Happy Centenary, Marilyn
Happy Centenary, Marilyn
It’s Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday today. Despite the stratospheric amount of media attention she has received since becoming a motion picture icon, our perception of her remains as mercurial and mysterious as it ever was. And has never stopped exercising its allure over us.
In honour of her centenary, she’s been present in the media once again – and once again the portrayal of her has changed. Has all this information always been in the public domain, or does our understand of her morph over the years, as we pass through different phases of awareness of being female?
As she begins, or maybe continues to be portrayed as a strong, intelligent woman who didn’t waver trying to achieve what she wanted and created a body of work – which included the fashioning of her public persona – as a path to achievement. She has become not only a blank canvas and mirror for men and their desires, but now also for women who can discover in her a role model other than housewife, dutiful mother or femme fatale.
I recently watched a three-part biographical documentary about her on the arte channel which charted how she grew up in a foster family, crafted her image and never stopped trying to get into the movies, nor wrangling with film studios about her contracts and the work. There is that famous photograph of her reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. And her attempts to hone her acting skill by studying the Method with Lee and Paula Strasberg. She was famously “difficult”, but that certainly isn’t a gender-specific trait in actors.
Watching and reading about her in 2026, I find myself asking myself three questions. The first, of course: what would she have become if she hadn’t died of an overdose on 5 August 1962 at the age of 36. Would she slowly have faded from our screens as she aged and studio bosses looked for younger models to cast? Perhaps only to make a return when she could be cast as somebody’s mother or grandmother? Or continued to film until drug abuse or illness knocked her down? Would she go on to marry another three or four men – maybe one of them twice? Adopt one or (many) more children, with or without her husbands? Use her money and influence to support a benevolent cause, such as children in poverty or animal shelters?
The second thing I wonder about is: if her active career was right now, what would she be doing? Given how she worked so hard to construct the image that worked for her given career choice, I wonder if she would have become an influencer? Someone who puts all their time and enormous effort into self-construction and promotion. Maybe even (re)shaping the influencer industry like Kim Kardashian?
There’s also the possibility that she might have found her way out of the persona that seems to have been strangling her. In 1954, she founded her own production company. She could have adapted some of the novels she read, or pursued more challenging, less instrumentalising vehicles, or gone into directing.
And finally: would there have been another, divergent trajectory for Marilyn that might have ended happily? In the Iliad, Achilles was prophesied either to become a glorious hero, a champion for the ages; or go on to have a happy, peaceful life in obscurity. It seems unlikely. And, as with Achilles, we would have never been able to admire and wonder at the phenomenon she was.
Painting across the gender gap
Self–portrait, by Sabine Graef Lepsius (1885). She painted this at the age of 21, yet she was able to communicate – and depict – so much discernment, such an exacting, sceptical, probing regard
Chimps and fire
Chimps and fire
I was struck by a line in Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital – I mean, I’m struck by almost every line in this profoundly beautiful book – but this sparked an immediate internet trawl.
‘… the only things humans can do that animals cannot is start fire from nothing.’
Harvey goes on to say that chimps could do it if they watched and learned, and then they’d be doing more human things like cooking food and moving to cooler climates.
This is a phenomenal concept. I instantly looked up whether chimpanzees could be or even had been taught how to make fire, and it appears they have been. But they have to be taught, they can’t come up with the concept themselves, nor an idea of how it could be useful to them, now or in the future. Apparently. I don’t know anything about chimps.
So that difference in cognition is the decisive element? Chimpanzees – I think probably most apes and many other animals besides – are hugely curious. A lot of them make tools and come up with solutions to problems using them. How is it that a sense of the enormous benefits of harnessing fire, despite its dangers, is such a game-changer? We can see what it did for the human species and what progressed from here, but what of this epoch making or breaking moment of cognition?
It made me think toward, if not an opposite end of the spectrum, at least a very different part of it. Can AI “think” of making fire in this way? Is it endlessly curious the way a human being is, endlessly able to put two and two together and make 500?
The fire on the tea light in this photo was not created with a piece of flint, nor an existing ember, nor a match or even a conventional lighter. It was done with some stick I recently bought that can be recharged with a usb cable that creates a little laser horseshoe like something out of a dated Frankenstein film to light the wick without fire. It’s like a toy. Every time I use it I’m amazed.
Unfortunately I can’t come up with some kind of tight and pleasing conclusion to this train of thought. I can hear some symphonic music playing on an internet radio, see the cursor blinking on my screen, see the buildings out the window and the jet trails in the unruly and insistent sky … sometimes, frequently, I’m overwhelmed by the enormity of what is in the world, and am endlessly, greedily curious about it. As a fellow human animal yourself, I’m sure you are, too.
