“At the end of a Storm” Vol.5
Why I write
“Why I Write”
A brief meander and ramble through tales of dark blue ink stains, a fresh sheet of paper and a head full of tangential dreams
21st November 2021
As far back as those dreaded days of junior school and spilling “Quink” everywhere (and as I wrote so hard I often snapped the nib of the infuriating fountain pens we had to use) I honestly remember, distinctly, and vividly so, writing my first “story” at school and was maybe 10/11 years of age, and I remember it for two main reasons (1) my style of writing even then and (2) being chided by my classmates for writing in such in a way.
I remember commencing a story with this, Shakespeare like opening:
“What you bin doin?”
Not exactly Pulitzer Prize stuff I grant you, but I remember even back then wanting to and creating a character who talked incorrectly and in the dialect of where I was born. Correct grammar and copious amounts of spilled ink dictate my opening should read “What have you been doing?”, however been was bin where I came from and you dropped your ending “g” almost as a rite of local passage! I remember this all these years later as I recounted this story to the “Angel on my Shoulders” this week and it made her smile, so that’s always “Mission Accomplished” as far as I’m concerned. But I liked what I’d written and probably liked it even more as my classmates ribbed me and the teacher no doubt stamped her feet in fury that I wasn’t using correct grammar and that bloody ink pot has fallen over again!
I don’t recall writing much at Senior School (ages 12–16 here in the UK) but I do again very distinctly remember writing a lot at Portsmouth 6th Form College (now simply Portsmouth College) and one essay in particular on the Hillsborough Disaster in April 1989 when 97 Liverpool football fans were unlawfully killed for simply attending a game of football. At the time there were 94 confirmed deaths and the unlawful killing verdict took over two generations to finally bring a semblance of justice to the thousands of families directly or indirectly involved, but I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the human tragedy of being relieved I wasn’t in attendance (I went to a lot of Liverpool games in this season but not this particular game), of sending a scarf of mine with a friend who was journeying to Liverpool to pay his respects, and of the utterly devastating scenes that dominated our mid-April television screens. My English tutor (a name I sadly can’t recall) praised me like no other for my writing and although it was a highly emotive time and no doubt my writing was passionately emotive too, I’d like to think he was praising me for a well written piece as an awkward 17 year old rather than softening the heartache of the tragedy with some kind words.
Who knows?
As I journeyed into the terrain of gainful employment I wrote a lot too, but more in email form and always, always to the frustration of whomever read those pixelated mails of electronic doom. For I do love a good ramble! And so every email, whether I was restricting credit on a poorly paying insurance broker or trying to close a huge deal on a multi million pound council housing contract, every email was like a twisted “War and Peace”. My employers only ever wanted the “skinny” of my story but each and every time I rambled on why a certain insurance broker was good for the credit as he’s a man of local renown, a rotary club member and plays Father Christmas in the Town Square every year, or why the deal fell on stoney ground because the CEO of the Council hated every member of my back up team, and here’s the reasons why. In between all came the advent of The Matrix, sorry, Internet, and yet another stage for me to ramble and write, and email and frustrate the recipients of the multitude of my electronic prose.
In 2012 I started a film blog as a response to a heart breaking 11 year relationship break up and I dived headlong into a passion project as a self defence mechanism to my heart break and wrote some impassioned, long, outspoken, spoiler free, but very human and very me film reviews. As my dear friend “Brother Andy” remarked to me recently, reading a blog of mine is akin to hearing me talk, and no finer a compliment can a simple man receive. Whether in my film blog archives or now here, this is me, warts, grammatical errors too, and all. This encapsulates one of many reasons why I write and why I enjoy writing, being me, entertaining myself, staring wistfully into the long distance and thinking about my Dad, then linking those thoughts to the film “Field of Dreams”, and shrouding the developing tale still in my head at this time of my hometown, my life since leaving home, how I dearly miss the rapier wit of that old rascal who was my Dad, and how because of him I can no longer watch a film about baseball that isn’t actually baseball. Either the literal blank sheet of paper or the blank sheet of an overactive mind can be thrilling for me as I immediately jot down a simple idea in my notebook and days/hours/minutes later I’m adding to the note with a possible tangent or an idea for another mini story.
Strangely, and quixotically, this isn’t actually me at all, the blank paper example. That blank sheet of unknowing and uncertainty in real life crushes me and is a symptom of the lowest of all my possible moods. The questions of “What am I going to do?” really destabilise me in so called “real life” and my usual answer is “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”. But here, or with a red pen and a notebook full of empty pages I’m as happy as my curmudgeonly self will allow. Memories are a big reason for writing too (for personal familial reasons) and I’ve always been a person who looks back rather than forward, but rather than dwelling on a past that’s gone and worrying about a future that hasn’t happened sitting in an armchair and feeling sorry for myself I’m endeavouring to use this for it’s advantages rather than dropping deeper into a dark moody chasm. I’ve written a lot in such a short space of time on friends, friendships and how much I value the human beings behind the titles of “Matt” or “Marc” (for comedy effect I wish there were a “Luke” and a “John” but there aren’t) or “Leri” or a “Brother Andy” who isn’t my brother, or an “Older Lady” who forgave my childish love of the pop group “Take That”. I’m guilty of remembering my friends as they were when I left my hometown in 1999 and so here, if they so choose, can see me writing about them (mainly anonymously) and in my own way saying hello, keeping in touch, and showing them perhaps that whilst I’m not the person they remember in 1999, I can still spin a tale and often think fondly of them as I weave them into the narrative.
I’ve written some “opus” blogs hence far and I doubt this will be changing any time soon. I’ve lamented at the leaving of my hometown, my parents, friends, lost loves, my obsession with Radiohead and my football team and the films that have kept me company over the years. I’ll never write on a singular topic or compose a straight A-Z story as that’s not my style and therein is perhaps a perfect juncture at which to end this brief ramble on why I write.
The blank sheet of writing paper enables me to be me, for good or ill. I don’t particularly have time for an identity crisis as I’m constantly in an enveloping existential angst crisis but the theme of being me, true to me, authentically spoken and without hiding behind a mask is so important to me and a struggle I succumbed to in working life, conforming, wearing a corporate mask, saying the correct thing at the correct time. Who’s got time for all that? I certainly don’t any more.
So this is me now, writing as me and being as positive about being me as I’ve been in a long while.
I started writing the film blog as a self defence against heart break and to prove to myself I could write and/or be a writer about film. I’m immensely proud of that old blog and selfishly I hope I proved to myself that I can indeed write about my favourite directors and the cinematic gems they concoct. I’m immensely proud of this blog too, and I’m pleased it’s evolving in ways I didn’t anticipate or plan. I’d also like to think this is somewhat of a written record that maybe just maybe, my young teenage son will read and have a fuller appreciation of the soft hearted weirdo figure he calls Dad.
So thank you for following/reading this as I never make assumptions that anyone will do either. That’s another beauty of writing, the unknowing of an audience reaction and if there’s an audience reaction at all. I am my audience first and foremost and everything I write, even a 2 line ditty on Twitter has to pass my internal editor before it’s released to the world. But thank you, sincerely, for being part of my audience here.
In the words of my great literary hero Hunter S Thompson, “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”.
Stay weird everyone.
“Why I write” can also be found as the 46th and penultimate chapter inside my recently self-published book “At the end of a Storm”.
"At the end of a Storm" - available via Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
They killed people just for attending a football match in '89? Wow; the thought of being killed attending a game would make a lot of North American sports fans sober up!