On a lifelong love

and an ongoing conversation

‘Carsaig 704203’ a book inspired by the scene at the telephone box at Carsaig.

‘I Know Where I’m Going’, or IKWIG to fans is a British film made in 1945 by Powell & Pressburger, a duo who made so many seminal films including ‘The Red Shoes’, ‘Black Narcissus’ and ‘A Matter of Life and Death’. It’s a classic - there’s a summary and recent review here : ‘one of the most lovable films in British cinema history’ and it also happens to be Martin Scorsese’s favourite film.

I have been thinking a lot lately about why I keep returning to IKWIG. It’s a film made nearly 80 years ago; I’ve watched it more times than I can count, so why do I go back to it - what is it about engaging with a single work that is so inspiring?

‘Robert’s Book’ - containing all the words spoken by the character Sir Robert Bellinger, which fade away to nothing as he fades from Joan’s thoughts.

I can’t of course speak to the filmmakers or the actors; they are sadly not alive any more. I did meet and chat to a Mull resident when I was there making work for an exhibition; he was a teenager when the film was shot there and remembered it (which was a wonderful thing) but making books and artwork about it mean I can still live with it and engage with it. I can explore its fascinating themes, ask it questions and find illumination in the process of making work in response to it. Great works of art (and I would certainly argue this is one) grow and change with their audience. Or at least are expansive enough to allow their audience/viewer to shift perspective.

As I’ve got older I’ve moved from being most attracted to Joan and her story (she is the central romantic lead) to feeling most allied with Catriona who now strikes me as my ideal.

I would love to think that this is what I look like when I am striding the hills with my dogs at my heels, absolutely at one with the landscape. Fiercely independent, completely self-contained and competent, watching the unfolding drama around her with wry amusement.

It’s fascinating to be able to notice myself changing, through this relationship with IKWIG. I find it too with Jane Austen, although I see myself aging rather too rapidly through her female characters - I’ve left my favourite (Anne Elliot) behind long ago and I am afraid I am now Miss Bates, the poor village spinster in Emma. I expect any moment people will come round with calves foot jelly and beef tea if I can’t get the dogs to see them off. But I digress.

Anyway returning to IKWIG - making work about it, reading and researching it, visiting the locations of the film - these are all ways I have found to become part of it, embedded in it. Returning to it over and over makes it feel like a living changing thing, gives me a relationship with it and it’s now embedded in me. I embody it. It’s also really wonderful to have chosen it purposefully. So much of our lives now are overwhelmed with unwanted and unwelcome influences - the stuff that social media algorithms pushes onto us. I am so glad I found IKWIG when I was a kid, when BBC2 showed old British films on weekend afternoons when there wasn’t much to do and no streams of superficial noisy output. I was able to be completely absorbed in it and I am still able to immerse myself in it. It’s become a touchstone, a way of connecting with myself again.

‘I Know Where I’m Going’ - an installation featuring all the words spoken in the film.

And all the reading and research I’ve done around it, all the different work I’ve made about it, have all deepened and reinforced my connection with it. The pilgrimages that I’ve made to Mull (and I think that is probably the right way of describing these journeys) have meant that it’s also been a physical experience of being present in the landscape of the film. I look all the time for ways into the film and actually being in the place where it was made is one of them. I dream of that moment in ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ when Mia Farrow is in the cinema watching a film and one of the characters turns and looks at her and steps out of the film…if only I could take that step in the opposite direction. My suitcase is packed!