Colours from nature to dye for
Even common, garden-variety black-eyed susans can yield a handsome ink. Image: Cathy Dillon
Bringing the colours of nature into her work, artist and journalist Cathy Dillon is harvesting local plants to create her own pigments and ink
THE EXISTENCE OF COLOUR is one of the great gifts of the physical universe, and the ability to see and appreciate it is one of its greatest gifts to us. While we can’t detect the full spectrum, the rainbow of hues visible to us represents one of the greatest pleasures and comforts of daily life.
And so on to Dublin, where journalist (and former Irish Times colleague) Cathy Dillon has been going beyond the black and white of newsprint. No longer just writing, she’s exploring a love from her past – visual arts. To do this, she is quite literally going back to the roots of writing and pictorial communication by foraging for and processing plants to to make her own pigments and ink.
Cathy Dillon at work in her garden
Cathy, who’s always dabbled with drawing and painting, faced into a journalism career path when she decided to study English instead of visual arts. After 17 years at the Irish Times, she decided to go back to freelance work, and has augmented her writing and editing activity with drawing and painting. Making inks is a way of getting back to the foundation of written communication. “It’s the intersection of visual arts and text,” she says. “Letters are beautiful and intriguing.”
She started her exploration into natural pigment production when she embarked on a joint work with another local artist, Áine Teahan. For the Hinterland project, she got the idea to make wild inks with flora from the area. “I started to readbooks about wild inks, and there’s an active network of people who make them,” Cathy says. “I go foraging in the area and experiment with different things.”
Many plants along your usual pathways could be an accessible source of rich pigment. Image: Cathy Dillon
In that field you’ve just walked through, or that park you’ve crossed on the way to the supermarket, or even just a bit of neglected green, you might have seen some of the vegetation that, properly treated, can yield beautiful pigments for writing, drawing and painting. Naturally growing items such as rose hips, blackberries, fennel, eucalyptus, birch bark and nettles can all be transformed into something into which to dip your brush and bring colour to the page. Most recently, she harvested your fairly standard black-eyed susans, happily growing in profusion along a path near Dún Laoghaire. She says that she always takes care to follow the general rules for foraging: only gather what is abundant. Take only as much as you need. And always ask permission if the plants are on private or publicly owned land.
After harvesting, she says, “You need a couple of hours to make ink, and a couple of days for pigment.” She beings by collecting her source material, pouring boiling water over it and steeping it overnight. The next day, she boils the infusion and lets it steep again. After this, she adds soda ash so that the pigment settles out. The liquid is poured into a coffee filter, which catches the pigment. It takes time, but in the case of the black-eyed susans, for example, “It turns out they make cool patterns as they dry.”
After filtering the liquid from processed black-eyed susan plants, the pigments leave intriguing patterns in the filter. Image: Cathy Dillon
Once you have dried and ground the pigment, you can make your own paints. Mixed with gum arabic (which itself is derived from the acacia tree), water and glycerin, the pigment becomes water colours. But you can swap the glycerin for oil for oil paint, or egg for tempera.
“The three main traditional dye plants are woad, madder and weld,” Cathy explains. These have been used for centuries to create blue, red and yellow pigment. She found woad seeds in an arts supply shop while visiting friends in France, brought them back and scattered them into her garden. “Amazingly,” she says, “they survived, so I’ve made pigment out of that.” She’s also in the process of growing madder. But weld has proven difficult to cultivate. “It grows wild in scrubland and neglected areas,” she says, “and likes poor soil and open conditions”, so the average cottage garden is probably not its favourite home.
Once dried, the pigment can be powdered for making inks, paints and dyes. Image: Cathy Dillon
“I really like working with nature,” says Cathy, as she describes the advantages of foraging for her own pigments. “It’s environmental: the pigments are non-toxic and you can compost the remains of the plants. Even the chemicals you need to add are not toxic and can be poured down the drain.” And it’s relatively cheap and easy. “You don’t need a complicated infrastructure, and you can make inks out of things you see every day.”
One of the unpredictable things about natural inks is their fugitive nature. They tend to fade more quickly than industrially processed pigments, with different plants having varying staying power. Ink from blackberries, for example, “is vibrant purple, but it fades to a lighter, greyish colour. You just have to accept that.” A natural fixative can help remedy that, as can protective glass for framed works.
Adding gum arabic to the pigment powder is the next step to making paint. Image: Cathy Dillon
The three traditional pigment plants – woad, madder and weld – became widely used because of their intense and long-lasting colour. But apart from the weld being difficult to grow, the madder takes three to five years of cultivation before you can get that really strong crimson from it. “I did try harvesting some a bit early,” Cathy admits, and although that ruby red didn’t emerge, “I did get a rich orange.” Her best success with these thus far has been the woad, which after one year yielded a vivid blue pigment.
