Guidance

It's only when you open up to the wrong person that you realise how multifaceted grief can be. You mourn for lost moments, lossy memories and an even lesser regard. You've lost out on the most valuable cultural exchange but they never seems to understand it. They think sadness comes from the memory of physical love, but it's often about a more simple desire to be present with another person: it's a longing for the warmth and the education to carry on, as promised.

It's an ineffectual desire in light of where I find myself now. I've been attempting to think of the future and address those plans I once had. It's uncomfortable to dream, now that I find that I have to develop some other life. I wake up each afternoon in a kind of panic. I feel less and less welcome in the hostel, having read horrible things that were intended for me and horrible things that weren't. I have uncovered a plot to replace me and someone else must work for free until I decide that it's time.

I labour on ancient memories after a year of silence, his suggestions that I leave the hostel (and London) as soon as possible. We frequently described this place as a kind of purgatory, as the events of each night managed to bleed into one another and everybody appeared to be wearing the same clothes constantly. I refer to those poetic reflections, those agreements that touched upon how we have all lived together knowing that it was the best and the worst way to live. We lived knowing that this was a stolen season and none of this was ever real.

I don't know where I could possibly go, but I hope I'll have my desk, my books, some air, some light and my guitar. There'll always be those persistent dreams of demos with fuzzy hooks and loaded lyrics, but I know that I will naturally gravitate towards essays about music, grief, love and hope. The wrong people may characterise it as a destructive habit to remember, reframe and honour how I've been mistreated, but for me, it's the only way I can learn and grow and find out what I want. I don't want to talk anymore, I just have to write...

Absolute Beginners

I had never written you an unsent letter. My essays were my unsent letters. They were formalised affairs with broader themes, but I wrote them with you in mind, like Montaigne to La Boétie. I wrote them to heal and accept what had happened because I suppose in spite of everything, I had always hoped that you loved me more.

I have now returned to my home and I see that you're checking in, more and more. Again, I'm left to consider whether there's anything left to say. Are there any more poetics? Do I have any further revelations, anything you need to know? Do I want a dialogue? Perhaps, but I can't guarantee that I won't be destroyed by it.

For the months that I've known it was you, I've wondered what was the point of your readership, but then I remember how much you loved my writing. You swooned over it in chunky paragraphs, saying that my musical writing should be prescribed reading from the age of 14. Perhaps you are curious, perhaps you miss my universe.

I once wrote of my suspicion of those who didn't write, as if those who failed to write failed to remember. Now I've returned to my room, with stacks upon stacks of filled notebooks, creaking with dust and melancholy. I wrote to find an acceptable truth, but it meant distorting all I knew to create a narrative where I was the victim who cared more.

When they announced that the hostel was probably going to shut down, I used my sentimental reputation to patronise the feelings of others. In a heated discussion with a dear friend, I predicted a future where we all dispersed and they'd wipe out memories of the life we shared together. Teary-eyed, she swore at me and stormed out of the kitchen.

After that confrontation, I realised that I have challenged the sentimentality of others for as long as I can remember. In the most natural and subversive tactic, I've boasted that I'm prepared for their forthcoming betrayal. It's harsh and unfeeling and I'm not entirely clear why I do it. Perhaps it's an attempt to deceptively obtain an undertaking that they do care, some evidence I can take down for later use.

Otherwise, I often find myself sitting across from the heartbroken, counselling the sentimental. They yearn for a familiar face and dialogue. I speak of loss authoritatively and I encourage them to write it out. I speak, mindful of the lyrics of Paul Weller, "you can lose a lifetime thinking of it and lose an era daydreaming like I do..."

We can lose an era when we begin to contemplate our consequence. I can't begin to know of mine, but I will say that I cherish those qualities I inherited from you: the unyielding energy and enthusiasm for creative projects, the fascination for musical anecdotes, the desire to research weird subcultures.

It would have been cool to share all that with you, but it's alright. I can explore all that with the people who can be here now.

