distil // thoughts on writing

I’ve been enjoying the writing of Shoko Wanger recently (of ‘Sho & Tell’ blog). She writes a beautiful narrative essay series* called 'POV' where she reflects on memory and being in the moment and ‘learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis’ (among other things). Her essays remind me (and reinforce my conviction) that writing that draws on real life, on personal experience, isn't something irrelevant or self-indulgent when it's done well: instead, looking honestly (and with curiosity) at your own life and then offering up what you notice to others... it’s actually extremely valuable work.

‘It’s not often,’ I wrote in my journal back in December when I first stumbled upon her blog, ‘that you read another’s words and think: “well, yes – that’s exactly it! Thank-you.” That, as I see it, is the purpose of writing. (Or at least a purpose.) The purpose of writing truthfully. To leave space for (and trust in) the possibility that your words, observations, life might do the same for another.’

♥

I was thinking a bit about that idea again after my brother, Evan**, shared the poem Nothing is Lost by Noël Coward with me. In the poem, Coward writes that nothing is ever forgotten: not really. Everything that’s ever happened to us (‘sorrows and losses time has since consoled,/Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes/Each sentimental souvenir and token...’) is all still floating about in our subconscious somewhere, ‘waiting to be recalled...’

It’s an interesting thought. And I am always kind of bawled over when someone says something, or I overhear something, or I taste something that sparks a memory. When I remember something I forgot I knew.

That’s kind of what he’s talking about. Nothing is lost. But what the poem makes me think of is the idea that nothing is ever wasted either. Blunders, mistakes, blips – embarrassing moments where you muddled your sentences, those hours where you got lost in the dark in the city in the rain – nothing, really, is wasted. Or it doesn’t need to be at least. 

There are many many aspects of ‘being a writer’ that could, potentially, drive one insane: the clock ticking, the solitude, the blank-page-blank-head problem, the question: ‘how’s the writing going?’, the pain – actual physical muscle-tightening pain – that comes every day from trying to pull ideas out of your head and down into words: like you’re trying to lasso the moon out the sky and pull it through a keyhole. But one aspect of writing that probably keeps me sane is that voice that says, in the middle of real life difficulties: 

'Don’t worry. You can make something out of this. If nothing else, you can write about this later.' 

♥

NB. I’m not talking about over-sharing via paper, or thinly disguising real life gripes as fiction. Absolutely not. There’s nothing more uncomfortable than reading writing like that. I’ve read too many stories recently where the main ‘character’ is clearly just the writer with wig on.

What I mean is... I think I’m learning that the trick to writing well – or really: the trick to being an empathic person, because maybe that’s actually what I’m talking about, and that’s what kind of writer I want to be – is being able to look at your own experience and find a way to distil it down till you’re not necessarily talking about particulars anymore (THIS happened THEN over THERE). Good writing, I think, is when you’re able to capture the essence of experiences (the colour and texture and sound of them) and turn them into words that ring true.

NB.2. I’m also not saying I’m very good doing that – at distilling experience. But it’s something I’d like to learn how to do because I see it in the writers I like and in the people I admire most: the people who are open and authentic and honest without being attention-seekers or needy.   

I also like the idea of a writer’s brain being an ‘experience distillery’. (If any illustrators read this blog, please draw that idea for me.)

♥

Notes

*Here are three essays from Sho & Tell you might like: 'Triumphs', 'Busy', and  'Roads'.

**Evan, incidentally, has also just started a blog: 'Coffee with Philosophers' and he's a pretty good writer so you should read it. 

The pictures in this post are by: Fumi Koike. 

(Also, ps. Thank you for your feedback on my last post. And apologies if this one seems a bit waffley ...I also realise it’s another ‘here are some thoughts after reading a poem’ piece. I will try and mix it up a little for next time!)

a poem for you.

Nothing is Lost

by Noël Coward

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years 
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes 
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight 
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

♥

Picture by: Jiwoon Pak.

Icarus also flew // goodbye 2015.

When I was back home a few weeks ago, my Mum read me out a poem: Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert ‘Everyone forgets,’ the poem starts, ‘that Icarus also flew.’

We were sitting upstairs drinking tea on her bed, the sky dimming outside. Our back-door-neighbours’ Christmas tree blinked on and the sound of my dad putting cutlery away travelled up to us from the kitchen. We’d been sitting there for a few hours, the two of us, talking about I can’t even remember what. Things as they are now, I think. Life as it is now. 

‘Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew,’ Mum read. ‘It's the same when love comes to an end,/or the marriage fails and people say/they knew it was a mistake, that everybody/said it would never work. That she was/old enough to know better. But anything/worth doing is worth doing badly...’ 

And so it goes on. A meditation on transience and falling and the way we often write whole experiences off as ‘failures’ because they didn’t last forever, or didn’t work out as expected.

That word – failure – is something we talked about quite a lot last year: on our early morning drives up to work before I moved to the city (I’ve been missing those conversations). We talked about the famous ‘man in the arena’ speech by Roosevelt where he writes that: ‘credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...’ and who, ‘if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.’ We talked about Brené Brown, who writes about that idea of ‘daring greatly’, and how she used to take strength from the question: ‘What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?’ but recently she’s been asking herself a new one: ‘What’s worth doing even if you fail?’ 

