was a very silly title.
It was just an arbitrary string of nonsense words I like I threw together one morning like a car crash. I didn’t expect it to have the resonance of an Enid Blyton novel or a Victorian children’s TV magazine, if the Victorians had indeed had TV.
It probably explains why I’ve been so entirely indifferent to this virtual little online cyber neverspace as any form of serious journal. I don’t really seem to keep a journal at all anymore – I haven’t made a written entry in my little red book in months, and recently my dedication to my 100 words has begun to wane somewhat. I generally don’t feel much interested in anything or indeed interesting enough to write about my life lately. My passion for the things I supposedly care about seems to be trickling away, replaced more by a deep frustration and unhappiness with my job, an odd and recurring human hangover of loneliness, and a near obsession over my seemingly constant total lack of money. Money, ugh. How vulgar.
Last night I found, (with some delight having previously thought it to have been lost forever), the CD of sounds, voiceovers (I was always too terrified to do my own lines live each night) and music for the mutually unloved, uncontroversial and critically ignored 2002 Edinburgh Fringe box office smash (well, it was slightly more of a chip or smear upon the glass than a smash), The Ministers of Satan. For anyone who saw it, they may recall it wasn’t quite Shakespeare. It was puerile, scrappy, always over-ran and 75% of the time had an audience of around 10 people. We even had two or three walkouts.
But it was fun! It was one of the most buzzy, active months of my life. It was doing something I loved doing. And if it wasn’t all worth it for the handful of 4 star reviews, rubbing shoulders with the not that rich but still quite famous or the night we sold out which coincided with the evening the Perrier reviewer was in the crowd, then it was for the atmosphere and experience of being there. At the time I was also working on my first (and ultimately totally stillborn) novel. John and I would screw around on our time off on The Royal Mile, singing songs to American tourists about Jenny Bond selling her underwear over the internet, or disappear round the corner for a pint of Guinness and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, quoting Spaced at each other till midnight and showtime. It was just a time and a place where my brain was constantly burning with creativity and potential, and I was loving every minute of it.
So what am I doing now? What happened to that person of potential and hunger, who felt himself in the right environment and company for him to grow and become the thing he most wanted to be?
He’s just someone who stresses about his job. He’s someone who no longer finds the time to write, and even when he does, questions it, and ultimately walks away in frustration that it’s just no good. That he just isn’t talented enough, or ambitious enough, or ambitiously talented enough. He’s just someone who drinks too much, who smokes too much, who spends too much money he doesn’t have on things he doesn’t need. And just look at what his former co-writers are doing – how dedicated they’ve remained to their ambitions and how happy it’s made them.
So voila the new title.
I always glibly remarked that The Boy Who Could But Didn’t would be the title of my autobiography, should I ever overcome the eponymous paradox of doing anything interesting enough to warrant one.
It’s become more another visual kick up the bum to stop me pissing around. Did Mary Poppins sit on her bum watching Buffy when there was work to be done? Of course she didn’t. She sang a little song, snorted something hallucinogenic and got the job finished.
So why does it seem so difficult to do the things we want to do? Is it because we have to get past ourselves first? Do childish dreams get harder to chase as you get older?
… and do I sound like Carrie Bradshaw now or what?
Maybe that’s why I haven’t made it.
