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The Boy Who Could But Didn't The Boy Who Could But Didn't The literary struggle of a lazy part-time genius Articles
Owed
2007-07-22 22:23:00 Last Thursday was another one of those bipolar sort of days I'm now starting to get used to. AC/DC Thursday, where life is nothing but an alternating current of opportunities and chance, and you're just an electron at the whim of whichever way the flow of things moves you. But this has nothing to do with brain chemistry. This isn't the familiar 'buzzing in your head, waking up in bed with someone you'd rather shoot, walking down the road against hard and cold molecules pushing against your every step' sort of thing. This is the world itself gone cyclothymic. And you can tell by the weather. Thursday started with the usual way all my days have started recently. Blind panic. Terror. There were the usual three, maybe five seconds of insidious bliss between waking from a fitful sleep in the cuddly warmth of my own bed, and then the sledgehammer on my chest as I remember. As it all comes back to me with the heaviest heartbeat I've ever felt. As my heart beats faster and faster a...
Leaves
2007-07-14 18:36:00 I'm outside on my balcony. Everything's where it should be. My laptop is on my lap, my cigarette and its ash are in the ashtray. I'm glugging Port from the bottle and the sun is shining. Peri The Jasmine Plant needs watering. iTunes is playing and the song lyrics are singing to me - 'make your own kind of music, even if nobody else sings along.' The world is alive with taunting life - a hornet buzzing beside me, for one. They say their stings are out of this world. A magpie perched upon the roof. "Hello, Mr Magpie." Hornet loves the jasmine, but is disappointed by her drying leaves. I'm sitting here trying to write, trying to think, trying not to remember who I am and The State That I Am In™. I've been thinking about, you know, stuff. A lot of stuff. What I want to do, where I'm going. Boys. I've been thinking about boys. Why I cannot really fall in love anymore. Whenever the last time I ever really did I can no longer remember. Have I ever? How impossible it is to surviv... More About: Leaves , Aves
Act 1, Scene 5, l. 98-104
2007-07-02 04:27:00 Let me try and explain what it feels like. I'm assuming of course that you have no idea, but there would be no point in my writing this if you didn't. It's like someone's gone out and left a light on in a house. It's a 100 Watt bulb. But it isn't just one light. They've left every light on in every room. And three televisions on as well, tuned to different programmes in different languages. Blaring out. And the stereo. The stereo is playing a thrash metal band whilst the wireless on top of it hums a crackly Bach Cantata. Both phones are ringing. And the microwave is making popcorn. And the dishwasher's washing knives. And the glare of a computer's monitor burns flickering fragments of half-glimpsed data into the world. And a washing machine spins laundry, round and round and round, again and again and again... No. No, forget all that. Just imagine a motorway. At night. Like those long exposure photographs you see of just lines of the bright white and red lights of cars w... More About: Scene
No pigs, no girls, no postcard risks
2007-06-26 15:19:00 Keeping it simple this time. More About: Girls , Postcard , Pigs
Mercury well and truly back in retrograde
2007-06-22 16:42:00 For sale: One burnt out type 3 novelist: Leto model. No longer remotely top of the range but these models are proving increasingly popular with collectors, and is still just about functional at benchmark level. Details below. HARDWARE: Base unit: Mesomorphic with interchangeable trichological fascias. Memory: About 512k. Respiratory capacity: Can push a marble up a slight incline in under three hours. Hepatic status: Dangerously exciting. (Current bidders include Sarsons and The Fat Duck. Eugene Victor Tooms politely declined to make an offer on account of having given up junk food). Memory: About 5... 12... something. Battery status: Poor. Unable to function for extended periods without external support. FIRMWARE AND ADDITIONAL DETAILS: Compatibility with other models: Motherboard completely burnt out. Currently held together with motheaten nostalgia and fuzzy feelgood scenes from arthouse films. Adaptive flirtation coprocessors (hardly used). Interface: Built in sarcasm. ... More About: Back , Mercury , Merc , Well , Etrog
Clockface redesign
2007-06-21 23:39:00 The synchonicity of my universe, mk ii. More About: Redesign , Lock , Rede
My very first rejection letter
