Of Sidequests and Souvenirs
Somehow, it’s been three weeks since I got back from my trip. They’ve been eventful weeks, every crack in the calendar filled with recordings and side gigs, volunteering and coffees and lunches and a surprising number of hikes. In short, plenty has happened that I could make meaning of for these digital pages.
But I have one last1 story I want to tell you about my time in England. And it starts before I even left Los Angeles.
Earlier this summer, I read a book called Enchantment by Katherine May. I’d picked it up during a session of therapeutic bookstore browsing. The subtitle called to me from the shelf: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age. I don’t recall if buying the book did anything for my mood, but eventually I read the thing, and that helped. Somewhere in the middle, in a chapter auspiciously called “Pilgrimage”, I was tickled to find mention of Canterbury. More specifically, May writes of Harbledown, a place “just outside Canterbury,” and a wellspring there where Edward of Woodstock, “The Black Prince,” was once cured of leprosy. The author writes of her repeated 21st century visits there, attempts to find some miracle of her own. Or, rather, to find something holy within herself.
I’m going to Canterbury, I thought. Wouldn’t it be lovely, I thought. I could find the Black Prince Well for myself. Or at least try. May had been taken to the well by a friend, and described it as a place she would not have found on her own.
When it came time to pack my suitcases, an ambitious array of books made the cut. Several Sweet Valley High volumes, the latest Lady Sherlock, a novel called My Oxford Year, and an essay collection from Joyce Carol Oates titled The Faith of a Writer2. With so many books3 in tow, it seemed silly to bring along a hardcover I’d already finished. I snapped some photos of the May pages referencing Harbledown and the Black Prince Well, and hoped her scant description would be enough to send me on my way. Canterbury was, at that time, over a week away. I’d figure out the details of my quest later on.
Two details above - the number of books I packed, and my intention to go on a semi-religious sidequest — are indicative of my fantasy of how I’d spend my free hours on this trip. An early breakfast, a stroll through town, and then out into the emerald fields beyond the city center, where I spend an hour or two reading and writing under the shade of some millennium-old tree. In the distance, the peals of church bells alert me to the hour; I brush the stray grass from my legs and hie myself to pre-evensong rehearsal like Fraulein Maria rushing from the hills to the abbey (though hopefully not arriving late).
In part, this fantasy was born of a wish for some peace and clarity outside the chaos of “real life;” in part, it was a recollection of our last choir pilgrimage, back in 2017. That time, I’d set aside a few hours to write a blog post every day. I’d taken a memorable day-trip to Glastonbury, not knowing what I’d see there, and found myself at a The Chalice Well, a site steeped in both religious significance and Arthurian legend. I’d wandered up from the well to a private bench covered by a lattice arch, and past pilgrims had tied ribbons to its slats. As I considered these small prayers with reverent awe, a rain shower broke out. If my trip had been an art film, this could have been the wordless scene where our heroine found the answer she’d been seeking was inside her all along. The music would swell. And then she’d catch the bus back to her hotel.
Six years later, the nature of the choir’s pilgrimage was the same, but some key details had changed. Most people had some degree of phone service, and it was easy to touch base about who was where, when. We were in closer proximity to each other, staying in hotels situated around common areas. And even though it didn’t much resemble my imagination, this companionship was one of the best parts of the trip. Not one minute of my time abroad was spent reading beneath a tree…or on a bench, or at a cafe. I took some walks alone, but more often I was accompanied by one of my 40-odd travel companions.
As for my bookstack, the Lady Sherlock got read before going to sleep (or when I couldn’t sleep). One of the Sweet Valleys came out for a photo shoot. My Oxford Year didn’t even get its cover cracked. The Faith of a Writer was the only book that left my hotel room with me. I read it on several of our (many) coach rides. In each of the book’s essays, Oates offers some advice on writing. In “Running and Writing,” she describes the common writerly habit of using runs or walks to lay the foundation for some future work, whether it’s literally thinking through plots or simply absorbing the landscapes where a story will be set. I found all this romantic talk of craft and inspiration bittersweet. I want to be writing more, and I want my explorations to be fueling creative output. At home, I complain of a lack of time, and lord knows time is in short supply. But I worry that there’s something else that keeps me from really digging in to my next big “work.” Something internal.
On our official tour of Worcester Cathedral, we were shown the remains of “The Worcester Pilgrim,” a Medieval trader who was found buried under the foundations in 1986. They know he was a pilgrim because of the shell he carried in his pocket. Some theorize that he died on his way to Canterbury. Some slumbering part of my brain perked up at this tale. Now there’s the seed of a story, I thought, before realizing first that it’s not a story for me to write, and then that the story of pilgrims to Canterbury has, famously, already been written.
At any rate, I had no business looking for new projects to work on. During my first days in Worcester, I made a promise to write a short play for a fundraiser for my theater group.4 Committing to writing a new ten-minute work had been exhilarating, but quickly I realized that all I had was the start of an idea — a strange-but-true story from my own childhood — and no clue how to make it mean anything at all. For most of the time I was in England, I mulled over this problem any time my mind was free enough to recall its existence. I told myself that this mulling counted as progress. But also I needed 10 pages of play to be written by the time my plane landed in Los Angeles. Speaking of sidequests.
