"I love this time of night", was my first thought as I noticed that I was once again alone with the silently breaking dawn and my latest writing project. Having lost track of time, I discovered that somehow it was well past 4am and the Eastern edges of sky, just visible from my kitchen window, were beginning to take on a tint more commonly associated with midday, though the zenith above me was still as dark as the heart of a crater on the other side of the moon. The many hues of dawn are well known to me, the shocking pinks and fluorescent oranges are as familiar as the colours of my bedroom walls.
It's not unusual for me to be up in the wee hours but recently it's become a rarity for me to have a better reason than simple insomnia and an internet full of TV. Yet tonight the ceaseless parade of the adventures of improbably interesting people was ignored in favour of the blinking cursor which Pacmans its way around the screen, eating up white space and leaving trails of creation in its wake. Not particularly creative creation, it has to be said. It's been years since my last fictional piece begun, stalled and was abandoned. No, tonight I was beating back the hordes of word-doc dwelling snow ghosts with a letter begging for donations to a charitable concern and registration forms for a fundraising event in aid of same.
Such peaks of mundanity could not have been aspired to anywhere else by a young man in the wee small hours yet there was fun there. As well as the easily recognisable joy of watching another sunrise, there was another, less obvious, source of enjoyment. I soon realised it was a presence I hadn't felt since... such a long time ago. It was the buzz of writing, of taking something from inside your head and giving it form in the world, even if it was only as substantial as the fluctuation in an electrical current. Not for me the brush and canvas, nor even the inkjet and paper. No, my medium is this; the keys and screen. I won't ever create a masterpiece, or anything that is ever seen by more than a handful and is discarded and forgotten as easily as a chewing-gum wrapper. But who cares about skill or recognition when I can feel the sense of contentment that comes from creating at all?
I've got my mojo back.
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Monday, 8 April 2013
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.
Ok, to be fair, that's a pretty tasteless title, but it may just be one of the more moderate reactions of the day.
In case you haven't heard (you know, if you've been on Mars all morning or similar) Maggie "let's put the working man in his place" Thatcher died this morning. As a proud northern lad, I had nothing but resentment for the prime minister who ripped the heart out of anything north of the Watford gap but I'm not going to go celebrating. Today will be pretty much the same as yesterday was and tomorrow will represent a startling lack of difference. The woman may be gone but her legacy will live on in the politics of our nation quite possibly for ever. Some good things wrre done by the milk snatcher but then again a lot of harm was caused too, some necessary evils were enacted - with far too much relish for my liking - but some entirely unnecessary ones were entertained also.
Others will document, in great detail, the political life of democracy's greatest failure (she never lost a popular vote, you know) and despite all the wrongdoings, reports will most likely remain positive, partly because that's the ettiquette of death but mostly beacuse to badmouth Thatcher these days is to be, in the eyes of many, a millitant leftist bent on anarchy and the destruction of civilisation. Britain took a lurch to the right from which it may never recover when Maggie was elected and the rhetoric will all be of tough decisions that were unpopular but needed making, rather than the gutting of Britains industial northern cities. Neither leaving political office nor death can change the effect she had on us all, which was to turn us all to the dark side.
But whatever the past held now is the time to let her rest, if not in peace then at least in the ground, where we all go in the end, hopefully to reflect upon our sins, whether they be acts of political evil or dancing on the grave of a fellow human being.
In case you haven't heard (you know, if you've been on Mars all morning or similar) Maggie "let's put the working man in his place" Thatcher died this morning. As a proud northern lad, I had nothing but resentment for the prime minister who ripped the heart out of anything north of the Watford gap but I'm not going to go celebrating. Today will be pretty much the same as yesterday was and tomorrow will represent a startling lack of difference. The woman may be gone but her legacy will live on in the politics of our nation quite possibly for ever. Some good things wrre done by the milk snatcher but then again a lot of harm was caused too, some necessary evils were enacted - with far too much relish for my liking - but some entirely unnecessary ones were entertained also.
Others will document, in great detail, the political life of democracy's greatest failure (she never lost a popular vote, you know) and despite all the wrongdoings, reports will most likely remain positive, partly because that's the ettiquette of death but mostly beacuse to badmouth Thatcher these days is to be, in the eyes of many, a millitant leftist bent on anarchy and the destruction of civilisation. Britain took a lurch to the right from which it may never recover when Maggie was elected and the rhetoric will all be of tough decisions that were unpopular but needed making, rather than the gutting of Britains industial northern cities. Neither leaving political office nor death can change the effect she had on us all, which was to turn us all to the dark side.
But whatever the past held now is the time to let her rest, if not in peace then at least in the ground, where we all go in the end, hopefully to reflect upon our sins, whether they be acts of political evil or dancing on the grave of a fellow human being.
