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Under the Eye of the Clock: The Sparkling Creative Soul of a Writer (First Draft)


ggggggggggggI bet you never thought you would be hearing from me! To think that I would be able to write to you ggggggggggggwas beyond my wildest dreams.

gggggggggggg-- Christopher Nolan wrote in a letter to his aunt and uncle


The award-winning Dublin poet and novelist Christopher Nolan, also known as Christy Nolan, died on February 20 aged 43.

At the age of 15, he published his first book entitled Dam burst of Dreams, a critically acclaimed collection of poems constantly compared with those of his eminent compatriots William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. At the age of 22, his first autobiographical novel entitled Under the Eye of the Clock won the 1988 Whitbread Book Award; in it, he describes his struggle with his disability and how the people around him, especially his family, help him to overcome the barriers set for the disabled, and get education and fulfill his seemingly impossible dream – a highly-acclaimed poet and novelist. Throughout the book, he constantly asks himself one big question, “can I climb socially constructed barriers…what can a crippled speechless boy do?” Not only does it introduce the reader to the experience and social meaning of disability, but it also is the story of a “crippled boy” struggling to become a “fully developed man,” an individual without restraints who makes the impossible dream realized.

Born breech and deprived of oxygen for two hours, Christy’s body was rendered paralyzed, spastic, and incapable of speech; and he was eventually diagnosed with cerebral palsy. What he could do was only to move his head and eyes. Such unbearable a fact as it was, he didn’t give up his life, and more importantly, leaning. He had an unusually appetite for language and amassed a prodigious vocabulary that burst forth onto the computer screen at age of 11 when he was given access to Lioresal, a new drug which helped him gain control over his head and neck, allowing him to use a specially-made typing equipment. “Locked for years in the coffin of his body," paralyzed and forced to be silent, he finally found his means of communication to release himself from isolation and share with others the “insight and whimsy” of his inner world, the innermost thoughts in his once “imprisoned” mind that no one suspected.

He wrote by using a special typewriter with a rod, which he called “unicorn stick”, attached to his forehead. While his head was held by his mother, he painstakingly picked out each word, letter by letter, with his unicorn stick stabbing down at the keyboard through every syllable, word, sentence, plot, and the whole novel. Given that snail-walking pace of writing, he would think he was lucky if he could complete two or three pages a day.

Christy once explained this heart-wrenching and mind-boggling process of writing as follows: "My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down into my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness. Try, then, to imagine how frustrating it is to give expression to that avalanche in efforts of one great nod after another." As gruelling as it was, he never gave up realizing his “wildest dream.” "Sometimes he'd go at it from 11am to 8pm," she proudly recalled. "At other times he would start, then shake his head when the inspiration wasn't coming. He never really knows until he gets the headgear on. But when the mood takes him it is as if time stands still."

In his 1988 Whitbread Book Award acceptance speech read by his mother, he said it out loud, "I want to shout with joy. My heart is full of gratitude. … Imagine, if you will, what I would have missed if the doctors had not revived me. Can it be right for man to turn on his handicapped brother and silence him before he can ever draw breath? … History is now in the making. Tonight, crippled man is taking his place on the world's literary stage."

Christy Nolan’s physical life ended after 43 winters, but his life on the page will definitely last more than 43 springs. “Can you credit all of the fuss that was made of a cripple?” goes the opening of Under the Eye of the Clock. Well, we surely can because his sparkling creative soul revealed through his poetic language shows us that his several physical disability is "a positive factor rather than a modifying condition in his impressive achievement.”
_________________
I came, I saw, and I conquered

[[hahaview]]

Under the Eye of the Clock: The Sparkling Creative Soul of a Writer (First Draft)


ggggggggggggI bet you never thought you would be hearing from me! To think that I would be able to write to you ggggggggggggwas beyond my wildest dreams.

gggggggggggg-- Christopher Nolan wrote in a letter to his aunt and uncle


The award-winning Dublin poet and novelist Christopher Nolan, also known as Christy Nolan, died on February 20 aged 43.

At the age of 15, he published his first book entitled Dam burst of Dreams, a critically acclaimed collection of poems constantly compared with those of his eminent compatriots William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. At the age of 22, his first autobiographical novel entitled Under the Eye of the Clock won the 1988 Whitbread Book Award; in it, he describes his struggle with his disability and how the people around him, especially his family, help him to overcome the barriers set for the disabled, and get education and fulfill his seemingly impossible dream – a highly-acclaimed poet and novelist. Throughout the book, he constantly asks himself one big question, “can I climb socially constructed barriers…what can a crippled speechless boy do?” Not only does it introduce the reader to the experience and social meaning of disability, but it also is the story of a “crippled boy” struggling to become a “fully developed man,” an individual without restraints who makes the impossible dream realized.

