The Friend Ship

On the power of creative allies, friendship beyond friendship and lessons long after a loss.

(If you are new here, welcome, it is wonderful to have you on The Wild Edge. You can come and introduce yourself if you wish. Clare x

The Friend Ship- For Jennifer Corcoran.

The daffodils are slowing rising to awake. A pop of yellow breaches the February grey, like sunshine from another year has resurrected the memory of dawn. I don’t think I will ever be able to look at daffodils again and not think of her. They were only just unfurling when she died. It only ever felt like the beginning.

It’s two years since my friend and creative travelling companion, Jennifer Corcoran passed away from a galloping cancer. It was all over so soon. I am only really able to write about it now. Her death still cuts through, sometimes still with a searing pain, but I have come to accept that the intensity of the loss is a mirror to the intensity of the esteem I held for her, and the love.

The words around her loss came first in poems. Poetry held grief in its hands, and gave it compass to find a way through. Now though, there are lessons in the mix, around the power of creative friendship, the container and limits of describing that friendship, and practical things I have learned from Jennifer - filmmaker and director, educator and adventurer- about diving right into the creative process while letting it literally shape our lives.

Alongside telling you a little more about Jennifer, it’s these lessons I want to share today. And while Jennifer would have cringed at my praise for her, I think she would have approved of sifting through a life to allow the lessons to gleam. So yes, this is a post about Jennifer, but it is also about so much more than that. Jennifer was always about so much more.

The post below is for paid subscribers. Mostly because it feels tender. I am also sharing a recording of a poem I wrote, Studio Notes, a few weeks after her death.

However, for those just reading this far. Hello, and three things:

1. If you have a creative ally, someone who just really ‘gets’ you, please tell them how much they mean to you, how they have influenced you and how their example is rippling out. Even better, turn off your phones, pack a flask, and go on an adventure together. Up hills. Down rivers. Into the creative abyss. You’ll both be changed for it.

2. Jennifer Corcoran’s first feature film, ‘She Sings to The Stars’, was her total labour of love, and, in turn so full of love and wisdom. There was lots more where that was coming from. But for now, we still have this.

3. As Jennifer would say, whatever you do, may it be done in beauty.

   So, may it be so.

Now, over to The Tales of Jennifer Corcoran. By her travelling companion and aspirational sidekick, Clare.