The Ancient Art Of Making Our Mark

Why do I write?

Good question.

The answer is a relatively simple one.

It’s because, as a species, we love to communicate.

We are infinitely sociable but, at the same time, feel that the most important mark that we make in life is our own.

If you are ever fortunate enough to explore the Chauvet Cave in France, you will come across a spectacular array of ancient paintings on its walls. Some of them have been painstakingly carbon dated and are estimated to have been created approximately 36,000 years ago.

Unfeasibly bygone art depicting, for the most part, the mighty beasts that the artistic denizens spent their days with.

Yet, for all their grandeur, there is one painting which, for me, stands out more than any other.

It is a very simple one indeed.

Reckoned to have been made by a young woman, it is an image of a human hand. The artist has placed her hand up against the rock and painted around it, leaving its outline in place amongst the ochre colour that she used.

A handprint.

Her signature.

Her way of saying “…this is me. I was here.”

Thinking of that very fundamental urge within us to make our mark, to tell people of our presence and make a physical record of it for all to see.

36,000 years ago.

That handprint is no different, for me, to a text today. The desire to make an impression, to be noted is just the same now as it was then.

Only the means of doing so has changed.

And thinking of that young woman having the need to do that, just as teenager of 2024 will do the same thing via Instagram or Tik Tok blows my mind.

She, quite literally, ‘made her mark’.

She felt compelled to do so, it is part of the human condition to want to do so.

Nothing has changed. We look at the modern equivalent to her art today and call it graffiti.

We then tut and hope someone comes along and cleans it up.

It’s a good job no-one felt the same way about wall art in Upper Palaeolithic France.

She and I have a lot in common.

Because I feel that same compulsion to make my mark upon the world.

Which is why I write.

It matters not to me if my words, scattered and varied, were read by absolutely no-one.

Yet they are and I will always be very appreciative of that fact.

I was writing before I started school. By the age of three I was an advanced reader as well as an avid story teller with an imagination that was rich and colourful. I took all of this to school at four where, as my mother revels in telling me, my first teacher didn’t like the fact I was a '...ready made’ reader'.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I am at University near Wimbledon, studying English Language and Literature.

I tumbled into higher education. It wasn’t something I’d ever intended to do as all I ever wanted to do in life was write. So I bodged my way through three years of study, looking for any reason at all to pack my bags and go home to, I fervently desired, a garret and poverty, ‘…down and out in Norwich’ as opposed to Orwell’s classic which features Paris and London in the same vein.

But wouldn’t you know it, I fell deeply in love with the college I was at and the people who I was there with. Thus, even when, in the middle of my second year, I was close to being offered the position as a trainee journalist for a newspaper in Ely, I didn’t pursue it.

Should I have packed my bags and left my South London idyll?

Probably.

Now, deeply into middle age, I could, if I so wished, make a list of all the things I did in my twenties that I deeply regret. It would be a long and arduous task.

But at least I’d be writing.

Writing is the ultimate catharsis. It unburdens the soul. I suffer, frequently, from depression and have received treatment, in recent years, for same.

I’m currently experiencing something called Psychodynamic Counselling on a weekly basis and let me tell you, right here and now, it’s something that everyone should experience at least once in their lives. To borrow a phrase from the song, 'I'd never been to me'.

I have now. And. It. Is. Fascinating.

All I can add is that, even in the very depths of the greatest gloom, all I can say, to this day, is thank ?the gods I have my writing.

Life is what makes you a writer. And, as self critical as I am about myself, one thing rings very true.

I’m a very very good one.

You may have read some of my books. I’ve written or edited thirty at the moment, though there are more to come next year.

You may even own one or two of them. I often say some of them are made for the smallest room and are likely most probably ‘read’ from around 7am in the morning to about 8:30am, and for about ten minutes at a time.

Just as long as my words are being read. That’s all I ask for.

Even if they'll never be as jaw droppingly incredible as a 36,000 year old hand print.