2007-06-21 15:35:00 A bittersweet moment in any writer's life. I do wish I'd got my postcard back though. If any one happens to be passing through Granville Island Market in Vancouver any time soon, please go and see the mad postcard woman in the mall for me. It's the black and white photo of the little girl, clutching a pig and laughing. You'd make it into my will (assuming you're the sort of person who feels they could benefit from a collection of broken watches and a few fuzzy videos of Star Trek: The Next Generation taped off the TV. Still, it's possibly still a fair exchange for a postcard.) I keep looking at the letter and feeling perhaps inappropriately excited. I feel like I should be ticking something off a list, or running a line through the agent's name with a big fat black marker pen. As Adrian Mole said on receiving the response to his first submission, "it's a very nice rejection letter." More About: Letter , Rejection
Lost Time
2007-06-20 12:56:00 Here I am, approaching thirty, with only hayfever, a second edition De Profundis and the perpetual elusion of Du Temps Perdu to my name. Now I have lost even my former self's guilt over my newfound indolence, I spend most of my time sleeping, avoiding the outside world and its pollens, lamenting self-denied cigarettes and alcohol with a face buried in duvets and pillows, too new to be home to fussy old fashioned dust mites. So what did I do tonight? How did I struggle to escape stagnancy today? I tried to turn back the clock. It was surely an urge from my subconscious itself. I opened the drawer, the top left of four each labelled in a language few would understand. This is the Drawer of Time . This is the drawer where my collection of watches lives - pockets, fobs, wrists and clocks. I took each box out, one by one, and inspected its contents. The battery powered masonic watch no longer ticks. The battery has died. I saw no point in winding the demi-hunter brass number I bought... More About: Lost
Don't put Motion over Rosen
2007-06-11 23:53:00 I've only just read that Michael Rosen has been chosen as the Children's Poet Laureate. I'm surprised it hadn't happened sooner. The man has a quite Dahl-like quality to him in capturing eloquently the sort of world that children love to live in, namely a world that largely involves things like bogies, puke, dog poo and making a mess at dinner time. I was lucky enough to meet him when I was no more than about 7, and he visited my primary school in Chiswick to give us a brief talk on what poetry was. I still remember this very tall, floppy haired man with big feet arriving late, much to the relief and then delight of the assembled female teachers, and plod gleefully to the front of the gym hall where we were all sitting crossed-legged and patient. There he performed what I can only describe as 'stand up for kids' - a mix of poems and stories that I can still remember a few of to this day. It is one of perhaps three happy memories I have from my first primary school. Those of ... More About: Motion
Clap
2007-06-07 20:18:00 On Tuesday the lovely Miss Babs took me to the latest event by Poet In The City. This seminar was on the Spoken Word, and poetry that's more performed than read. Though I thought the general idea was much more effective than just listening to poets recite their work from a sheet of paper, I'm not really a fan of political poetry, which is what several of the acts came across as. I can't help it, but it just doesn't resonate with me. As a writer myself, I personally feel that poetry is primarily a gymnasium for emotion. That's not to say I don't enjoy pieces with a political bent or agenda. I just feel that this is something best left as a vehicle for resonating an emotional response or recognition with its reader, or indeed listener, rather than an explicit statement or focus. The previous event of this very worthwhile charity I attended was very political, featuring refugee poets from Iraq, China and Malawi. But the pieces they read out explored their own personal emotional...
Walk on
2007-06-05 05:24:00 I see the moon as I leave. Ivory white. Ivory yellow. Waning. It will be a new moon soon. There are no lights in any houses. The world is fresh and alive. I walk the dirty road to the garage, passing the sound of plates being stacked from a dark unlit window above. I recognise the man at the window in the garage. It is a ritual of unsaids. I know we are both grateful for this brief twilight interaction. Every nod is a conversation - "20 marlboro lights please." This is a novel. I smile. "Thank you." He smiles. A smile from a stranger is worth the universe. Walk ing up North Hill, I am in the world in early morning - bird song, the faint and familiar throb of my blood bringing me movement through it. Its perfumes change, they grow. The wind blows through me and carries my memories into scents that blanket me. Suddenly I can smell the sea - seaweed rotting on North Sea-caressed sand, saltwater on limestone. For a heartbeat, Highgate becomes my favourite place in space and time. Long...
