One of the annoying things about trying to write - stories and poems, I mean - is never really knowing what to put, and sitting here with a vague concept in mind, or a scene of some kind, or sometimes just a word, and then attempting to make something of it. Generally I don't put enough effort in, and I flick through various bits of music on iTunes, or I scribble and delete stuff, or I just end up doodling. I am not very good at doodling but I have a nice way with sort of squares and diamonds and straight lines. This blog is a sort of linguistic doodle.
I read somewhere (I think it was Ted Hughes) that you need to train your imagination, and develop it like a muscle. I have been trying that lately, by writing things of different genres. It has been frankly toe-curling to read the results. Not only have I chosen genres which I should stay well away from and don't even read, but what have I come up with isn't even a morass of sentiment and cliche; it's just meaningless verbiage, duckspeaking. This work has issued from my fingers with no input from my higher brain centres at all.
And yet the sheer number of words I have declaimed to Microsoft Word lately: 4000 on Wednesday last week, with 2000 most days before and since for around two weeks. How can so many words say so little, and how can they be so poorly arranged?
The problem for me - and, I suspect, many tenth rate authors - is that my range of sympathies and interests, and therefore imaginations, is narrow. So I have to force the imagination into action. And if one's imagination works like a slightly surreal film, then on these occasions mine is like a three year old's picture done in very heavy blue crayon. But for so long I have failed to do this, and have just focused instead on the "things I know" (to quote a writerly phrase), that I have exhausted these things, and been left with a paucity of spirit and creative soul.
It has also left me quite astonished at how little I do know. Even of the daily things of life: the materials of clothes, the looks of emotions, the workings of televisions, the ingredients of famous dishes. I know nearly nothing at all about colours, different types of rain, types of cloud, the appearances of the sky in different seasons: in short, the stuff of observation which is supposed to characterise writers.
Which makes me wonder: what on earth have I been doing all these years? Why have I failed to retain so much of what I must have seen and even noticed at various times? It must be because I have not really been interested enough in the world around me. In me - yes, for sure. In the outside of me - hmmm. It all seems too much like reflections of my moods, which means I either ignore it, love it or loathe it. Finer distinctions, such as would come from a genuine interest in life and the world, seem to escape me.
I don't think I can be a writer because I am too uninterested in the mechanics of existence.
That doesn't stop me wanting to pour out words, and sometimes in great quantities, very quickly. It just means I have to do it into the void, which wouldn't be a void if I had paid more attention earlier on.
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Saturday, 5 July 2008
Matt Please Don't Spoil It For Me, I'm Not Visiting Your Site
****ing bastard school play, oh hang the asterisks, fucking fucking bastard school play and removal to Reading and no way of recording, argh, oh fuck, oh fucking fucking fuck. Doubtless this man knows all about it, well he would wouldn't he, the miserable lucky fucking bastard, oh bollocks. bollocks bollocks bollocks I probaly won't know for a week!!! A WHOLE WEEK!!!! Fuck!!!!!
Everyone is a bastard.
Bastards!!!
Bollocks. Even the gf won't even hint at what happened. Miserable cow.
Dare I go to Outpost Gallifrey....no, I daren't. I don't want to know, I just want to SEE THE FUCKER.
Now you know. This is why I was not having sex when I was 13, or indeed 16. Because this is what I was saying all the time. Well, 13, yes, but by 16, there was no Who, so it was all about not meeting the gf(as she then was) but spending my £10 on the latest VHS (such as the Daemons). At 16 1/2 I wanted to see DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS more than I wanted to kiss the then gf. ~Much as I loved kissing her, the thought of Jon Pertwee..and the luscious Caroline John, and early synth music, and that gorgeous converted VHS quality, and Fulton Mackay, and Major Baker, and Nyder!!! And GEOFFREY PALMER.....well now, that was more than enough for me then: nervous fumbling? awkward tongues? rejected advances? Fuck it all!!!
DOCTOR WHO IS THE DOG'S BOLLOCKS.
NuWho is more like the mongrel's slightly lower hanging right testicle, but it is still ace.
No wonder I've never exactly been a stud, but am somewhere to the right (I assume) of the Spectrum*.
*What do you mean, what Spectrum? The Aspergers one of course.
"But would you do it?"
..."Yes, yes, I would do it." [snaps forefinger and thumb] "That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!"
Everyone is a bastard.
Bastards!!!
Bollocks. Even the gf won't even hint at what happened. Miserable cow.
