D i a r y A r c h i v e : S e p - O c t 0 7
'Biz' - Tuesday 16th October 2007
Is it possible to have far too much to do?
Yes, of course it is.
Is it possible that the state of having far too much to do is a regrettable state in which to find oneself?
Yes, of course, but perhaps not entirely regrettable.
Is it possible that the drawbacks of being in a state of having far too much to do outweigh the advantages?
Have you been placed in this state against your will?
No, not at all.
Well then, no, the drawbacks probably don't outweigh the advantages... because if you're in a state of having far too much to do, then chances are that you're fit and healthy enough to be able to do lots of things... so next week, when you stop off at Auschwitz on your way to Warsaw, tell yourself - not for the first time - to look around, stop moaning and be grateful that you're able to be busy.
'Plain Sailing' - Wednesday 10th October 2007
 Another week, another talk. This time it was the turn of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, he of solo, water-based circumnavigation victories.
He spent a great deal of the time talking about his frustrations with technology, which made me think how apt the event's setting was: an old, defiantly dignified theatre - high-ceilinged and awash with smooth curves - rather inelegantly crammed with the accoutrements of modern stage craft - scaffolds, cables, projectors and wonky screens perched on dented stands.
Comparisons with the Ondaatje talk were interesting. When Sir Robin was asked different versions of, "So tell us: HOW do you do it?" he was happy to respond in a detailed, technical manner... although things became less precise when he was asked WHY he does it: "I don't know... because I love it"... which is an absolutely perfect reason, really.
Comparing audiences was equally fascinating. Ondaatje attracted a certain type. Female: big hair; artfully positioned scarf/brooch; paperback glued to palm of hand; tendency to talk too loudly about 'structure' and 'postmodernism'. Male: overlarge, scruffy coat; shuffling walk; eyes to the ground; man-bag under arm in true urban style. Sir Robin's faithful were quite different. They were older, for a start, and they all looked... well, sorry, but they really did look rather wind-swept, all ruddy cheeks and deep wrinkles. The hair of some of the men was a very outdoors-y shade of grey - if such a thing exists - as though the wind had been blowing through their locks for so long, it had actually frozen the colour right out of them.
Unlike Ondaatje, Sir Robin allowed himself to be animated and passionate on a number of topics, which brings me to the main point I took away from the evening. He has absolutely no time for our excessive reliance on and adherence to health and safety rules, claiming that they can actually end up causing more harm than good because they give people a false sense of security.
Cue this morning's news report that 95% of all British children have been the victims of "criminal" action. Whilst I would never wish to belittle the seriousness of the suffering experienced by anybody, I do question the wisdom of a report which counts "low level ... hitting" and "kicking" on school playgrounds as "criminal" activities. The report goes on to say that greater support must be provided for those on the receiving end of such "victimisation".
Had Sir Robin allowed himself to become a victim of the difficulties he's had to cope with over the years, I doubt he would have achieved his many successes. If he'd heard today's news, I suspect he might have been disheartened by the vision of a whole generation of youngsters demanding support for all of life's problems. Then again, he may well have tutted under his breath, turned the page and allowed himself to be inspired by an article on a voyage which relies completely on advanced technology: NASA's New Horizons probe recently flew past Jupiter and the astonishing images it transmitted to Earth have now been released to the public.
Maybe that's what we should do with the world's health and safety pundits: build a probe just for them and launch them into the asteroid belt... you know... just to give them a better perspective on things back at home...
'Lag' - Thursday 4th October 2007
As far as I'm aware, I've never experienced jet lag. I have been on several long plane journeys but I've obviously not crossed enough time zones to be able to enjoy this experience about which I've heard so many people complain.
I've been trying very hard to get myself into a post-holiday, post-resumption-of-work, post-manic-weekend-rush-of-stuff-that-needs-to-get-done writing routine... and I seem to be achieving tiny nuggets of daily success... but the flip side is that I feel myself sinking into a fog of all the other things that come with writing, like feeling constantly distracted and being unable to focus on what's going on around me. And I wondered if this is what jet lag might feel like.
