Monday, June 28, 2004
Addendum
and in the cold light of morning you read back over the previous night's raving and....
some of it's okay, actually. This is how I work best. Get all worked up and simply blast and then in the cold and sober light of day edit edit edit. There're a couple of germs of good ideas in there, and that gives me something to work with. All of a sudden This reading seems a lot less scary (B-but Bill Griffiths has the same billing at the next one! Crikey!).
some of it's okay, actually. This is how I work best. Get all worked up and simply blast and then in the cold and sober light of day edit edit edit. There're a couple of germs of good ideas in there, and that gives me something to work with. All of a sudden This reading seems a lot less scary (B-but Bill Griffiths has the same billing at the next one! Crikey!).
Christ, I'm a one man cottage industry.
I have some very exciting news to share with you all. I appear to have started writing again with a VENGEANCE. This evening I decided to take it back to the old school and see what happened if I just sat, got good and drunk, and wrote, and you know, it seems to be working.
I think largely the blogging may be a part of it. Admittedly Coastalblog is a semi regular endeavour at best but even that lax discipline reminds me of what it is to write, which is, I feel, the most important thing. Even the shortest blog entry is an act of creation, and the best way to perpetuate creativity is to keep creating.
On a slightly more downbeat note though, having read back through some of it it's the most self-lacerating stuff I've ever produced. I think my subconscious may have a down on me at the mo. Whatever, it feels good to have words on page again.
Speaking of which, this bit's an open letter to Laura. Still write at all? Cuz you really should, I think (I know, I really should save this sort of thing for email, but it seems such a natural extension of my train of thought at present and hey, my blog, my rules, as my mum would probably say).
I think largely the blogging may be a part of it. Admittedly Coastalblog is a semi regular endeavour at best but even that lax discipline reminds me of what it is to write, which is, I feel, the most important thing. Even the shortest blog entry is an act of creation, and the best way to perpetuate creativity is to keep creating.
On a slightly more downbeat note though, having read back through some of it it's the most self-lacerating stuff I've ever produced. I think my subconscious may have a down on me at the mo. Whatever, it feels good to have words on page again.
Speaking of which, this bit's an open letter to Laura. Still write at all? Cuz you really should, I think (I know, I really should save this sort of thing for email, but it seems such a natural extension of my train of thought at present and hey, my blog, my rules, as my mum would probably say).
Jobs for the boys.
Three things:
Well fucking done Porl. I'm immensely proud. Well fucking done Jim and Robin also.
Adam and I really should be kept apart, the world can't take that much ennui in a confined space.
Sam is a bad bad man. A very very bad bad man.
Normal service to be resumed once I'm through writing this story about a man who wilfully fucks up his own life for no readily apparent reason (ahem).
One more thing. Isn't Sloop John B a brilliant song? (I'd never make it as a music journo...)
Well fucking done Porl. I'm immensely proud. Well fucking done Jim and Robin also.
Adam and I really should be kept apart, the world can't take that much ennui in a confined space.
Sam is a bad bad man. A very very bad bad man.
Normal service to be resumed once I'm through writing this story about a man who wilfully fucks up his own life for no readily apparent reason (ahem).
One more thing. Isn't Sloop John B a brilliant song? (I'd never make it as a music journo...)
Thursday, June 24, 2004
No No No a million times No for the love of all that is good No No No
The one dayer with New Zealand was called off due to bad weather. In other news nothing happened. Nothing at all.
The thlot pickens
Ahem, my, I was in a bad mood that day wasn't I? Relax, normal service will be resumed.
So over on ILE there was an almighty brouhahah after some chap said he woas going to produce a book of threads using cafepress. Nasty words like "copyright infringemen" were bandied about.
Now, regardless of how silly the entire thing was (and those getting angry at him were pretty much in the right) the one thing which I did take from it was how jolly seriously everyone seemed to take themselves. I mean, I write and everything, but I've cheerfully given poems away to people without any thought as to where they may turn up. For all I know, my copyright is being badly infringed as I write this, it doesn't bother me overly; I can always write more poems. Neither do I think that anything that I write is of such massive importance that I'm going to get in a snit about it, but that's just me, it would appear. I probably should have contributed this to the thread in question, and would have done were it not for the fact that the board can be dreadful for descending into interminable sniping, and I had no intention of contributing to that one iota. The two or three ILE regulars who read this can feel free to agree or disagree, as ever.