Paper bag
2007-06-05 03:42:00 Breathe. Pace. Pace. Breathe. Tea. Make some tea. Green tea. Brewing. Big Brother on in background. People. People. Humans. Breathe. Breathe. Calm. Centred. Breath. The universe. The universe. Centred. Gravity. Attracts. Planets. Planets are selfish. The Earth is not the centre of the universe. Planets think they are suns. Suns think they are galaxies. The universe. Breathe. God does not think he is anything. God looks neither down on or up to anything. God is not human. God is not a planet. God is just God. God is breath. Breathe. Breathe. Fuck breathing. I'm going out to buy cigarettes. It's two days and I'm allowed. And green tea just reminds me of Vancouver and the road to it, untravelled. More About: Paper
Human Nature
2007-06-03 18:54:00 Some recent events have led me to reading up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It's a fascinating little syndrome. Did you know for example, purely as an aside, that its diagnosis can more commonly be found in confidence tricksters or stalkers? I imagine this is something to do with the total lack of empathy required to take a cold advantage of others as a means to their own whimsical and often juvenile ends, or the absence of any apparent instinct to apologise or demonstrate remorse for their behaviour afterwards. It must be wonderfully reassuring to live in a Solipsism. I'm quite envious. It was at this point that I particularly enjoyed discovering the irony of having been unconsciously applying the definitions to myself as I read through them. It left me wondering if genuine Narcissistic Personalty Disorder can only ever be, by its nature, self-diagnosed. I was never overly keen on Narcissus as a flower. It always seemed a little too commonplace for me - a little too eve... More About: Nature , Human Nature , Human , Uman , Natur
Identity Theft
2007-06-02 15:46:00 Someone has set up a fake profile of me on hi5 (a site I'd never even heard of before today). They have taken information from my website and my MySpace and are pretending to me. They have also lifted images and comments from MySpace to create fake profiles of my friends. They are apparently leaving abusive messages on others profiles there in my name. I find this invasive and disturbing. I have contacted Hi5 and told them what is happening. And I'm fairly certain who you are. If you stop doing it, now, we can resolve this calmly. More About: Identity Theft , Theft , Identity
Questions, comments
2007-06-02 13:05:00 My blog wasn't sending me emails to let me know when someone has commented on a post like it usually does. I wandered into 'Comm ent Control' just earlier to see if it's indeed true that no one loves me to find a whole list of scribbles left like shopping lists to yellow in the ever-increasing confidence of the June sun. Having found out that not everyone does hate me after all, there was then a feeling of discovering your Christmas presents were merely locked away in the cupboard by your wicked stepmother or Margaret Thatcher. I started a new month of 100 words in May, but I barely finished half of them. My heart just wasn't in it, and it's depressing that the self-congratulatory masterpiece of One Year In The Life Of Ben is still left incomplete on the site several months after its transition, despite me going through Google's archives myself and picking out entries one by one and forwarding them on offering to insert them if that helped. There's no point there being just ... More About: Questions , Comments
Empty spaces
2007-05-30 01:56:00 Exhibit A: Best friend in wine. Soon moving away. Exhibit B: Former best friend. Now moved away. Exhibit C: Former boyfriend. Now moved away. Took all the wine. Exhibit D: Former best friend and never a boyfriend. Now has a boyfriend. Exhibit E: Former best friend and never a boyfriend. Moved away and now has a boyfriend. Now drinks wine. Exhibit F: Significator. Did not move away. Does not have a boyfriend. Does not have wine. Now has eczema. More About: Pace , Paces , Spaces , Empty
'Round the Old Oak Tree
2007-05-28 19:43:00 Regardless of what you think of the current media circus (and let's face it, it's akin to social suicide to be seen as even slightly critical of its dominance in the news), it's really quite baffling to see how 'tributes' such as the one linked to below actually help. Frankly, I think there's something increasingly disturbing happening in Western society. More and more, this is no longer about a missing girl or a desire to see her returned safely to her parents. The very image of Madeleine McCann is slowly becoming the latest must-have fashion accessory; her very name is being used as a sort of emotional blackmail to tolerate anyone's desire for five minutes of fame in a stolen spotlight. Am I heartless? I don't think so. I'm capable of empathising to some degree with what those who actually know her are most likely feeling (limited as I am by not having had a child myself, let alone one go missing). Her picture is everywhere, but that's the point; people are donating mo... More About: Tree , Round , The O
Wasted time?
