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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
Thirty Years: Thirty
2010-06-30 01:05:00 ?Who are you?? I?m driving down the Pacific coastal road to LA with my fiancé and two of the most selfless and loyal friends I’ve ever had. If life is a journey, I feel I was always heading this way. I?m picking up things I loved from my childhood and making them work. Once I ... More About: John , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Nine
2010-06-30 00:54:00 ?Our absence was my language.? I remember the agonising wait in that muggy basement, feeling increasingly sick as it gets closer to my turn. In the audience I hear my friends laughing at the others. I consider another cigarette but my mouth is dry and I know I?ll be sick. Suddenly Sarah?s up there. That ... More About: Twenty , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Eight
2010-06-29 00:37:00 ?For the dawn.? I was trying to escape. I?d set everything on relocating to Canada, perhaps seeking that feeling of home felt when I?d visited Vancouver years before. I even moved home to save money. Standing on the shores of English Bay in an impromptu birthday holiday, I thought this was where the story would ... More About: Twenty , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Seven
2010-06-27 16:19:00 ?This is a war.? When I quit my job they asked me where I was going to. I replied I was going to write. I received a pitying look in response, as if I hadn?t yet figured out how the world worked. As an unemployed writer I would sleep during the day, working all night ... More About: Writing , Twenty , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Six
2010-06-26 21:24:00 I?ve never been an ?office job? person. By 26 I?d grown desperately unhappy, aware of time moving unbearably fast, frantically grabbing at each wasted second. I felt isolated, somehow exiled in London, desperate to escape. I remember once leaving work, inexplicably on the verge of tears, and staring at traffic on Euston Road. The city ... More About: Twenty , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Five
2010-06-25 20:57:00 Twenty five saw the rise of the Canadians. If my life were a drama then this ?season? saw an influx of new characters, none of which I could now comprehend having ever lived without. We moved closer to Highgate Cemetery, its legendary cobbled streets often echoing ghostly carriage-wheels clattering across them. It all felt like ... More About: Twenty , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Four
2010-06-24 18:49:00 I discovered I was allergic to blonds far too late. One in particular took me to Vancouver; the first place I?d felt at home since university. While there I took an Amtrak to Seattle to visit my older brother, following the Pacific coast under a full moon. When I arrived we hugged awkwardly. ?There?s no ... More About: Twenty , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Three
2010-06-23 20:15:00 Graduation was intense; I moved back to London without focus or direction. I started a beautifully destructive and turbulent relationship. We no longer speak. I moved to Highgate, but fell out with a friend over trivialities like washing-up and laundry. In autumn my mother developed cancer and I moved home to look after her between ... More About: Twenty , Years
Thirty Years: Twenty Two
2010-06-22 16:27:00 Anyone who?s done Edinburgh will tell you it?s incredible. You meet so many people: both rising new talent and veteran faces of stage and screen. When not performing, flyering or watching shows we?d grab unhealthy snacks from Piemaker, sing songs on the Royal Mile about Jenny Bond selling used underwear on the internet or grab ... More About: Writing , Twenty , Festival , Years , John Lynch
Thirty Years: Twenty One
2010-06-21 02:42:00 My abiding memory of my 21st birthday was sitting beside a dual-carriageway in Victoria eating soggy overpriced sandwiches as I watched the traffic pass. My mother later pretended she hadn’t forgotten by rushing to Sainsbury’s before closing to buy a fruit salad spongecake, gone soggy from being left out all day. Realising that all my ... More About: Twenty , Years
Death of the Novelist #5
2009-08-09 19:16:00 Yes, he read it all right. He looked at me as if I had a swollen cheek, looked sidelong into the corner, and even tittered in embarrassment. He crumpled the manuscript needlessly and grunted. The questions he asked seemed crazy to me. Saying nothing about the essence of the novel, he asked me who I ... More About: Writing , Death
Death of the Novelist #3
2009-07-03 20:18:00 I doubt my ability to ever capture in words the beauty this does in music. More About: Writing , Death
Death of the Novelist #2
2009-06-15 23:32:00 One day, someone might even ask why I stopped. I’ll reply that I found all the people I wanted to share the world I saw with. More About: Writing , Death
Death of the Novelist #1
2009-06-02 21:59:00 And the award for least effort put into a rejection response goes to… It almost makes me look back through rose-tinted specs at ‘Dear ……………… ;……….’; a form of address which always perplexed me more than a little. I mean, if you’re going to be made to feel utterly ephemeral to the person taking 10 seconds to ... More About: Writing , Death
Passacaglia
2009-05-22 14:22:00 I feel connected. Again I see the number 22, everywhere, much like I once saw combinations of B and 13. Sometimes I still do. I finally took the time to look it up – connotations of Revelation and a conjunction of the mundane and the fantastical. Sounds like me in a nutshell – living in ...
