Well, any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most
Short Answer to a question you didn’t actually ask me:
This Website is about writing. It’s also my journalism and short stories and maybe even recipes and childhood scribbles.
Here’s the long version:
I often feel that I am crap at coming up with titles. Whether it be for novels, short stories or journo, I find it often the bane of my writing life. Then again, sometimes I get it right. Put on the spot and asked, “What is the name of your site?” and the first name that came to me was, “You can't write like Dostoevsky using only Emojis,” only to then decide that, TheSolidWallOfWriting was more on the nose.
And for some reason a lot of people who are looking for blogs about Russian literature came flooding my way. For them, here is a picture of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s desk in his apartment in St Petersburg that I took some years back.
I also have a picture of this desk from the Dickens Museum in Doughty Street in London and I can only hope somewhere someone is now debating who had the better desk.
For anyone debating: It’s not even close. The Dickens needed to up his game and buy a better desk.
I think there is a common conception that a website or a blog, of which this has elements of both, has to be about something. In the case of films, TV and novels, basically anything that tells a story, it always seems to be that the first thing we want to know is “what’s it about?” It seems a fair question. But how many times have you been asked just that and then struggled to explain exactly what something is.
“Ooohhh, I love Inception.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about this bloke who can enter your mind. He sort of goes into this dreamlike place and steals your secrets and implants thoughts and in this dream place you have to fight projections of people’s subconscious and then you can go into a dream within a dream and………”
“OK. Stop you there. Is it a comedy?”
“Hhhhmmm, I’m not sure.”
I had to read the synopsis for Inception just now and it did actually make me feel sick. Just working from memory, I have no idea what Inception is all about. I wasn’t a big fan of the film but I understand that some people are and they probably love being asked what it’s about and then explaining the whole concept of dreams within dreams within dreams. Conversely, some people think they know what something is from just being told the title. I like Batman the movie. No questions asked. Everyone thinks they know what you mean. No need to ask what it’s all about. However, there is plenty of room to get it wrong.
“I love Batman!”
“Me too!”
“What’s your favourite bit?”
“That has to be the part where you see that Harvey Two Face Dent has had half his face melted off by acid. Yeah!”
“Oh. I don’t remember that. My memories are of when Batman’s running around going Biff and Kapow and stuff and the bit where he has to dispose of a giant bomb but he can’t find anywhere to throw it and at one point he’s going to chuck it off a pier into the water but he sees some cute ducks and can’t throw it there because he might kill the ducks.”
“I like Batman” does not mean the same to everyone. Quite often we think we can understand what something is because of our prejudices and personal understanding. To some, Batman may be a children’s cartoon or a camp 60s pastiche of a comic book and to others, the ones who really know, they know it’s a twisted dark world full of dangerously psychotic people.
Then again, sometimes we know exactly what something is based solely on the title. You can judge a book by its cover. Exhibit A: One word. Sharknado. I suppose Sharknado could be a name of a small art house film in which Sharks and Tornados have a deeper meaning to our protagonist. Perhaps it’s a sweet allegorical tale about a young man’s lost innocence. Or, most likely it’s a Z-Grade disaster movie in which Sharks are sent hurtling through the LA skies to cause all sorts of mayhem. Maybe I’ll watch it one day but I’m pretty sure I know that film without ever seeing it.
Newspapers, whether they are online or in print, aren’t considered in the same way. No one asks, “What’s the Daily Mail about?” Oooooh, bad example. It’s not really a newspaper. And yet Websites and Blogs do tend to be about something. There’s probably an interesting piece to write about that.
I can’t say I know what Jack White had in mind when he sang, “Well any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most.” But I know what I’ve made it mean to me for the purpose of writing this. My take is that anyone in the blogosphere can write about the things they like the most.
“What’s your blog about?”
“My Blog? It’s about how much I love Dolly Parton!”
“I love Dolly Parton too. Can I follow your blog?”
That fits a world I see in which the aim is to gather around you people who like the same things, perhaps in an attempt to create a safe haven of like minded people, united in their love of Dolly Parton. We live in uncertain times. You’re not going out on a limb to suggest this is the most polarised society has ever seemed. Oddly where we see divided societies we can also see a million different voices blogging, Youtubing, existing in so many ways on social media and social media channels usually being particularly about only one thing in a very marketable way.
“Walked out this morning
Don't believe what I saw
Hundred billion bottles
Washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone at being alone
Hundred billion castaways
Looking for a home.”
Is that a model of life anyone can recognise? A blog, like any other creative endeavour, could easily feel like a message in a bottle set adrift into a sea of a hundred billion bottles. Despite this, and maybe even because of this, we set them off, with no idea of where they’ll go . In a creative hierarchy the publishers are launching ships and we’re launching messages in bottles. And it’s free to do and no one is going to tell you, “It’s very well written but not for us thank you.”
In some ways this feels like a website/blogsite of writing that just hasn’t found a home. It’s writing that doesn’t belong anywhere but needs to exist somewhere. I have to appreciate that the way things work is that I have to justify that existence, if anyone other than me is going to read these words.
“Hi. What’s your blog about?”
