KOMI SHARES

Just dropping a note to say that I've now headed over to Substack to throw down wonderings and whatnot there. I never really did make the most of being here on tumblr (whoops) but ja.

I'm seeing how that works for me in terms of sharing my writer's journey and whatnot.

Hoping Substack will stick.

Why is not enough?

There are several seasons of the show, which, by the grace of our latest technology, we are able to re-watch to our hearts' desire.

The show was inspired by a film, already seen by multiple generations.

There's the music soundtracks you can play literally anytime, anywhere. Lo-fi remixes abound for your study time.

There's the merch, official or fan-made.

The BTS chopped into smaller Tiktoks, regurgitated to you ad nauseam thanks to your algorithm.

The video game.

The DVD commentaries.

The conventions.

The board games.

The fan-fictions.

The cosplay parties.

The books that either inspired the whole 'IP' to begin with or came after, in a bid to ooze out more of that money juice for the corps(es).

The televised 10-year reunions.

The 20th year anniversary Zoom calls with the cast.

Yet ...

'We hear the fans' call to continue to visit the world,' they tell us. This is for '...all the fans who never stopped asking for this.'

So, are we the public (fans), nothing more than a gluttonous beast, whose insatiable appetite is immeasurable? What would that creature look like, if rendered as an illustration?

I think therefore, I will revise the statement above to: [to] .... all the fans who never stopped asking for this can never let go. Who cannot abide an ending. A real ending. A real death.

When ... when the greatest irony is that storytelling is about one thing and one thing only: how we live - and then, that we, as with everything made up of matter, always, always die.

The greater irony still is that by doing so, we asphyxiate the creative world - for if there is no death, there is no life, no real renewal, only corpses re-animated. There is no room for NEW life. There is no air with which to breathe new life. How we've yanked away room for the novel ... how we choke away the actual refreshing next thing...

So here lies the insiduous hidden consequence of not accepting the passing of time and of death: our stories too have become tarnished, as a bouquet of flowers that bloomed to give us transient joy is now desperately watered, even when it's beyond reviving, dried out, its flowers wilted, utterly spent, begging to be buried.

Yes, it seems it is not enough to content ourselves with keeping these stories largely in our memory; sometimes near, sometimes so far to be almost forgotten until a passing remark from a friend revives it in our mind. With such catalogues of content (as above) we can go 'revisit' and warm ourselves, after all.

Yet ...

It is not enough.

And I see one thing in my mind only: a morbid scene of gravediggers, churning up dirt to drag out the dead, limp story ... and we, the public, rejoice?

This time I actually thought about rhythm and structure for this. In the past, poetry has been an excuse to get down more lyrical, song-like prose from my head but without much thought to poetry as a crafted form. So I went back and read and re-read it about ten times, adjusting as I went (I got stuck like a broken record on the word 'our' and whether it was one syllable or not. In Southern / RP English, it's one - 'ow' - but when you really sit down and articulate it, there's no way it sounds like one - 'ow-a' - right??) . Paradoxically, I probably strayed into over-writing or overthinking some parts of this, so then wondered whether I'd diluted or lost some of the urgent despair and precision of the first draft, the first expulsion, the instinctive stuff.

A long journey but a worthy end, one where I got to do some directing -- and for my first narrative documentary. It was long while ago since we filmed it and post production took awhile but so thrilled to finally be able to share the story of FACTORY EAST. Led by the generous Jack Ramadan of Bow, East London, it's a charity to help the young people in East London and provide a safe space to grow and transform.

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On a more personal note, travelling solo is always a bit nerve-wracking. Even though I've done it loads. But I'm so glad each time I do. It's always the most exceptional time. And this trip in particular, is stand out. But the thing, it doesn't even sound spectacular really, it was just a short country break where I spent a few hours in the moors one day, took a few snaps of the hotel grounds I was staying at and then curled up with a book in front of a roaring fire in a grand room. Even so, each moment was sublime. And I don't know, after this very strange, weird and heavy year, maybe my spirit soared on this trip precisely because it had been a heavy, weird year and so it revelled it being in the midst of this beautiful, dramatic place - but asking nothing of it, other than to request 'May I stay a short while and soak in the exquisiteness?'

