One year, no weddings and two funerals: working
towards meaning and regeneration through
auto/biographical stories
Nod Miller
University of East London, England, UK
Paper presented at SCUTREA 34th Annual Conference, University of Sheffield,
UK. 6-8 July 2004
Introduction
This paper is about my experience of 2003 (the year to which my title refers) and my
representations of that experience. I present a case study through which I hope to
illuminate some aspects of the methodology of the particular brand of
auto/biographical research which I have been developing for some time. I begin with
some backstory (the term used in movie-making to refer to the histories of the
characters preceding the current narrative) to explain the context for this paper. I go
on to describe a text in which I gave a visual representation of my life in 2003, and
use a metaphor of auto/biography as media production in order to analyse that text. I
conclude with some thoughts about the connections between elements in my
experience and analysis and the themes of this conference.
Backstory: the loneliness of the longitudinal auto/biographer
I have been engaged in auto/biographical research on adult learning for several
decades, and in my past writing I have been in the habit of making more or less
casual observations about learning as a challenging and lifelong activity. I have
probably become rather glib in my exhortations to my readers and students to learn
from every experience. But 2003 was a year which tested my ability beyond its limits
to practise the experiential learning about which I have theorised at length. I have
found it immensely difficult in recent times to reflect upon negative experiences in
order to turn them into learning opportunities, or to mine my subjectivity productively
for research purposes. There seemed little to celebrate: there were no weddings in
my social network, although I was involved in two significant funerals. I found my
reflections on learning through the life course turning increasingly towards thoughts
about death, and these gloomy musings were reinforced by daily news bulletins full of
war, violence and destruction.
My feelings of deep depression at the end of the year resulted in my breaking of a
habit of over twenty years: namely the annual production of a personalised Christmas
card. Each year since 1981, I have designed an illustrated text, in collaboration with a
friend I have known since my schooldays who is a graphic artist, usually featuring
significant images and events from the preceding year, and distribute copies widely
among my social and professional networks. In a paper (Miller, 2002) presented at a
conference on letter-writing, I examined this instance of an auto/biographical practice.
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I described and analysed the development of these texts of seasons’ greetings and
the contexts of their production and distribution, making reference to issues such as
the place of Christmas communication in the maintenance of friendship relationships
and social networks, in impression management and in reciprocity. I examined what
might be read from my annual Christmas texts, and the processes of production and
distribution surrounding them, about my changing identities, the interplay of my
personal and professional selves, my assumed audience and my changing
relationships with information and communication technologies. I attempted to draw
out what I could learn from this case study about the social structures and processes
of which I was a part, and to grasp the relationship between the ‘I’ of my academic
papers and the Nod Miller of my Christmas cards. The title of the paper (‘Twenty
years of seasons’ greetings from humbug to wizard’) encapsulated the chronological
journey from my earliest card, which featured a succinct reference to Dickens’s A
Christmas Carol in the caption ‘Bah, humbug’, to the 2001 production, with wishes for
‘a wizard Christmas’, which included such contemporary cultural referents as Harry
Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Lord of the Rings, Ally McBeal and the His
Dark Materials novels of Philip Pullman. During the autumn of 2003, at the time when
I usually review my last year and decide how to represent it in my Christmas card, I
was devoid of good feelings about the year and of any creative ideas about how to
represent my recent experience positively. This state of affairs persisted through the
festive season; consequently, I sent out no cards at all.
A year in the life: looking back in anger
By mid-January 2004, I had received a number of anxious communications from
friends who were alarmed at the non-arrival of my expected festive text. I realised
that, unless I wanted to slough off most of my social contacts at a stroke, I would
need to communicate in some way with my friends, family and colleagues who were
at a distance. And unless I planned to send individual greetings (or, unthinkably,
commercially produced ones), I needed to design a card — this time, to be
despatched as a new year greeting. And by then I was determined to try my hardest
to leave as much as possible of my anger and grief in 2003, and look forward to
brighter experiences in 2004. At the same time as I composed the abstract for this
paper, I designed a greetings card for 2003/04. This is the text which forms the object
of my analysis in the following sections of this paper, and (if SCUTREA’s
technological resources permit), one side of it is reproduced in a black and white
version at the end of the paper [They did! It is! Ed].