The Lonely Tale of King Furciel
2009-04-06 22:16:00 A cautionary tale for adult persons as to why one should not accept denominationally unstable wishes from strange fairies in forests. Written and scrawled by yours truly and read by John Rayment. More About: King , Tale , Lonely
Work in Progress
2009-04-04 14:01:00 A snapshot of a scribbled-in notebook. More About: Writing , Work , Progress , Work In Progress
Ben Leto on Resonance FM #2
2009-03-28 09:28:00 Click here to listen to last week’s show on Resonance FM with Arthur Fowler’s Allotment.
I?d rather stay in bed
2008-06-06 00:44:00 I can’t begin to describe how utterly arbitrary and purposeless my life feels. Every single act of volition is a lazy exercise in wasting time. But what happens if such exercise stops? What happens if I don’t waste time? The only answer - too much time. I can’t even write this properly. I can’t even ... More About: Stay
Lessons learnt for the son I?ll never have
2008-05-30 00:04:00 1) Don’t do that. 2) Music really does sound better through earphones. 3) The grass is always greener. Be happy with your lot, not unhappy over someone else’s. 4) Wear sunscreen. 5) Don’t bank with Abbey National. Ever. EVER. Unless of course you want to waste money, have high blood pressure and go grey before your time. In ... More About: Lessons
How not to brainstorm a sitcom
2008-05-26 14:04:00 An actual transcript… BEN: You know you said just go for the zeitgeist - y’know, like Amy Winehouse - take something old and make it modern? LITTLE ONE: Yeah. BEN: Like, put a modern spin on it by throwing in a few swear words and talking about being wasted? LITTLE ONE: Uh huh. BEN: So how about ‘The Two Ronnies’, only more modern: ‘The ... More About: Sitcom , Brainstorm
Morpheus reads Tim the Sheep
2008-05-23 12:50:00 It happened again, somehow more as teenage viscera than the teenage innocence of before but no less warm in effect. Only there were three this time. One was a boy - a cheeky, impudent libertine. Another was an ex, tacitly competing with me for the libertine’s attention’s. And one, curiously, was a girl. I know. ... More About: Morpheus , Sheep
This is it, by childhood and home
2008-05-20 21:37:00 fingers tense against the gnarled oak chest, clutching at drawers, scrambling, fumbling inside. i am blind, my vision having died in darkened rooms, blindfolded by dirty sheets and smothered by anything without an edge. paper cuts my skin as i claw within the dark for clues, for something soft and warm, familiar, breaking my knuckles ... More About: Childhood , Home
Nerd Joy
2008-05-19 00:55:00 At last reunited with my faithful Kodak cable, I’ve been able to finally transfer the many photos that have been sitting idle on my camera for the past few months since moving. More About: Nerd
Best Unsigned Artist Find in the Whole of Today Award
2008-04-25 11:40:00 goes to Bark Cat Bark! Have a listen Or a read It’s good. More About: Artist , Today , Find , Award , Unsigned
I heard a cow cough
2008-04-23 11:43:00 a st andrews breakfast - two cups of coffee and two marlboro lights, looking at 9am as it trails warm pools in its cloak across the valley opposite. brecon has never looked so pretty as regina sings, and sings and sings, daffs dancing all around me like teenagers at a concert waving unsteady lighter flames. ... More About: Writing , Cough
Beasts of the Finished
2008-04-22 00:20:00 13 chapters. 125,327 words. Two and a half years. And several grisly deaths, naturally. How better to quietly celebrate actually finishing a novel for the first time, than listening to Together in Electric Dreams, drinking a can of Becks lager and gnawing a slab of chocolate? More About: Writing
How to stay sane in West London
2008-04-03 01:29:00 I’d like you to meet my new cellmate, Mr Chauncey Rapscallion. I found him lying facedown, half drunk behind the radiator. He says he likes it there, that the fluff is comfy and the heat stops him thinking about crows. He’s going to keep me company during the rest of my sentence. Tomorrow night we’re ... More About: London , West , Lego , Stay
Leaving Highgate
2008-04-01 14:00:00 From the journal… Friday 22nd: The first day of summer I watch the leaves wave like abandoned wives beyond the glass as clouds roll majestically away behind them - moving west, always ever further west. I sit unblinking in my almost empty room and watch the world move, change and grow - the clouds cruising away like ... More About: Leaving
The first time you discovered microphone feedback
More articles from this author:2008-03-17 22:53:00 read. just read. sit back with your feet up on white sheets and listen to owen. don’t fear the reaper. read, as you turn the pages of a tobacco-yellowed 1960s paperback just to feel them between your fingers. pretend you’re rich. pretend this is all just a novel and you’re holding your breath because you’re ... More About: Microphone , Time , Feedback , First Time 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