Aquas are so 'aloof'

A few months ago I got asked by my fellow creative and good friend, Adam El-Sharawy to come on to his podcast, 'Living Creative'. Even though he said it's just a chance for us as friends to catch up, I had my reservations. What meaningful or interesting stuff would I talk about? I am often plagued by not being very 'successful' or 'known.' Even then, I thought, well let's give it a go. I am mindful that the only way to get more known and visible is to put my self out there, in well, a more visible way. Sod whether a lot of people know me or follow me or whatever, or whether I am talking about anything that's super interesting or not. Not a great sell, right? But anyhow, if you were a bit intrigued about how I am, more so in the flesh, as it were, then voila, please check it out. I talk mythology (obviously), my writing, work-life as a someone who writes outside their day job.

Time. A terribly obvious answer. Pathetically so. Nothing revelatory, new or clever. A 'goes without saying' kind of answer so why say it and risk the 'duh' response and rolling of eyes?

Painful truths come painfully round and round again, like a broken turn of a Wheel of Fortune, doomed to have you end up on the same wedge. So here it comes around for the umpteenth time for me, again, not in a revelatory capacity but rather as a repetitious reminder as banal as 'remember to put the dishwasher on again.' The reminder made evident in the tracking of one's word count. Now word count in of itself is not the only metric to measure one's writerly success, published or otherwise but it is the key one in actually getting a manuscript completed. You have to put the words in, otherwise no book/story is completed (another pathetically obvious point).

So in a bid to go forward with clarity (rather than the kind of complexity this kind of subject tends to warrant or we indulge in), I am looking at word count and word count alone to measure the success of me being a writer, in getting the job done. Thanks to the handy 'Writing history' function within Scrivener, I can see that recently, my best time was March of this year, where I wrote 25,000 words. Not a humungous amount, granted but in my own personal context, an unmatched output for years. It is only today that I have had any meaningful output at all - eight months down the line. There is no great mystery to puzzle over here. In March and April I was on sabbatical. I had nothing else to do other than write, go for walks in South Gloucestershire or Somerset, generally feed myself, watch some TV and read. I worried for a hot second I would actually twiddle my thumbs and get precious little writing done but no, I did not. The freedom was such that I knew I would be making good progress if I wrote 2-3 hours solidly and then had the rest of the day to myself. I nearly finished another novel.

This kind of output hadn't been seen since 2014 - a good while ago now, much to my shock. In 2014, I wrote a 120,000 word novel in nine months. In 2014, I worked four days a week. By 2017, I was in a situation for the first time in my adult life: in a full time, five day working week. Like some weird ruse, one day extra sucked up all the time I had. It sounds dramatic when I say it like that but time is a weird trickster and can be rather screwy. Talk to anyone who has gone from working two days in the office to three. Why does that one extra day tip the whole balance of your week off? How is that possible?

I'm not sure why I write this other than to say the only way I get any kind of meaningful writing done is when I clear up my schedule of the day job. Again, nothing clever, interesting or newly insightful. I echo a million other voices who dejectedly know this to be their truth too, who constantly struggle with the balance (enter thoughts like: do I get up earlier and sacrifice sleep? Do I go to writing retreats that encourage me to get the manuscript done? Do I ask my friends to set me deadlines? Do I write for 15-minute bursts a day? Do I write at work when there's 'down time'? Do I reject socialising in the short term and just focus?)

She's utterly unremarkable. A life of a little garden not barren, not much to look at either. Unachieved, unreported, uninspiring, unmotivated. A marking, a patch of a life, to signify such that 'a person exists', one day to be 'a person existed.'

