I am actually rather astonished by it. I did not expect it, I did not look for it, but I have found it and I am just beginning to feel like the cat that has the cream.
Last autumn I had a revelation. There are many things I haven't done because folks have told me I'm not terribly good at them. They were right too, that's not the point, and I thank them for their frank appraisals, because without them, this would not have happened.
Some time around 1984 my voice broke; I stopped singing, and for good reason. I went from being in school & Boys Brigade choirs where I did quite a lot of singing, to being a bit rubbish. I couldn't hit a note, and I couldn't control my new 'voice' that sounded like a herring gull in the wrong register.
I tried to do drawings and paintings. They were rubbish. People said so. They were right. So I stopped doing them. And so it was with other pursuits.
But the revelation came last year when I was musing how I have missed these things. I don't do them because I'm not good at them, but I miss them. And, in an unusually reckless moment, I came to a conclusion. "Fuck that" I thought. "Just do them".
I remember thinking that I had stopped doing these things because other people didn't like the result of them. OK, so my artwork was dire. But you know what? I can hit a note. And as I recently proved to myself in an underground car-park - I actually can sing. I'll never get rich from it. I may even get asked nicely to stop sometimes. But bloody hell it felt good!
The car-park was my turning point. I had to transpose up a bit, but I belted out Libera me Domine (the Fauré, natch) and my voice filled the space. I filled the space. It was a liquid warm thing, sloshing around the pillars and air ducts, splashing everything as I threw it from me.
And when I stopped, and the resonance slowly faded, I had a gleeful smile, and I did a little dance of joy.
ha! you're thinking. He's found singing again.
WRONG.
Well, OK, not wrong. I have, but that's not what's inspired this post.
I have found something quieter and softer and something I can do without waking the neighbours.
I have found writing.
I'm doing it. But I'm doing it for me, doing it and sometimes posting it up on the interwebs for all to point at if they choose but I honestly couldn't give a damn. The feeling of ideas flowing through my fingers, crafting the balance and nuance, pairing words (like that) and just letting it flow from me... it is joyous. It's like the sun coming out.
I was talking to a chum on Twitter about Thoreau and his turn of phrase, and I wanted to mention Plath and poets that I love and I realised that what I wanted to do was actually write something.
Now that I have realised that this writing is for me, not for anybody else, I have been released from the tyranny of anticipated judgement to immerse myself in the simple act of it, the product isn't important because it's defined by the act; now I realise that something comes to me, it flows, and I am discovering it as I do it, the joy of it. I could sit here and do it for hours, I think... and despite the two-hour interruption I just had, I can pick it up where I left off and nobody will ever know!
Maybe it's a thing that comes with age, this ability to do things for the joy of them. Things that I would have been concerned about doing because I was always worried about the purpose of the act - what are you writing? Why are you writing it? What are you going to do with it? What, ultimately, is the point?
Never before had I realised that the point is that I like writing, and most importantly that enjoying it is enough (something I remember reading a year ago - see Vonnegut's note on Joe Heller's understanding of enough on Maria Popova's truly wonderful brainpickings site)
You might be wondering if this is a self-confidence thing. It's not that I don't do things because I don't have the confidence. I don't want to do them for others, I want to simply do it. I know I'm not great at them, that doesn't matter. It's not about self confidence, it's about self expression.
It's not about doing, it's about being.
So.
I am going to write.
Probably quite a lot.
I might put some of it up here.
It's for me, and you're all very welcome to look.
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