Dare I go to Outpost Gallifrey....no, I daren't. I don't want to know, I just want to SEE THE FUCKER.
Now you know. This is why I was not having sex when I was 13, or indeed 16. Because this is what I was saying all the time. Well, 13, yes, but by 16, there was no Who, so it was all about not meeting the gf(as she then was) but spending my £10 on the latest VHS (such as the Daemons). At 16 1/2 I wanted to see DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS more than I wanted to kiss the then gf. ~Much as I loved kissing her, the thought of Jon Pertwee..and the luscious Caroline John, and early synth music, and that gorgeous converted VHS quality, and Fulton Mackay, and Major Baker, and Nyder!!! And GEOFFREY PALMER.....well now, that was more than enough for me then: nervous fumbling? awkward tongues? rejected advances? Fuck it all!!!
DOCTOR WHO IS THE DOG'S BOLLOCKS.
NuWho is more like the mongrel's slightly lower hanging right testicle, but it is still ace.
No wonder I've never exactly been a stud, but am somewhere to the right (I assume) of the Spectrum*.
*What do you mean, what Spectrum? The Aspergers one of course.
"But would you do it?"
..."Yes, yes, I would do it." [snaps forefinger and thumb] "That power would set me up above the gods! And through the Daleks, I shall have that power!"
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
My Four Leafed Clover - Redux
Bloody hell I don't even know how to spell this: I thought I could do it on google hits: "four leafed" gives 49000 hits, "four leaved" 36000 so I thought I'd take the majority view, being a freedom loving democrat.
My reader will by now be accustomed to reading no updates of TTD at this stage of the week - too busy is the pathetic excuse. However today is an exception - for reasons which are unlikely to become clear at the moment.
So I thought I'd post on one of my favourite subjects: the psychology of embarrassment. In particular how it can be desired as a pathway to annihilation and (maybe) therefore renewal.
I've made all this up, btw. This is more homespun than a jumper your nan made for you when you were two and were too embarrassed to wear it even at that age.
So. It is possible to desire, even actively plot, a situation wherein you are humiliated, with the full knowledge of this outcome, and still to desire it. The reason is this. Let us assume there is issue x, about which you are to embarrass yourself. Issue x needs to be plausible, even real, but not, on the face of it, desperately important. However, there is also issue y, which really is bugging you, and which is probably only tangentially related to issue x, such as occurring in the same place of work (to take a random example).
Issue x can be used to bring issue y to a head, by facilitating a total humiliation related only to issue x (on the face of it) - thus allowing issue y to be solved without its own humiliations, though admittedly using the humiliations of issue x. But it might just be that x allows you a more noble, or pure, solution than tackling the, say, political issues of y.
Choose your humiliations, is my advice, I suppose: choose them well and decide how you wish to be remembered.
My reader will by now be accustomed to reading no updates of TTD at this stage of the week - too busy is the pathetic excuse. However today is an exception - for reasons which are unlikely to become clear at the moment.
So I thought I'd post on one of my favourite subjects: the psychology of embarrassment. In particular how it can be desired as a pathway to annihilation and (maybe) therefore renewal.
I've made all this up, btw. This is more homespun than a jumper your nan made for you when you were two and were too embarrassed to wear it even at that age.
So. It is possible to desire, even actively plot, a situation wherein you are humiliated, with the full knowledge of this outcome, and still to desire it. The reason is this. Let us assume there is issue x, about which you are to embarrass yourself. Issue x needs to be plausible, even real, but not, on the face of it, desperately important. However, there is also issue y, which really is bugging you, and which is probably only tangentially related to issue x, such as occurring in the same place of work (to take a random example).
Issue x can be used to bring issue y to a head, by facilitating a total humiliation related only to issue x (on the face of it) - thus allowing issue y to be solved without its own humiliations, though admittedly using the humiliations of issue x. But it might just be that x allows you a more noble, or pure, solution than tackling the, say, political issues of y.
Choose your humiliations, is my advice, I suppose: choose them well and decide how you wish to be remembered.
Thursday, 5 June 2008
I See Only The Basic Materials I May Use
I love borrowing post titles from top 80s tracks*; I get to mould my whinging and moaning around someone else's intelligent thoughts.
