Forward
Years ago, I began keeping a journal of my own life, and I felt it necessary to include, at the start, this caveat:
On the Nature of Truth:
It occurs to me as I write this that I should warn you: Do not take any of this as fact. I want to be sure to stress that this is not a story in which fact or truth plays any role. In any story ever told there is a moral, or a meaning, or a theme somewhere in the text. Spelled out, or buried somewhere in the words, or both. Almost always both. In this story there is, buried within, the story of who I was and who I became. And always, over top of everything there is a narrative composed of intentions and attitudes, disappointments, regrets, hidden feelings, old resentments, things that have nothing to do with me, or that I simply got caught up in, and have no solid connection to.
And I implore you, please, not to believe a word of it, save for those that ring true to you. Because, as hard as I were to try, I could never put something like this down without bias, with out a slant, toward what I've felt and how I've seen things. Please know that I will cover over my faults in desperate self preservation, and sometimes point out other's unfairly.
The only thing I can guarantee about this story is this: that this happened to me, in my heart and in my mind, these were events as I witnessed them, or how I wanted them to happen, or how I like to think of them. I have given no weight to truth or fact or whether I've been fair in my descriptions of events and places and most of all people. People are not characters in a story- the people in this story, myself included, are complex and real individuals, and will act as such.
This is a story- no more no less.
I guess I can give you no better guide than that.
This warning also applies to my time with Peter as well. Even more, the items related here are often his impressions, relayed through me, and then, finally, on to you, the reader.
I have been long aware of Peter's propensity or hyperbole and exageration. I know how, in recollection, a few days for him can translate into a few weeks. That facts as he observes and recounts them may, in reality, be proven to be distorted or even completely false. I have related them here, when appropriate or necessary, as fact. This represents, as completely as I have been able to capture it, his experience, relayed through me, and it should be taken as such.
Peter had lived for nearly 90 years*. His memories, like all of ours, have changed and distorted with each revisitation. Over the years a cumulative effect of constant recollection has imparted on his memories the sort of distortion of shape and scale normally associated with continental drift. The tectonic plates of ego and id have changed the landscape of his life much more than a man of my relatively young age can comprehend. I refuse to begrudge him these revisions that his conscious or unconscious mind has made. After all, the audacity he exhibits in reordering the world around his perception is part of what makes him unique.
That said, I have tried, as best I can, to provide the reader with an objective reference to the events he has described to me, in as much as those references are available to me. I have done my research, and include it all here. You, as the reader, are free to choose which version to believe in any given circumstance. I would only warn you that in some instances there is as much value in what a single man perceives as there is in objective fact.
In writing this story, I have referred to several sources. Firstly, and most importantly, I have given priority to my own experiences with Peter over the last several years that I have known him and lived with him here on Lambert St. in Morgantown. Secondly, I have referred to his unfinished autobiography, written by him and edited by Mary-Jane Hall, a long time friend of Peter's. I have also referred to an interview conducted by Ms. Patricia Linton, in an interview for Voices of British Ballet which was conducted at the Royal Opera House on April 13, 2006, an interview conducted by Lin Elek of the Dominion Post in November of 2011 (for which I was present), and to the many recollections of people who have known him. For any other details of fact checking, I have refered to various sources available to me, including web sites, articles and Peter's one published work, The Sadler's-Wells Ballet Goes Abroad, published in 1951 by Faber & Faber. All references will be listed, in detail, in the bibliography.
I hope that the reader will give due weight, though, to the words of Peter himself. More than anything, his perceptions of events in his own life are more worthwhile than any dry, factual account. Beyond that, I hope that my own perceptions and observations, having lived here with him these last several years will lend a certain weight, as his influence on my life has been greater than any outside my immediate family. Knowing Peter has been, for me, a highlight of my life.