“If you look at tapestries from the Middle Ages, they have this bluish tint,” she says. To get green, the yarn “would have been dyed first with woad, then over-dyed with weld. But the weld fades more quickly than woad, so eventually they go to blue.”
‘Coming towards the end (1)’, by Cathy Dillon, painted with natural inks and pigments
The mercurial nature of the natural pigments can present a challenge, but the excitement of watching what develops brings huge rewards. One thing Cathy has noticed is that, unlike purchased pigments, inks and paints, the natural colours all go well with one another. “The colours are more subtle, and you can get great variety by changing the pH” during processing.
She finds all steps of the process immensely satisfying. The unpredictable conditions of making and working with natural pigments “makes you realise how little control you really have,” she says. She recounts that she was growing some plants for pigments, and then “the snails got at it”.
The end is the beginning of this happy process: fennel yields a vibrant green pigment. Here, the pigment is in the process of settling out of the treated liquid. Image: Cathy Dillon
But it’s the act of working with these chance, unbiddable elements that gives pigment-making its added buzz. You discover that you’re less important, “that they take the lead”, she says. “You never know what you’re going to get. It’s great when it becomes something beautiful.”
If you’d like to see more of Cathy Dillon’s work, she has a photographic piece, ‘Lights of Home’ in Artist Network’s Transience exhibition at the Walter’s gallery in Dún Laoghaire, Exhibition continues until the end of October 2023
‘77% down (2)’, by Cathy Dillon, created with her own natural inks and paints
Unstop that writer’s block
Focusing on an object and allowing your mind to free-wheel and make associations can be a useful and productive exercise
Ever sat in front of a blank page or screen and felt like your brain was just as empty? There are ways of breaking free of that state and allowing ideas to flood your mind
Everybody, at some time, will have to produce a piece of writing by a deadline (I actually first wrote “dreadline” by accident, corrected it, then realised what a revealing Freudian slip that was) and won’t have a clue what to write. This is so common that it has its own terminology, and the lead paragraph could have started like this:
Everybody, at some time, will have experienced writer’s block.
And maybe it should have – brevity, as they say, is the soul of wit. But I could probably put that line above into a search engine and get hundreds of articles that start with it. And you’d want to avoid parroting clichés, too.
When I was working for a daily newspaper, where deadlines are excruciatingly tight, relentless and non-negotiable, I sometimes (frequently) got stuck. If things were very bad, I’d leave my desk and take a walk around the block. This would take about 15 minutes, and when I returned, more often than not, the way forward was so blindingly obvious that I was mystified as to why I didn’t see it before. To brazenly seize another cliché: a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.
Nothing in your world is entirely neutral, and objects can project the power of myriad associations and stories of intricacy and depth
Creative writing isn’t much different. If you’re blocked, take a break, take a walk, play some music, doodle, emulate Proust and contemplate the madeleine (or biscuit) dipped in your cup of tea. If you’re still stuck after that, here’s a useful exercise not a million miles away from that Proustian hallucination.
Focus on some object. Any object. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s there in front of you. Stare at a pencil on your desk, or a pen, or your cup, or the crack in the wall. You can go further afield, leave your desk, pick up an orange in the kitchen, or a plate, or a half-eaten sandwich. A used tissue, a rubbish bin, a stray leaf, a hairbrush, a key fob. You’ll have got the idea – anything, it doesn’t matter what.
Stare at this thing and let your mind wander. Whether it’s yours or someone else’s, familiar or strange, dwell on the thing and let your mind go. Don’t try to push into some kind of relationship with it, but just absorb its presence and whatever qualities make it what it is. You will soon notice that your mind is going places with this object, drawing parallels, conjuring up memories, creating hypothetical situations with it. You might be responding to these emotionally. Write these impressions down as they come to you.
Just a pencil? It’s very pointed, could be a weapon (I did in fact get stabbed with a pencil once, how ironic). Or for many, a wand of creativity. Or the thing that your friend slid on, fell and broke her arm
Let’s take an example. To the left of me, here at my desk, I can see (amongst all kinds of other debris I should put away/throw away but just don’t because clutter clusters around me like I’m magnetic) a selfie stick. It’s black and kind of bulky because it also doubles as a smartphone tripod for taking pictures. It makes me feel a little embarrassed because I don’t want to be the kind of person who uses, let alone owns, a selfie stick. It contains a small remote shutter release that no longer works, which annoys me. I’m remembering the last picture I took with it, when I realised the remote shutter release didn’t work anymore: a family snap at Christmas – taken with the delayed release as the remote no longer worked. I remember the Christmas holiday and the Christmas atmosphere and the glow all around it. A bit more mindless – or rather mindful – daydreaming, and I’ve got an anecdote, or a story, or a memoir.