Walls

Ross and I posed for the photograph at reception, holding defaced playing cards to our fringes. It was the night that the party suddenly relocated to reception and then they explained: "We didn't want you to miss out!" As the night rolled on, we sat together, attempting to deduce whatever was scrawled in pencil on our cards. We often failed to retain whatever clues we had just been given and so the game drew on endlessly with exasperated cries of frustration from those who knew the answer was LIME. It was one of those loud games I'd only ever watch in silence, looking up at the kitchen's security camera but that night, I was pulled in and included.

I saw that photograph again last night. Alex had sent it to me during the night but it was a photograph of a print. He typed across it: "You made my wall :D" Last winter, he had spent his nights with me, sitting up, discussing music, writing, politics, love and grief. We spent some time in the daylight too, walking around Primrose Hill and Regent's Park, recalling how we had once been loved. We agonised how we wish those that we loved would reach out, how we wish they'd somehow change their minds. I reiterated all the stilted advice I had been given, all the advice that I could never really accept. I said that despite everything, we would even yearn for this very moment in time. But much like my stilted advice, I'm not sure if he ever really believed me.

I don't own a desk here but I often find myself falling asleep and dreaming of them in fantastical settings. I've often yearned for a place to be alone, a place where I can sit and research and write without anyone asking why I am writing anything down. It never seems to be a particularly popular pastime, to think and reflect. This morning, I was reminded of my own desk and how much I missed my wall with all its photographs and emblems of love and loss. Everything from John Lennon Guy's threepence to a photochrom of Chillon Castle in Vevey. I had thought so much of the physicality of desk that I forgot what it meant to look up from it, to think and to miss.

I have recreated a similar sort of space next to my bed in the rave cave. I can't properly write there but each day I look up and see the 7" inch record of John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me. There's Kalyn's drawing of a sleeping fox on grid paper and Laur's blueprint of the Tokyo Disneyland Castle. There is a scrap of paper featuring handwritten Kaseva lyrics, lovingly translated from Finnish to English by Olli, the night-time successor of Alex. I get emotional whenever I think of the mere gesture: the handwriting, how the lyrics squarely reflect my grief, the pain caused by the physicality of love lost.

One of the greatest pains of existing as a sentimentalist is that regardless of any advice to the contrary, you live with this perpetual feeling of unrequitedness. You insist that you care more because you write and remember and reach out. Yet I have carelessly discarded those who have been reckless with my heart, I have establised a willingness to overwrite memories, to freely destroy the legacy of music held fast in time. I recently wrote that "I am in this conflict of wanting to remember and wanting to forget, wanting to reveal and wanting to obscure". I want to write for you constantly, but I am troubled by the thought that you don't write for me.

I try to adopt a gracious and grateful mindset. I am moved to learn that I am remembered, that my friends wish to look up from their desks and see me. I am moved that they relocate their parties and transcribe lyrics, they draw foxes that screech in the night streets of Bloomsbury and they make me food most nights, in the knowledge that I don't bother with that sort of stuff anymore. They make it clear to me that this is not an unrequited friendship. They make it known that they love and remember, in the same way that I love and remember.

Blackout

I had developed this plan to cut out online living, in the vain hope of productivity and creative glory. The goal was to disconnect and focus on writing a script about the lyrical themes that appeared in Freddie Mercury's earliest compositions. I took a stream of consciousness approach involving a Parker fountain pen, dark purple ink and a grey thatched square notebook from Bookbinders Design. Paragraphs were dense, clean and unrevised, reading more like an academic thesis than a script for radio.

I broke my commitment to the blackout constantly, simply because I wanted to see his name in bold in my inbox, I wanted to read another message. I'd give him reports of my progress: "I'm still in 1969." He jokingly remarked that he thought he was actually hearing more from me now since I'd made that declaration to refrain from contact. He mocked me gently for it, only to make the bittersweet remark: "There's something very painful knowing that you can't contact someone if you wanted to, even if you normally don't contact them all the time."

We shared this mutual sense of urgency, this heady sense that we not only had to share many millions of stories, songs and ideas, but we had to do it as quickly as possible. It's a dynamic that I've since felt at the hostel, this intense connection and desire to convey everything well before check out. Despite all that, I've always characterised myself as a person who has had difficulties in being present. I had always figured that joy comes with meaning and meaning comes with retrospect, away and alone, at a desk.