“It’s about writing.”
“What? Like how to write?”
“Errr, sometimes. But it’s sort of like a newspaper where you read stuff.”
“Read? Eh?”
“It’s about everything and it’s about nothing. But it’s well written.”
“And who’s it aimed at?”
“Do you work for a publishing company by any chance?”
I was once told that love is loving someone even when you know it won’t work out. Sounds masochistic to me. But I can relate as I love writing and it goes nowhere. This work exists here, in short story form, in chapters of the two unpublished novels that I’ve written, in newly created and old journalism and reviews and anything else I can throw in. It’s here or it’s filling up space on my hard drive. But it exists for the very reason all good art does. Because you are compelled to create it, even if you don’t know what to do with it.
Hard Times if you like words, huh?
At this point I can say that this is now about writing. I’m even going to mention names of writers and characters from fiction. That’s how much about writing this is.
I was listening to a song from the 90s on Spotify recently. It was a little known and long forgotten song. As I listened to it there was an authority in what was being sung and the way it was sung. There was something genuine about it that struck me as inescapably true. And it goes beyond simply being relatable. I can’t say that I know that there was any truth in the song at all. It may have been written by someone whose only intention was to sell copies of CDs. Certain truths can sometimes be made of a whole lot of fiction but the truth lies in more than just the words of a song. It’s an attitude, a delivery, a way of making you feel. We’re in Bill Hicks territory now. What had he said way back when? Play from your Heart! Actually, for anyone who hasn’t seen the late great comedian Bill Hicks, he screamed it. “Play from your fucking heart!” And when you do people will really listen and feel and take notice. JFK could have said, “Hey, let’s fly to the Moon. Won’t that be cool?” But he didn’t.
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.”
Those words will get you to the Moon!
Back to twenty first century Earth: Who’s in charge now? Who do we believe? Does anyone have any authority now? We have created a situation where increasingly we give equal credence to all opinions and as a result no authority to anyone. An anonymous Trip Advisor review can somehow sway opinion. How is that possible? Online reviewers who spout an opinion and then disappear have no stake in what they write. People may review a review and then someone else reviews that. It becomes a squabble, just a messy pile of opinion. Reading comments at the end of any news article is like hearing a thousand chattering voices leaving the theatre at the end of the play. I often feel like I’m stood outside a pub at closing time watching fights break out. It’s its own form of twisted voyeurism. And that’s why I have no place for feedback.
Is there too much choice? Are we all on our own beaches with all those messages in a bottle washed to shore and we don’t know which ones to read? Do I have any more authority than any other writer? Should I be content with adding to the masses of messages we already have?
I have held a belief for some years now that when you give people something to read that you are making a promise. It’s a contract. I give this to you knowing it’s not shit. Arguably there is a level of arrogance that can be assumed there when you hold that opinion. Or there is a complete miscalculation of your own talent. You might be shit. Having studied to PhD level, having a Masters in Creative Writing, having a chapter in an academic book about writing, being long listed once for the Bridport short story prize, gives me an inkling that I’m not awful. And yet still, I cannot know I am good or great. What I can say is that any authority that might shine through is because my goal is never to just convey a message but rather to make the writing as good or better than the subject matter. The writing always comes first.
Apparently, the Sci-Fi writer John Keffer, who I know nothing about, can be attributed with the idea of requesting that his tomb stone should read, “He didn’t know but he had an inkling.” For some of us an inkling is as good as knowing. Any years of study and small written achievements are not proof of anything but it’s a good starting point. What I’ve never been able to do is write entirely on my own terms and know that what I produce has a place. That’s what this is. And my theory is that if it’s good then people will read it, even if they have no interest in the subject.
That’s not to say I want take a swipe at the standard of all Journalism. Is a blog journalism? I guess it is. Does anything need to be well written? Do stories? Novels? TV Shows? Have we all become like Mr Thomas Gradgrind from Dickens's novel Hard Times? Are we only concerned with cold hard facts? I once asked an MA Creative Writing student to quote me something from their favourite book. They told me that they “don’t do quotes.” I’m still shocked at that one. I’m not saying that to be good you need to be quotable but there is a power in words that you just don’t get in emojis. I’m being facetious. I am confident that the woman who doesn’t “do quotes” never went on to write a novel in only emojis. But the point stands. Words take second place to a fixation on asking, “What’s it about?” There’s a need for writing to be palatable, to be easily consumed. As a result everything now seems low concept to me, designed to fit on a screen of an android phone. The big oversight with regards to that model is that it might be easier to read but too often I get halfway through an article and stop reading because it isn’t designed to be readable, only to convey facts or opinion. Quite often I find I’ve got all I need or want from just half the article and there is nothing compelling me to keep reading.
The flipside of that is when I hear others complaining that something is too long. “Too many words man!” But if they’re good words you want to keep reading. If it’s good you keep going, even if it is in two sittings or more. Back when I was still studying I read an article by Jonathan Franzen called “Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels.” Reading it made me feel twenty nine years old again. I have no idea why I picked the number twenty nine. There must have been good stuff going on at that age is all I can think. Writing should do that to you. You should want it to never end, not be in a race to get through it.
