Bravado and Risk

It's been a while. Here I am, ashamed and guilty. I have been editing, examining and doing odd jobs here and there. On examining, once again, flushed with success and repetitive strain injury, my team has done sterling work, setting another battalion of the young into their next adventure at university - few real problems this year.

It 's emotionally a bit flatlining - one works for days on end, dreaming of little red marks on a computer screen. Then, nothing. It takes its toll. Imagination, even here, looks dun-coloured and wan, since I find myself asking the unanswerable. Was I fair, always? And, what now? The grind of the surf gives way to the freedom of the ocean where I get to think new thoughts or even process old ones.

Also, do I have anything very original to say? Everybody has written about transgender rights, school shootings, Putin's war and the absurd Partygate. So, what else could be written about that's really unusual , really edgy, really...different?

Perfectionism is a curse beyond endurance since for the last considerable time it has slyly looked over its eyes at me and told me that whatever I write won't be good enough, witty enough, funny enough. 

Of course it won't and I'm beginning not to mind. The comedic is for the others for now and clowns are the saddest creatures on earth. Apropos of which, I watched Ricky Gervais' reworked 'Supernature' on Netflix the other night. Something about his presentation unsettles me, his truthful assertion "I ’m a white heterosexual millionaire and as such, in a smaller minority than black, Asian or queer people. But do you hear me complain?" sounds like something he says because he's wildly popular and as such supposes that he can say whatever he likes, sheltering behind faux irony which just feels dishonest, even dissembling somehow. Behind the infectious laugh, there's cruelty in the eyes. With such ostentatiously provocative standup Gervais is choosing (as he keeps telling us) to be obnoxious, whereas other comedians just can’t help it.  There remains, though, a huge audience for off-colour comedy, full of bravado and risk but I thought the hour of my time watching it was more wasted than not as the council house lad from Reading sniggered at us all.

However, back to the more familiar words unrolling like liquid gold across a virgin landscape of imagination. 

Not everything can be just so, just as one might wish, special and unique.

I read a lot of bloggers' work, some of which is inspirational, much of the rest is tepid, almost like practice, flexing muscle, rehearsal without dress.

It seems strange to think so, but I am almost - but not quite - sorry for big bucks authors who have to squeeze new plots out of their familiar characters every six months, otherwise their publishers wave breach of contract suits over their heads. And, it shows. People's early, unfettered work has a breath of bravado and risk about it, much like Gervais' comedy, and as they have been ground down by the cockchafer of publishing deadlines, their original spark takes more and more tries to ignite against the sweat-dampened tinderbox of their imagination.

And yet, we do. Perhaps because we must. Like Maya Angelou's caged bird, sing we must - clipped wings or not, standing on the grave of dreams.

And then; there's this...

...but words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled Stepdame Study's blows;
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite;
"Fool," said my muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

Astrophil to Stella, Sonnet 1

Sir Philip Sidney