I had assumed that my in-house best friend had learned everything there was to know, but then it was revealed that he knew nothing about radio, nothing of the blog, nothing of the writing. I kept on thinking about how odd it was that he didn't know, that in spite of all our time together, that once central and obsessive feature of my personality was no longer apparent. I then remember being struck by the existential quality of that connection. I remarked upon it at the time, that I was filled by this sense that I would only ever truly appreciate that connection in that very moment: "I've never been able to feel so present..."

Ambition tends to fall away with people like that. Hopes, ideas and plans tend to get temporarily suspended in the shadow of such a connection and I don't think it's a bad thing, necessarily. I like to think that it is because we are already fulfilling a more innate ambition to connect. There are many reasons that we create, but there is an essential component of it that suggests that we create to be remembered. When you connect with people like that, you have this vague sense of hope that you might be remembered forever.

Precision

I knew it was the end when I saw that photograph of your smashed up steel-blue Fender Precision Bass. The headstock was roughly decapitated from its thick neck, the strings were severed and hung loose across the bruised body. Fans cooed dramatically, commenting on how rock'n'roll it all was. You never addressed them, but I know you would have loathed that suggestion. You only ever said: "Goodbye old friend."

I imagined your relief that came from that violence. How it must have felt for you to destroy the object that had kept you away for so long. It reminded me of our first conversation, when you told me about how you saw Richey Edwards' last show with the Manic Street Preachers. Years after his disappearance, you still seemed so shaken by the determination of his violence, diving head first into the drum-kit at the end of the show.

I hope you've managed to return to the life you wanted, free of old friends and draining obligations. I'd be lying to say that I didn't miss your hysterics, they were always so poetic. I still think of the world in terms of us and them. There are those who will swoon over the rock'n'roll gesture and then us, those who will try to derive some meaning out of it. I think we live differently to everyone else.

Experts

Whenever we would have guests around, my Dad would boast about my ability to identify the year of any photograph, film or song. I would be sheepish, downplaying my mad skillz, but I've always made a point to ask the year of everything. Whether it's a deteriorated red hardcover book by Arthur Mee or a DVD of a J. Arthur Rank film, I want to know where it all fits historically. I need to develop this narrative in order to make sense of the past.

When my Dad and I watch old 1950s English films together, he always remarks about how sad he is to learn that all these actors have since died. Together we contemplate what they would have been like in real life, whether the cast were friends with one another, whether they were warm, kind or funny. We often know that they led tragic lives. They were either alcoholic depressives or else closeted homosexuals who would later commit suicide.

His knowledge of this particular genre of film is astounding and whenever we sit together, I encourage him to document all his observations in a blog or even a zine. I urge him to get in touch with his old English teacher, who coincidentally has written two encyclopaedias about the history of British film. He puts it off, expressing anxiety that he needs to learn more before finally making contact. I tell him to hurry up: we don't have much time.

I suppose we share not only the desire to be experts, but also that fear that we may never know enough. I wonder if we'll ever be ready enough to reach out to the establishment. I wonder if we'll ever spar with those we admire, in such a way that might suggest that our views might even carry some kind of authority. I look forward to that feeling that might fill me one day, that satisfaction that would come from knowing enough to finally move forward.

Highly Dangerous

Locks

I cannot help but think that my tendency to mourn for conversations developed when I first started writing a diary. I was nine and it was around this time that my best friend left the country and I'd secretly write about how much I missed her and our conversations. She would write me letters with fat wads of pages, telling me about her new life in Texas. With her broad, bombastic print (with large circles over her i's), she'd always complain that I never wrote to her enough. It was true, she was always more vigilant with her letter-writing. However, when I was alone, I thought about the things we had talked about and the things we could have talked about, if only she had been here.

No one really understood the value I placed on that communication. I tried to explain it, that desire I had just to walk around the school oval and talk endlessly about everything and anything, but it didn't make sense in that era of four square and kiss chasey. I thought I was doomed to be the serious misfit until I saw her re-appear in the door way of our class room: She was back! With an American accent! I was thrilled and I shrieked, reacting in a way that again seemed disproportionate and inappropriate but I didn't really care what anyone else thought. I figured things would get back to the way they were, but for whatever reason, it just wasn't the same.

