared their most intimate feelings and fears with me, saying that my book gave them faith in their own recovery or that it had helped them understand what their loved ones had to go through. Doctors told me that it opened their eyes to the inner suffering of their patients.

In “Dancing above the precipice – my struggle with cancer” I wrote about my feelings on the day I was told that I had cancer, when I started treatment, and when the terror of my predicament became all too apparent. I also wrote about beauty of being alive and spending playful days with my family. I aimed for my words to be like a torch, that would allow other people in a similar condition to have a clearer vision of what they have to face up to. Some nights I was sitting in a room with a view of my garden, which was lit by a moon hoping that I will manage to describe, translate my life from the time of illness into substance, which is comprehensible.

At one of the meetings with my readers an elderly lady turned around to the audience and pronounced: “You must read this book. It will give you the strength to cope. Everyone should read this book!”

Which meant that my writing didn’t “get lost in translation”! That it was all worth it.

Day 3: How can I tell my story?

Once we understood What do we want to say (Day1) & Whom do we wish to share our thoughts with (Day2), it is time to choose the most effective way to have a conversation.

Perhaps it was Socrates who invented a dialogue, which his followers from Plato and Cicero to Hemingway and Magnum Group masterminded into the most flexible and influential way to say important things in life?

Who knows?

When I wanted to engage with others beyond face to face conversation or phoning them up, I used film, writing, photography, TV, lecture hall and … this is just about it. Obviously, there are many more options, but for the time being, for this particular day, I will restrain myself to just one example: portrait photography.

For many years I communicated by taking photographs of people, who were curious to see what I can do with my camera, Canon A1. Sometimes they even let me loose on their organization, leaving editorial decisions to my judgment (London Sinfonietta & the BBC World Service). Others confined time to 5 minutes (Paloma Picasso, an hour after opening the exhibition of her late father at the Royal Academy in London and before going to Ritz Hotel to meet friends), while Glenda Jackson allowed me to carry on shooting three films during half an hour break between performances.

Needless to say, people I photographed for some publishing company knew that our personal meeting during a session had another, final dimension or motive. This was to present their portraits to others, to their readers or an audience. While I cherished those chances to meet fascinating individuals, some of whom were famous, while others incredible in their achievements or just important in relation to what was presently happening in our society, I always felt that I was employed here to create an image, which would speak to “the World”.

Nevertheless it was all very thrilling, on edge, ambivalent, almost mysterious. And I loved it!

Upon the return to the office, in the centre of Krakow or Warsaw or London or Paris, a journalist, an editor, a designer would take it further and so my photographs were folded into a wider scene. And this was special too.


Day 4: Do you believe that someone will get excited, astonished, moved to tears, intrigued, be charmed, fall in love, laugh, learn new things, expand horizons of thinking by taking in your story?

When my first text was published in a newspaper, I felt that I entered a magical world of journalism. This was for real! Suddenly I was free to walk into a buzzing editorial office with my text to be set in print within a few hours, while reporters were rushing in and out, fax was printing furiously and the editor-in-chief was ordering photographers about. It was awesome, even if I was told to rewrite my story in ten minutes flat because it wouldn’t squeeze into its allocated space.

One day, being youthfully enthusiastic and eager to improve, I asked my editor about readers.

“Do you think that they like how I write? What do they think about my ideas?”

“When you get facts wrong, I will get complaints. If they have other ideas, they will not read what you want to tell them. Otherwise, anybody’s guess” and she went back to her phone.

“Not very encouraging” – I thought.

I went out slightly depressed, straight into a magnificent mediaeval square in the middle of Krakow, in Poland. Trees were sprouting fresh leaves, rain was gone and I saw a man in his thirties, who bought my newspaper and was walking away towards a flower market.

I followed him immediately.

Then, to my amazement, I saw him opening a newspaper, turning his attention to my column and reading it. This was more than perfect. I got so excited about it all that I levelled up with him, walking far too close. But then My Reader glanced at me with astonishment and I realised that he wasn’t particularly keen for a stranger to peep into his newspaper.

I backed off, pretending that I wasn’t interested, but my heart was leaping with great joy. My writing was OK! I couldn’t get a better assessment of my fledging skills than that, because the event was supremely anonymous, like blind wine tasting, when your bottle gets a prize.

Day 5: A Generic Publication (Mock-up design with texts & images pasted onto a board)

Group Discussion

 

© Bo Lutoslawski, 2009