We are currently working on a new feature for the website which will help map out Lawrence’s travel as well as capture his initial observations on places.
I am often asked, what is creativity? And my answer is simple: creating problems and solving them. Or finding problems and solving them.
Another recurring question is, what is the point of creativity? And, again, my answer is simple: we have to fill our allotted three score years and ten doing something. Time is there to be filled and creativity adds a crackle and spark to the precarious clock hands.
Creativity leads to obsession as the desire to perfect a process becomes inevitable. This is pretty much what has happened with the Locating Lawrence feature in the Memory Theatre. These are a monthly video essay based on the letters of D.H. Lawrence, published one hundred years to the month.
Originally, I was looking for some quotes to use in the D.H. Lawrence bulletin that I edit. This then transformed into a monthly blog. Then it became a video essay on YouTube. The first Locating Lawrence started in April 1922 (published April 2022) and has been running ever since – and will do so until his death in 1930. This means I’ll be making them till 2030 whether you want them or not. It’s quite the commitment but inspired by Frank Delaney’s superb Re:Joyce podcasts which deconstruct Ulysses a sentence or paragraph per podcast!
I mention this as the official date for the start of the Memory Theatre project was 2019 – to mark the centenary since Lawrence began his self-imposed exile and embarked on his savage pilgrimage. Technically, I need to back-date the video essays till then but for now I have completed the 1922 ones. The January, February, and March videos will be published over the next month. This is important as I’ve created a playlist for each year and so they need to be filled.
The downside to this is I love reading Lawrence’s letters each month and published the video essay and blog exactly one hundred years on. Updating messes with the chronology as well as with my head.
Paul and I are now working on a map for the website that takes inspiration from the Indiana Jones films and will include the videos as well as quotes. This will eventually run in real time. My initial idea is to include polaroid type images to mark out the journey, such as the one at the top of this post, but we’ll have to see how this looks.
If you subscribe to this blog or follow our YouTube channel, please don’t think I’ve suddenly lost the plot if random years start appearing in your timeline. Think of it as a spring clean and an attempt to get things back in order, as well as an excuse to create more problems for myself with less time to solve them in…
References
D.H. Lawrence: A Digital Pilgrimage 
I love anything map-related to do with DHL. I started a Google Maps-based one initially as somewhere to hang together my DHL geographic knowledge and it has grown joyously (for me) into a global monster. It has pictures, quotes and a timeline of dates/locations. You may enjoy it or hopefully be inspired… https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?hl=en&mid=1kPxsaX-GxMdng_Z02onMkEiRCy_Gd9Cw&ll=47.952174537999106%2C8.226518778889421&z=5 Lawrence PhD scholar Buxi Duhan also has a local one… https://www.mappingdhlawrence.org/
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You are welcome to submit a blog post about your project, and yes, I’m sure there are ways we can incorporate your research. We’re working on a map based on the letters, so when this design is finished we can think of ways of linking.
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I have a blog post you may be interested in regarding dialect called “DH Lawrence – What did he sound like?” It’s based on first hand accounts of his rather unusual sounding voice… https://watnallhall.blogspot.com/2023/10/dh-lawrence-what-did-he-sound-like.html
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What a great blog and fun bit of research. I think Lawrence definitely had a ‘fay-the’ rather than a ‘father.’ If you want to send over a condensed version of this, I’d be happy to publish. If you’re in Nottingham, we should meet up as well. Would be good to hear more about your project.
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That would be good. If you want to use it, maybe just use the intro and take your pick of the examples. My fave and a good sum up is Compton Mackenzie’s parody of DHL (and Frieda) in his novel “The South Wind of Love”… “Rayner rose to his feet and in a broad Midland accent told them that he was taking the chance of Sunday afternoon to give the damned place a jolly good clean-up. Untying his apron, he went to the foot of a narrow staircase that led up from the sitting-room to the floor above and shouted in a brusque slightly rasping voice, an unexpected contrast to his usually soft tones which would sometimes trickle away into a musical falsetto: “Hildegarde! Hildegarde! Hildegarde! Roll off that bed and come down, d’ye hear? The Rodneys have turned up. Come on down and talk to them while I get tea.”. Spot on!
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