March 14 2023, 19:16

Hospitals

My father is in hospital again. Both his legs are swollen, which is fairly common with heart failure, which we’ve known about for a few years, but one of his arms has also swelled up, and he’s out of breath doing the slightest things. The practice GPs thought it was better to treat him at home, but the lymphoedema nurse was adamant it was something else. My moderately stressful trip shoehorning Dad into a VW Polo for an assessment in an inaccessible part of one hospital became an eight-hour wait with the triage team in a bigger hospital. As part of his admission he did a Covid test... which came back positive. The only people he sees are the district nurses who dress his legs, so it was probably them. He’s asymptomatic—I took him for his last vaccination in November—but after a whole day face-to-face lifting him in an out of chairs, I feel like I’m playing Covid roulette with a full chamber.

I’m letting off steam. He’s in good hands. I hope he’ll be home in a couple of days. Meanwhile, I’m working from (childhood) home, I miss my family, I’m tired, and I feel vulnerable. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a full-time carer. At the same time, it’s a privilege to be able to look after him like this.

Hospitals are emotional places. There’s nothing like an admission ward to make you feel grateful for your health. Dad might be old and ill, but I’m still young and well. I have to remind myself because my boundaries in this are both hard-won and ever-fragile.

February 21 2023, 20:18

Content apocalypse

This is the tipping point. I’m fifty in two weeks. I’ve watched fifty percent of the 800 films I own, and even less of the books. The amount of time I have left is constricting, but the number of books and films I own keeps expanding. Something has to give.

I need a new philosophy. What I consume (bleurgh) must feed (this is family trauma speaking) whatever I am creating. I envy those who have perhaps always done this. Collecting and list-making is the hoarder’s comfort. Part of me wants to watch and read everything, to learn every language, to play every instrument, but the excess of wanting all this, never mind getting it, is enormously destructive. It’s like over-eating. It’s a form of nihilism. It’s choosing not to choose because I’m afraid of getting it wrong. Instead, I could consciously make a path and accept the consequence—choose an author, a book, that feels related to the novel I’m writing, or pick a film that speaks to something bubbling under the surface that I can’t yet grasp. Maybe it’ll be useful and maybe it won’t, but I’ll have severed my chain to the immovable boulder of infinite possibilities.

Elizabeth Filips, my current YouTube guru-crush, preaches ‘soft discipline’. She means, trust your intuition as to when you do things, and don’t get bogged down in systems and rigid structures. That same knowing-what’s-right works for picking books, tweaking a sentence, choosing clothes in the morning and improvising a meal. It requires being sensitive to how I feel and what I think, and to wonder why I feel and think that now. As a straight man who loves intelligence and empathy in others, Elizabeth Filips is ripe for anima projection. Libido flows through the anima—life force, creative energy, motivation, call it what you will. Intuition is my inner feminine.

Films are a safe way to experience the extremes of life, and books too, probably all art, but in excess they can also be a defence against actually living. It’s time to make some choices. All of my watchlists and TBR shelves make me feel like I have a plan and a project, but this leads to my father’s version of my predicament, which is thirty-eight more years of reading and TV. It’s a decent life, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want it. I can imagine other options.

February 18 2023, 18:26

Emotional weather

I’m staying with Dad for the weekend, and because he’s having some new health problems, it’s quite hard work. My mother was always the anxious one. I wonder now, in her absence, how much she was anxious for everybody, in the literal sense of taking on other people’s anxiety. Dad is getting more and more anxious as he gets older. He hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s eighty-eight next month. He’s doing amazingly for his age, but he’s rarely been ill, and has escaped most debilitating conditions until now.

I made a list of the reasons this is a tricky situation for him, me and my sister, which I’m not going to share here, but this weekend more than ever I find myself influenced by the emotional weather in the house, which matches the drizzle coming across the Atlantic. He’s miserable, frustrated, afraid and generally grouchy, but in between he is also drily funny, easily distracted by sports, caring and good company. We watched Bullet Train last night, which we both found gross and very amusing. These are the breaks in the clouds.

Today I’ve spent solid time with him, but also escaped to Swansea, Porthcawl and Aberavon. My part of North Yorkshire is much colder and drier than South Wales, and I forget how these weather fronts can define the days. It finally stopped raining mid-afternoon, so I went to my mother’s grave to say hello. A woman left the children’s graveyard with her hood up, hiding her face. I spotted a hawk floating over the nearby woodland. It was quiet.

I’ve still got time with my father, but this stretch of illness feels different to previous ones. I can’t tell if this is my misery, or if I’m infected with the gloom over this house. Caring for others is also a seemingly endless exercise in reinforcing boundaries.