When we got to the hotel in Canterbury, my room wasn’t made up yet. While I waited, I took my first peek into the cathedral itself. A peek is all it was — I didn’t have the wherewithal to take it all in just yet. But in the small gift shop near the transept5, I spent £4 on a silver shell pin that I wore for the rest of the trip, marking myself, I suppose, as a pilgrim. I’d been hoping for a necklace, but the pin was the only shell on offer.
We arrived in Canterbury on a Monday. By Friday, I realized that if I wanted to find the Black Prince Well, it was now or never. I found my hastily-snapped photos of the pages of Enchantment and was reminded just how little I had to go on. She mentions St. Nicholas Hospital; I was able to find this on a map and saw that it was about a mile and half away from our hotel. I decided to walk.
The first part of the walk was pleasantly redundant, as I’d spent the week looking for restaurants still open for dinner or hunting down friends at various tea shops and pubs. But at some point I entered unfamiliar ground. And I found myself thinking about my little play. I thought of the Irish playwright Conor McPherson. I thought of all the stories I have heard over the past two weeks, and how I’d wondered if many of them could be true. And then I found myself at a church called St. Dunstans, where the head of Sir Thomas More was apparently buried. I went in, paid my respects, and continued on, now turning onto a busier road. It started to rain, but I’d brought my umbrella.
By the time I got to Harbledown, I was pretty wet and fighting back worries that this had been a stupid idea. I found St. Nicholas Hospital Church, but when I pulled out my phone to check the map again, I saw that I had no service. Eventually, I found signs indicating public footpaths, but following them just led me to the back of St. Nicholas Hospital Church, which was not open to the public. It’s fine, I consoled myself. The adventure had been the point; even if I didn’t find the well, I’d still seen a number of things I never would have known were here. There are apple orchards in Harbledown. I walked past impressive stacks of wooden crates the apples would presumably be stored in. There had been Thomas More’s buried head.
I decided to double back one last time, looking a little more closely. And that’s when I saw it. I stood on the wet footpath and several yards of grass separated me from a small pool of water with a stone backing and stone steps. The signs had said not to venture off the path, but what was a few steps of trespassing in the rain, after how far I’d come?
The well was different from what I’d pictured. It was less secret, less shrouded in mystery. I sat down on the damp top step, letting my umbrella fall away and my fingers graze down into the water below. I debated how long I should sit there in the rain. I stayed put for a while, wondering if enlightenment might strike me. I remembered that Katherine May had written of the offerings people left behind at the well — much like those strings tied to the lattice at Glastonbury’s Chalice Well. I scanned the Black Prince Well for treasures, but there was only one to speak of: a solitary shell.
And then, I started back. I was proud that my quest had been successful. I’d found the well. And yet…had I found what I’d been looking for? I asked myself what it was that I’d expected. The voice of God, bubbling up from deep waters? A profound sense of the prayers of thousands of years of pilgrims? To be healed somehow, as Edward had been healed (though, you know, not of leprosy)?
I wound my way back to the road and decided to take a bus back, since it was still raining. And as I waited, I realized that, at some point on this walk, I had solved the problem of my play. I’d figured out that it would be about stories, and about how the best ones can be hidden where you’d least expect. Now my head was brimming with dialogue and plot turns, and I had to get out my phone to record a voice memo to myself. I was still talking when the bus arrived, and I continued to talk to my future self until we pulled into the depot. The well had been one sidequest, and the play had been another. The JCO essay had promised that writers find their work while walking, and she’d been correct. The new stories and voices I’d been hearing had mingled between my ears and merged with my own life experience to form something new, partly fact and yet fully true.
I met my deadline. I won’t pretend that when I sat down at my computer to type it all up, I did so with confidence and relish. Part of me wondered, as it always seems to, does this make sense? Is any of this making sense? Thankfully, I have that bus ride voice memo. The voice in that recording is overflowing with the joy of creative synthesis, of idea tributaries finally meeting to make a river and seek an ocean. Of all the souvenirs I brought back with me, it is the one I most hoped for, and the one I least expected to find.
A few reminders
The Mirror Game is on Tubi !!!
The most recent episodes of Sweet Valley Diaries have been a lot of fun! Listen to AMY’S TRUE LOVE (with Brian) and MISS TEEN SWEET VALLEY (with Denise).
You can enjoy new episodes of Feeling Seen and Maximum Film!, the shows I produce for Maximum Fun (…Media Cooperative!), every week! These are good shows, man.
Okay, no promises that this will be the last one EVER. But probably for now.
Subtitle: “Life, Craft, Art”
(and I came home with even more)
InHouse, who put on A Mere Conception in 2019
Canterbury Cathedral has a much bigger gift shop outside the church, near the front gates. MUCH bigger.
Welcome home, Pilgrim. Ever write songs?