So here I am, posting as Jim Callaghan, it seems a bit weird to then launch into full rant mode; so I won't. The toad work is once again rearing its ugly head (end of half term) and this particular toad is extremely ugly, especially in the way it disposes of rival toads. In fact toads are like that. Metaphorical toads I mean, Philip Larkin type toads. Toads don't tend to brook rivals, or challenges. Toads don't appreciate being left alone: they demand attention. Indeed you might argue that the whole concept of work, far from being a way we define ourselves (Gang of Four this time), is a way we have of defixating our egos. Let me explain. You start off with self-obsessional late capitalist man (I'm assuming it's late capitalism, it's beginning to seem like it anyway). He likes the mirror and reads the Guardian with the prim seriousness of the man who knows all opposing worldviews to be not merely incorrect, but also evil. Or he reads the Mail with the insouciance of someone for whom the major story of the day is Christiano Ronaldo's impending move to Real Madrid/new contract at Man Utd. It doesn't matter. The mirror in the bathroom does matter however. So does glass generally. He moves onto blame-everyone-else therapy when he doesn't turn out to be JFK or Einstein: he blames his parents, or the colour of the sky, whatever. The key thing is his victimhood. Then everything he thinks about is in some way internal; himself, sex, his favourite football team, genetic engineering.
What better way could there be to salve this poor man's conscience and bring him out of his morass of self-indulgence than work? OMG - looking outward and putting other people first! Maybe. Responsibility, at any rate. Work forces him into a state of mind where in fact he does not matter at all.
So his life becomes one of those ghastly trick of the mind pictures where he constantly has to switch focus because he simply does not know which is real: the self-absorption, or the responsibility.
The answer of course is that neither of them is real. One is an illusion, and the other a series of pathetic power games which exist, in the main, not to put food on the plate, but to give expression to someone else's self-absorption; because all work comes down in then end to this person. However, our poor confused late-capitalist still needs to put food on his table and so he goes along with it, joins in with it, eventually becomes that person for whom this supposedly outward activity is really just another way of biting the head off the toad.
Work is the devil in the flesh, but not the iron in the soul; more like the iron in the flesh as well.
* Well duh. I've finished with Change and I'm onto Red Guitar now.
So here I am, posting as Jim Callaghan, it seems a bit weird to then launch into full rant mode; so I won't. The toad work is once again rearing its ugly head (end of half term) and this particular toad is extremely ugly, especially in the way it disposes of rival toads. In fact toads are like that. Metaphorical toads I mean, Philip Larkin type toads. Toads don't tend to brook rivals, or challenges. Toads don't appreciate being left alone: they demand attention. Indeed you might argue that the whole concept of work, far from being a way we define ourselves (Gang of Four this time), is a way we have of defixating our egos. Let me explain. You start off with self-obsessional late capitalist man (I'm assuming it's late capitalism, it's beginning to seem like it anyway). He likes the mirror and reads the Guardian with the prim seriousness of the man who knows all opposing worldviews to be not merely incorrect, but also evil. Or he reads the Mail with the insouciance of someone for whom the major story of the day is Christiano Ronaldo's impending move to Real Madrid/new contract at Man Utd. It doesn't matter. The mirror in the bathroom does matter however. So does glass generally. He moves onto blame-everyone-else therapy when he doesn't turn out to be JFK or Einstein: he blames his parents, or the colour of the sky, whatever. The key thing is his victimhood. Then everything he thinks about is in some way internal; himself, sex, his favourite football team, genetic engineering.
What better way could there be to salve this poor man's conscience and bring him out of his morass of self-indulgence than work? OMG - looking outward and putting other people first! Maybe. Responsibility, at any rate. Work forces him into a state of mind where in fact he does not matter at all.
So his life becomes one of those ghastly trick of the mind pictures where he constantly has to switch focus because he simply does not know which is real: the self-absorption, or the responsibility.
The answer of course is that neither of them is real. One is an illusion, and the other a series of pathetic power games which exist, in the main, not to put food on the plate, but to give expression to someone else's self-absorption; because all work comes down in then end to this person. However, our poor confused late-capitalist still needs to put food on his table and so he goes along with it, joins in with it, eventually becomes that person for whom this supposedly outward activity is really just another way of biting the head off the toad.
Work is the devil in the flesh, but not the iron in the soul; more like the iron in the flesh as well.
* Well duh. I've finished with Change and I'm onto Red Guitar now.
Friday, 28 March 2008
A Unique Experiment (II)
In December, my reader might recall, I was asked to partake of a truly bizarre experiment - ie to drink an increasing number of "Stella"s - a little known concotion from Belgium, thought to contain alcohol (to a percentage of roughly 5.1). This experiment having gone exceptionally well, and having been successfully repeated many times - thus proving its results beyond doubt, except to the dwindling band of "Stella deniers" who insist that it does nothing for them), I have been asked to undertake a second, dangerous task.
