As the sheets of rain came down earlier this week I found it hard to write a new blog post to publish here. You might have noticed this and you might have noticed, too, that I took down the most recent posting, which was my attempt to satirize various media responses to the Swedish House Mafia malarky.
I don't think it was particularly funny, but that is not why I took it down. It just didn't feel a correct fit for this blog - it wasn't in tune with the 'heap and what it is about. I'm not good at snark here, even though I have a an unruly snark element in my nature that pops up in conversation or on twitter sometimes.
I've spoken before about change here, but I doubt what I do on asleep on the compost heap will ever truly change. I found out that that the blog has a 'feel' I can't betray. This week, when I had that satirical post up, I genuinely felt weird at odd moments of the day, struck by sudden realisations that it was out there misrepresenting my little blog and gathering the wrong sort of page impressions. As pathetic as that admission must sound to a non-blogger, I'm sure plenty of bloggers will know the type of unique neurosis I'm getting at.
I might start a different blog somewhere else. Who knows?
Today, I've been looking through all these notes. There are piles of them. I have a box of them under my bed, and I rooted it out. In the past, I've lumped stuff into the box, but I've never actually sat down with it and gone through it. This afternoon, I tipped it out and sat on my bedroom floor surrounded by years and years worth of material all written in the same clutzy scrawl that was remarked on in every single one of my school reports.
My God, what an amount of stuff. There are notes about every sort of thing physically written on every sort of thing: foolscap, torn cereal boxes, various diaries, newspaper pages - there are even more than a few supermarket receipts with scribbles on them. Seeing them all accumulated like this, it struck me what vast personal value these notes have.
I'm looking at shreds of slightly macabre stories about boys on building sites and farms, slippery and rare playground echoes that came into my mind long enough for me to catch them with a pen, things old people said in pubs, the wisdom of people who gave up alcohol, the self-absorbed righteousness of some of those people too, wisps of dreams, stuff written when I was young and drunk, stuff written sobering up, diary entries from a hitchhiking trip across Canada, drawings of people on buses, drawings of people in psychiatric hospital and (scribbled below) the things that they and their families talked about as I listened from my bed across the ward, shadow figures from my childhood fleshed out by sentences spoken in their actual voices and captured from the dark multiplying murmurings that rise around the mind as it falls asleep, weird newspaper stories, small-town rumours from Kells, stories my mother told me, ghost stories, impressions, the light on certain buildings, my uncle's wet woolen clothes hanging on a hook, the same uncle's cold as marble head that I kissed at a wake, sunset on Clew Bay, a teenager falling headfirst out of a swingboat during a torrential wet night at a fairground in Kells, an Easter rising parade marching through Falcarragh's main street on an almost painfully bright March day in the 1980s.
So much stuff. Saved in way. Caught from the rapid daily flux of thought and piled up like sediment in a box. To be honest, I never knew how valuable all this would be or indeed why I felt compelled to take notes on situations. I mean I've harboured a vague desire to write that has come and gone down the years, but the note-taking remained constant like a compulsion. I'm so happy I did it. It feels like I've given myself a heap (!) of genuine treasure.
Now I'm going to start building. I'm going to use my spare time to try to write fiction seriously.
Bits of fiction will certainly appear here as I try things out. But fear not, the compost heap will never really change. I joke from time to time about agonizing over blog posts but the truth is that I get a lot of peace of mind from writing here. It's a sanctuary.
Music lovers, don't give up on me, my next post will be about album number 7 of last year: Danny Brown's XXX
5 comments:
Hey G: Snark away if you want. I like it -- seems English and Irish writers do that sorta thing better than anyone else. I even liked that post you took down, tho I don't know a thing about the event you were taking off from....
You define what the Heap is -- if you're in a snarky or satirical mood sometimes, you should be able to express that without worrying if it fits in.
I will say that when I post something that I think is cutting or satirical, it tends to fall flat. Nobody comments, anyway. You know what the old theater producers useta say: Satire is that stuff that closes in Peoria. ... and your musings on note-taking do sound a lot more "like you"....
I've also posted stuff I was scared to see in print, but none of it led anywhere, I haven't become world famous (or notorious!), & now I wonder what I was so shaky about. That "brave" and "daring" stuff is still out there, and nothing's changed....
Anyway, bring on the fiction. I'm looking forward to it....
thanks Tad - you might like to read this, I'd say: http://theracket.com/2012/07/what-i-did-on-my-summer-holidays/
As for snark, if it burbles up from time to time that's fine. I don't feel comfortable spouting it straight out though. That's not really me.
The note-taking seems to be more than just a means to document thoughts and ideas for you. Almost a compulsion?
You're a born writer,and I suppose the journalistic style approach you took with the sarky post felt unnatural. We've all written at least one post which ended up being too far removed from our true 'voice'. It all sounds trite (as I write this comment) but a blog quickly becomes a very personal platform
and everything in it has to feel 'right'.
Looking back in years to come won't be such a good experience if you read something written without the correct flow.
Make sure you keep that box of notes, my bag of scribbles would be one of the few things I'd like to rescue from a fire.
It must be bedtime now, surely.
You should start writing a book, you simply amaze me with your blog writing style, you always have lots to say and apparently so much more stored in your brain just waiting to emerge. I would personally love to read a book of yours some day soon. Go fourth and conquer!
Hey G: I don't know if "like" is the right word, but your "summer holidays" piece is brilliantly written. Pretty chilling, too.
I was especially hit by the ending. A dozen years back, when I had my 40th Birthday anxiety attack at work -- after they hauled me into an ambulance, got me to a hospital, taught me how to breathe again (I'd been hyperventilating), got me into a bed, & had people watching over me trying to figure out what was wrong -- I remember thinking that bed was EXACTLY where I wanted to be, that all my overwork had logically led there. The sense of relief was overwhelming, & I cried like a baby....
Thanks for sharing all this. Get to work on that novel, will ya?
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