Born breech and deprived of oxygen for two hours, Christy’s body was rendered paralyzed, spastic, and incapable of speech; and he was eventually diagnosed with cerebral palsy. What he could do was only to move his head and eyes. Such unbearable a fact as it was, he didn’t give up his life, and more importantly, leaning. He had an unusually appetite for language and amassed a prodigious vocabulary that burst forth onto the computer screen at age of 11 when he was given access to Lioresal, a new drug which helped him gain control over his head and neck, allowing him to use a specially-made typing equipment. “Locked for years in the coffin of his body," paralyzed and forced to be silent, he finally found his means of communication to release himself from isolation and share with others the “insight and whimsy” of his inner world, the innermost thoughts in his once “imprisoned” mind that no one suspected.

He wrote by using a special typewriter with a rod, which he called “unicorn stick”, attached to his forehead. While his head was held by his mother, he painstakingly picked out each word, letter by letter, with his unicorn stick stabbing down at the keyboard through every syllable, word, sentence, plot, and the whole novel. Given that snail-walking pace of writing, he would think he was lucky if he could complete two or three pages a day.

Christy once explained this heart-wrenching and mind-boggling process of writing as follows: "My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down into my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness. Try, then, to imagine how frustrating it is to give expression to that avalanche in efforts of one great nod after another." As gruelling as it was, he never gave up realizing his “wildest dream.” "Sometimes he'd go at it from 11am to 8pm," she proudly recalled. "At other times he would start, then shake his head when the inspiration wasn't coming. He never really knows until he gets the headgear on. But when the mood takes him it is as if time stands still."

In his 1988 Whitbread Book Award acceptance speech read by his mother, he said it out loud, "I want to shout with joy. My heart is full of gratitude. … Imagine, if you will, what I would have missed if the doctors had not revived me. Can it be right for man to turn on his handicapped brother and silence him before he can ever draw breath? … History is now in the making. Tonight, crippled man is taking his place on the world's literary stage."

Christy Nolan’s physical life ended after 43 winters, but his life on the page will definitely last more than 43 springs. “Can you credit all of the fuss that was made of a cripple?” goes the opening of Under the Eye of the Clock. Well, we surely can because his sparkling creative soul revealed through his poetic language shows us that his several physical disability is "a positive factor rather than a modifying condition in his impressive achievement.”
_________________
I came, I saw, and I conquered

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Listen to Bono's "Miracle Drug"


Miracle Drug Lyrics by Bono

I want to trip inside your head
Spend the day there...
To hear the things you haven't said
And see what you might see

I want to hear you when you call
Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape
And walk right out

Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new born baby's head

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough I'm not giving up
On a miracle drug

Of science and the human heart
There is no limit
There is no failure here sweetheart
Just when you quit...

I am you and you are mine
Love makes nonsense of space
And time... will disappear
Love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love...

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up
For a miracle, a miracle drug, a miracle drug

God I need your help tonight

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear a voice
It's whispering
In science and in medicine
"I was a stranger
You took me in"

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up
For a miracle, miracle drug

Miracle, miracle drug
_________________
I came, I saw, and I conquered

[[hahaview]]

Listen to Bono's "Miracle Drug"


Miracle Drug Lyrics by Bono

I want to trip inside your head
Spend the day there...
To hear the things you haven't said
And see what you might see

I want to hear you when you call
Do you feel anything at all?
I want to see your thoughts take shape
And walk right out

Freedom has a scent
Like the top of a new born baby's head

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough I'm not giving up
On a miracle drug

Of science and the human heart
There is no limit
There is no failure here sweetheart
Just when you quit...

I am you and you are mine
Love makes nonsense of space
And time... will disappear
Love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love...

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up
For a miracle, a miracle drug, a miracle drug

God I need your help tonight

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear a voice
It's whispering
In science and in medicine
"I was a stranger
You took me in"

The songs are in your eyes
I see them when you smile
I've had enough of romantic love
I'd give it up, yeah, I'd give it up
For a miracle, miracle drug

Miracle, miracle drug
_________________
I came, I saw, and I conquered