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Twenty-Something (and single) on Valentine's Day (sort of)
It's the most manufactured of all the special days we have, and yet probably one of the most celebrated. Valentine's day is that special date on which we all come together and declare our undying love for crass consumerism. The embodiment of our post-modern, capitalist society can be found in almost every place on February the 14th.
Okay, it's actually the 15th today, and (since I'm writing this with my nosey-ass brother looking over my shoulder which is considerably slowing the process by necessitating my punching him in the face if he does it once more) it may well be the 16th by the time you read it, but I'm not waiting another 363 days to get this written. I've got the topic and the motivation, timing can hit the bricks.
Anyways, Valentine's Day is often considered a couples' day, hence its often being misspelled as Valentines Day, the plural taking the place of the possessive to imply it is the day for you and your "Valentine" (perhaps the Americanism I most despise), rather than a celebration of St. Valentine. Point is, if you're single, society takes this opportunity to look down its collective nose at you.
But society is missing the point. The one thing this "holiday" is about (apart from gift companies having needed something to tide them over between Christmas and Easter) is people in love. This does not preclude couples, obviously, but equally does not exclude those not in a relationship.
Now, I'd love to be the sort of blogger who does a little research and sprinkles my 1500 words with a light dusting of facts but I'm just going to go with what I (and the rest of you, I'm sure) learnt in primary school and hope for the best, despite the fact that, when you can remember it, most of what you learn in primary school turns out to have been little more than unadulterated bollocks.
Well, here goes: according to every teacher I had from year 1 to year 6 (and sitcom How I Met Your Mother), St. Valentine was a priest/monk who married people in a time when some crazy Emperor dude had outlawed marriage. This guy was a supporter of a kind of love that, at the time, was not allowed. If anything, this guy now bears more significance for some single people in today's society.
No kind of love between two people is out of bounds in the modern world. As we prepare to make gay marriage legal in the UK, we've gone about as far as we can go in making every expression of love available to every person. But, nearly everyone has experienced the pang of a one-way love and that, I feel, is the kind of love that, whilst it is legal, is nevertheless not allowed today. While this kind of love can become reciprocal, it is far more likely that it is stamped out. We either bar ourselves from love by failing to act on such feelings or we act and are rebuffed, neither stops us from loving but in either case it is almost a fact of nature that we will be encouraged to stop, to give up, to move on. This is what I mean by not allowed.
See how those of us who are one half of a potential relationship which will never come to fruition are told we should not be allowed? We, the least obtrusive of alternative loves, are forever told we are unworthy of use of the term. Valentine is our saint now, we are the outlaws. We don't ask to secretly wed, we know the impossibility of such a thing, when we have no-one to be wed to, we ask merely that we be allowed to love, silently, from afar.
That's what February the 14th used to be about. Remember when you first heard the primary school version of the story of St. Valentine? Remember the card to the girl whose desk was a couple of rows over from yours? Often anonymous but sometimes signed, though only by the bravest of the brave. That's the only time this most sterilised, monetised of saint's days meant anything, when it was the chance for us all to take that flame we'd been holding (usually in a safety lamp with all the flaps shut so that no-one could see it) and use it to light the windows of our hearts.
I fail to see why grown-up Valentine's Day should be any different.
Okay, it's actually the 15th today, and (since I'm writing this with my nosey-ass brother looking over my shoulder which is considerably slowing the process by necessitating my punching him in the face if he does it once more) it may well be the 16th by the time you read it, but I'm not waiting another 363 days to get this written. I've got the topic and the motivation, timing can hit the bricks.
Anyways, Valentine's Day is often considered a couples' day, hence its often being misspelled as Valentines Day, the plural taking the place of the possessive to imply it is the day for you and your "Valentine" (perhaps the Americanism I most despise), rather than a celebration of St. Valentine. Point is, if you're single, society takes this opportunity to look down its collective nose at you.
But society is missing the point. The one thing this "holiday" is about (apart from gift companies having needed something to tide them over between Christmas and Easter) is people in love. This does not preclude couples, obviously, but equally does not exclude those not in a relationship.
Now, I'd love to be the sort of blogger who does a little research and sprinkles my 1500 words with a light dusting of facts but I'm just going to go with what I (and the rest of you, I'm sure) learnt in primary school and hope for the best, despite the fact that, when you can remember it, most of what you learn in primary school turns out to have been little more than unadulterated bollocks.
Well, here goes: according to every teacher I had from year 1 to year 6 (and sitcom How I Met Your Mother), St. Valentine was a priest/monk who married people in a time when some crazy Emperor dude had outlawed marriage. This guy was a supporter of a kind of love that, at the time, was not allowed. If anything, this guy now bears more significance for some single people in today's society.
