Poly Styrene Angel Wings – Remembering Marianne Elliot-Said
I met Marianne in London in June 2002. She had come to attend an event I had helped to organise at the now-defunct Borders Books on Oxford Street. The event was a talk given by my then Indian guru from Calcutta, accompanied by music and chanting led by a party of temple musicians.
At the end of the programme, Marianne came up to me and introduced herself by her spiritual name: Maharani. I also introduced myself to her by my initiated spiritual name at the time: Lalita. Maharani had been part of the Hare Krishna movement, and had since joined up with a splinter group, which had many western devotees, headed by another Indian guru. My guru had very few western disciples at that time, having spent most of his life’s work preaching throughout India, and this was his first visit to England.
I cannot remember much about what she and I spoke about that day, except the fact that we were both musicians. We exchanged contact information quickly, because I had to dash off and escort our guests back to the cars to take them back to their UK host’s home.
Maharani called me, and over time we became friends. That autumn, I was going through a rough time in my life, and a few months later my marriage of 22 years, which had been tumultuous for a long time, ended. Like Maharani, my former husband had been a member of the Hare Krishna society. After my husband and I split, I found it very difficult to be around anyone from those circles, and I kept my distance. Because of this, I asked we could call each other our western names—Marianne and Lynn—rather than our spiritual names. This was fine with her.
One day Marianne came to visit me at my work. I was working as a music technology teacher in Tottenham, a notoriously rough area of North London, where the infamous riots were to break out in 2011. We spoke about our experiences in the music industry. It was only then I found out she was actually a well-known punk singer, who went by the name of Poly Styrene from the band X-Ray Spex. I had never heard of the band, having been in Texas and not into punk at the time of their heyday in the mid 1970s. I had no idea how famous she was; nor did I have any idea of what her music sounded like. To be honest, while I found her past fascinating, I was really only interested in who she was in that moment, and I was happy to have found a new friend.
After my marriage ended, Marianne was very kind in listening to my grief as I struggled with the many inner and outer changes I was dealing with during the first year of my divorce. In 2003, when I finally got the courage to write to my guru to tell him why I had divorced—that I had been a battered wife for more than two decades—I never received a reply from him or from anyone else at the temple. Marianne was one of the few people with whom I could speak about this heartache, because she understood the temple culture without me having to explain. She gave me space to express both my anger and my pain. I remember one day when I was particularly upset, she led me through a visualisation over the phone. She wanted to help me let go of the past with love and grace, so she had me visualise my ex-husband enveloped in a beautiful, sparkling pink bubble. Then, we floated it in the air and we let him go, as we said together,
“Love and Light! Love and Light!”
I must admit I resisted this, as I was still full of blame and hurt in my heart. Nonetheless, I can still see that beautiful pink bubble and I remember Marianne’s soft voice as she guided me with love and affection.
Over the coming year, just as my life started to settle down a bit, Marianne’s life seemed to become more shaken up. I went to visit her in East Dulwich, where she was living at the time, and we went out to a café and had a long chat. She shared many heart-rending stories of different traumas and hardships she had endured in her youth. She also told me she had bipolar disorder, but to be honest, at that time I really didn’t know what that meant (a few years later, my own daughter was diagnosed with it, and I have come to understand it better). She really opened up to me and I could feel we had become good friends.
One time, Marianne and I were riding on the London Underground, and a woman beggar came up to us. Without hesitation, Marianne handed her a £2 coin. She told me that she always gave money to beggars, especially women. She said she didn’t care whether or not they were “real” beggars or fakes. “I give them the benefit of the doubt,” she said. She told me she herself had once been homeless, living rough on the streets when she was young. She said there was a time she had been so poor she had no shoes. The cold and exposure to the elements were so servere that her toenails fell off. She said, “I often thought if someone, just someone, would come along and help me, I could get out of this horrible situation. But most people just looked at me like I was dirt and walked away. I decided I would never treat people that way.” Since those experiences, she always gave money to women beggars.
Over the following months, I began to see the implications of Marianne’s bipolar disorder. She called me serveral times in the middle of the night during her “manic” phases. One time she called me at 2AM from a phone booth in Glastonbury, hundreds of miles from London where we both lived. She said she was confused and couldn’t figure out how she had gotten there. Then, she suddenly got agitated and she had to go find a church because the angels had told her if she didn’t, her daughter (who was in Australia) would be in grave danger. She sounded full of panic and very upset. Abruptly, before I could find out where she was, she hung up the phone. I was worried because I didn’t know how to find her or how I could help her. Later she told me that some “very nice police officers” found her and brought her to a nearby hospital. Apparently, she had run out of medication, which caused her mania to flare up.