Again, it may be useful to refer to some of my earlier work in summarising my
methodology. In ‘Lifelong learning goes to the movies’ (Miller, 2000), I set out a model
to assist in the construction and analysis of auto/biographical texts of lifelong
learning. The model is developed from a metaphor of media production according to
which a lifelong learning story may be constructed in terms of the following stages in
the production of a media artefact such as a movie, sitcom or soap opera: pitching,
scripting, casting, shooting, editing and screening. In another paper (Miller, 2001), I
sketched in more detail that part of the model concerned with the use of archetypes in
assembling my cast of characters. My approach has been shaped at the intersection
of my academic identities of adult educator and media sociologist with my personal
identity as a fan of popular culture (as has the content of my Christmas card over the
years). In various papers I have examined the insights into aspects of lifelong
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learning which may be gained from analysis of products of popular culture and
highlighted the way in which such products impact on personal experience,
subjectivity and identity-construction. I have analysed the significance in my life of
cultural artefacts such as television series (Miller, 1999; 2001) and popular songs
(Edwards and Miller, 2000) and have deconstructed the way in which I draw on
images and sensations from popular culture in making sense of the everyday.
I now turn to the stages in the model of auto/biography as media production in order
to analyse elements in the representation of 2003 in my greetings card.
Pitching: thirty-two little boxes
Pitching involves selling the idea for a media product; it may be equated with
establishing a rationale and standpoint. Since Hollywood moguls have exceptionally
crowded diaries and limited attention spans, the sellers of concepts for films and
television series have to develop skills in presenting their script ideas in the most
compressed way possible, establishing genre, plot and treatment in a few words. The
abstract I wrote for this paper back in January may be seen as the pitch for this
current piece of writing (and as I write I reflect on the slippage between the original
idea and its manifestation in the fully formed text, and cross my fingers that the
SCUTREA conference organisers will not feel they have been sold a product under
false pretences). The pitch for my card may be seen on the obverse of the picture
side of the card, which, along with the caption, ‘wishing you good things in 2004’ and
my current contact details, provides what I hope may be an incentive to my recipients
to give more than a casual glance to the visual images on the front of the card: ‘Can
you solve the riddle? Prizes will be awarded for the two best decodings received by
31 December 2004’. I generally find that a promise of material reward acts as a
motivating force, in educational settings as in life, and I hope in this case to stimulate
curiosity among those to whom my cards are sent. It almost goes without saying that I
am in no way offering a definitive decoding of my text in this paper. Although I had in
mind a particular coded message when I composed the card, I suspect that it is way
too obscure to be guessed. In any case, I hope that I have produced a text
susceptible to multiple and diverse readings.
Scripting: accentuating the positive?
Scripting is the process of plotting a story, writing dialogue, setting the scenes and
identifying significant events and themes. In constructing the script for my card, I
decided to depict people, places, animals and objects which featured in my life during
2003. As can be seen in Figure 1, the images are placed in 32 boxes, arranged in
four rows of eight. Four of the boxes carry some clues to my feelings about the period
of time under consideration: ’bye and RIP 2003; hi and welcome to 2004. One of the
boxes is empty: another clue to my emotional state. Objects depicted include packets
of herbal tea and pills, two record sleeves, two pairs of shoes and some body parts.
There are numerous intertextual references to, for example, two television series (the
noir comedy-drama Six Feet Under and the sitcom Seinfeld), as well as to a new
Philip Pullman (2003) novella and to a surprisingly best-selling book about
punctuation and grammar (Truss, 2003).
My Christmas cards in the past have usually spelled out an explicit message in a
combination of words and pictures, with a more or less typical narrative structure,
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often following the conventions of the comic strip. As I have explained already, I
found myself somewhat lost for words adequately to describe my experience in 2003.
At the same time I was fiercely resistant to fitting my experience into a story arc which
fetched up at a happy ending. Producing a text made up primarily of visual images
enabled a sufficient level of ambiguity, allowing me to include coded references to
sadness and death without (I hope) depressing the members of my audience unduly.
Casting: an author in search of some characters
Casting involves processes of identity construction, development of character and
recognition of significant others. In casting the characters in my auto/biographical
drama I situate myself in a set of social relations and explore questions of self-image
and subcultural affinity. I did not set out to chart in any systematic way the set of my
social and affective relationships in this card. Nevertheless, as I revisit my text I
recognise the presence of many members of my cast of characters, who appear in
person, in puns or in the form of objects or locations. Several of them are animals:
five cats (one of whom died in 2003) and a panda are featured.
The text includes two of my close women friends, both of whom died of cancer during
the year. Theirs were the ‘two funerals’ of my title, and my grief at their passing was
still raw when I selected the images of Araba and Dany for inclusion. I have only just
noticed that both of their photographs (numbering along the rows from the top left
corner, they appear at 3 and 10 respectively) are positioned adjacent to the empty
square.