No kind of love between two people is out of bounds in the modern world. As we prepare to make gay marriage legal in the UK, we've gone about as far as we can go in making every expression of love available to every person. But, nearly everyone has experienced the pang of a one-way love and that, I feel, is the kind of love that, whilst it is legal, is nevertheless not allowed today. While this kind of love can become reciprocal, it is far more likely that it is stamped out. We either bar ourselves from love by failing to act on such feelings or we act and are rebuffed, neither stops us from loving but in either case it is almost a fact of nature that we will be encouraged to stop, to give up, to move on. This is what I mean by not allowed.
See how those of us who are one half of a potential relationship which will never come to fruition are told we should not be allowed? We, the least obtrusive of alternative loves, are forever told we are unworthy of use of the term. Valentine is our saint now, we are the outlaws. We don't ask to secretly wed, we know the impossibility of such a thing, when we have no-one to be wed to, we ask merely that we be allowed to love, silently, from afar.
That's what February the 14th used to be about. Remember when you first heard the primary school version of the story of St. Valentine? Remember the card to the girl whose desk was a couple of rows over from yours? Often anonymous but sometimes signed, though only by the bravest of the brave. That's the only time this most sterilised, monetised of saint's days meant anything, when it was the chance for us all to take that flame we'd been holding (usually in a safety lamp with all the flaps shut so that no-one could see it) and use it to light the windows of our hearts.
I fail to see why grown-up Valentine's Day should be any different.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Twenty-Something back on the scene
Back on the blogging scene. Yes, that's right it's yet another "I'm back" post, putting me well above Lazarus but with some ground to make up on the Phoenix in the rebirth league table.
I make far too many promises, to myself as well as others. Not only is the number of promises I make infeasible, but it is coupled with the utterly herculean nature of some of the tasks I promise to perform.
In truth, the things I vow to do are not out of my reach: I have the ability, but the application is sadly lacking. However, I had promised to return to the blogosphere and here I am. One thing off the list. Sustaining my interest in this journal will not be easy, though. As my rest period slips inexorably into full-blown unemployment, viable topics of discussion become thin on the ground. I've been mentally composing rants against those things that irk me but I'm in a demographic of one on these issues and would lose what little readership I have if I were to tell you my grievances in these areas. I've also had designs on writing short stories or philosophical treatises, but the plot won't fall together and the existentialism has been rehashed here over and over again.
(If you're playing Dan's blog bingo, or some associated drinking game, you should have "return to blogosphere", "apologises for quality of blog", "pretends like he has a readership" and "takes self-deprecation too far". Simply because I assume you would like a full house I'll use the word love but I will spare you a disquisition on the subject. I assume that love was the uber-word, requiring some sort of cocktail of doom, comprising at least 8 different drinks including that 40% proof cider and a pint of absinthe. Suitably sozzled you may even thank me for pointing out that in the course of this last paragraph we've also covered "over-use of punctuation", "using big words just for the sake of it" and "puts far too long passages of text in brackets".)
At any rate, I've written my first post of 2013, I invite you to read half-way through it and give up: that's what I did whilst writing it. The paradox being that to have read this you would have to have perservered beyond half-way, you poor lost soul.
I make far too many promises, to myself as well as others. Not only is the number of promises I make infeasible, but it is coupled with the utterly herculean nature of some of the tasks I promise to perform.
In truth, the things I vow to do are not out of my reach: I have the ability, but the application is sadly lacking. However, I had promised to return to the blogosphere and here I am. One thing off the list. Sustaining my interest in this journal will not be easy, though. As my rest period slips inexorably into full-blown unemployment, viable topics of discussion become thin on the ground. I've been mentally composing rants against those things that irk me but I'm in a demographic of one on these issues and would lose what little readership I have if I were to tell you my grievances in these areas. I've also had designs on writing short stories or philosophical treatises, but the plot won't fall together and the existentialism has been rehashed here over and over again.
(If you're playing Dan's blog bingo, or some associated drinking game, you should have "return to blogosphere", "apologises for quality of blog", "pretends like he has a readership" and "takes self-deprecation too far". Simply because I assume you would like a full house I'll use the word love but I will spare you a disquisition on the subject. I assume that love was the uber-word, requiring some sort of cocktail of doom, comprising at least 8 different drinks including that 40% proof cider and a pint of absinthe. Suitably sozzled you may even thank me for pointing out that in the course of this last paragraph we've also covered "over-use of punctuation", "using big words just for the sake of it" and "puts far too long passages of text in brackets".)
At any rate, I've written my first post of 2013, I invite you to read half-way through it and give up: that's what I did whilst writing it. The paradox being that to have read this you would have to have perservered beyond half-way, you poor lost soul.
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