I soon learned that Marianne’s bipolar disorder was usually fine as long as she was on her medication, but if she went off it for any period of time, these kinds of episodes would inevitably recur. One time the police had found her wandering around again, and she was brought to a hospital in East London. She had been there a few days (and back on medication) when I went to visit her one Saturday afternoon. She seemed so normal and happy—like the Marianne I knew. Throughout the afternoon, I saw many of the other patients coming in and out of the common room. They were obviously seriously ill, and needed continuous care. But Marianne seemed fine, now she was back on her medication. I said to her, “You don’t belong here. You should be home. Why are they keeping you here?” She told me it was a voluntary facility, which meant she could leave any time she wanted. But the problem was, she’d need a doctor’s signature to get released, and as it was the weekend, the doctor wouldn’t be in until Monday or Tuesday. Then, a friend of hers (who owned a car and had driven there) came to visit. Together, we conspired to get Marianne out of the hospital and back home that afternoon. We gathered her clothes in a laundry bag, sneaked her out and drove off, my heart pounding all the way. Marianne seemed so relaxed and happy when she got home, so I really don’t care if our great escape was “against hospital rules”.
Marianne eventually moved out of London into a cottage in the seaside town of St Leonard’s near Hastings. In the summer of 2004, she invited me to stay with her for a few days. I remember how lovely she was when she met me at the train station, saying how much younger and happier I looked now. We had a fabulous time together, walking along the shore and chatting day and night.
Her cottage home was very sweet. In sharp contrast to her “punk hero” public image, her home was always fresh, aesthetically beautiful and full of light. She had a real talent for home decorating and every element of her home looked purposeful and appealing. One evening, after visiting her mom for a little while, Marianne and I went to a pub—the oldest in Hastings. We talked about life, relationships and all the “normal” things friends do. I remember we walked home around midnight, and there was a brilliant silver full moon over the sea. It was a very warm evening and we stood watching the black waves reflect the moonlight for a while. When I got back to London later that week, I wrote about the scene, and some of the descriptions from that vignette found their way into my 2009 book the Garden of the Soul.
The final night, Marianne and I stayed up late talking. She confided in me about unusual auditory events she experienced. I’m pretty sure doctors would probably explain them away as “auditory hallucinations” stemming from her bipolar disorder. But she called them angels. She described the many different angels she heard and occasionally saw. She described their beautiful white feather wings. She described how safe and wonderful she felt around them. I looked around her room, and noticed how her little cottage home seemed to reflect her love for these angels. She trimmed her dressing table with white netting and white feathers. Her curtains were gossamer fabrics in whites and purples.
I have to admit, I felt uncomfortable when she spoke about angels. I didn’t know how to respond to her, or indeed what to think about it. Was the fact I had witnessed her bipolar episodes making me sceptical? Or was my hurt from my past “spiritual” background making me unable to hear about such things? There were so many variables clouding my own perception, so how could I possibly be a judge of what was real or unreal? But most of all, why did I feel the need to judge? What was more important: to find a rational explanation, or to honour my friend’s experience?
I decided our friendship was more important than my own need to find a logical explanation to her angelic experiences. So, I stayed up late that night, listening to all she had to say about it. I asked her what her own feelings and thoughts were about these angels, rather than asserting any of my own. Like she gave beggars “the benefit of the doubt”, I wanted to give Marianne the benefit of the doubt too.
She was my friend.
But the next day, one of Marianne’s female friends from her religious community came over for breakfast. The two of them began to speak in the devotee “jargon” I had heard for so many decades. I realised that the Marianne I knew was not the one she showed to “devotees”, and that she was still very much involved in a world I had left, with great emotional pain, two years earlier. Almost instantly I felt myself shut down and pull away. I was not longer being open, fun, accepting and loving, but rather closed, fearful, judgemental and self-protective.
Then, Marianne’s friend asked me to join them for a “women only” spiritual event coming up. I knew she was being friendly, but as I was going through my own “clearing” process after my split from the temple, I couldn’t respond with anything but discomfort. They seemed baffled as to why I refused their invitation, but I couldn’t say anything. I felt like the delightfulness of the past three days had suddenly collapsed and washed away like a sand castle.
It was time to go back home. Marianne and her friend walked me to the station to catch my train back to London. We were all friendly, and hugged each other goodbye. But inwardly I knew I was acting different—sort of phoney and defensive. I wasn’t being myself. I couldn’t seem to snap out of it.
