from an email
Occassionally I find myself staring into space and going on all sorts of thought-journeys. On one the other day I ended up in my the arts department corridor, in front of an office door marked JM Coetzee... my second visit. He looks at me from piles of paper with my markings all over me and says "Keep writing. You're doing fine." I go outside again and rejoice, because finally, irrefutably, I know I'm good. I also know with a sinking sadness that I'll never write again. It has all been for that one moment when I am confirmed, externalised. That has all it has been about, the recent years of failed attempts. Validation and complicity of genius. Acceptance into the Literati, the enlightened masters of prose who have transcended the banal to expose it to itself, to *know* the common man more than he knows himself, and so, while forced to live amongst them, he has power of them. He is an intellectual God.
But that's not what it was always about. I used to write stories for fun. They were godawful, they were derivative, they were not genius, but I suppose that doesn't matter. They were honest. That's enough.
So after that little vision, given my current mood, I wonder if I am going through another typical Stew-change, or more likely, advanced-adolescent-change, in which an entire personality quietly blows away like a season and the geography is the same but the surface is not. The subtle difference, the three degree alteration of temperature which creates the spark of life. Or maybe not. That's the joy of being human, isn't it! Oh, shut up Bartleby.
But that's not what it was always about. I used to write stories for fun. They were godawful, they were derivative, they were not genius, but I suppose that doesn't matter. They were honest. That's enough.
So after that little vision, given my current mood, I wonder if I am going through another typical Stew-change, or more likely, advanced-adolescent-change, in which an entire personality quietly blows away like a season and the geography is the same but the surface is not. The subtle difference, the three degree alteration of temperature which creates the spark of life. Or maybe not. That's the joy of being human, isn't it! Oh, shut up Bartleby.