I guess she didn't really care anymore.

I feel that in my heart, I've harboured that same desire to walk around that oval for nearly two decades, laughing and shrieking and carrying on. I had never really thought about the significance of that desire until I acknowledged the sheer amount of time I spent alone: thinking, writing diaries and practising musical instruments. When I was ten, my parents finally took some preventative action, installing brass door locks for my room and the study. The lock to my room is now worn, badly scratched and dinted, from my brother's repeated attempts to break in with a screw driver. To me, those locks are worth more than anything in this whole house.

I had always advertised the abuse, unashamedly. I presented the facts, never considering how anyone else felt. I never understood my friends' stuttering speechlessness. I never understood my parents' desperate willingness to protect his reputation. I never understood my teachers' desire to delegate any kind of investigation. I presented everything, hoping this mythical conversation would come to pass. I never knew what I wanted anyone to say exactly, but I was so disappointed by their failure to say anything, to do anything. I was so disappointed by that suggestion that just hearing about it was so fucking hard.

I was twenty when it finally happened. I heard what I wanted to hear, after hours of sitting in my then-boyfriend's car outside my house. He had intended to leave many times over the course of those few hours, turning on the engine and nudging forward in two metre increments towards his 40km journey home. We had this habit of talking all night, we shared this same breed of passion, wit and musical taste. I loved him in a way that I knew I would never love anyone else more. He'll continue to own that part of me, in the same way he owns this particular time of the morning, where the world is shrouded in a momentary hue of slate grey. It's that time of day he always fled.

What he said was quite incidental to a break up which, in that instance, didn't take: "Whatever it is, wherever you are, whatever happens to us, call me and I'll save you." I cried hard (partly in relief, but mostly in irony). My yearning to connect hinged on that one idea, that I was worthy of protection. It's kind of stunning that someone like him could have stumbled upon that jackpot sentiment, but then perhaps that just adds to the mythic nature of it all. Thankfully, I never did call him under such circumstances. We do get in touch extremely infrequently though, with whimsical recommendations such as a themed-Tumblr of Morrissey posing with cats. It can't go much deeper than that because any actual detail of his life tends to make me go hysterical.

Today, I am happy and grateful. The vast majority of my conversations are full of revelation or hilarity. I spend my time with the most wonderful, kind and loving friends. I adore my family, who are among the funniest and most intelligent people I know. I haven't seen or spoken to my abusive brother in over three years. I don't intend to see him again. I don't think I would have been able to convince that lonely nine year old that it would ever be this good. Saying that, I still harbour that tendency to mourn for those conversations. There are so many people I wish I could talk to. I think about it constantly, remembering expressions like: "It makes me angry to think he was so careless with your heart." I wonder if I could have made it up. I wonder how much of that love ever existed outside of me.

gab on deviantart

Tantrums

I've recently developed this exercise to combat creative self-doubt. It's only a small act that takes place in my tatty magenta-coloured Claire Fontaine A6 cahier. I sit there and with Winston Churchill's Parker pen, I write the heading: What's the Nishi? It's Japanese Cockney rhyming slang my friends and I had made up: Nishinagahori / Story / What's the Nishi? We say it to each other all the time now as a kind of nifty in-joke salutation and in this context, I use it to drain out every fret and anxiety.

It's been hard, embarking on the Consequential Lyrics project on my own. I haven't had any sort of creative consultant on hand, someone to shriek and shake my arm enthusiastically during late night conversations. I've struggled in those moments when I've been compelled to pitch what it encompasses exactly. The premise is simple and intimate, it's both personal and universal. It's been hard but I've risen to the challenge of doing what the project actually requires: faithfully describing the consequence of these songs, sensitively describing the meanings I've assigned to them (without embarrassing anyone too much or getting sued).

