It’s just words
Life is far too tragic not to write about it.
I’m writing a book. I write to decompress. I write to get to know myself. They are just words, and these are my own. They are unaffected by the boundaries of industry and instead are based on the briefs I set myself, which usually means anything, anywhere, anytime.
The purpose of this section is to establish a different side of my writing style and invite you into my head. When I say I write for a living, I mean it quite literally. Below is a showcase of short pieces from my personal collection that introduces me far better than a ‘fun fact about myself'.
The Book
You’re Late.
I want to feel like you’re nearby. I can’t remember what you sounded like. I don’t tend to trust my judgement anymore. It’s been easier to imagine you happier than ever, and by your many battles on Earth, i’d say you’ve more than earned some joy in the afterlife. I’ve thought about happiness a lot, that it’s life’s greatest achievement rather than something you hope will happen if you play your cards right. It’s taken death to understand that life, and by extension our happiness in life, is coming from you and not at you, that the onus is not on happiness to find you. Think about it like feelings’ natural selection, and to live life looking ahead quickly becomes futile if you’re not looking inwards too.
The Void
Judgement
Mother’s Day has pink energy.
Soft pink or hard pink? Peonies or breast cancer? I imagine a pink so hard that it’s basically red, it’s my favourite colour. To me, Mother’s Day is an imposing commercial sign in a shop window, Father’s Day is everyday – meaty lunches and a bottle of wine all year round. I do still wonder what eighteen motherless Mother’s Days would’ve looked like with more mother. This year i’m expecting more of the same, it’s a nothingness that feels tethered to something. My feelings on the topic are entirely anthropomorphic, a lot like British weather – predictably shit but might need shorts.
Love
According to the boomer, generally speaking, we judge someone within the first few seconds of meeting them. Most of us have considered this notion preparing for an interview, for example. It makes me wonder if any of us are in control of a judgement like that, and if we are, how much of ourselves are we sacrificing in pursuit of meeting these weird expectations? In a world of self-loathing and unrealistic ideals, with remarkably less resources than our parents had, what do people expect? That we walk into said interview with the kind of positivity and openness that is unaffected by the unfairness of life, of opinions? In all honesty, when discussing this topic with friends and family it’s hard not to get frustrated, and I suppose that’s the point. It’s all painfully relative. Judgement. Take the hiring process, or trying to make a new friend. Discuss it with actual relatives and it's a cracker for the Christmas table. Anything is better than Monopoly.
Sadness
The sadness is powerful. When times are tough, profound ideas are forming underneath all that muck. It’s the definition of a blessing in disguise, to suffer, to really understand life’s misfortunes and find the ability to create art. How privileged we are to benefit from the work of the hapless. It’s taken until much later in life to fully comprehend the sacrifice and fragile strength of vulnerability, when I could relate to the struggle of being open when one desires to be closed, so to confront the pain and re-articulate it into something potentially beautiful. A powerful commodity. The moronic, the sad, and the damned parts of life, will eat at our bones until humanity ceases to exist, but as we know all too well, the saddest things often makes the best art.
Frankly, romantic love is wildly unfair. True love’s wild goose chase makes fools of us all. Everything about the prospect of finding it is fractious at best, specifically because the metric is entirely flawed. Dating is the information gathering stage, though nowadays social media has pushed that forward to mean a new research stage exists, where we can filter out the probable failures and take the risk on the people with better odds. Does reading the menu online ruin the meal?
Maybe there’s something more to be said for the friendship to lover trope, that perhaps it’s not the way to ruin a friendship but the foundation we need to build strong relationships. We’re going in blind no matter what, and why? Because people change. Love is nonsensical by design. If we knew it would work out then surely that makes it considerably less exciting. For some people, sex is love enough, companionship is the goal for others, take the chronic daters who can’t make a decision, or the serial relationship people who struggle to cope without a partner even if that partner is shit – the metric is flawed because the metric is people. It’s psychology. It’s us.
Outrageous
The BAFTAS 2017. Phoebe repeated this piece of advice from her mother: “you can be anything you want to be as long as you’re outrageous”. I made a mental note immediately knowing that i’d give that advice to my own kids one day.
Awards ceremonies. I’m no Nicole Kidman, but of the few corporate quarterlies i’ve attended, where the insults are disguised as prizes and the prize is a bottle of wine from the colleague you slept with last year and now hate, I’m confident that it’s all as monotonous and incestuous as each other. Best actress or best team player, Valentino or Zara.
The Speech. I’ve thought about how mine would go. A stagger down to the stage against sustained percussive clapping, throat in my ass, “don’t fall up the stairs”, harsh lights connecting like a blazing bolt to my corneas, the adrenaline kicks in, quickly followed by my returning vision. Imagining all the people naked doesn’t work, I think. Silence. I’d begin my speech with a comical one liner, that leads on nicely to an all-inclusive thank you instead of selecting individuals which I find gets boring fast, i’ll catch the audience off-guard with a tear-jerker, and stick the landing with something provocative. The speech is over, and everyone fancies me.