Chugger Chugger brumm brumm. I fall out of love with blogging and writing. Not through any haughty poetic reasoning but a sort of self hating fear. One of watching an unedifying bluster of words jostling each other like a rugby team trying to fit into a mini on its way to the crucial semi final. A fight will break out, there’ll be blood and gore everywhere and they’ll go absolutely nowhere. So I clean the whole imagined horrific scene with the definite press of one button, delete.
Sometimes I sit with fingers poised over the keyboard , envisioning the brawl ahead, and I stay in that position like a pianist just before the concert or a magician with hands hovering over the top hat waiting for the rabbit to appear. What i fear is that i may not be able to write because what is most crucial is to write. It’s all got to do with the fear that it my not appear. And the outcome of all this postulating is that it doesn’t. Ta Daaaaaa. Perverse I know. I could liken the sensation of not writing to standing on a cliff edge. You know that feeling you get, just two steps and you could fly off the edge.
But If what I am doing right now is getting back in the car and retreating from Beachy Head then there should be some interesting blog posts to come. You, the reader and the passenger in my car will I hope enjoy the views to come rather than worry about my gear shifts. Still, if you treat this post as a careful look over the engine. Could you put your seat belt on please. Chugger Chugger brumm brumm.
Good to hear your voice again Lemn! Your writing is spell binding.
I don't know how you do what you do, you often say you love it but it must be riven with difficulty of various kinds. It seems effortless but is full of thought and feeling and discovery.
For me your hallmark is utter sincerity, not earnestness, but sincerity, you face the pain, the pettiness and the joy of living, it's all there, that's why I enjoy being a passenger in your car.
I was thinking how you are someone who writes in diverse ways, I first saw you at a Newham Monitoring Project event, years ago, I'd never heard/seen an aural poet before, the poem was delivered with urgency and conjured real emotion giving stark warning, and it seared like music does, but you were all alone up there, doing this very real thing and I was amazed, by you, your conviction and that what you do existed at all!
From your blog it's clear you're nearly always on the move, all over the U.K and abroad, giving spoken word 'performances' of your poetry, this seems to be vital to your sense of being, that you communicate directly, surely this means you are not as isolated as say a novelist might be. So perhaps any fear of writing can be mitigated in some sense by the fact that you come into regular contact with people who experience your writing there and then?
More real somehow?
I heard you on Radio 3's The Verb recently, your reading was great, delicious, and it made the words come alive, lyrical and rhythmic, really punchy. It opened up ideas, fresh with discovery, rolling and leaping. You made music, you make me think and feel excited about being alive.
There's a heightened sense of awareness revealed in all you write, be it a brief reportage type post or one eloquent with insight, the journey is the thing!
Marysita.
Marysita,
It realy is a pleasure to read your response.
best
lemn