We can use another example, something totally unfamiliar. Standing at a corner, I see a baby’s lost sock. It’s tiny; I could just about get two fingers into it. It looks machine-knitted with blue and green stripes, and a green heel and toe cap. The baby that lost it, could be either a boy or a girl, might have been struggling with it, nudging its feet against each other, or maybe the sock was too big or too small and just came off. Maybe the child was playing with its feet, or sucking on the toe. Let’s give the child a name: Robin. Why not, we can do anything we like with this. Perhaps Robin’s parent – Pat? – was busy texting and didn’t notice that the sock had come off, or was having an animated chat with another parent and neither of them was really paying attention to the kids in their prams, or the Pat was having a hard day and occupied inside their mind with something else. Maybe Robin didn’t like wearing the socks and managed to pull the one off and was working on the other one before Pat noticed what was going on, but the discarded sock was too far away for Pat to find. Or Pat was in a hurry to get to an appointment and couldn’t go back looking for it. Or Robin had so many socks that it didn’t matter if one went missing. Perhaps the sock was a gift from hated Aunt Sophie, or brother-in-law, and was better having disappeared. Maybe Pat was frustrated at being a parent and it was the seventh sock that Robin had managed to dispose of in a week and they were thinking, fine, just freeze then. Or Pat was convulsed with guilt and felt like a bad parent because they never noticed that the socks went missing, and didn’t have the money to pay the heating bill, never mind keep baby Robin in new socks.
Something as unrelated as a cable can become a snake preparing to strike, or a tangle of pasta, or …
You get the idea. Once you’ve got your mind moving, it’s not hard to change gear, or change track, and concentrate on what you were working on before that block stopped you. Block? What block? Is it a baby block with letters on it? Or a line of traffic cones? Or somebody in front of you waving a flag, or fallen tree, or an abandoned car in the middle of the street?
Whatever it is, it’s behind you now.
Relentless
Camellia bud primed for bursting
Even if it seems like it will never end, winter doesn’t last forever. The first harbingers of spring still arrive with a very welcome sense of regularity
An early bee goes looking for lunch
I was cradling a cup of tea in my hands, letting the heat penetrate into them, when I couldn’t ignore that background noise any longer. Was someone driving a flock of geese up the narrow lane which, when it’s on duty, doubles as the high street of the village?
I opened the door, looked up and down, there was no life form of any kind to be seen. Unless you want to count the skeletons of weeds along the side of the road – frozen, dried out and left for dead by a merciless winter. Glancing down the intersection, there was evidence of life: three humans, all facing skywards. I followed their gaze and saw … the pale, late-afternoon winter sky filled – and when I say filled, I mean filled – with migrating birds. They were flying in V-formation, and as high up as they were, their screeching and honking filled the air as though they were padding up and down the high street, looking for trouble.
That morning we had just been stacking another delivery of firewood. Without any other effective way of heating the house we, like almost everyone else here, still spark up the reliable wood stove, which magically fills the home with warmth and the air with its caramelly, spicey perfume. The logs clunked one after the other on the pile made a xylophone music of their own.
Yet winter is obviously beginning to weaken its frozen hold on the landscape. The air is no longer dry and biting but smells of leaf mould and damp soil in the mornings. The sound vacuum has been breached by a hundred different melodies of birdsong. Plant life, while still not at its vigorous, verdant best, looks fuller, plumper, gathering strength for an imminent profusion of green and colour. Buds swell on stems, on shoots, on green protrusions everywhere – some green, some silvery, some already a sassy shade of pink.
And those birds. They were cranes, I was told by Miguel, the Portuguese potter and general savant who lives down the other road leading down, then up the hill and out of the village. There were thousands of them, squawking as they flew from south to north, in V-formations that undulated sinuously across the sky. Occasionally an individual bird here and there would detach itself from one V, then join another, no longer distinguishable from any of the others. For some 20 minutes, these birds, pointing like arrows forming bigger arrows towards their secret destination in the north, kept coming from one horizon, to disappear into the opposite one. Always with the same unerring, unveering, relentless sense of purpose. How they know what to do, where to go, when to depart, and how to arrange themselves – in fact, why the V-formation? A good question for Google. Or, rather, the very aptly-named search engine Duck Duck Go.
But that is for another day. At the moment, I’m just enjoying being filled with the sense of awe at the immensity of it all, the sense of imminent, momentous change. And soon not having to warm my hands on too-rapidly cooling cups of tea.