She's no wonder, no marvel, nor is she resplendent marble in the galaxy of nebular glory. She blinks and blinked, lost in a haze of pinpoint lights in a lazy stargaze. What if I told you she wept too many times to count? That she stuck out her lip as a child to concentrate but lost the trait in a bid to grow up and be more as young women should be? That she yelled when she was angry and cried when she was furious because the world told her, showed her words weren't enough? That she traced out lines and sketches in a bid to make friends, to signify a commonality that they could initiate over. That she grew cold in the bath when her mother talked of her father's pride in her though it would mean going on without dear friends. That it was the first time she clammed up and thrust her own will deep down and that it would become a skill she would develop. That she loved the warm water cascade in a shower and summoned imagined worlds and imagined creatures between the steam. That she walked streets for love of walking streets, like that would be her life long act forever, a solitary scheme, listening for the different feels against her feet. That as she got older, she saw no charming portal in the door, saw no strange enchanting light bouncing off a puddle in the alleyway, saw no way to the magic lands, so magic became only the domain of books and imagination. That she once raced across a beach at low tide, ready to meet the sea, keep going into the sea, and never stop. That she unknowingly grieved when a wiser man told her that fathers are the universe and mothers are the Earth and what that meant for her life, in that case. That she had the Earth but no universe and no universal force. So she would remain a garden. Present and potential-less. That she felt exceptional when she stood up to read, that she revered the honour of being allowed to speak. That she knew herself to be dark and brutish but knowing she was built no other way. That she was loud and vocal with her dear ones but not one of them cared for it. That her own presence and sense of self could displease and discomfort. That she loved to hear from others in equal measure and it was good to listen to those around you. That she always had unkempt hair, never just tidy but rather tied back to what approx­imated neatness. That she slouched awfully most times, a consequence of persistent discomfort or pain in the abdomen, so she developed a habit of crouching forward. That she-made the vision board, wrote the screenplays, penned the one week, then month, then year, then five year plans, paid for the therapy, made progress and then made none at all. That she felt sorry for herself so many times as an adult, her teenage self would have been disgusted. That she began to wonder about nonexistence. That she tried so hard to reach and collaborate and engage but it never seemed to stick. That she began to see herself as a flitting leaf in all things. And she could not see, could not dance, could not breathe.

You step outside your door. The cold catches in your throat, the sun so strong it makes you squint. The immediate shift in the atmosphere from inside to out is evident, as if you’ve stepped into new skin. Your boots reassure you as you regard them on your feet. The crunch of the gravel is a welcome beat. 

A melody now joins in: a voice. It beckons you take the path through the bracken over there, so you open the small iron gate, the clang of the lock slips back into place. The leaves crunch, the shade of the trees casts over you in twos and threes. You sense your self has shifted into a new realm, making way for being. And that’s where I exist: the voice; your link, your companion beyond the world of ‘think.’  

I direct you to reach out and touch the hawthorn blossom, to glance through the branches at the sparrows hopping. I want you to know what you’ve been missing, when you’ve been closed off and cordoned in your homestead dwelling. I want to keep talking to you as much as I can, for I know that I’m ultimately banned when you return to those civilised spaces; homes, streets, cities and towns, all of the places fenced around. 

You’ve not recognised me yet, you’ve not given me name. You think it’s your mind communing with you, to you it’s all the same. Even so, deep down in your bones, you appreciate my rhythms and tones are different, distinct and in sync with the babble of the brook, the snail on its trail, the owl in its nook. 

Though I’m inside you, even deeper than your marrow and veins, I also exist outside of your body, a transference for change.  

For now I’ll call you to a particular glade, marked by the oldest oak at the north end and here you’ll come to meditate. Even on days where you’ve told yourself to skip that path, for you came the day just past, you will be pulled here nevertheless. My hope will be that it’s not too late, for as a human you’ve already aged too much and as such, the link may never rise. I’ve asked for help from the Mother of the Wild but for now this will be a compromise.

THE LOOKOUT

Eight roses rest on the stone shelf of the arched window. Bright pink petals in the light of the bright spring sun. Eight roses for each one of you lost to us, lost to me. They lie pointing north across the bay to another country, just in hazy view, the picture split by the deep golden sandbank revealed only at low tide.

I turn to look left, not ready to look ahead.