This time I have been asked to "go to work".
I shall try to describe this disturbing experience as best I can - but be warned, it was deeply unpleasant, and readers of a more sensitive disposition might prefer to go to DK or Dizzy now.
Well, it started by my having to "get up" at 7am. My mouth was dry, my head was pounding. No-one told me that Stella-experiments and Work-experiments might not mix! If anyone wants my advice, may I suggest you don't try to partake of "work" if you have been "on the Stella" (as aficianados say, I am told!) the night before. Goodness me, this was painful. I levered myself out of bed and undertook breakfast - a meagre repast of Weetabix and tea. Ugh. It was unutterably ghastly. I tried to shower but I found myself falling asleep under the lukewarm water.
I drove to work. This was interesting, as it provided a chance for me to test my use of language, especially words we often call "inappropriate", when I was stuck behind slow lorries! I did enjoy doing that, although I even surprised myself at times!
Some time later I arrived at work. Upon arriving there I immediately engaged myself in "tasks". These are activities, not freely chosen, but attributed to an individual by another individual, which the former needs to undertake for, I believe, a largely indeterminate length of time. The latter is generally spoken to with respect, as I learned the hard way, when I accidentally told them to "fuck off"!
On occasion I was called upon to deal with "problems". These are events which are not controlled by an individual but which the individual is nonetheless called to resolve. I found this logic strange, but managed to undertake a few of these anyway. I think my "boss" was impressed - at least, that's how I interpreted their telling me to "get out of my sight" - I guessed I was no longer needed to solve problems!
I was struck by the logic of "breaks". These are moments of non-work: but, while my "boss" was largely able to identify and isolate such moments for herself, I was repeatedly told that I was unable to avail myself of these until I had completed whatever it was that anybody else had given me to do. Often another "task" appeared at just the moment I was to take a "break". Just my luck! Strangely, though, the person who had given me the task was often to be seen smoking or on Facebook while I was performing this duty. I wondered what appalling tasks they had been set that required them to inhale noxious gases!
Later it was time to go home. How can I sum up my impressions of this wholly bizarre activity? Well, I was very tired, quite angry, rather annoyed, somewhat disheartened and completely disillusioned. I was hungry, physically aching, and looking forward to tonight's "Stella" experiment. But I was missing something. I had been told that one received renumeration in return for work: ie, money. Coins. Notes. The things, which, I believe, one uses to pay for Stella. But I was told as my boss helpfully handed me my briefcase - although rather too rapidly for my liking! - that such compensation would not appear for over six weeks. Apparently, as well as being "at work", it was also called "being on supply" for " a bunch of cynical and money grabbing bastards in an old Cathedral city which also happens to have ancient docks and is not that far from Wales" -and so you don't get your "money" for weeks!
What a day!!
But I don't think I'll be "working" again any time soon!
This time I have been asked to "go to work".
I shall try to describe this disturbing experience as best I can - but be warned, it was deeply unpleasant, and readers of a more sensitive disposition might prefer to go to DK or Dizzy now.
Well, it started by my having to "get up" at 7am. My mouth was dry, my head was pounding. No-one told me that Stella-experiments and Work-experiments might not mix! If anyone wants my advice, may I suggest you don't try to partake of "work" if you have been "on the Stella" (as aficianados say, I am told!) the night before. Goodness me, this was painful. I levered myself out of bed and undertook breakfast - a meagre repast of Weetabix and tea. Ugh. It was unutterably ghastly. I tried to shower but I found myself falling asleep under the lukewarm water.
I drove to work. This was interesting, as it provided a chance for me to test my use of language, especially words we often call "inappropriate", when I was stuck behind slow lorries! I did enjoy doing that, although I even surprised myself at times!
Some time later I arrived at work. Upon arriving there I immediately engaged myself in "tasks". These are activities, not freely chosen, but attributed to an individual by another individual, which the former needs to undertake for, I believe, a largely indeterminate length of time. The latter is generally spoken to with respect, as I learned the hard way, when I accidentally told them to "fuck off"!
On occasion I was called upon to deal with "problems". These are events which are not controlled by an individual but which the individual is nonetheless called to resolve. I found this logic strange, but managed to undertake a few of these anyway. I think my "boss" was impressed - at least, that's how I interpreted their telling me to "get out of my sight" - I guessed I was no longer needed to solve problems!
