Maladjusted
"All I can say is that my life is pretty plain. You don't like my point of view. You think that I'm insane. Its not sane, its not sane."
Drunk again. This is the same state in which I've spent the last two nights. I haven't slept and my body clock has gone all to hell. Funny, but this feels like a more natural state to me. I feel like I do my best work when I'm all fucked up and out of synch. Sober and straight and dodging insomnia, I work to a schedule and get nothing done, sleeping and working at The Toby Carvery and chatting to Jenn. Some of these things I enjoy, others I don't. But the simple fact is that I get nothing done.
These last couple of nights have seen me slipping back into my old pattern. I sleep all day, work until midnight, then come home and type until the early hours. Jenn was at school on Monday and had to write an essay last night. This left me at a loose end, and I used the time to work on various stories and - eventually - a letter I'd been meaning to write for some time. Between Friday and today, I have written maybe 30,000 words. That's more than I've managed in some time, and a lot of it was stuff I know I'll still be proud of ten years down the road.
That's a part of what makes it so hard for me to straighten myself out and lead some kind of normal existence. In routine and structure I am impotent. I write, but the words don't really flow. It all makes sense, but it seems empty and cold. It's like writing as a practical exercise. There's no real feeling.
Yesterday, I wrote part 3 of Lanterns And Shades. I chased it with a fluff porn story I wanted to get out of my system. I followed that with a letter to Jenn that ran maybe 5,000 words and was probably the most honest, blunt, and true thing I've ever composed. I don't think it was good, I know it was. Sometimes, as a writer, you read the things you've just written and can be sure that wherever they go, they will have an impact. That's how I feel about that letter. Jenn's at school today, and hasn't replied. Hell, maybe she hasn't even read it yet. But I feel sure that when she does, it will touch her. That was my intent, and I feel that this is one of the few occasions when ambition and result speak the same language.
At 7:30 this morning I was in the bath, reading Richard E. Grant's film diaries. At 8:30, I was making burgers from mincemeat and cheese and paprika. At 9:30 I was in bed, watching film after film after film until five o'clock, when I had to get up and get ready for work. I finished at ten because I was tired and there were two of us on the bar where only one was required. I'd intended to come straight back home, but I ended up drinking with a group of builders that have been staying at the hotel for the last few weeks, exchanging idle chatter until a little after midnight, when I staggered back home and immediately opened a bottle of red wine. Tiredness has passed, and I am now doing my laundry and updating all that needs to be updated. When I am done with this post, I plan to open up a fresh, clean Word document, type the words Welcome To Forever at the top, and go to work. I've been planning to do just that for weeks, maybe months, and it just hasn't happened. Now, at the point where I am giving up on quitting smoking and drinking, where I am falling into old and damaging habits, I finally feel as though my mind is in the right place and there are enough hours in the day that I can actually get some work done.
I don't know if it's just this novel or if it's my creativity in general, but I find that I am at my best when it's six or seven in the morning and I'm drunk and without sleep. In that state, the words are natural and powerful. I don't even have to think about it. My mind races and my fingers scurry over the keys in a vain attempt to keep up. Everything wants to be ten or twenty thousand words. Everything is easy. Everything reads as though written by a man with a talent and a firm eye on where it will take him. Worries and insecurities fade away, and I feel as though anything is possible. I feel as though nobody can write like I can.
I want to quit smoking and drinking so much. I want to be in control of myself. I want to be safe and sane and in control. I want to drop the extra weight I've gained through unemplyoment and settle down each night to work on a novel that I really think could be great. Problem is, I'm no good at doing any of these things, and they bring me nothing but pain. When I can dull that pain, when I can twist it and turn it to my advantage, when the words and the thoughts and the feelings flow, when I can do it without ever worrying about it, that's when I do my best work.
In a truly pretentious and slightly horrifying way, I need to be destroying myself for my art to be truly representative. I need the cancers to be inevitable, the control to be lost. I need my head spinning and my heart beating fast. I need to be real, casting aside all the baggage I carry around with me when I'm straight and whole. I need to be fractured and broken and real.
That's my reality. That's my forever. I just can't see myself as somebody well-adjusted and confident at the wheel. It isn't any fun unless there's a chance that you just might crash through the barriers and bring an end to this ride that can only be destructive. In a way, that's exactly what I want. It terrifies me, but I see it as a kind of inescapable destiny. I am incapable of saving myself.
Don't think that I don't see the lights of friendship and love. I do. It's just that I am naturally cynical and downbeat. That's almost the point of the story I'm trying to write, of my life. While part of me searches for something or someone that can pull me out of this freefall, another part searches only for what I'm feeling, and for new and painful ways to put it into words. I find a kind of desolate romance in that, and it drives me to the alcohol and the nicotine and the strange high that rushes through me when I've been up for three days and I'm typing to beat the devil.
Maybe you don't understand that. Maybe you don't want to. Maybe you see me as a friend or as some kind of presence in your life, and the idea that I might want to destroy myself is abhorrent to you. Maybe you think I should just cheer the fuck up and find something that makes me happy. Hell, maybe you're right.
I can't stop. There's a scream inside me that never fades away. I have to drown it in booze and articulate it in these strings of letter and word and paragraph and story. If I don't, I feel I might go insane. I feel that this metaphorical scream will become real, and that once I open my lungs and let it out, I won't be able to stop.
I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense to you, if you think I'm something or someone that I'm not. I can only be me, and I can only ever do the things that I will do. Everything else is a lie.
