Why I (don't often) write

Ego death, running with Graham Coxon, the lot.

There was writing paper strewn over Ben’s bathroom floor. Rune-like lettering, half-poems side-by-side with his dad’s shaving equipment. I can see it vividly: perhaps more so than I could then, swaying in my adolescent inebriation. He was the rapper in our band and I was filled with respect for his artistic ethic, his restless talent.

It was around that time that an English teacher introduced us to Maya Angelou. I recall a poster with a quotation, crying out to be put in our extended essays. There is no greater agony than bearing some untold story inside you. I believed that, I think, certainly told people that I did. The notion of writing as an essential process, an urgency, a way of making sense of the world.

In the fifteen years that followed I repeated it with differing degrees of conviction. It depended on who I was talking to and if I fancied them; if I was inebriated; if I was depressed; if I was trying on self-awareness¹. All the while I didn’t do huge amounts of writing for someone who professed a desperate need to. I wrote poetry at university and a bit after; have written short stories and chapters of various aborted novels; had a few articles published in recent years.  

The question therefore remains why I suggest it’s an important part of who I am. I’m self-evidently not that restless, not the rapper in the band. I was thinking about this yesterday as I listened to Ronnie O’Sullivan’s Desert Island Discs. Snooker also exists in an adolescent sweet spot for me. I’d often get back from somewhere – Ben’s house maybe – and would sober up to the big psychedelic puzzle.

On the podcast Ronnie grapples with two big topics: sobriety and doing pointillist art with Damien Hirst. Lauren Laverne spots a narrative arc and asks: Is your art helped by the balls, Ronnie? You can’t begrudge her trying but it’s silly, and she is gently rebuffed by The Rocket. I would have drawn a similar link as a teenager, desperate to weave my hobbies together into a grand narrative. I just like snooker now. Why can’t I just like writing?

This is obviously a nonsense parallel. Even the most romantic ball-potter/pointer would surely concede to the more expansive possibilities of the written word. I’m being facetious, but whatever: it’s my blog. This is in fact the point I’m slowly making my way towards. I decided to start writing these monthly entries as a New Years’ Resolution, thought they could be about whatever interested me. Most of my articles up until then had been about my job – social work - and I was keen to branch out.   

I committed to writing something, anything, once a month. I hoped I’d get into a rhythm with it, develop it into a practice, a way of working ideas through. I was determined that it would be first for myself rather than any imagined audience. Perhaps the need for this intention ran deep. When I was on my first childhood diary, I remember my dad suggesting that I should first decide whether I expected it to be read. Clearly I imagined an audience for this when I started a Substack, but I also wanted to think about how I could write to help and/or indulge myself.

I’ve had some success but I’m yet to transcend the pull of self-consciousness. After my first post I wondered if there was a not-insignificant chance that Geoff Dyer’s publisher would see it, and that would be that. Some people saw it, a couple of people said constructive things, I enjoyed the process. I went travelling for three months from March and enjoyed the meditative process of condensing my thoughts, but never managed to stop daydreaming that these would be heralded as the new Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

I don’t need to navel-gaze too much to see this as my big old ego. I enjoy exchanging work with others, and it means a lot when friends and family comment. Ben actually subscribes so if he doesn’t screen this email I’d imagine he will read this, and that’s nice to think about. I read his poems too and they’re brilliant. That connection should be enough really, and I think somehow in time it will be. Another of my dad’s aphorisms is that no-one ever kicks off at pensioners for drawing daffodils, so we should be able to write for the sake of the act.

I’ve mostly been thinking about people I know as I’ve written this and it’s the quickest and least self-conscious I’ve been when writing a monthly instalment. I don’t have a good track record for restlessly keeping at it; it would be ridiculous to imagine myself alongside people who do. It’s the 31st July and my self-imposed deadline is looming. My mind has been on other things this month. I feel good that I carved out some time to finish something.

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I ran a half marathon with Graham Coxon the other day. I’m still on a career break. I’ve been compulsively listening to that insipid food menu podcast. It was a habit that started on South American night buses, and has followed me into the long runs of my gardening leave. I was looping round South Kesteven’s back roads as he warbled on about prawn cocktails, mockneyed his way through remembering what koftas were. I ran through Blur puns for my Strava posting, couldn’t think of anything outside of the obvious. Other ideas formed on the back-burner.

The next day I had these wild, disgusting blood blisters. I limped to the bottom of the garden and pulled out the journal I’ve been trying to keep, for myself. I wrote:

Last week I ran a half marathon with

Graham Coxon dragging his heels, ranting

About chip butties until I was blue

Face down on a grass lawn in Lincolnshire.

There were more stanzas; they were even worse than that. I just re-read the scribbled thoughts that accompanied them and they made a bit of sense to me. The shit poem made me laugh momentarily. In response to the question of why he wrote, Calvino responded: ‘I write to give vent to my feelings and I write using rhyme because I like it’. For the second time in this collection of musings I’m concluding with the thoughts of the big man. Maybe he didn’t need that Nobel Prize. Maybe I don’t need my subscribers to be in double figures. I’m not restless, if I ever was.

1. I saw the Barbie film at the weekend and - as much as I tried to leave a cynic - all I can think of is a row of Kens playing the guitar.