In my practice of writing What's the Nishi?, I feel as if I'm sitting down to talk to a hysterical seven-year-old, one that has been throwing a tantrum for no discernible reason. It's important to to listen that raging child, to address them, to allow them to safely express their every angst and plague. At some point, there comes a moment when the anger recedes and the tears stop and there's no longer any rational basis for that anxiety. It's plain to see, in the matching magneta-coloured cursive print, that each of these anxieties can be broken down and addressed in a perfectly rational way.

There's another heading that comes after What's the Nishi?, I write in big letters: How to Progress? Under that heading, I try to combat those anxieties by being kind to myself. I try to think up practical solutions as to how to get over it, whether it be a practical obstacle or an emotional concern. I consider everything one at a time and I break it all down, thinking about what can I do today, this hour, this minute. I congratulate myself on how far I've come, the great amount of work I've already done and I acknowledge how good it will feel once it's actually completed.

I realised some time ago how much I've relied on other people for that creative confidence, how much I drew upon those shrieks and arm shakes. I thought compliments could fill me. I thought if I had enough of them, I would suddenly believe that my work had value. The problem was that I'd neither accept compliments or if I did, they would fade quickly. I never had enough to combat the self-doubt I harboured, but at the same time, I never wanted to quit. I just thought I was doomed to anguish: never believing, never accepting, always doubting.

I wrote a note for my desk:

Consequential Lyrics is worthy of your time and concentration. It is unique and it will encourage others to share something beautiful and important. A compliment won't make you feel better. Completion will.

I realised that's what I need to do to feel better, to calm the hysterics. I need to follow through, I need to complete this. I have forever dreamt of a creative compatriot, a Marr to my Morrissey (or even the other way around) and I wish I could have pulled this off with someone by my side, but I just can't. I just have to sit and push on through alone. I need to consistently convince myself that there is value in this. Whenever I begin to feel that hysterical child pipe up, I know that it's alright. I'll always have time for her, I'll always stop, listen and ask: What's the Nishi?

Inventions

It was a cold brisk night and Noreen and I had just walked past the cemetery. She said: "Just because they don't write essays about it doesn't mean they don't care. It doesn't mean that they don't remember everything..." I could only laugh a little, what with my wheezing and shortness of breath. I responded quite flippantly in that trade mark sardonic tone. "What are you talking about, no one remembers anything! I'd be an idiot to convince myself otherwise."

I don't know when I started believing this, but at some point, I thought that comfort comes from invention. It comes from that ability to convince yourself that they do care or they do remember or they do regret. There's always that scope to do that, if you spend enough time alone with your thoughts. In the silence, you can construct an alternative reality, one that need not be true necessarily, but one that is not quite so painful to live with on a day-by-day basis.

Lately, I've been sceptical of this practice. That's not to say I don't think it's worthwhile, I believe it encourages the imagination to provide solace at a time when it is so inclined to do quite the opposite. Saying that, I've started to resent the idea of measuring requitedness. Trying to figure out what they think, what they feel. You can stand in front of a person and they can insist that they love you and you can insist that you love them, but ultimately, it means nothing if they go on to remorselessly squash your heart.

Are those moments meaningless? Are they void of sincerity if you can't reconcile words with actions? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps I've had too many conversations to know how easy it is for other people to shelve such incidents in the mind. They don't need to invent imaginary regret or regard, they just distract themselves and move on. There's no desire to glorify passing moments or conversations, they don't even need to wonder if I care because I advertise that I do, in the most vulgar way imaginable. I advertise that I care on here.

I've been experimenting with damnatio memoriae, the Roman practice of completely wiping out a person's image and memory. It's just like carrying on as if that person never existed. It's strange and it's powerful and it's completely at odds with who I am. Yet, I've taken to it, not because it is easy to do, but because it is much easier than having to understand why. No comfort can be derived from that old practice of invention, there's no way to imagine their care or regret because it is impossible. It just doesn't make any sense.

The irony of all this is that I've started to see value in the meanings I create. I've started to see beauty in my own inventions. What they think is almost irrelevant at this point, I create consequence. I will always create consequence. I love how empowering that notion is, how it is not at all reliant upon detecting any semblance of truth or sincerity. It's all about establishing a kind of ownership: it's not meaningful because they care, it's meaningful because I care... and I express it all in a way that other people might care too.