Drunk again. This is the same state in which I've spent the last two nights. I haven't slept and my body clock has gone all to hell. Funny, but this feels like a more natural state to me. I feel like I do my best work when I'm all fucked up and out of synch. Sober and straight and dodging insomnia, I work to a schedule and get nothing done, sleeping and working at The Toby Carvery and chatting to Jenn. Some of these things I enjoy, others I don't. But the simple fact is that I get nothing done.
These last couple of nights have seen me slipping back into my old pattern. I sleep all day, work until midnight, then come home and type until the early hours. Jenn was at school on Monday and had to write an essay last night. This left me at a loose end, and I used the time to work on various stories and - eventually - a letter I'd been meaning to write for some time. Between Friday and today, I have written maybe 30,000 words. That's more than I've managed in some time, and a lot of it was stuff I know I'll still be proud of ten years down the road.
That's a part of what makes it so hard for me to straighten myself out and lead some kind of normal existence. In routine and structure I am impotent. I write, but the words don't really flow. It all makes sense, but it seems empty and cold. It's like writing as a practical exercise. There's no real feeling.
Yesterday, I wrote part 3 of Lanterns And Shades. I chased it with a fluff porn story I wanted to get out of my system. I followed that with a letter to Jenn that ran maybe 5,000 words and was probably the most honest, blunt, and true thing I've ever composed. I don't think it was good, I know it was. Sometimes, as a writer, you read the things you've just written and can be sure that wherever they go, they will have an impact. That's how I feel about that letter. Jenn's at school today, and hasn't replied. Hell, maybe she hasn't even read it yet. But I feel sure that when she does, it will touch her. That was my intent, and I feel that this is one of the few occasions when ambition and result speak the same language.
At 7:30 this morning I was in the bath, reading Richard E. Grant's film diaries. At 8:30, I was making burgers from mincemeat and cheese and paprika. At 9:30 I was in bed, watching film after film after film until five o'clock, when I had to get up and get ready for work. I finished at ten because I was tired and there were two of us on the bar where only one was required. I'd intended to come straight back home, but I ended up drinking with a group of builders that have been staying at the hotel for the last few weeks, exchanging idle chatter until a little after midnight, when I staggered back home and immediately opened a bottle of red wine. Tiredness has passed, and I am now doing my laundry and updating all that needs to be updated. When I am done with this post, I plan to open up a fresh, clean Word document, type the words Welcome To Forever at the top, and go to work. I've been planning to do just that for weeks, maybe months, and it just hasn't happened. Now, at the point where I am giving up on quitting smoking and drinking, where I am falling into old and damaging habits, I finally feel as though my mind is in the right place and there are enough hours in the day that I can actually get some work done.
I don't know if it's just this novel or if it's my creativity in general, but I find that I am at my best when it's six or seven in the morning and I'm drunk and without sleep. In that state, the words are natural and powerful. I don't even have to think about it. My mind races and my fingers scurry over the keys in a vain attempt to keep up. Everything wants to be ten or twenty thousand words. Everything is easy. Everything reads as though written by a man with a talent and a firm eye on where it will take him. Worries and insecurities fade away, and I feel as though anything is possible. I feel as though nobody can write like I can.
I want to quit smoking and drinking so much. I want to be in control of myself. I want to be safe and sane and in control. I want to drop the extra weight I've gained through unemplyoment and settle down each night to work on a novel that I really think could be great. Problem is, I'm no good at doing any of these things, and they bring me nothing but pain. When I can dull that pain, when I can twist it and turn it to my advantage, when the words and the thoughts and the feelings flow, when I can do it without ever worrying about it, that's when I do my best work.
In a truly pretentious and slightly horrifying way, I need to be destroying myself for my art to be truly representative. I need the cancers to be inevitable, the control to be lost. I need my head spinning and my heart beating fast. I need to be real, casting aside all the baggage I carry around with me when I'm straight and whole. I need to be fractured and broken and real.
That's my reality. That's my forever. I just can't see myself as somebody well-adjusted and confident at the wheel. It isn't any fun unless there's a chance that you just might crash through the barriers and bring an end to this ride that can only be destructive. In a way, that's exactly what I want. It terrifies me, but I see it as a kind of inescapable destiny. I am incapable of saving myself.
Don't think that I don't see the lights of friendship and love. I do. It's just that I am naturally cynical and downbeat. That's almost the point of the story I'm trying to write, of my life. While part of me searches for something or someone that can pull me out of this freefall, another part searches only for what I'm feeling, and for new and painful ways to put it into words. I find a kind of desolate romance in that, and it drives me to the alcohol and the nicotine and the strange high that rushes through me when I've been up for three days and I'm typing to beat the devil.
Maybe you don't understand that. Maybe you don't want to. Maybe you see me as a friend or as some kind of presence in your life, and the idea that I might want to destroy myself is abhorrent to you. Maybe you think I should just cheer the fuck up and find something that makes me happy. Hell, maybe you're right.
I can't stop. There's a scream inside me that never fades away. I have to drown it in booze and articulate it in these strings of letter and word and paragraph and story. If I don't, I feel I might go insane. I feel that this metaphorical scream will become real, and that once I open my lungs and let it out, I won't be able to stop.
I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense to you, if you think I'm something or someone that I'm not. I can only be me, and I can only ever do the things that I will do. Everything else is a lie.
posted by Michael at 6:54 PM
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