January 22 2023, 16:04

Writing jiggle

`The photo above was taken this week in the bar at the City Screen cinema, York—I was sitting at the same table almost a year ago when I had the idea to become a creator on Patreon. I love little synchronicities like that. I also love any opportunity to take an anniversary to reflect. I’m pleased with the consistency with which I’ve posted to Patreon, but I feel guilty that I’m not giving enough value for people’s generous support, so I decided to jiggle things around.

There is now an extra, cheaper tier on my Patreon, Strange and Beautiful, for $3/£3 per month. I’d like more patrons in 2023, and to write more for them.

The existing Weird and Wonderful tier remains $5/£5 per month. (Yes, it’s more expensive in pounds now, Patreon adjusted the exchange rates.) This is where the podcast will live, and everything else, including new fiction. Patreon solves the problem of my reticence to publish fiction online. It’s private and paid for, so the ideal place to digitally self-publish pieces that can still go on to become other things.

My plan is to post to Mastodon with my usual daily shizz, to Twitter if something seems to need a wider audience, to this blog for longer reflective pieces, and to Patreon for everything else. People don’t seem to favour websites, even with RSS making a comeback, so it makes sense to cross-post my blog to Patreon. Then patrons can get everything in one place.

As an aside, I’m starting to see the positives of being on Mastodon. It’s a quieter, more civilised space, with lots of interesting people. The statistics are more hidden than on Twitter, so it’s less addictive, and there are fewer voices. I’m hopeful my relationships from Twitter will stay intact somehow no matter what happens. Musk will either kill Twitter or eventually bail.

It does all seem a little complicated, but I’m hopeful and excited to give it a go.

December 31 2022, 20:01

Elisa Gabbert on why writers write

Twitter shines at surfacing what I need, when I need it, in this case Elisa Gabbert’s 2022 book list, within which she links to her Paris Review essay, Why Write?

That essay sings to me. Gabbert says that Joan Didion wrote fiction to find out what the pictures in her mind meant, and she give several examples of other famous writers who start their stories with an image, or a dream, and chase it down in words, including Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis and William Faulkner. It can feel cleansing to get the image onto paper, and the act of writing is often a painful test of endurance.

Jean Rhys only wrote when she was unhappy. George Orwell wrote for the political good. Dorothy Parker was particularly happy when writing, but loathed the business of being a writer. The rewards of writing, meagre as they are, are doled out indiscriminately, and she says no writer deserves anything more than any other.

One passage stood out to me, on the periods of not-writing between longer works:

Tillie Olsen, in her 1965 essay “Silences,” called the not-writing that has to happen sometimes—“what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)”—instead “natural silences,” or “necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation.” Breaks or blocks, times when the author has nothing to say or can only repeat themselves, are the opposite of “the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.” The unnatural silence of writers is suppression of the glimmer. This is Melville who, in Olsen’s words, was “damned by dollars into a Customs House job; to have only weary evenings and Sundays left for writing.” And likewise Hardy, who stopped writing novels after “the Victorian vileness to his Jude the Obscure,” Olsen writes, though he lived another thirty years—thirty years gone, gone as that novel in the apple tree. She quotes a line from his poem “The Missed Train”: “Less and less shrink the visions then vast in me.” And this same fate came to Olsen herself, who wrote what she wrote in “snatches of time” between jobs and motherhood, until “there came a time when this triple life was no longer possible. The fifteen hours of daily realities became too much distraction for the writing.” I read Olsen’s essay during a period in my life when stress from my day job, among other sources, was making it especially difficult to write. I didn’t have the energy to do both jobs well, but I couldn’t choose between them, so I did both badly. Like Olsen, I’d lost “craziness of endurance.”

She concludes that the reason her default state is writing is because it helps her “do better thinking”, and when she’s thinking well, she has more chance of writing...

...that rare, rare sentence or paragraph that feels exactly right, only in the sense that I found the exact right sequence of words and punctuation to express my own thought—the grammar in the thought. That rightness feels so good, like sinking an unlikely shot in pool. The ball is away and apart from you, but you feel it in your body, the knowledge of causation. Never mind luck or skill or free will, you caused that effect—you’re alive!

She writes for the pleasure of solving a puzzle, but a puzzle that only she knows of, and in finding a pleasing solution, finds joy in sensing her own unique spark in the universe.

Read the essay in full at The Paris Review.