Viktor Tsoi in Igla: get stabbed, light cigarette, walk away...

Wax

I brought in the new year alone. I didn't intend it to be that way, but it felt appropriate somehow. As I stood by the upstairs window and watched the fireworks over Northcote, I don't think I could have had anyone else there.

With any other year, I'd take myself aside moments after midnight to read a letter I'd written a year before. There'd be lengthy summaries, paired with annoyingly simple and familiar moral overtures.

As I sat alone, I recalled those instances where I was forced to reveal the contents of my yearly letter, to Gav in a gutter in China Town and to Min in a kitchen in South Yarra. In both instances, I warned of its intensity but they insisted I proceed.

They were both disgusted, but for very different reasons. Gav came up with the infamously ironic (and the fucking stupid) statement: "you have ephemeral attitude towards love". Min, predictably, dismissed my candour and depressive tendencies.

I realised it quickly, after I managed to pull the pages apart that were stuck fast together with silver sealing wax. A year ago, I wrote with the same idiotic naïveté that I displayed in revealing my words to those I had loved so much.

I don't think I'd have ever realised, in my ten years of doing this, that perhaps these letters weren't about resolutions for the new year. They were about an ideal: someone interested enough to excuse themselves from a party, to follow me out to calmly listen to private thoughts.

Everything is different now, everything is more different than I could've ever imagined. I no longer hope for connection, I no longer hold that desire to glorify passing moments. I hope for nothing, except for the ability to quash that pathetic propensity to talk and to trust.

Disappointments Diary 2013

Aversions

The writing amnesty has come as a surprise. I figured I'd always write, whether it'd take the form of morning pages, essays, scripts, emails, tweets or text messages. Lately, I've refrained from words, from inkstained hands and repetitious thoughts. The amnesty has come as a surprise, because I had always believed that to write was to feel normal. Even the most meaningless, mindless, pointless thoughts - get it down and you will siphon your heart.

I daydream a lot, I nightwalk a lot, I process very little. My existence is vague but I never seem to shake that tyrannical sense of obligation, that feeling like I should be getting it all down. I should be committing to my past and my present, I should be writing to connect, to make sense of the love and the loss. I try to convince myself that the writing amnesty is some perverse therapy, that the undefined will obscure the grief.

I'll have to start again somehow, but I'm not exactly sure when it will happen. I'm still convinced that to write is to feel normal, but I'm not inclined to rush back to that sense of normality. I'll keep dwelling upon the reconstructive power of creative inaction. I would never recommend it to anyone, but I'll think of its function, during those daydreams and nightwalks. I'll marvel at how it can be so easy and so difficult, all at the same time.

Sentences

I once realised that you only need a sentence to survive. A succinct statement of the sadness and brutality, enough to push you forth into rational thought. It would always take several notebooks to work out its construction and strangely enough, I would always forget the exact articulation upon later reflection.

It's come far sooner than I ever thought it would. I didn't need to write reams of pages to work out the sentence I must live out, I managed to exhaust every word in excessive thought. It makes me idle with nauseousness: he convinced you of my meaninglessness, like he convinced me of your meaninglessness.

I think of it purposefully and wait for the arrival of indifference. It was meant to come much sooner than this.

Jiving at the Long Bar by Kevin Lear

Itou Kittou

When I was young, I'd write stories in notebooks. I'd write even though I knew he'd seek out my writing and read it out loud, stopping to cackle loudly in my face. It was humiliating, but I would never stop. I never really could.

I would never finish a single story, but it never really mattered because all the stories were the same. Every story was about best friends running off to Europe together. They'd be so unspeakably gleeful - they would secretly gush to each other in French.

I dreamt of this mythical friendship endlessly. As a six year old, I'd look at my dual reflection in a pair of sunglasses and wish for another one of me. I'd pray for her arrival, next week, next term... but it never really eventuated.

I now find myself sitting across from my best friend, describing how we will fill our forthcoming days in Paris. We anticipate how we'll drink fishbowls of coffee and describe every detail in our notebooks. We share elaborate daydreams and use French slang to supplement our meanings.


