I have been watching, not the London riots as such, but the commentary on the riots, with many exasperated sighs. It does not take a genius to work out what is going on in these communities which have been cut adrift from society. Yet so many commentators seem at a loss. Yes, someone broke the social contract; yes, it was a handful of criminals. But they were safe in their boardrooms and million dollar mansions while the streets were burning. I admit I can’t help enjoying the chaos a little, if only because I am far away from it. If it was my city, my inability to buy the life that i am taunted with would certainly incline me towards some opportunistic looting. I am not a bad person, but I could really do with some shoes without goddamn holes in them.
But London is not my battle, and honestly, I would probably find myself wielding a broom, the same way that as a young anarchist, I found myself trying to nut out positive ways of organising our communities, and trying to make peace, and finally took to writing as a way of expressing my dissatisfaction with the narratives we are offered, instead of burning shit down.
But i still believe there is a time and a place for burning shit down.
Perhaps it’s cowardice, but the quiet life in the country is all the more enticing. Back in chilly old SA, enjoying the changing of the season as spring extricates itself excruciatingly slowly from the frozen earth. Excruciating slowness seems to be the order of the day; I am battling a cold, and trying to write feels like winching a submarine out of a sand dune. Still, I managed to finish a short story yesterday and send it off to somewhere. It is another pebble thrown pathetically at reality’s front window.
Perhaps the slowness is a kind of punishment for my constitutional impatience, or my spirit baulking at the competitiveness of the writing world, which sometimes seems overwhelming. I am not doing so well at the racehorse model of being an author today. At times persistence in the craft is just a matter of holding steady, holding the huge weight of a thing while the sand slips off its sides, hoping it eventually becomes visible. Wanting some other life to be seen, to be broken open, whether or not you know it has a meaning. The meaning of things is sometimes an oppression.
There is a pall of rather apocalyptic-smelling smoke over the house today. The school across the street is burning off and little packets of ash keep landing on my shoulders like dandruff. Like many things from my childhood which have been banned everywhere else, the burning of rubbish still happens in country SA. I was worried about leaving the lawlessness of the Territory behind, so am pleased to find that rural libertarianism is alive and well and I don’t have to be too nostalgic for it.
The smoke is finding its way into the book I’m writing. Today I am somehow psychologically capable of admitting I’m writing it. I work on the porch when it is sunny and when I can find the time between things that pay, which are very few at present. I can’t seem to work when I am Working, or Work when I am working. Anyway worrying about money is deadening, so I am stopping. Yesterday I added up some pages and found I was about halfway through the very rough, handwritten draft of this new book-like thing. Despite steady labours this has come upon me suddenly and now I am seized by the unhealthy delusion that I am Making Progress. Given the subject matter, I should know better. I am going to be coy about this one and not tell you anything else yet. It is too unusual.
What I can tell you is that I will be at Byron Bay Writer’s Festival next week talking about Gone! I seem to be in lots of events so check out the program if you are lucky enough to be going.
I am also on television this week. How twentieth-century! But internet television, so very contemporary. It was recorded early one morning at the Sydney Writers Festival, and even though radio is far more flattering, it is a good interview, as far as I remember.
Anyway I must get back to the delusion before I turn against it and start feeding it page by page into the flames.
“this is something: a map of the dark.”
Here is the third, final and mooniest part of The World Muscles In.
This odd little story was written for a sketchbook. It’s interesting for me to see how things translate from a handwritten, illustrated zine with all its enhanced imagery, to a naked, typed manuscript, and then to audio. The book was lost at sea for a few months, forgot its name and address, fell asleep in a basket and woke up in a cardboard costume in a pile of boxes in Brooklyn. It is traveling round the USA at the moment as part of the ArtHouse Co-op’s Fiction project. I think. I was holding off on posting this because I was hoping to link to the book’s profile, but there seems to be an Impossibility Field around their website. Oh well. Mail is always an act of faith, and code… well, code is a special kind of optimism.
In case you missed them, you can find part one here and part two over here. Thanks again for listening and sharing.
“nothing but hair and beetles.”
“I’m going to be sawn in half…”
Into three parts actually. Here is part 2 of The World Muscles In:
Thanks for listening/sharing. I should have part 3 up late next week.
go to part one
go to part three
