~ Here We Go Again ~

~ Here We Go Again ~

To write these things I must certainly be a fool. To invest so much of myself into this manic muse of mine. And not just time and effort; I’m talking about scraping the very bottom of my soul, scooping out the contents and placing them onto a page no matter how drained it leaves me. I think of all the other things I could have been doing whilst I’ve been committed to this strange and solitary endeavour. Perhaps I could have been developing some sort of career, building wealth, learning to fix cars, speak another language, or some other thing which I’m pretty sure every other person on this street would see as favourable to torturing oneself to write a pretty sentence. Are these sentences even pretty? Is this collection of words worth everything I have put myself through? I guess when I think about it, through the last ten years, it seemed like I didn’t even have a choice. I was simply possessed, or insane, or just blindly committed to a fool’s errand. I still remember being in a hostel bar in Guatemala with a blonde German girl I had been travelling with. She listened to me describe my need to write – a need which caused me to forsake everything else in the pursuit of becoming a great writer. She sat and stared at me with concerned eyes. I could tell I was a creature that she hadn’t laid eyes on before. Even hailing from Berlin – where I knew there was a wealth of starving artist types roaming the bohemian streets – I was still a foreign thing. She just looked at me and, after a moment of silence, said: “don’t you realise how crazy that actually is? That you would fuck yourself up just in order to write a good sentence?”

At the time I took it as a compliment; her reaction simply reaffirmed my belief that I was someone going to the ultimate effort of becoming what he desired deepest. It didn’t matter if I went crazy, or destitute, or scared away everyone close to me – all that mattered was getting that sentence down in a way that would show me I was a true writer, just like my literary idols – the other madmen: Thompson, Bukowski, Miller, London, Kerouac, Celine et al… all those fellow fools who bled themselves dry in order just to be great practitioners of the craft. None of their lives were pleasant, but they were ferociously alive and could put down immortal words that could put fire in a person’s heart. In my young and idealistic mind, that was the greatest achievement of a man: To create art. To stir souls. To understand the human condition and tap into a sacred place that was out of bounds to those who stayed on the safe path of life. I imagined society as a herd of animals; the majority of the people stayed huddled in the herd for safety and belonging. They had those things, but they were also restricted, held in place by others, and could only see an obscured view of their surroundings. The animals who drifted away from the herd, sure, they were more exposed and vulnerable to the beasts of loneliness and madness; but they also could move freely and see the world with greater vision and clarity. They had a wide screen view of the herd and their place in the environment that was simply unavailable to those within it. I explained this metaphor to her but she just continued to look at me like I was some sort of ranting lunatic.

I quite liked that young German girl. Despite her concerns, we even got close to romance, sharing beds and kissing when drunk. But her block up against me was too strong and we eventually parted ways. I was an unsettling creature and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to see the back of me. She was yet another one scared off by my madness, only to be recounted here in some random story I’m strumming out at 10.42am on a September morning over four years later. I wonder if she ever anticipated that she’d feature in my writings? I guess she wouldn’t have cared.

Anyway, after all this time, I’m perhaps not totally as idealistic as I was then when I was scaring off pretty young German girls. I’ve since self-published four books, selling somewhere around 2000 copies, making almost no money when I take into account the few adverts I’ve done on social media here and there. All of this effort and sacrifice for this. Naturally, you wonder if it’s all worth it. You only seem to get poorer and crazier as the years go on as a writer. Sure, there is the odd success story, but the 20th century is long behind us, and the writers who make any form of living as writers seem to be 1 in 47,897 or something like that. Naturally, you think about packing it all in and becoming a respectable human-being. Maybe you can still write the odd poem here and there, but it just doesn’t seem to make any sense to devote so much of yourself into something that takes you nowhere, other than the realm of your own satisfactory delusion that you’re a great and noble writer – an undiscovered genius strumming his keyboard in his garden at 10.47am on a September morning, as the rest of the world toils in their jobs and responsibilities.

I think again of utilising this energy for something else. Age 31, I still haven’t learned to drive, and I’ve recently committed myself to trying to obtain my licence again. I could be spending this time learning the theory like I promised myself I’d do this morning. I could also be researching jobs which I also promised myself I’d do seeing as I’m currently getting by on a zero-hour contract job with inconsistent work. But yet, here I am again: all these years on, still totally committed to the same manic muse that has consumed me now throughout the whole part of early adulthood. I can just about imagine that same German girl sitting opposite me now, still with those confused and concerned eyes, wondering why I am still fucking myself up just to write this nonsense that probably only a handful of people will read and forget about. It reminds me of a story I recently read online about a man who took ten years writing his novel and two years promoting it, only to receive no sales. When his family found out, they disowned him. He ended up depressed, moved to another city, and then started work on his second novel…

I guess it comes back to it: a person’s own purpose. We frame human purpose in a positive light; that generally one is meant to find what it is that they’re good at, serves others, and makes them a fulfilled human-being. But we never stop to consider that someone’s purpose can also drive them to the edge – to become fucked up, tortured, isolated, misunderstood, destitute, deserted, and even dead. I think again of Kafka and Van Gogh and Plath and all the others who only ended in darkness while pursuing their innate calling. Once again at the crossroads, I consider packing this laptop away and learning to drive. I consider searching for that job, tidying my room, ironing myself out, and becoming a respectable member of the human race. I hear the German girl urging me on. “Finally stop this madness. You have four books now. You’ve given it a go. You’ve done more than most people and it’s time to give yourself a break. Put down the pen and get yourself in order.”

But alas, the words just keep on coming, and if you’re still here listening to this self-indulgent, introspective, stream-of-the-consciousness crap, then well, I guess maybe you share a similar type of madness. There are so many other productive things one could be doing, but then again, what is the point. What is the point as I now watch two butterflies dance with each other in the morning sun; as I watch a ginger cat strutting elegantly down the path; as I watch a squirrel run along the fence and listen to the birds singing somewhere in the nearby trees. I guess nature doesn’t concern itself with what it ‘should’ do rather than what it is doing. And that in doing so, it is far more graceful than us with our clumsy and clunky lives. Perhaps I was simply born to the wrong species. Humanity was never the intended destination of a soul like mine. I was better off being a cat, or a squirrel, or a butterfly fluttering in the early morning sun. I know the second I stop this story and start studying my driving theory and searching for jobs, I’ll be longer in tune with the great harmony of nature. But this seems to be the requirement for surviving in society and stopping the pretty girls from thinking you’re crazy and wanting to sleep with you. That is an awfully nice thing, I must confess, so now I consider packing it away again. And it seems to me that if I do that, I’ll no longer be considered a fool by others, but I’ll know inside that I am a fool. To neglect this holy feeling I must certainly be mad, and now it’s time to choose: to be mad by my own reckoning, or by theirs. There is no easy way and I guess maybe I’m just too far gone as I decide I’ll be adding this piece of writing to my fifth book: Daft Daydreamer Delusions. I’m choosing to be mad in their eyes again. This one is for you, pretty German girl. I hope your life of sanity and sensibility is as fulfilling as this is. If you read this, get back to me and we can have a chat again. If you’re not too scared, that is.