Something was missing, and it was this: it was the feeling that I was expressing what I intended to express, and that I had an audience with whom I was in sync, who understood me, got from me what they wanted and what I wanted to give. It was the feeling of belonging.
I hadn’t belonged anywhere for a few years now.
Tracy Thorn: Bedsit Disco Queen. p240. (emfarsis mine)
~~~~~~~
After severalish, smalllish Japanese whiskeys, these are the sentiments that E@L is resonating with at the moment.
Problems with writing stem from…?
E@L doesn’t know. He is aware of a potential audience of 2 to sync with at the maximum.
Is it the 21C schizoid learned distractability of smartphones, and of course the internet in general? Is it the barely subdued anger at the spiralling chaos of the last few years leading up to and including his post-expat suburban life, circumstances dumping him in this unexpected place in what is allegedly his new reality, his new normal…?
And add the righteous anger at the currently even more fucked up than usual actual world itself?
With all these angers, frustrations, regrets, and nostalgia for lost futures spinning into each other how could he think clearly, how could he write about the pernicious banalities of his current life and try to milk a laugh out of them? How could he write about anything now and be the E@L of the old days (when he was funny…)?
The absurd reality of what his life is now like… What he shoulda describe woulda outdo the most imaginative fictions anyone coulda create.
~~~~~~~
E@L sits at the computer on his desk, and can’t face his Scrivener blank pages. There is some magnetic like-poles repulsion from sitting with a writing programme open to, well, to sitting at all, let alone fucking writing anything.
He needs distance, the distance the computer is trying to push him away to... Is this why he rides 30-40kms on his bike when the weather permits? Real or spiritual, emotional, physical, he needs distance from all things. Perhaps take the laptop outside to the table on the balcony. Perhaps this desk is no longer his writing desk. Perhaps he should have another whiskey. Or perhaps another desk…
~~~~~~~
Or (phew, oof, that smell again!?) perhaps he should change his colostomy bag before going to bed and risking a blowout and a Trainspotting worthy bed-linen crisis at 4am.
Ignore all the preceding: all else pales. At the moment, right now, this is the biggest question in the life of
E@L
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