It's weird to see how close it is to how dreamt it. For all my prayers and loneliness, I can't believe I've actually found her.

Confetti & Acorns

The path to Holy Trinity is strewn with confetti and acorns. It reminds me of our weekend adventures in England, when we would all pack into the dark red Volvo station wagon and go to churches and castles. If we happened to pass a fancy car tied up with a white satin ribbon, I'd emphatically insist we stop. In spite of my present resentment of weddings, I was once obsessed.


Up until a few days ago, the path to Holy Trinity led to my favourite op shop. It's tucked away from our High Street, only moments from the haberdashery store that resembles a leftover set from Are You Being Served? and the uniform shop that mends the school blazers of the rich and bullied. I'd walk that path alone after writing class and look for ages and ages.

I found amazing things in that op shop: books for 33.333 recurring cents, 7" records for 50 cents, Alannah Hill blazers for $20. You did need patience to wade through it all, there were times when there was nothing of particular interest or value. You'd see the same things in the racks for months and months, a Honky Tonk record or that taunting electric blue leather jacket. Could I get away with it?

I'll miss that ritual, the records and books, the jewellery and jackets, the confetti and acorns. There was a kind of warm solidarity associated with it: writing and looking at records, instead of marrying and being a lawyer. I doubt I'll ever shed that sense of expectation, but I enjoyed those moments alone when I did.

Alignment

I'm not a great believer in fate, as such, but lately I've been noticing this feeling of alignment. This feeling that as one important person steps back, another important person steps forward. That every sense of loss is duly compensated by this overwhelming confrontation: I know we've just met, but I have this feeling we're going to be friends forever.

I feel great safety residing with my crew. Mini, Andrew, Missy Laur, Louise, Noreen and even OC at times. Even my exes, the greatest source of lost communication, have become supplementary members of my crew. They contact me when they witness a passing mention of the Smiths. Andrew says it is as if I have set them all onto Google Alerts and now they feel compelled to contact me, as I once felt compelled to contact them.

My crew are unrivalled in their patience, they are unrivalled in their compassion. They are more than familiar with my bullshit excuses, why I don't do radio, why I don't sing, why I don't write. I don't need to explain any of it anymore, because as we sip at our mochas at Madame Sousou, they understand exactly why I don't do it. Just as they understand why the hating gets as severe as it does.

I don't need to answer to my crew when I fall into a pattern of destructive behaviour. The levels of sympathy vary from friend to friend, but I ultimately return to the perennial advice of Mini: You are doing the wrong thing. You know what you need to do. Of course, it's true. I need to eat better, I need to sleep at night, I need to write essays every day. Unfortunately, it's advice I often ignore.

Inspiration, care of Pika Pika
I don't believe in fate, as such, but this alignment has come about from the rare inclusion of new friends in my crew. Strangers, sidling up to me, blinding me with enthusiasm and encouragement. Why isn't C&CM on radio? Why don't you make those documentaries? Why don't we start a band! My established crew have said exactly the same things to me millions of times before. Yet, I get off on the baffling selflessness of the gesture: hearing the same words from unfamiliar lips.

We may not be friends forever, sure. We may not even last the month. But I don't wish to forget this feeling I have now: People don't need to listen, but they do. People don't need to read, but they do. People don't need to care, but they do. Take responsibility for your art and start creating again. It's a miracle that they still care, long after you've stopped.

Evil > Slow Hands

I had been drafting letters in my head again. It gets worse when I am left alone at work for hours at a time. I become fixated with certain expressions, obsessed with the idea that I can clarify matters. I become obsessed with the idea that I can clear my name, not my memory. I really wanted to write to him. As time has passed, he has brutalised my character to anyone who cares to listen. He portrays me as a drunkard, a heartless selfish manipulator. His descriptions of me have become more and more malicious as months roll on. I suppose the lack of contact gives him that entitlement to distort the facts. I have done the same thing, the only difference is that I am compelled to pay homage to our friendship. I am compelled to value the ambiguities and the complexities of it, now it can never be restored.