But it did get me thinking abou the nature of my own work (which can only be a good thing). Now, I have an extensive body of work, some of it in print, yet I treat it with a throwaway disregard (see comments above), as nothing terrifies me more than the idea that I might get precious about it. I cannot STAND people who get uppity about their work when they have achieved the level of what I have achieved i.e. very little. Is this wrong of me? I know that my work is as valid as anybody elses, but the idea of considering myself to be as valid as those I admire strikes me as more than a little distasteful.
God I'm so fucking English sometimes...
So over on ILE there was an almighty brouhahah after some chap said he woas going to produce a book of threads using cafepress. Nasty words like "copyright infringemen" were bandied about.
Now, regardless of how silly the entire thing was (and those getting angry at him were pretty much in the right) the one thing which I did take from it was how jolly seriously everyone seemed to take themselves. I mean, I write and everything, but I've cheerfully given poems away to people without any thought as to where they may turn up. For all I know, my copyright is being badly infringed as I write this, it doesn't bother me overly; I can always write more poems. Neither do I think that anything that I write is of such massive importance that I'm going to get in a snit about it, but that's just me, it would appear. I probably should have contributed this to the thread in question, and would have done were it not for the fact that the board can be dreadful for descending into interminable sniping, and I had no intention of contributing to that one iota. The two or three ILE regulars who read this can feel free to agree or disagree, as ever.
But it did get me thinking abou the nature of my own work (which can only be a good thing). Now, I have an extensive body of work, some of it in print, yet I treat it with a throwaway disregard (see comments above), as nothing terrifies me more than the idea that I might get precious about it. I cannot STAND people who get uppity about their work when they have achieved the level of what I have achieved i.e. very little. Is this wrong of me? I know that my work is as valid as anybody elses, but the idea of considering myself to be as valid as those I admire strikes me as more than a little distasteful.
God I'm so fucking English sometimes...
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
When you look in the mirror, and shock yourself with a glare...
Weeeeell. I feel strange. Everything in my life points towards some significance, but as to what significance, I cannot tell. From the moment I wake, to the last few gasps of the day my life feels cinematic. I am living outside of myself, I have no idea of why this should be.
It is almost a feeling of being extra-alive, with the concomitant problems of feeling so much. I'm crying a lot more these days, often for no reason. I got back from work tonight, sat in my chair and just wept. I have no idea why.
When I wake, I'm like a bullet, I tear into the day. My workrate when I'm in my job leaves others shaking their heads. The long hours on the track, or on the treadmill, or doing laps of the woods or lengths of the pool, the thousands of situps, the solitary nature of the training regime I've imposed on myself for reasons I remain unsure of all add up to a growing sense of alienation from pretty much everything. My answer to everything is like Boxer's in Animal Farm. Work harder. I love it, I love to work, I love the sensation of the pain piling on, need me in two hours early? Great, I'll be there three hours hourly. Want me to take three customers to the rest of the restaurant's one? No problem. I'll make their drinks, do their bills, phone their cab. Fuck, if I drove I'd take them home myself. Last week, rather than sensibly getting the staff to help me close down I sent them all home, did it all myself, it took me two hours and I was so happy. I rememebr descending the stairs with a case of wine on my shoulder, my shirt soaked with sweat, the exhaustion almost causing me to fall. I could barely see the digits when I punched in the alarm code, I have no memory of going to bed. At two in the morning I'm the one chiding those ten years younger than me for their lack of energy. I am a monster, I don't get it. Forgive the rambling but I'm working through this. I am not me.
But what work should I be doing? The writing seems to have dried up, handily just short of the biggest gig of my life. I am devoid of inspiration, the same sense of wellbeing I used to get from a long and drunken session at the keyboard now arrives somewhere in the sixth mile, which, typically, I have chosen to run at the absolute height of the days height, if my knees don't buckle when I get back, then I haven't run hard enough.
WHAT WHAT WHAT? What the hell is happening to me? Or is nothing happening at all? I am over-dramatising the usual inchoate twentysomething sturm and drang? Am I simply thinking about this all far too much? Answers on an "hilarious" e-postcard plz ok thnxbye.
It is almost a feeling of being extra-alive, with the concomitant problems of feeling so much. I'm crying a lot more these days, often for no reason. I got back from work tonight, sat in my chair and just wept. I have no idea why.
