somethings+nothings

Aside from the sporadic bit of data entry, most of my morning in work has been taken up reading various essays, columns, bits, articles and pieces by various authors and writers about why they do so. 

Currently I’m reading a response from Cheryl Strayed, in an agony-aunt style, to a despairing Elissa Bassist (click here if you want to read it). Both pieces are fantastically written. I don’t mean from a technical sense - though I’m sure they are, I am nowhere near qualified enough to pass that kind of judgement - but rather from how their respective ‘letters’ read. 

For the liveliness and evoking self-doubt that Elissa Bassist puts across, and for Cheryl Strayed’s composed yet simultaneously empathetic relation to frantic, crumbling self-belief, for those aspects alone the piece is worth anybody’s time (especially if, like myself, you have an interest in writing).

What’s really hit me about this bit of writing though is the way that Cheryl Strayed shines a light on some of the qualities of being a writer. Again, I cannot (and do not mean to) claim any kind of authority on what constitutes “being a writer”, but for the purpose of how I related to this piece of writing let’s say that you don’t have to be a successful author or journalist to fit that title.

Actually, in fairness, it’s not just Cheryl Strayed that mentions some of these, but also Elissa Bassist. Those qualities include: narcissism, arrogance, assertiveness, self-belief. Or rather, those are the connotations I associated to what they mentioned, which has not only prompted this little thought piece but also has me questioning my perception of writers.

That’s not to say that I think all writers share those personality traits. No. Instead, I think, it means that my perception of being a good writer (and my perception of the quality of ‘good’, where writing is concerned) requires those qualities, to certain extents. Is that a bad thing, or should it be considered so? 

If the result is the kind of writing that both Elissa Bassist and Cheryl Strayed have produced, in this article alone, then I don’t see how anyone could argue that it could be. Both writers address their own dealings with such qualities, and as I read these confessions, there was nothing to them that lead me to resent what they had said. I didn’t think of them as bragging about themselves, but instead as being so completely frank about their tendencies that there’s almost a nobility to their honesty.

What’s more is I agree with the principle of the argument. Perhaps it comes from youth, or expectation, or environmental pressures, or feedback, but I certainly believe that there’s an arrogance that’s prevalent in writers that’s absolutely necessary. To paraphrase what Joan Didion says, you do presume that you have something more important to say; that your voice and perspective are more deserving of other people’s attentions.

As I write that, fully believing of it, I can feel myself cringe at the sheer pigheadedness of it. What would my journalist friends have to say about that? I doubt that’s what has driven them to their positions, professionally.

Personally, I think it’s most likely a by-product of youth. Youth and a devastating fear that you will never be able to come up against the standards of those around you, and those you admire. An inferiority complex that produces a need to overcompensate by giving yourself too much credit. Maybe that’s why whenever I read something back which I’ve written, I tend to think it’s pretty much always a crock of shit. Fuck, it’ll probably happen when I read this back.

No-one should go and watch this film.

To have a dramatised version of what I would still consider to be a contemporary cultural event, especially one as significant to the 21st century society we find ourselves in, is in itself ridiculous. In that regard, it’s on a pedestal with the fan-made Prince William and Kate Middleton film that came out months after their wedding.

On a more serious note, this is how things lose significance. Once it becomes a dramatised piece of media, it becomes trivialised and diluted. You no longer perceive the events as something that happened to real people, you only associate the name and actions with the faces of those people in the film, or at least most people will.

Some would probably argue that this will boost the profile of what happened back in 2013 for those who weren’t particularly interested at the time or for those who think of documentaries as being above them. I would refute that claim on the grounds that if they weren’t interested at the time, but knew of it, they won’t be interested now. Not in a meaningful way, at least.

The greatest reaction something like this will generate is a wave of people who will come out of the cinema exclaiming to their friends how terrible it is that governments do the things they do and thank the heavens for the likes of Snowden. It is, in my view, a means to neutralise a topic that should never be anything less than hotly controversial and close to our attention.

Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960 

For the purposes of context, I have been - unsurprisingly, I hope - a firm supporter of the notion that we should stay a part of the European Union. Not for any economic reason, certainly not because David Cameron thought it a good idea. My reasons for voting to remain yesterday were primarily based on what my relationship is with the EU and how it interacts with my life - I fully accept that as it currently is, the EU is not a great system and is not as democratic as people would have us believe, but I think the telling difference between myself and others who voted to leave is that I firmly believed (and still do) that the EU can be reformed with the involvement of other European countries.

What it does allow, though, is unrestricted travel across the member states - anyone from this country could pick up their life, move to anywhere in Europe and all they would have to do to become a resident of that country is notify the local authority. That’s it. I appreciate that’s not going to be of importance to a lot of people, but the fact is that it’s still a perk of the EU.

It also contributes massively - and I fear the Welsh people really haven’t grasped quite how frighteningly massive the EU’s contribution to us is - to supporting Wales, unreservedly across the land: the farmers in Wales are heavily subsidized, there are EU initiatives that have resulted in new facilities being built and funded without any direct affect on the people of Wales, the bulk of the funding for arts and cultural programs comes from the EU in Wales. It’s inescapable that we are the biggest net beneficiary of all the United Kingdom when it comes to the EU, and if any Welsh person honestly believes that a Conservative government, under the leadership of Boris Johnson (or whoever it turns out to be), will work tirelessly to ensure that Wales will not miss out on “a single penny” as a result of our leaving, then I question that person’s judgement.

To most, that might read as purely anti-English cynicism, but considering this Conservative government - whilst still leashed to the EU - has already presided over some of the biggest cuts to welfare and social care, what on this good earth makes anyone think they’re about to buck that trend? Not a single person have I met who voted for Conservative in the most recent general election now thinks they made the right decision. And now we’re on the brink of being governed by a Conservative government, unshackled from any measures put in place by the EU, that is likely to be lead by someone who allied himself with spreaders of paranoia and fear.

Honestly, my greatest problem with how this campaign has been fought is to do with the way that the leave side have tackled immigration. By which I mean they have done seemingly everything in their power to dehumanize immigrants and create an atmosphere of fear and resentment towards them. The leaders of the leave campaign have tried to moderate and calm these accusations by saying, almost as if they’re doing everybody a favour, that they’re actually in favour of immigration - provided it’s “controlled”, whatever that will show itself to mean.

Personally, this referendum has proven to be quite divisive among my family; I’m the only person in clan Ford, that I know of, who voted for us to remain. Everybody else - parents and sister - voted for us to leave, albeit their reasoning I understand (though still disagree with), and the subject of immigration has come up as quite a heated topic of conversation. Not because any of my family - that I know of - have developed into ardent xenophobes, but because they have aligned themselves with a campaign that has deliberately set out misleading information which has, and it kills me as a Welsh and British person to say this, resonated with the fear in the British public.

On the BBC Wales EU debate that was broadcast on Wednesday evening, the leader of Wales’ nationalist party (perhaps a rarity in the context of nationalist parties, in that there has never been a connotation of racism associated with Plaid Cymru, unless it’s towards the English - equally inexcusable and tribalistic of them) said that some of the rhetoric being used by the leave campaign on the subject of immigrants wasn’t too far off what was being said at the beginning of the 1930s in Germany. The response from the pro-leave section of the audience and its panellists was to laugh this comment off as rude and hysterical.

Is it rational behaviour to put out posters that openly advertise an anti-EU immigrant message, and yet make use of pictures of Syrian refugees seeking shelter on the European continent? Is it right that people call for our borders to be secured to prevent more European people coming into this country, when the total level of EU immigrants living here compared to our total population is something pathetically small like 0.25% and the vast majority of immigrants come from countries outside of the EU, i.e. immigration that we can control and don’t?

