Page 9 - Art First: Simon Lewty and Will Maclean: Charting a Decade II

contributed to it. In that sense, the recordings are themselves an excava tion.

Listening to Lewty and Maclean, one becomes acquainted with their forebears,
vivid characters who come to life again in the telling of memories and whose

influence remains potent and in some instances inter woven with the works–

Maclean’s grandfather’s boat evoked in his Star of the Sea, the typescript from

a novel by Lewty’s mother, Marjorie, adapted for reuse. Among the comments

made by Maclean in his last recording session, he says the process has drawn out

‘Stuff that I’d forgotten that I knew . . . . Particularly to revise memories of my

Granny and Skye, which was in retrospect such an important person in my life.
Unfortunately I was too young to understand the rela tion ship and she probably

would be quite surprised . . . but things like that have been very interesting for me’.

Among the best moments for interviewers are when an artist says, ‘I hadn’t quite

realised that myself before’. Very oen this is in response to being asked to describe

a work, something the speaker may never have had to articulate before, when

the knowledge is subcon scious until questioned. In these instances, the fact that

the recording is audio only rather than film becomes a strength.

ere are many points of contact between Maclean and Lewty. e beginnings
of a list might include that both have engaged deeply with the coast and the sea

(in Lewty’s case in the parts of his life spent in Swanage, Dorset), both have