I suppose we can never change how they feel about us, but I desperately desire control of the way I am perceived. I hate that he hates me, that he feels compelled to punish me as he does. I hate how that punishment is indicative of his own pain and suffering and that, because of his mandate on the subject, I am forbidden from contact. It frustrates me immeasurably, as I find more and more people are invited to judge. They are invited to comment and dispel my actions. Yet, I am not granted the right to defend myself. Instead, I exist in the shadows, cloaked in my trade mark trenchcoat, averting their eyeline, weltering in the knowledge that they hate me. They really fucking hate me. But should I even really care? I never even liked him, in any case.

What is peculiar is that one evening, it all felt so different. Instead of obsessing over my endless mental drafts, I spent the night laughing with a work colleague. We spoke of the Medellin drug cartels, maquiladoras, Keith Richards and kittens. It was a remarkable thing, because I remembered what it was to be seen as person, not as a monster. It was a blessed feeling, to have some kind of implied assurance that they would never bully or exclude me as I have been bullied and excluded. Yet, in a completely different way, the evening revealed the true extent of my self-loathing. It revealed how much I anticipate strangers and acquaintances to witness the same breed of evil as he saw in me.

I'll stop. I promise I will. I'll stop with the hating and the mental drafting and my earnest willingness to believe the hype. I can't control much, but I know I can control something. Even if it's cultivating a delusion that the hate isn't as severe as it really is. That somewhere, at some point and some time, he remembers all the laughter and affinity that I do. I hope, that in spite of everything, I will be able to convince myself of that fallacy. I hope that I will be able to live in the comfortable ignorance that he doesn't hate me as much he says he does. Maybe then, each night alone at work won't seem as painful as it ought to be.

The Rules of Productivity

In my time as a procrastinator, I have become attracted to blogs and other websites devoted to the promotion of creativity. They offer boundless encouragement and guidance about how to go about tackling your next creative project. This is often delivered in the form of a list: "Top 5 Ways To...", "99 Excuses For..." and so on. All the relevant points are provided in bold text, so it's that much easier to run away with that positive message. In later times, I have been a bit skeptical of (but no less attracted to) these types of sites. I have recognised that I fit into their market of the creatively blocked. This disappoints me, as it would. Blockages are unpleasant.

What compelled me to write a piece in relation to these types of sites is one particular article I came across tonight: The 1-Step Plan For Super Productivity. In essence, the article maintains that the secret ingredient for productivity is getting up early. There are citations aplenty, from Ernest Hemingway to the Harvard Business Review, but how do 99% understand the nature of my productivity? I've maintained apparently dysfunctional sleeping hours for the best part of twelve years, what's to say I'll produce work of a higher quality if I go to sleep at 11pm, instead of 11am? I am unlikely to ever cease my consolidation naps, am I doomed to be creatively unfulfilled for ever, so help me gawd?

What these sites fail to acknowledge is that you, as a reader have developed your own individual coping mechanisms. Instead of encouraging you to understand and appreciate how you work, they offer rules. I appreciate the positivity of the message. I understand that they want their readers to go on to create wonderful work. The fact is that we place too great a reliance upon what they say, without acknowledging that we have solved it all before. We know what we have to do to be productive and it doesn't involve bookmarking a list of excuses. It's about a fundamental recognition: there is value in your expression.

So what the hell are you doing here? Get on with it. I'm going to bed.

Jan Pieńkowski's The First Christmas

Clandestine

I moved out of home for the first time approximately three weeks ago. I didn't give it much forethought. I was at work when I had received a call from my Dad that my brother had found my diary and trashed my room. I knew then, covering my face so not to draw attention to myself, that there would be no way I could go home.

When I describe what it has been like these past few weeks, I usually start with some ironically snide remark. It's just funny that I don't feel safe in my comfort zone, I would say. I used to think I was safe, simply locked up in my room. In addition to hiding myself, I would hide my writing, in fear that he would find it and read it out loud, pausing to cackle loudly in my face.

But how can you ever escape? I can sit in a rented room on the north side of town, with my suitcase unzipped and my notebooks in full view. I can sleep without having to lock my door for the first time in fifteen years. But I am yet to escape somehow. I know I will continue to punish myself, just as he punished me.

There's nothing more I can say.