There has not been any direct persecution of “the immigrant”, not by those that have enough power to cause serious damage (though I do not excuse UKIP and its members for their behaviour), but then the same was true back then in Germany. There was no open, inflammatory declaration that all Jews were to be put to the sword, because that approach - quite fucking rightly - only reveals the wielder of those words to be what they really are, but there was a gradual building on a national feeling of resentment following a period of recession.

Is it a surprise that across Europe, where there are countries that don’t have the scale of economy that we fortunately do, there’s been a rise in the far-right parties? It shouldn’t be, there’s a pattern in history of those on the far-right gathering momentum in times of economic difficulty. I don’t know why this happens, because it’s precisely during these times that we should be coming together as a society, rather than finding someone else to blame for the problems caused by the government, regardless of which colour’s in the hot-seat.

In the interest of fairness, I acknowledge whole-heartedly and unreservedly that this is not a fair representation of everybody who supported the leave campaign; as I said, my family all voted to leave and I know that none of my family are racist.

What’s important now, at least in my mind, is that the result of this decision is roundly accepted by both sides. Ultimately this was a democratic exercise and, regardless of the result, a decision has been made as a direct result of the question being put to the people. I don’t have to - nor will I ever - like the outcome, but I will not be one of these people promoting petitions for a second referendum, advertising how bleak the world will be now as a result. Bollocks to that, they might have won the vote, but that’s no excuse to become bitter and isolated.

Whatever the outcome is from all of this, there’s no doubting that the European relationship is now forever transformed and, objectively at least, the prospect of knowing that we, as a nation, are about to enter the unknown is exciting, if a little concerning.

It’s only the second day on account of a New Year’s Day blowout I had by myself which saw the slow and thoughtful consumption of many spliffs in the comfort of my own home whilst dealing with an almighty hangover.

Yesterday was a genuine struggle, and had me questioning whether my approach the day before had been sensible, where there a few times that could have resulted in me digging out the remaining baccy, rizla and filters from the bin bag in the kitchen. The hardest part was the internal argument of having just one last cigarette against the idea that if I caved on day one then that would set a precedent.

Fortunately I didn’t cave, something which I credit in part to a finely timed phone call from Frazer which was a welcome distraction and, in its own way, managed to trivialise the conflict I had been having my mind (although we only briefly talked about my quitting).

Perhaps the weirdest/least expected outcome of yesterday’s “day one” was the extreme flits from feeling fine to feeling pretty unstable, emotionally. For example, when my parents (who had come to check in on me) left I nearly burst out crying for no good reason. When I made it back upstairs I then sat in silence, alternating between trying to seriously think about how I felt and uncontrollably welling up. Suffice to say I didn’t particularly enjoy that, but it seemed to stem itself after a while and more importantly, it hasn’t happened once today.

Today has been a much better day, and I genuinely want to thank the resolve of yesterday for not having caved. The drastic shifts in my emotional fragility have gone and I feel as stable as ever, if not slightly more positive than usual - something that was embodied as I proceeded to empty and subsequently refill the dishwasher, and washing machine, before having breakfast. It never ceases to catch my attention that on the rare days when I make the decision to just do these small things, I feel a lot better about things after having done them.

That conflict itself, something that I view as the contrasting faces of the impatient youth and pragmatic adulthood scrapping it out in my personality, is something I’m hoping will resolve itself this year. While I still have all the time and love and satisfaction in the world for those times when I feel like doing nothing, and allowing that to physically manifest itself as an extension of myself in how I take care of myself and my surroundings (i.e. I don’t), that tide is now starting to change direction.

These types of thoughts/realisations/small-time epiphanies, or the results of them, sound like sharp hypocrisies of what I would have wanted for myself anytime between the ages of 17 to 21. Now, the decision to quit smoking in a complete fashion, is the latest manifestation of how my thoughts and opinions on what’s good for me have changed. That’s not to say I was oblivious to the detrimental side effects of smoking, but quite honestly they just didn’t matter to me; smoking was just a part of who I was, and something that has formed a part of my identity over the past 5/6 years - perhaps it was particularly hard to agree with myself to let it go because it has, to all intents and purposes, become a part of who I am, entirely by my own choice.