2007-05-25 11:31:00 I am ashamed to say that at the Hay on Wye Literary Festival I hadn't heard of even half the new authors speaking on the day I attended. Hay on Wye meanwhile is rightly ashamed that not a single bookshop could offer me a hardback Mrs Dalloway or a copy of A la recherche du temps perdu. I did however find the following "Kilroy was 'ere"... More About: Time , Waste , Wasted , Wasted Time
The idiot's guide to 2 point 4 children
2007-05-22 17:48:00 Things I think when an attractive man smiles at me: (apart from oh my God, an attractive man just smiled at me) Just because I look away, quickly, doesn't mean I'm not interested. Just because I seem arrogant doesn't mean I don't have zero self-confidence. Just because I manage to look back at you doesn't mean I'm capable of making the first move. Just because I don't say anything doesn't mean I don't want to. Just because I'm holding her hand doesn't mean she's my girlfriend. Just because I haven't shaved this morning doesn't mean I don't suddenly wish I had. Just because I know I'm never going to properly fall in love doesn't mean I don't want to. Just because you're smiling at me and I'm smiling back at you doesn't mean we're ever going to see each other again, does it? And then there's the one I never think at the time: Just because a stranger smiles at you doesn't mean they're attracted to you. More About: Children , Guide , Point , Guid
The mushrooms we had for breakfast...
2007-05-20 11:31:00 I can still remember it, though the details are of course a little more hazy now. I remember us meeting at the retro clothing store in Camden, run by a very unfriendly man who only allowed one "night time" shopper in at a time. This is the name he used for anyone who took their time browsing. Strange man. You were there, moving casually between the overcoats and the corduroy, making a very bad job of pretending you weren't watching me from the corner of your eye. I'd seen you around before - in the market, on the bus. We always played this game - I'm sure I was just as unsubtle about looking at you. But I remember how I felt that first time you broke the ritual by speaking to me, like a dog-eared page in a storybook had finally been turned to reveal the most colourful of pictures, making you fall in love with the tale all over again. If only I could remember exactly what it was you said! You told me your name was Peter - my father's name - and we found out we didn't live too fa... More About: Breakfast , Mushrooms , Room , Mush , Brea
I like coats with big pockets
2007-05-18 15:47:00 because I usually have the following in them: Notebook Pen An unopened letter I've picked up on the way out of the flat and keep forgetting to read. Cigarettes Lighter Box of matches (having thought I'd forgotten my lighter the previous day only to find it in my trouser pocket) Pocket watch (usually with one of several infuriating faults) Phone (with essential built in camera) Chewing gum (usually one solitary piece I can't bring myself to eat, wrapped in the oilcloth of what once was foil) Loose receipts (v useful for used chewing gum in no-bin situations) Wallet (quaint affectation these days) Keys (occasionally with TARDIS key) Loose change (usually 2p pieces I've seen and picked up for luck. Tuppences are lucky. Pennies are not) I don't like bags, you see. A good coat with lots of pockets is like a best friend you can share a bed with. You do everything together, and they carry the components of what makes up your universe. More About: Coats , Like , Oats
I'll let you know when I get this back
2007-05-16 10:27:00 It was one of my favourite postcards as well - the one of the little girl holding a pig and laughing her little socks off. I bought it in Granville Island Market two years ago. I do hope I get it back. Well. So. Ta da. I've done it. Yeah. I've finally finished my synopsis. I have actually made a submission to a literary agent. Crikey. And it only took two months as well. I don't feel relieved, I don't feel elated. I do still feel a little tired, having gone almost 40 hours without any sleep, but mostly I feel terrified. I'm convinced I made a mistake somewhere in the submission. I'm suddenly possessed with the certainty that really it's not a terribly good novel at all. I'm now almost certain I spelt my name wrong, or put a kiss after I wrote it. As soon as I dropped the envelope into the post box, all I wanted to do was stick my arm in and pull it out again. But that's a good sign, isn't it? It's certainly not a bed made for hubris. I'll be away for the next ten day... More About: Back , When , Know , Get This
Where does the time go?