December 31 2022, 16:09

Bedrock

I write in my notebook every day. This is the bedrock of my writing practice. It’s where I work things out. For years, this has meant coffee at a Caffè Nero, and 30–60 minutes with pen, paper, and Twitter. This is writing as therapy, where I clear my tubes of gunk, note what’s on my mind, and pay attention to dreams, fantasies and feelings. Twitter is intrinsic to this, because it’s where I fish for images, ideas and quotes, like flicking through an endless magazine for data about my unconscious state. Before I get on with the day, I curate my stream. I’m always editing. It’s a bit of a curse. Twitter has become a rather soulful game, where I can express my enjoyment of a cup of coffee, say good morning to distant mutuals, acknowledge unexpected sadnesses, celebrate successes, and (un)knowingly repeat patterns.

Things get murkier when a piece of writing requires more than five minutes of thought. This is where the editing curse is worst. Of course, the end game of the editing curse is complete censorship, which is writer’s block. I post longer pieces about writing, my life, films and books on my website. My writing perfectionism doesn’t afflict me so badly in non-fiction—when a thing is clearly expressed, it is done.

Stories are another matter. There is no perfectly expressed story. I don’t publish stories on my website. I pretend Twitter isn’t publishing, but of course it is. I learned early in my tweeting life that once a line is published, it’s dead. Some essential energy is gone and I lose interest. I develop stories in digital tools offline, like Word, or Ulysses, but sustaining my attention on writing a story has been impossible this year.

Hold on, strong emotions incoming. Deep breath. I’m fed up of writing about how I (don’t) write. I’m fed up of the self-imposed pressure. My anxiety has crushed the fun out of both reading and writing. Twitter is neither. What if I’ve been going about my creative writing practice all wrong? Have I just been rationalising my addiction to effectively an online social game? God, on the one hand I wish I took my writing more seriously, and yet that inner editor, that censor, is deadly serious.

When I wrote The Complex, I had several MA deadlines and a publishing deadline to keep me on track. My editor believed in me. I was invested in the idea of becoming a published novelist. My desire for validation made me drop everything and push writing into every gap in my calendar. The emotional mathematics was in favour of writing—the belief that it was worth the effort was greater than the belief it was not.

I’m not saying that was a healthy way to write. I definitely need to lighten up. In 2022, on a deep level, writing new material wasn’t a priority, and perhaps that’s correct. My life has been rich enough without it. But I am curious. Going into the new year I’m going to do some gentle excavation into my beliefs about writing, because I’m realising I’ve lost touch with what fiction means to me. If there’s no meaning, there’s no purpose.

December 31 2022, 10:47

Adieu, 2022

It’s been a year of three big creative adventures: getting a new job (first in fourteen years); a family holiday in France (first to Paris for a week, then to Morzine in the French Alps); setting up my Patreon (experimenting with a patrons-only podcast).

There was very little fiction writing, but plenty of reflective writing, a lot of films (131), and some books (26 of which were fiction).

In time-honoured fashion, here are my favourite discoveries of 2022, in chronological order of publication or release.

Favourite books of 2022

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), Douglas Adams
• Climbers (1989), M John Harrison
• A Patchwork Planet (1998), Anne Tyler
• Nod (2012), Adrian Barnes
• I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2016), Iain Reid
• The Spirit of Science Fiction (2016), Robert Bolaño
• Saltwater (2019), Jessica Andrews
• Braised Pork (2020), An Yu
• Dead Relatives (2021), Lucie McKnight Hardy
• Seafood & Cocktails (2021), Eygló Karlsdóttir

Favourite films of 2022

• Stop Making Sense (1984), dir. Jonathan Demme
• Morvern Callar (2002), dir. Lynne Ramsay
• The Consequences of Love (2004), dir. Paolo Sorrentino
• Oslo, August 31st (2011), dir. Joachim Trier
• Columbus (2017), dir. Kogonada
• The Empty Man (2020), dir. David Prior
• Palm Springs (2020), dir. Max Barbakow
• Undine (2020), dir. Christian Petzold
• The Sparks Brothers (2021), dir. Edgar Wright
• Top Gun: Maverick (2022), dir. Joseph Kosinski

Time to wrap this year up and store it with all the others.

December 26 2022, 20:11

Love and breakages

I’m excited about 2023. There’s a lot I want to do next year. (This is the case every year.)

I’ve just broken a wine glass. I’m at my father's house, and it feels auspicious, although I don’t know why. He has cheap glasses because we are his only wine-drinking visitors. He rarely drinks alcohol anymore, and when he does it’s either lager or a glass of whatever we are having. Anyway, the glass broke neatly at both the top and bottom of the stem, so there were three pieces of glass on the tiled floor. I hadn’t poured anything into it, so it was a cinch to tidy up. I got off lightly. I’ve put the pieces in a padded envelope, as per instructions, taped it closed, as per instructions, and dropped the package in the outside bin. It made a satisfying thunk as it hit the bottom.