Nine times out of ten, I write in my room with the door locked, the blinds pulled down, the lights dimmed and my ears plugged with industrial-grade bullet-shaped bits of foam (which don't quite drown out all the noise, but there we are... I suppose I need to retain some vestige of my hearing in case someone on the other side of the door feels the need to shout "Fire" or something...) Cut off and cocooned, I stare at a (very often blank) page or screen for over an hour, trying to think and feel myself into the world of a few imaginary people. By definition, this is a very still activity. The only parts of me that move are my hands and my eyes... and sometimes my feet, as I brush them across the carpet... which is oddly comforting. I sit and think and sit and write and think and cross out and sit and tap and think and write and cross out and think and sit and sit and sit.
And then, when the time feels right, I ease the plugs out of my ears, get up, unlock the door, open it and step from a blue carpet onto a dark pink one, and I might as well be stepping from one planet to another. I have to squint immediately (remember: I've got the lights dimmed in my room) which makes me feel like I've just woken up or stepped off a plane in a country where the sunlight beats off the tarmac like endless lightning. Everything around me feels louder than it normally does, which induces a tortoise-like retreat within my brain. I stretch my arms and my back, but I have to walk around for a few seconds before I feel comfortable with any sort of movement. And although familiar things appear before my eyes - the dining table, the back door, the car keys in a little dish on a shelf - what I'm actually seeing in my head is a scene that exists only on the ink-stained page abandoned in the twilight of the room behind me: a woman avoiding all communication with her husband; a dead baby haunting her parents; a man taking advantage of his wife's terminal illness.
And as I walk from the hall to the lounge - usually my first port of call - it actually feels as though I'm forcing my mind to catch up with my body and travel back into the here and now. But my mind is resistant. It's easier to stay in one place, especially if you know you're going to have to make the trip all over again tomorrow. But I keep walking and invariably someone starts talking to me and I find myself avoiding eye contact, because if I look at them whilst they're speaking, their voice and their mouth aren't quite in sync, which makes me feel even more dislocated, and anyway, it's not as though I can easily grasp what they're saying because all I can hear is a string of words, so I pretend to turn my attention to some terribly important letter that's conveniently been left on the dining table, but of course the person speaking to me realises they're not really being listened to and I try to make an effort to concentrate harder, which has the effect of making my brain more tortoise-like and I wish I were still in my locked room because there the walls don't shudder with noise and the floors don't sway and the light doesn't slice into your eyes...
...and I just wondered if that's what jet lag feels like. That's all.
6 COMMENTS
'Struck continued' - Tuesday 2nd October 2007
Okay, I didn't leap up the stairs and I didn't get a seat in the front row, but I did get carried away... and I did manage to get a couple of minutes to tell Mr Ondaatje about my surreal Kip-Westbury-horse-train experience, which made him laugh, briefly.
It was an inspirational evening, but also frustrating at times, as most of the people in the audience seemed intent on killing time by asking him questions which were essentially different versions of: "So tell us: HOW do you do it?" Unsurprisingly, the only way he could respond was to smile, shrug his shoulders and offer words which were essentially different versions of: "I don't know."
He did say it takes him about five years to write one novel - which was encouraging/depressing/reassuring/terrifying to hear - and that he writes almost every single day. But apart from that, he was pretty circumspect, albeit in an admirable way. His approach to the evening seemed to be that it was an event in which he was obliged to participate because of the realities of the world of publishing, but that didn't mean he was suddenly going to bare his soul and his innermost thoughts to these strangers sitting in front of him. He simply answered everyone's questions politely... and somewhat ponderously. Which was just fine. In fact, it came across as very dignified.
And then, after he'd signed my copies of Divisadero and The English Patient, and the Divine L and I walked back towards Warren Street station, I breathed in the night air and just thought, "I've met Michael Ondaatje. How cool is that?"