When I wake, I'm like a bullet, I tear into the day. My workrate when I'm in my job leaves others shaking their heads. The long hours on the track, or on the treadmill, or doing laps of the woods or lengths of the pool, the thousands of situps, the solitary nature of the training regime I've imposed on myself for reasons I remain unsure of all add up to a growing sense of alienation from pretty much everything. My answer to everything is like Boxer's in Animal Farm. Work harder. I love it, I love to work, I love the sensation of the pain piling on, need me in two hours early? Great, I'll be there three hours hourly. Want me to take three customers to the rest of the restaurant's one? No problem. I'll make their drinks, do their bills, phone their cab. Fuck, if I drove I'd take them home myself. Last week, rather than sensibly getting the staff to help me close down I sent them all home, did it all myself, it took me two hours and I was so happy. I rememebr descending the stairs with a case of wine on my shoulder, my shirt soaked with sweat, the exhaustion almost causing me to fall. I could barely see the digits when I punched in the alarm code, I have no memory of going to bed. At two in the morning I'm the one chiding those ten years younger than me for their lack of energy. I am a monster, I don't get it. Forgive the rambling but I'm working through this. I am not me.
But what work should I be doing? The writing seems to have dried up, handily just short of the biggest gig of my life. I am devoid of inspiration, the same sense of wellbeing I used to get from a long and drunken session at the keyboard now arrives somewhere in the sixth mile, which, typically, I have chosen to run at the absolute height of the days height, if my knees don't buckle when I get back, then I haven't run hard enough.
WHAT WHAT WHAT? What the hell is happening to me? Or is nothing happening at all? I am over-dramatising the usual inchoate twentysomething sturm and drang? Am I simply thinking about this all far too much? Answers on an "hilarious" e-postcard plz ok thnxbye.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Summertime Blues
As an autumn-loving adolescent, addicted to big jumpers and moping under grey Cornish skies my mother always wisely said to me "as you get older, you'll like summer more." In this she was right, as I've got a little older I have a growing fondness and regard for sunlight, an ear more attuned to the soprofic qualities of bees, an almost religious devotion to breakfasting outside with the papers and a large bowl of blueberries. Fifteen year old me would be disgusted, and fly straight back to his Smiths records and Turgenev. I like summer.
In all respects but one. The temperature rises, and my fellow countrymen collectively lose their minds on a heady cocktail of long evenings and two for one deals.
It would be all too easy to come off sounding like a grumpy liberal writing this (aha, and the Dead Kennedy's have just come up on random play - how apt), but I do beleive that the nation's gone a bit nuts. I stood outside the door at work on the final mwhistle against France last weekend, and heard the fights erupting all over town. Right, no foreigners here to kick, might as well lump you, then. Well placed as I am to observe the nations drinking habits I can confirm that it's just getting fucking silly now. A quick pint after work that same night exposed me to the most extravagantly drunk crowds I've ever seen in my life. Even at Euro '96, the absolute watershed of football's coming home triumphalism the air was a alcoholically celebratory one, but not this weird seething primal desperation for booze.
Much better writers than me have written, and will doubtless write many thousands more words on this subject. It is a nagging one, carrying as it does attendant fears of fogey-ism, of wilfully misremembering the past, but I honestly cannot recall it ever being as bad as this. The fresh and new-minted patriotism of the late nineties, recovered from twenty years of desolation and fuelled by a very real optimism has descended into an altogether more jingoistic and jaded, confrontational form of self-determination. And this is inexorably linked to a celebration of consumption at dangerous levels. A tacit media nudge nudge and wink winking, each anguished and soul searching column drowned out by five lifestyle items. The nation is pissed, and god help us all, there's a major sporting tournament on at the same time.
Or, more precisely, a major football tournament, it's hard to imagine the nation going quite so nuts over the ashes. Only wimbers seems to bring out even point five of the nationalistic fervour engendered by football, and even then it's of a laughable, easily derided middle class calibre. Try being anti football at the moment, and you'll end up being regarded as slightly freakish, even by those who the rest of the year have absolutely no interest in the game, but for the time england are in a major tournament latch on to the collective unconscious and just get swept along.
Weird weird weird. You're all Barry fucking weird. Though to be fair, I will be in the pub for todays game against our ancient hated enemies the perfidious Swiss. "That's for the Nazi Gold you cuckoo clock loving bastards" I shall cry, and my fellows will cheer. But then, I like football, I always have. I still think you're all weird though.