In 2005, I took a job in Bedford and moved out of London. One day after I left, Marianne called my house while my daughter was still living there. My daughter told her I had moved out. Marianne said, “Please tell her I called.”
But I didn’t call Marianne back. It was not due to anything she had done. I simply couldn’t be around anything that reminded me of my former spiritual community. But I couldn’t express this to her. In those days, the only way I knew how to deal with uncomfortable emotions was avoidance. The very sad truth is that I stayed away from Marianne because I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable around the Hare Krishna culture.
How ironic that the very thing that had first brought us together ultimately sent us on different paths.
Turn the clock ahead to today: March 3rd, 2012. Since 2005, my life has changed in so many ways. I am happy, stable and have found my own peace with the past, love for the present, and trust in the future. And for some reason, I really don’t know why, today I decided to try to find Marianne on Facebook.
After several searches and alternate spellings, I couldn’t find her under her name. So then, I tried Googling her stage name “Poly Styrene” to see if I could get a current email address. It was then I saw a long list of eulogies from every major newspaper and television station saying Marianne Elliot-Said, aka Poly Styrene, had died from a very aggressive form of breast cancer 10 months ago, on 25th April 2011. From the reports, it sounds like it all happened very fast, as she died only two months after she was diagnosed. The cancer had spread rapidly into her spine and lungs.
It was then I finally saw her music videos from the 70s, and even her most recent gigs. I read all about how influential she had been as one of the few female punk artists of her day. They made a big deal about the fact that she was mixed race. She used to tell me how she had struggled with being mixed race, but for some reason I never “saw” it, if you know what I mean. She was just Marianne. But now, in the press, it was made to be a really big deal. All kinds of famous people were talking about her as their friend. The person I saw presented by reporters was an entirely different person from the woman I knew.
It was really weird. I felt like she “belonged” to the world. My friendship with her seemed very insignificant.
I wondered if she had ever thought about me. I wondered if she remembered me with fondness at all, or if I had hurt her. Now, I would never be able to ask her these things.
You might wonder how I had not heard about this at the time she died. Admittedly, I don’t own a TV and I don’t read newspapers. And in spite of being very active on the social networks, for some reason I hadn’t noticed the news on Twitter or Facebook.
Even if I had caught the news of her death at the time, it wouldn’t have felt much different from how I feel today. Marianne had been my friend, but because I was going through my own “stuff” back then, I allowed us to lose track of each other. Now she’s gone. She was only 53. I could never have imagined she’d leave the world so young. I took her presence for granted, thinking I had time to rekindle our friendship someday, when I felt more relaxed around that past.
But time ran out.
My heart ached and I broke into tears.
I needed to get out of the house, so I went for a walk along the River Great Ouse here in Bedford, which usually helps to clear my head. I looked at the trees, just starting to bud with the first signs of spring. I looked at the black waters, always flowing downstream. I thought,
Life is endless. We come into the world and leave it. We cross each other’s paths, leave our imprint upon each other and then take our leave. Perhaps we remain together throughout our lives; perhaps we come in contact for only a few moments. No matter which, we inevitably will take leave of each other’s company on this physical plane.
But while those we may have loved might appear to come and go, what connects us all is this endless flow we call Life. Within that flow, nothing ever leaves us; their imprint upon us continues forever. It flows from us, to another and another, just as the river flows continuously to the sea, back to the Source, and back again to the river.
Taking some solace from these thoughts, I left the river and walked through a little patch of wooded area nearby. The Daffodils were starting to sprout, and the cool Earth was damp and slightly muddy. The sound of birds in the late afternoon surrounded me.
I found myself saying aloud,
“Marianne, did I hurt you?”
And then, I could feel the cool, uplifting sensation of white feather angel wings springing from the back of my shoulders, and pink champagne bubbles sparkling around my face. Like a joyful sorrow, I felt embraced by something unseen.
And I heard Marianne say,
“Love and Light!”
Goodbye, my friend. I am so glad I knew you, even if only for a very short time. Fly with the angels, Poly Styrene.
Lynn Serafinn
3 March 2012
As a child growing up in the 50s and 60s in the US, I loved Halloween. Apart from the fun of dressing up and going out for trick-or-treat, it was also my father’s birthday (he would have been 90 years old today if he were still alive), so my mother always bought a really fancy bakery cake every Halloween in honour of Dad’s birthday. After many years of having the same type of cake year in and year out—orange and chocolate layer cakes smothered with sugar jack-o-lanterns, black cats and witches—he finally rebelled and asked to have a “normal” birthday cake instead. But as far as I was concerned, I loved the fun of my father’s Halloween birthday cakes every year.