'Struck' - Thursday 27th September 2007
Allow me to be star-struck.
This evening, the Divine L and I are attending a talk by one of my favourite living writers: Michael Ondaatje. And I'm getting ever so extremely excited.
Although I'm not entirely sure that I should be.
Margaret Attwood - well known for her dislike of meet-and-greet situations - once said that "wanting to meet a writer because you like their books is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté". I suppose I can understand what she's getting at, but surely her analogy's all wrong. If you like pâté... and if you're interested in food... what's wrong with wanting to meet the chef?
I've been an admirer of Ondaatje's work ever since my heart and head were thrown into a spin during a train journey along the south coast of England which I spent reading The English Patient. (I actually happened to be passing Westbury when I reached the section in the novel where Kip is near the chalk horse... a coincidence slightly too odd for words.) I've read all his other novels, including his latest - Divisadero - which I found beautifully hypnotic. I consider him to be an author whose greatness merits the capital letters in Great Author. I can feel myself coming over all giggly and six-year-old-ish at the thought of maybe being able to go up to him to ask him to sign my book. But another part of me is wondering if I should curb this enthusiasm.
Maybe wanting to meet a writer really is a case of focussing your emotions in the wrong place. Maybe Attwood's point is that once a writer has produced a book, they no longer contain its charms within their person. In relation to the book, they are a cadaver... in the same way that a duck is dead in relation to the pâté it 'helped' produce. Maybe it isn't right to attach some undefinable, almost mystical importance to one person about whom, really, I know next to nothing.
Or maybe this is precisely my problem: that whenever I begin to get excited - say, about an idea for a novel - a voice in my head (always rather haughty, always terribly English) tells me that this simply will not do. "Do please try to restrain yourself" etc etc.
But... no... not this evening, darn it. I WILL get carried way. I WILL leap up the escalators at Warren Street tube station. I WILL try to get a seat as close to the front as possible.
"And what if he turns out to be a disappointment, dear boy?"
Shut up!
'Footwork' - Tuesday 25th September 2007
 The Divine L and I went for our second salsa dancing lesson last night. Yes, really. The hour-long session is full of opportunities for fiction... especially the part when we swap partners every two minutes. But the most powerful thing the instructor said yesterday was - surprise surprise - that you've got to get the footwork right - you've got to make the steps second nature - before you can bring some flair into the sway of those hips. Learn to do what everybody else does first, then begin to make it your own.
That reminded me of a Radio 4 Thought For The Day I heard the other week. I was so moved by it, that I was determined to listen to it again on the Net and transcribe it... but it was taken off the site before I could get to it. Essentially, it was a meditation on the celebrations surrounding the Jewish new year, with their emphasis on familiar rituals. In a style more eloquent than I can manage, the Chief Rabbi described how we must be wary of abandoning routines and rules in our culture as they add rhythm and tempo of our lives.
Structure liberates. A cliche, I know... but then, at the moment, it isn't fashionable to acknowledge the power of cliches either.
Changing the subject, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that I've added a blog-style Comments feature to this site which allows you to share your views on individual diary posts. So please click on the link right below this paragraph and type away.
'Details' - Tuesday 4th September 2007
One of the many things I love about going on holiday is the wealth of new details which I'm able to bring home with me as souvenirs. Like:
If you leave a piece of kebab on the side of your plate at a stall in Marrakesh's Djmaa El Fnaa square, the hand of a beggar appears from the surrounding shadows and whisks it away.
Figs and dates blended with cinnamon and cumin make a fantastic drink.
The zebra crossing lights in Granada feature a 30 second countdown and an animated image of a man who walks faster and faster as the countdown reaches zero.
Cars should not be allowed in Arcos De La Frontera.
MacDonald's in Marrakesh is a magnet for Ferraris and prostitutes.
Couscous tastes the same wherever you go.
Wi-fi sounds much cooler when it's pronounced "wee-fee".
You can't walk around Seville Cathedral and be angry at the same time.
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