In all respects but one. The temperature rises, and my fellow countrymen collectively lose their minds on a heady cocktail of long evenings and two for one deals.
It would be all too easy to come off sounding like a grumpy liberal writing this (aha, and the Dead Kennedy's have just come up on random play - how apt), but I do beleive that the nation's gone a bit nuts. I stood outside the door at work on the final mwhistle against France last weekend, and heard the fights erupting all over town. Right, no foreigners here to kick, might as well lump you, then. Well placed as I am to observe the nations drinking habits I can confirm that it's just getting fucking silly now. A quick pint after work that same night exposed me to the most extravagantly drunk crowds I've ever seen in my life. Even at Euro '96, the absolute watershed of football's coming home triumphalism the air was a alcoholically celebratory one, but not this weird seething primal desperation for booze.
Much better writers than me have written, and will doubtless write many thousands more words on this subject. It is a nagging one, carrying as it does attendant fears of fogey-ism, of wilfully misremembering the past, but I honestly cannot recall it ever being as bad as this. The fresh and new-minted patriotism of the late nineties, recovered from twenty years of desolation and fuelled by a very real optimism has descended into an altogether more jingoistic and jaded, confrontational form of self-determination. And this is inexorably linked to a celebration of consumption at dangerous levels. A tacit media nudge nudge and wink winking, each anguished and soul searching column drowned out by five lifestyle items. The nation is pissed, and god help us all, there's a major sporting tournament on at the same time.
Or, more precisely, a major football tournament, it's hard to imagine the nation going quite so nuts over the ashes. Only wimbers seems to bring out even point five of the nationalistic fervour engendered by football, and even then it's of a laughable, easily derided middle class calibre. Try being anti football at the moment, and you'll end up being regarded as slightly freakish, even by those who the rest of the year have absolutely no interest in the game, but for the time england are in a major tournament latch on to the collective unconscious and just get swept along.
Weird weird weird. You're all Barry fucking weird. Though to be fair, I will be in the pub for todays game against our ancient hated enemies the perfidious Swiss. "That's for the Nazi Gold you cuckoo clock loving bastards" I shall cry, and my fellows will cheer. But then, I like football, I always have. I still think you're all weird though.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Goodness I'm a lazy lazy man
Feeling kinda disjointed at the moment. Pretty good...but not that good. Something, and I have no idea what is nagging away at the back of my mind. But it won't let me see it, yet. Hmm.
Some moments from the last week or so which have crystallised with perfect clarity though..
last week, cleaned the yard. Not all that exciting in and of itself, but slightly more so when it occurred as this kind of compulsion. Woke up "must clean yard" by the end of the day was eating a meal on new furniture in suddenly clean yard. Odd. Very odd.
Trip with R to Byrne's of Clitheroe, the greatest wine merchants I've ever been in (admittedly not the hugest of fields, but I am yet young). The rising sense of excitement as room gave way to room, each more full of fabulous wine than the last. I shopped Also, the view from the top of the castle.
I had to work Sunday, so missed the debacle in Portugal, it was a little strange, as on the final whistle I could hear this beer-saturated howl of rage rising all over the town. It was somewhat primal. There was to be no having of more than one scary as fuck post-labour pint that night, sadly, so I got battered instead, and watched the cricket.
Not really sure what's come over me, something has though...
Some moments from the last week or so which have crystallised with perfect clarity though..
last week, cleaned the yard. Not all that exciting in and of itself, but slightly more so when it occurred as this kind of compulsion. Woke up "must clean yard" by the end of the day was eating a meal on new furniture in suddenly clean yard. Odd. Very odd.
Trip with R to Byrne's of Clitheroe, the greatest wine merchants I've ever been in (admittedly not the hugest of fields, but I am yet young). The rising sense of excitement as room gave way to room, each more full of fabulous wine than the last. I shopped Also, the view from the top of the castle.
I had to work Sunday, so missed the debacle in Portugal, it was a little strange, as on the final whistle I could hear this beer-saturated howl of rage rising all over the town. It was somewhat primal. There was to be no having of more than one scary as fuck post-labour pint that night, sadly, so I got battered instead, and watched the cricket.
Not really sure what's come over me, something has though...