I was struck by the logic of "breaks". These are moments of non-work: but, while my "boss" was largely able to identify and isolate such moments for herself, I was repeatedly told that I was unable to avail myself of these until I had completed whatever it was that anybody else had given me to do. Often another "task" appeared at just the moment I was to take a "break". Just my luck! Strangely, though, the person who had given me the task was often to be seen smoking or on Facebook while I was performing this duty. I wondered what appalling tasks they had been set that required them to inhale noxious gases!
Later it was time to go home. How can I sum up my impressions of this wholly bizarre activity? Well, I was very tired, quite angry, rather annoyed, somewhat disheartened and completely disillusioned. I was hungry, physically aching, and looking forward to tonight's "Stella" experiment. But I was missing something. I had been told that one received renumeration in return for work: ie, money. Coins. Notes. The things, which, I believe, one uses to pay for Stella. But I was told as my boss helpfully handed me my briefcase - although rather too rapidly for my liking! - that such compensation would not appear for over six weeks. Apparently, as well as being "at work", it was also called "being on supply" for " a bunch of cynical and money grabbing bastards in an old Cathedral city which also happens to have ancient docks and is not that far from Wales" -and so you don't get your "money" for weeks!
What a day!!
But I don't think I'll be "working" again any time soon!
Friday, 8 February 2008
We Have To Shout Above The Din Of Our Rice Krispies
Mornings are an arse. The best morning I can think of is Mornington Crescent. Mornings are even worse when, emerging from an amazing dream (see posts passim on the subject of sub-Freudian lucid dreams), one is immediately faced with the appalling prospect of work. I hate nothing more than the individual who defines themselves by their work. Whose purpose in life consists entirely of proving to others that they are more than capable of bossing them around in the service either of some ghastly abstract ideal which inevitably involves treating individuals like shit; or, of subsuming everything they have into some project or construction: with the results that when one deals with the actual, living offshoots of a "life's work" they are fucked up, selfish, weird personalities. I understand that people need a purpose to survive; and also that people have vocations of one kind or another; but that one should die with "I wish I'd spend more time in the office" on one's lips is a betrayal of all that humanity can do, of all that a human being could achieve if they looked outside their fucking paperclips for five short, lonely, life-changing minutes.
Monday, 29 October 2007
Guilty
Back from my school trip. Normandy is one of my favourite places and the weather was stunning: cold and bright with the mist trotting over the gentle valleys each morning. It was, as usual, a fairly exhausting process but I find the Bayeux Tapestry gets more stunning each time I see it, with more ambiguities, more political comment, and more breathtaking action sequences. It helped that the place was empty so for once we could see from a distance, where the cavalry charge sequences look almost cinematic. Some of my charges found pictures of men with their knobs out which I hadn't noticed and was unable to explain unless it was Adam.
I feel as though I need to apologise again to my blogpals for non-appearance at their sites recently. It really is difficult to visit them as often as I'd like because of my dial up and also I'm online a lot less than before, owing to work and a slightly confused home situation (ie I'm in a couple of places). However, I am going to try more to get round.
The title of the post refers really to Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which I've just finished and which I found less satisfying than his other novels. At times it cannot decide whether it is a murder mystery, a satire or an exploration of consciousness and it ends up being not quite any of them. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it: there is the detail which is characteristic of his work, though it's toned down a bit; there is the Adrian Mole like narrator and the enjoyable hints that the entire thing is made up from much later on (the anachronisms which occasionally creep in, usually from the mouths of other characters). You also sense an author having a lot of fun and letting himself go, whereas his other books feel tightly controlled (especially Human Traces). It's worth a read but you might finish it with a "meh".
I feel as though I need to apologise again to my blogpals for non-appearance at their sites recently. It really is difficult to visit them as often as I'd like because of my dial up and also I'm online a lot less than before, owing to work and a slightly confused home situation (ie I'm in a couple of places). However, I am going to try more to get round.
The title of the post refers really to Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which I've just finished and which I found less satisfying than his other novels. At times it cannot decide whether it is a murder mystery, a satire or an exploration of consciousness and it ends up being not quite any of them. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it: there is the detail which is characteristic of his work, though it's toned down a bit; there is the Adrian Mole like narrator and the enjoyable hints that the entire thing is made up from much later on (the anachronisms which occasionally creep in, usually from the mouths of other characters). You also sense an author having a lot of fun and letting himself go, whereas his other books feel tightly controlled (especially Human Traces). It's worth a read but you might finish it with a "meh".
Sunday, 25 March 2007
For Myself, Crushed By Ingsoc, & Anyone Else
Toads
Philip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
Philip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
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