It was easy enough to choose favourite images of my two much-missed friends to
feature in my card, but their life histories are of course much more difficult to
summarise. In Araba’s case, this difficulty was brought home to me in a big way in the
weeks following her death, as I was charged with producing a video to be shown at
her funeral. Before she died, she and I had long talks about how she wanted to be
remembered, and, in order to assist in the telling of her story, she handed over a
large collection of what Plummer (2001) would call her ‘documents of life’, in the form
of photographs, letters, cards and other mementoes. These have become the data for
further auto/biographical exploration. As I have worked to try to sort, classify and
make sense of these items, the difficulty of doing justice to a person’s complex
experiences and identities in a summarised life history (as, for example, in an
obituary) was underlined. The divergent constructions of my friend which came to
light as I interviewed friends of hers from different periods and contexts demonstrated
the inadequacy of simple categorisations in relation to such aspects of identity as
ethnicity, sexuality, political orientation and health. I also found myself wrestling with
uncomfortable questions about my ethical responsibilities towards my friend/subject
and those close to her in telling auto/biographical stories about her life. I also re-read
a classic text (Elias, 1956) about involvement and detachment in social research with
particularly close interest.
Shooting and editing: me, myself and I
The next stages in the production of movies and autobiographical texts are shooting
and editing, which constitute the selection, framing and interpretation of events. Of
course auto/biography always involves artful construction, and I recognise the
process of auto/biographical writing as an active construction of myself for a particular
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audience and purpose. I have already alluded to some of the processes of selection
involved in my sifting of images for inclusion in my card; selection always involves
choices about focus and emphasis, and much always gets left out.
A significant lacuna which presents itself to me as I examine my 2003/04 text again
relates to my professional identity. Most of my past cards have featured aspects of
my working self, and I have included in them references to my academic titles and
roles, plugs for forthcoming conferences and seminars, and office address. On this
occasion I have limited myself to home contact details, and it seems to be my off-duty
personae which are highlighted. The public or corporate self which I see in the cards I
produced at the turn of the millennium has given way to a more private, reflective
construction. I think that 2003 marked a period when my confidence about
professional goals and preoccupations wavered, and perhaps I am even becoming
less brash. At the same time I would want to steer clear of any slick suggestions
about ‘learning lessons’ to round off this chapter of my life.
I have frequently used Mills’s characterisation of the sociological imagination as
enabling us ‘to grasp biography and history and the relations between the two within
society’ (1970, p.12) in order to justify my research focus on the minutiae of my own
experience. However, another absence in the text under consideration relates to
world events or social movements. I am curious to what extent members of my
audience will read my card as a text of its time beyond its record of some details of
my individual story.
The soundtrack: building a little birdhouse in the soul
The soundtrack of a movie or television show represents a powerful framing device
which impacts on ambience and dramatic pace. I have found consistently that music
gives helpful inspiration to auto/biographical reconstruction by providing access to
earlier selves and sensations, and I have derived much enjoyment in the past from
fantasising about the music for the film of The Nod Miller Story. My experiences of
death rituals during 2003 have prompted me to compile and write down a list of tracks
for my own funeral (beginning with Joe Walsh’s Life’s been good to me so far).
I hope that one day soon my technological resources will permit me to incorporate
sound effects into my greetings cards, but there is no actual audio track
accompanying the printed text on this occasion. For reasons I do not entirely
understand, the track which sums up 2003 for me is Birdhouse in your soul by They
Might Be Giants (whose album cover appears in box 18). The matchless refrain (‘Not
to put too fine a point on it/Say I’m the only bee in your bonnet/Build a little bird house
in your soul’) seems to offer a blend of poignancy and near madness appropriate for
the year.
Screening: wait a minute, Mr Postman
Screening in my model represents dissemination or publication. At the time of writing,
most of the copies of my cards remain unsent, although making that observation has
now sent me off to update my address list and prepare some envelopes. My earlier
exploration of my Christmas card practices (in Miller, 2002) led me to take stock of
the size and composition of my mailing list and to question my habit of sending out up
to 500 cards a year, and hence sharing details of my life history with a group of
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people who include fairly distant acquaintances. But by the end of the year I expect I
shall have spread myself far and wide as usual; communication patterns built up over
three decades are hard to break.
The issue of disseminating auto/biographical narratives returns me to the matter of
concluding this paper, and reconnects me to themes and processes of this
conference.
