bit ironic innit? sounds like you’re a fake ego wanker if you’re putting it in a fucking Substack especially when you’re on the record as a Substack hater; you’re just the same as everyone else and trying to do the contrarian as a source of authority trick all the shit alt writers do and lack morals, integrity and value – as for ability well we all know [redacted]…

Internal monologue “lickl ol me” in response:

Voyaging and the duty to report it

I’m really into this thing Carl Jung once said when he was being especially a freak and like diving into his unconscious and all that before anyone really gave a fuck about who he was or knew his name and essentially he came across as a weird recluse child of motherly death as an infant that had been eating the wrong mushrooms at the stroganoff party which was essentially ~ if you’re going to be someone who voyages into new realms, territories, ideas, etc then you have a duty to report back whatever it is you find there. It reminds me of logbooks that sailors keep (he’s thinking about The Wager again) and how they are a diary, but they are also a document of a journey. And I just thought it was fucking neat to apply that to introspection also and I feel I may conjure up nothing new but that at the same time it’s a worthy use of my time. Jung also did that when he was having his menty bs, and I think that’s class really.

Helpfulness and connection

Maybe, and this leads into the next, some how some of you are of my disposition and there is some joy or comfort or food from whatever I put out here. I feel fucking sorry for you if it does feel relatable but fair play, a hug from you to me and me to you. Also I’ve lived in a city on my own where I basically know nobody for eighteen months and I’ve loved it but I’ve also realised that even at our most introspective we are social creatures and so I suppose there’s an element of reaching out to the universe and having the vulnerability to be seen and received that I for many many reasons lost a grip or confidence or security on the ability to do.

Ego (I do want my genius recognised; but not because of that)

The reason I am often like damn I should make reels so I can have a following so I can appease business models and make my life easier is to make my life easier, to in theory give me the financial freedom (or at least expectation of it / success / an excuse to scrounge PRs for free meals despite not writing about food much nor well nor nobody knowing I used to work in a kitchen and probably could in theory say shit about it all) to be able to then write with reckless abandon in the sort of Flaubert way. Though 1) that isn’t really what Flaubert would endorse, if I’m listening to him here which I think I’d like to and 2) in practice these things don’t unlock people they make people worry about losing their stability also 3) the writing would be fucking boring if I lived in the same world as people who do literary readings all the fucking time wouldn’t it, like who is ready for “magazine journalist as narrative voice” to become “we met at a literary reading event, I was reading about sex and they looked at me from the crowd of maybe as many as two dozen.” Imagine that in the post-match highlights they wheel out to me on the death bed. no thanks.

The recognition is to be acknowledged for doing something that makes someone’s life feel richer, whether it’s a nice line or a feeling articulated or whatever it may well be. It’s about not just putting out this sense of the world, but hearing: yeah, you are like me, nice. I wrote “as with everyone” re this being why they want to be recognised but realise that’s naive of me – though I think beneath the OUR LEGACY of it all we wear on our sleeves, this is in fact what we talk about when we talk about our legacy. I think it should be at least. This is egotistical belief that I have something to say that is worth being read, that is fine even if it isn’t true, but what I do know is I ought to live a life that supports doing my bit as well as possible – and wouldn’t it be fucking nice to do that through vacuous meme accounts that lead to a mesh of partnerships, social native revenue streams, and book deals that generate low six figures per annum before taxes before free shit from brands, oh golly yes it would. But it wouldn’t be me and it wouldn’t be right. And would the people I admire from before things were the way they are be fond of that? Mostly no. And I do care about lineage, I would like the artists I like to like me. I’m only human.

And as a side point yes I do think I think more than most and have better depth and breadth than many, and so I see a reason to try and have a go within it all. I’m only an exceptional human.

When it comes to being on the record as someone who thinks creatives do not need a Substack (article here) – yeah I don’t like third-party apps because I think they dilute revenue for magazines and newspapers and that then dilutes their journalism (I place the blame with the executives who blindly followed the snake into free digital journalism most though in some senses second most to those who devised media platforms to make profit not to help the world be a better place (sadly I do mean that as trite as it is)) and also journalists and fiction writers need editors like a flag needs a pole (and lord knows you’d enjoy this more without it but actually I’ve been intentional/aim to be intentional with having editors where I think they’re needed, and letting myself run free where I can) but anyway here’s the kicker on this point:

I’m not using this to make money or to push anything in the journalistic career I am increasingly pulling away from unless it is directly helpful work, and I will basically not be promoting it, and there will be no paid subscription stuff ever.

So yeah: for me, but here. At least for now.

NB: doing the thing mid comics do when they use swear words in place of punctuation, or bad comics do in place of being funny. oh well.

fertility, you know that

THE FERTILE VOID* IS that time where something has met its death in your soul and its space is still empty. the next thing is yet to begin and life is very silent and there isn’t a sense of wanting anything and it can be a dark place like how we often categorise voids but it doesn’t have to be; the fertile element is about how this is also a space for something to grow itself into, where things just start grabbing your attention expected or otherwise and the days pass and something is there and you don’t know what it is or if it will bear fruit or exist truly but either way there are these compulsions of things you find you start doing and themes that start forming and then suddenly there are shoots and buds and flowers and the garden of life looks different and takes on a new ecosystem and series of lives and deaths and voids and regenerations forever and ever. it’s something like that, at least to me.

“A FERTILE VOID” as in this one here is something of a display of where I’ve been, am, and will be, in my thoughts or outputs or whatever feels apt to me.

and I guess whatever I place here will come from my fertile void(s?) but mainly this one around writing and creativity and storytelling mostly because something i have learned is if “my life as a writer” in the sense it was is now sort of almost entirely spiritually dead to me, or at least the mode in which it operated is being juiced by the world we live in to a point where it needs rescuing like a soaking puppy in a storm (should i want to keep this dream and drive and instinctive part of myself ticking over at all but really who am i to leave a puppy crying and neither should you with yours) then i need to turn the dream into something of a pyrophytic tree (you know the ones that can only grow if there has been a wildfire) so it can grow again** among this dark ashy stain (or void, see) in the forest (earlier i said garden, who cares****) of my life. i must accept what has felt like the end of something as the opportunity for a renewal of something more significant within me, and i think i would like this writing and thinking and storytelling lark to renew.

this substack will be about somethings like that and also many forms of writing that are more story and less introspection, you hope.

thanks.

*(it’s a Gestalt therapy concept originally, of which i am a fan ofc, more on therapy and me soon)

**income generation mainly (whether for me or the magazine), but also a lack of experimentation, pressure, stifling of voice or thought, worrying about reception of things just because these ideas are not present elsewhere (they’re mine, how could they be), assuming that society is healthy and that i’m the sick one when most people don’t know their arse from their elbow let alone their healthy thoughts from the neurotic (or at least are ignorant on trying to assess that – nuances aside on like genuine individual mental health issues this is more like, why the fuck do i care about the middle class social media world of dalston etc etc when that is not what i’m here to think about, nor them me, because why and even then when i let my own neurosis flick through the narrative of it all i realise most people within these places do not know their oyster from their pearl about their own “interests” and so what the fuck am i worried about etc etc again, slower with less anger because i’m actually happy for them, i am, i am really if i sigh hard enough to starve my brain of oxygen first i am, you know what i mean***)

***maybe the point was made in the metaphors i lost along the way, you didn’t have to read it did you, but cheers, nice to engage

****who said this was meant to be good writing and not just writing