The usual cycle of ups and downs is ever present. One minute I can be iffy about my own work and then other times I’m pretty darn sure I am a literary genius. I’ll hark back to the incident I refer to as, “That time the batshit crazy woman in my MA told the whole class that my assignment for that week really copied Dostoevsky’s style and I hadn’t actually read that week’s reading, Notes from the Underground. I’d very much written it in my own style.” Woo! One person in my life thought my style was like Dostoevsky! Stick that on a book review, along with the time my Grandma said that my work reminded her of Steinbeck.
Any betrayal of a manifesto in the twenty first century should be met with death. Discuss:
Let’s go to the dictionary definition for this. Manifesto: “A public declaration of policy and aims.” Bloody Hell. Even the Urban Dictionary comes up with this: “A written document prepared by a single person, intended to garner attention towards a specific topic or issue.” I genuinely thought I was going to get something more interesting than that from the Urban Dictionary. “Manifesto? That’s the lies the political people tell to get power. Innit.”
With this in mind I don’t know how people have come to believe that any manifesto is set in stone. It's regarded as heresy and blasphemy with a side order of a lack of integrity to change your mind. Facebook started out with an idea of being a mouthpiece for freedom of expression. I suppose, for better or worse it does stand for that. Starbucks states that one of its core values is to challenge the status quo. Well, my Dad hated it and he was old school. So, maybe. We mostly try to start with good intentions. We can’t help what people paint us as. Perhaps down the road this whole site-blog turns into a review of porno films and someone says to me, “Hey, that was never in your manifesto. You promised us nothing but good writing.” To which I sincerely hope I remember to respond with, “Is it a blog with well written porn reviews?”
This medium frees you up. Maybe the only rules are the ones you set yourself. This is not a manifesto. It’s just how I’d like things to be. As a writer of fiction I always think you should write like no one else is looking. Who is it for? A blog about your football team or your love of your favourite actor is obviously for others who like the same.
Following on from Jonathan Franzen questioning the reasons to write novels in an age of images, it is appropriate to ask: Why even read at all? I fully appreciated that this follow up comes some decades after Franzen’s article was first published in 1996. I am often slow to catch on.
To do anything these days without visual images is going against the grain. A Facebook post that is only text? Crazy! Even as I write these words, I think I’m going to have to find photos to add something that isn’t the written word. The fact that I don’t even care about word count makes me feel like a lunatic. The only thing I have up my sleeve is this notion that good writing is enough of a reason to keep reading.
One answer to “Why read?” and “Why write?” comes in anecdotal form. A colleague once asked me what I thought of the latest Batman film. I probably did go on a mini rant about how you can’t have the hero of your film stuck down a hole for forty five minutes and then at the end the guy says to me, “I didn’t ask for a review.”
Perhaps it was a cheap joke. Perhaps the guy had nothing to say in response. But I had to think: What did he want? Was I expected to say, “Yeah. It was good?” What do film reviews look like in your Universe? Is it something like this?
My Review of The Dark Knight Rises
Please leave comments in the comment section if you liked my review.
I’m channelling Bill Hicks here when I say. Why do I write? There are so many reasons I write but one of them is so that I don’t end out a sociopath like that guy! I pretty much confirmed he was a sociopath when he followed up that discussion with one in which he declared that he didn’t cry at films because, “It’s make believe and it’s not like it’s stuff happening to him.” Nice guy but for the bit about having no empathy for any other human beings.
Reading and writing does require thought. How much anyone wants to be thinking is a common bone of contention. Unless someone can give me the scientifally proven equation for just the right amount of thinking I’m not putting a limit on how much is good for you. And journalism is surely nothing but analysis, stuff to think about. What are we if we retain nothing? Even if you’ve enjoyed Sharknado surely there is a part of your brain that’s curious about why you enjoyed it. I think of me and a friend watching a YouTube clip of Cookie Monster going berserk over a plate of cookies as we looked on in wonder and agreed that one muppet eating cookies should not be as funny as it is.
What is life if you don’t think about it?! Maybe some visual images require less work for the brain. Although comic books ask of you to take in images and words and give your brain double the work. Maybe the preferred choice of delivery is a Matrix style download. You plug in. There’s a huge rush of information and then suddenly: I know Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina!
Reading is not at all like the Matrix. There is no download into the brain. Good writing will have you thinking long after you’ve read the words on the page. There are so many ways to convey what you want to communicate. I have nothing against visual images. I love comics and film and TV and Theatre. The best version of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is the one I found online where the story was re-created in pictures where key scenes were recreated using Lego. I wish I’d done that. I just don’t know how to create visual images as well as I know how to use words. I’m not clever enough to create what I want to say here by only using emojis. Someone out there is talented enough to recreate Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground purely in emojis but it’s not me.
When all of this fails due to a Worldwide consensus that words are obsolete then I will have to resort to telling you: I like American football, comics, Russian literature, the original PlayStation 2 version of the game Devil May Cry and the band New Order. Give me a microphone! Ill tell you what I like the most, but I can’t do it in Emoji.