Return to the ordinary world of lifelong learning: bringing it all back home
Narrative theorists such as Campbell (1973), Propp (1968) and Vogler (1996)
suggest that stories, whether they take the form of fairy tales, folk myths or Hollywood
movies, follow predictable and recurring lines of development. The classic model here
is that of the heroic journey, where the central character receives a call to adventure,
and is carried out of the ordinary, everyday world to undertake an extraordinary quest
in search of a priceless treasure, battling with obstacles, enduring ordeals and
encountering mentors, allies and enemies along the way. The final stage in the
journey is the triumphant return to the ordinary world, usually bearing a rich prize. I
have argued in the past that this archetypal narrative matches well with accounts of
lifelong learning, and I have found it fitting to conclude some past accounts of aspects
of my own learning journey with a neat summary of what has been learned. (Here the
ordinary world is that of the conference theme, and I bring back the elixir of lifelong
learning.)
On this occasion, it feels very hard to round off my analysis in an tidy way; my writerly
resources do not stretch to a happy ending to this particular narrative. To pick up the
metaphor of the hero(ine)’s journey, it is as if my stage at the moment is one of taking
a break by the side of the road, shaken by recent skirmishes with dragons of
bereavement, grief, despair and self-doubt, aware of further struggles to come, still in
the process of sense-making, and grateful merely to have survived for the time
being. Although I was not sure where this tale would end up when I began it, I
signalled my expectations that I should not reach closure in the clause ‘working
towards meaning and regeneration’ in my title.
I want to finish this not-yet-final chapter with some disparate and brief observations
connecting my current text with the conference themes. Fuller development of these
fragments will require further stories and other papers. I have said little about
theories, policies and practices of adult learning, apart from alluding to some
elements and limitations in my own learning. But one implication of my story here is
the need for models of experiential learning to recognise and accommodate instances
and periods of barrenness and non-learning.
A second observation concerns the concept and context of regeneration, a term with
contradictory resonances for me in terms of both intrapersonal processes and
professional location. At a personal level, I feel desperate for regeneration: I want to
feel refreshed, renewed, rejuvenated and restored. At the same time, as I have noted
more than once here, I reject the possibility of any instant quick fix to my current
angst, and recognise the necessity of any contentment in the here-and-now to
incorporate sadness as well. At the structural level, I am made aware almost daily of
the impact of policies of economic and social regeneration on the landscape of east
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London, where I live and work. The view from my office window in my university’s
Docklands campus encompasses the towers of Canary Wharf and the constantly
changing vista of (brown) fields overtaken by new houses, shopping centres and
science parks. The transformation is exciting to see, but at the same time many longterm residents of the East End are at least ambivalent and sometimes hostile to the
changes being wrought. A familiar debate in my research centre ranges round ideas
of economic regeneration as an unproblematic good, and about the meaning and
significance of the concept of ‘learning regeneration’.
A third observation concerns the limitations of auto/biographical analysis. The
methodology which I have tried to illustrate here, incorporating the metaphor of
auto/biography as media production, offers me a degree of distance from the texts I
produce, and alleviates somewhat a feeling often induced in the course of analysing
auto/biographical data: that of spinning round in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the
back of my own head. Nevertheless, I believe that my auto/biographical imagination
requires stimulation through dialogues with others, and that my journey towards
understanding my own subjectivity and experience is one to be undertaken with
fellow-travellers.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Rod Allen, technology consultant and executive co-producer of my cards
and other texts.
References
Campbell J (1973) The hero with a thousand faces, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Edwards R and Miller N (2000) ‘Go your own way: lifelong learning and reflexive
auto/biographies in postmodernity’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 19, 2,
pp.126–140.
Elias N (1956) ‘Problems of involvement and detachment’, British Journal of Sociology, VII, 3,
September, pp.226-252.
Mills C W (1970) The sociological imagination, Harmondsworth: Penguin (first published
1959).
Miller N (1999) ‘Applying insights from cultural studies to adult education: what Seinfeld says
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Conferenc (AERC), DeKalb, Northern Illinois University, pp.229-34.
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television’ in N Miller, D O’Reilly, L West and R Allen (eds) Travellers’ tales: from adult
education to lifelong learning and beyond. London, UEL/SCUTREA, pp.269-273.
Miller N (2002) ‘Twenty years of seasons’ greetings from humbug to wizard’. Unpublished
paper presented at Yours sincerely? Letter-writing as an auto/biographical genre
conference, University of Manchester (20 September).
Plummer K (2001) Documents of life 2: an invitation to critical humanism, London, Sage.
Propp V (1968) Morphology of the folktale (2nd edition), Austin, University of Texas Press
(first published 1928).
Pullman P (2003) Lyra’s Oxford, London, Random House Children’s Books.
Truss L (2003) Eats, shoots and leaves: the zero tolerance approach to punctuation, London,
Profile Books.
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Vogler C (1996) The writer’s journey: mythic structure for storytellers and screenwriters
(revised edition), London, Boxtree.
Figure 1: My greetings card for 2003/04
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