2007-05-14 13:06:00 I'm doing my synopsis. Again. Of course I am. The day ends in a Y. I've been doing this synopsis for the past two months now, ever since I left work. The first hurdle was in sitting down to write it. The second was trying to stop crying when I pasted it into Word and found out it was eighteen pages. The third was trying to edit it down to ten pages and getting only as far as fourteen. The fourth was having a tantrum, realising it wasn't working, and trying to rewrite the whole thing in five pages. The fifth was in calling the inevitably ever-persistent sixth page all names under the sun as it refused to be flushed away, more self- assertive than a retrovirus. The sixth is today, having discovered one of the agents I'm targeting (that is if they're still in business by the time I get this finished) requires a three page synopsis rather than a five. Have you ever tried to reduce a 110,000 word novel into three pages? It's like asking Lisa Riley to wear a bikini. If it wa... More About: Time , Here , Where , The Time
All time greatest blog find in the whole of today
2007-05-12 17:46:00 With thanks to Mr OE's links. More About: Time , Blog , Today , Find , Test
The geek in me
2007-05-10 04:20:00 I found a bundle of photoshopped images on a backup CD from a few years ago. A few sound effects and... Whilst looking for sounds I also found this genius little gimic for MacBooks, PowerBooks and iBooks that turns your laptop into a motion sensitive lightsaber. I can just imagine the warranty claims pouring in. More About: Geek , The G
Affirmations on a Tuesday night
2007-05-08 22:17:00 I will not be flesh. I will carry my iPod with me more, and listen to Bach's Cantatas, stodgy Italian opera, Klaus Nomi and The Lion King soundtrack while I wait for a bus or walk down Archway Road. I will stop going vampire hunting in the wood at night. I will stop looking for trouble. I will think of sunsets, and the glow they give you over silhouetted rooftops like an embrace, like being in love. Again. I will smile more in slow motion when something moves me to joy. I will not pretend I don't cry at things that make you cry in films. I will eat more chocolate and pretend the spots I get mean that I'm 17 once more and have the chance to do it all again, right this time. I will buy a jasmine plant. And I will probably talk to it when it's midnight, and a full moon draws out its best blossoms in pale silent flirtation. I will sip good wine more, and not glug it to get drunk. I will appreciate my friends more, for however long the universe permits me to have them. I will plan th... More About: Night , Tuesday , Affirmations , Affirmation , Irma
with garlic
2007-05-06 15:21:00 i didnt go to sleep when i should. i stayed up to watch the fabulous baker boys - it was quite good. i liked tthe ending. never trust a happy ending,. it's not real, not part of life. you're just wathcing someone else's sully dream. abandoned. ugh. broken. there is no purpose to this. i'm just giving my fingrs something to do while their arms just lie here in the dark, staling banquets to be bitten by my mystery assassin in the night. alone. i shjudder to think what all this is doing to my grammatical reputation. write though me . write fast. there is pasta on the hob, old tobacco down the drain, and i sit here curdling thoughts to a thick that when the milk's drunk quick go insane More About: Garlic , Arli
Solipsism
More articles from this author:2007-04-30 12:14:00 Tree-filtered sunlight casts shadows across my floor. From the corner of my eye all things come to life - a coat raises its arm and waves to the window, rabbits that don't exist hop across the pools of light, ballroom dancers whirl polkas in tiny circles upon the rug from IKEA. The entire carpet glimmers like an ocean floor, and I imagine fish and crustaceans scuttling over its unsandy surface. But this is only the perception of life. There is nothing here that truly exists beyond the light, between the shadows of simpler lifeforms reflected. Yet still I watch the movement, from the corner of my eye. I watch the light and the shadows and in their ballet I choose to be by the sea. More About: Soli 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