We brought what was left of the Christmas dinner Chardonnay with us, and it had been in the fridge since we got here earlier today. I’m sipping it from a new glass. There are only two left. Somebody else must have broken the fourth. Maybe I did, but I can’t remember breaking it, not that that means anything. I’ve got a terrible memory for details. Some details. Unimportant details. Important things stay with me.

The nick on my hand has already scabbed over. Dad’s finger started bleeding yesterday. He’s eighty-seven. Thin skin. He didn’t know how it happened and said it had just split. I didn’t believe that, but who knows? I hope I get to be eighty-seven and discover my skin can just split like that. Getting fragile with old age is a gift. Perhaps there’s a connection between his cut and mine, a tunnel through time and space, and my broken wine glass somehow cut his thumb in the past.

The truth is, I try not to think about him too much when I’m home, and he is here, because he’s vulnerable and old, and he won’t move nearer to either me or my sister, and he won’t talk about alternatives, or support options, so forgetting is easier. But having him with us for Christmas reminds me how much I love him, and how much I’ll miss him when he’s gone.

I thought I was going to write about the exciting things I want to do in 2023, but instead I’ve written about bleeding, breakages, love, helplessness and loss. There’s always tomorrow, I guess.

December 19 2022, 18:47

A dream with Bob Dylan

I don’t remember my dreams that often anymore, but when I’m particularly anxious, or there’s a lot going on, they tend to stick.

Last night, I dreamt I was in a hostel of some kind, and I was feeling threatened by a man-child, who was also my host. A boy crawled into a jacuzzi with me, and there really wasn’t room for him, but then Bob Dylan arrived and started warming up with his band. I expected a raspy, older voice, but he sounded young, even though he was an elderly man. His people closed off the section, saying he wasn’t ready, and I spotted a snack on the floor, some sort of gooey cake, but there was something metallic in it, like a nut or bolt. I would have eaten it anyway, but I heard the music start up again in the other room. I’d lost my place, and while I knew the performance was good, it all seemed very far away.

It wasn’t a sad dream at the time, but I feel sad recounting it now. I spent an hour working it through over coffee this morning. I’m anxious about the coming Christmas holiday, and I feel defensive, distant, and easily distracted. If I’m not careful, I’m going to miss the band.

December 17 2022, 14:36

Chaotic reading

It’s a cold day, and this morning there was a thin crust of snow on the ground. The car park was empty, and the lines were hidden, so I chose a spot near the meter and hoped I’d parked in a space. Recently, there’s a man in the coffee shop who sits with a Bible open on his table and says hello to everyone who comes in. I used to sit in that seat, but he started coming a month or two ago, and he gets there even earlier than me, so now I go further back, out of range of his conversation. He’s a talker, not a listener. A person who wants to write, or sit quietly, has to retreat to the warmer rear of the shop, which is a benefit in winter.

I’m making the best of it. Today he was reading lines from his Bible, then pointing up at the ceiling and saying something, presumably to God, then reading another line, and so on. I was impressed by his engagement with the material; envious, in fact. If he were reading Frankenstein, as I currently am, or some other work of literature, he would most likely be an excellent café companion, and watching him I would guess he was an actor performing lines. His biblical fervour makes him toxic. Actually, it’s not the Bible, of course, it’s the fervour. Nobody wants to be fervour-ed at seven-thirty in the morning, not in a coffee shop anyway.

But back to the envy. His engagement with the text in front of him was inspiring. This is an ongoing issue for me, as any long-term reader of this blog will know (and short-term, and, well, any term really). In another attempt to get myself reading ‘good books’, I pinned a tweet on Dec 5: ‘Currently reading: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley.’ I’ve given up on Goodreads as a motivator. The problem is intrinsic, so giving myself extrinsic goals like fifty-two books in a year is just self-flagellation at this point. Twelve days later, I am on page 32.

Life is busy. I am not reading. Then I came across Elisabeth Filips, who runs a YouTube channel whose most viewed video is You’re Not Lazy: How to Live a Chaotically Organised Life. I’ve been around the block several times with self-help, but she had a new take that I really liked. I recommend exploring her work, but the video that got me really excited was about giving yourself permission to read multiple books at once.

This isn’t natural behaviour for me. I like rules. I’ve always picked a book and stuck with it. It might take weeks—months—before I realise I just need to walk away. Give it up. Oh, the psychodrama. The lack of fun. Well, no more. I’m enjoying Frankenstein. The block is the busy-ness of the time of year. But in the New Year I want to embrace reading as the pleasure it should be. A more chaotic pleasure.