Driving back and forth from the city to the sea, we (my Mum and I) asked ourselves that. We talked about the importance of ‘owning your own story’, and the difficulty of loving people, and the risks of letting yourself be known, and this predicament of feeling things so very very deeply and not knowing what to do with it all. 

‘What’s worth doing even if you fail?’

‘Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew...’

♥

It’s eighteen days into the New Year, and I’m still caught slightly off-guard at times by the year that just passed. It was a bit of a strange one, 2015, I have to admit. I’m left looking back on it still feeling a bit confused, unsure what to take from it now it’s finished. 

It was a year of many ‘favourite’ things. I got to hear one of my favourite authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, in Edinburgh, for example (he signed my knackered copy of Never Let Me Go and my hands shook). I ate filled baguettes in Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower from my train window. I got to teach classes on some amazing writers. My sister got engaged and asked me to be her maid of honour. Two of my favourite people flew over from Atlanta and stayed in our house for a few days. And after years of soaking up their music, I finally got to see Mumford and Sons live in Glasgow with my siblings. (Our throats catching, we sang out the words to their songs. Their lyrics are fuelled with a kind of longing for something better, something real. A determined sense of hope, in spite of what’s passed before.) 

Alongside all that though (and more), it was a year of feeling quite achingly unsettled. Bereavement. Uncertainty. Heartbreak. Loss. I probably ended up crying more in the past year than I ever have, and right from the get go. (Outside, inside, in toilet cubicles, on stairwells, at home, in the new flat, on trains, ferries, busses, taxis, planes, cars... goodness me! I just need to have a good sob on a tram, a unicycle and a bin lorry now, and I’ll be able to publish an illustrated guide to weeping in transit. ‘Find out, via easy-to-read graphs, how pathetic you will feel tearing up on the following... how ‘Romantic’... how exposed...’). 

It was a year where I lost my appetite more than once, and my voice shrunk down to a whisper as I started to falter: ‘what am I doing wrong here?’ ‘What do I do now?’

♥

I don’t have a tidy way to round off the past year in words. But I would like to try and draw a line under it. A few days before New Year – after too many days lazing about in pyjamas eating Lindt chocolates – I wrote myself a sort of ‘motivational speech’-type thing in my journal, in an attempt to shake myself back in the game. It went something like this: 

"Storm Frank is a’blowing outside your window, Melissa. And may he be blowing winds of change! (Or at least mild behavioural reform/refocus.) Wake up to your life, O Sleepy One! Wake up to it and read the books you want to read. Write the novel. Stop stalling. Remember: you are stronger than you think. Stop waiting on trains that aren’t moving. Get off them! Get off and run, run, run, run, so the wind is in your hair, and your calves and your heels and your lungs all shout: you are here, you are here. Don’t switch off. Don’t disengage. It’s a false kind of thinking that says strength comes from being detached. Remember that. You were brave. Don’t start doubting yourself now. Don’t get frightened. 

Stop looking at your phone. Switch it off! The world’s out there, so pay attention. Speak up. Think. Walk. Eat. Make your bed in the mornings. Leave the house on time. Stop snoozing the alarm. Go to sleep before the birds start singing. Be mindful. Take more baths. Pray. Don’t let failure scare you off trying. It is painful but it's not the end of all things. And it isn’t always your fault. Just don’t get stuck. Don’t get stuck. Don’t get stuck. Pick up the pieces. Shake the dust off your feet, nod your head, and walk on. 

'I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,' writes Gilbert at the end of his poem, 'but just coming to the end of his triumph...' Notice the triumphs. You can do this. Stop looking down. Look up." 

♥

(The beautiful pictures are by: Elicia Edijanto. And goodness, this was a long post. Next one will be shorter, promise.) 

Dear December, four and five: hashtag Storm Desmond.

Let’s be rather British and talk about the weather. (NB: I wrote this on Saturday but seemed to fall asleep before clicking: publish. Thus the 'yesterdays' and 'last nights' that don't quite match up...)

While I was waiting for the traffic lights to change yesterday evening, I saw a red umbrella blow straight out of a little boy’s hands. It was broken and twisted inside-out, the fabric rippling and sodden wet and absolutely no use to him as a rain–shield any more – but he was trying to keep a tight grip of it even so when the wind whipped it from his slippery fingers and dragged it away down Renfield Street.

I have always wondered who those people are that abandon their umbrellas on the pavement. ‘Litter louts.’ ‘Lazy folk who can’t be bothered walking an extra five steps to the bin.’ On wild days, Glasgow’s streets are littered with them: broken, twisted umbrellas. Black ones. Pink ones. Hello Kitty ones. Ones with stripes. They always look a bit to me like dead spiders: legs bent but still twitching. Only, now I wonder whether most of those umbrellas aren’t in fact abandoned by people of questionable character. Maybe they’ve just been stolen by the weather. ‘Quit messing around with that brolly, fool, and let me run down your face. Let me tangle your hair. Let me slip into the gaps between your sleeve and your wrist and make you shiver. Feel alive!’ 

I got rather up close and personal with the elements myself last night - on my walk back to Queen’s Street Station a few hours later after dinner. I was (foolishly, yes) wearing a coat without a hood. I had forgotten my hat. The ribs of my umbrella had snapped earlier. By the time I turned onto Buchanan Street I’d given up struggling to keep my hair dry with my scarf and, for the first time all day, I let my shoulders unknot themselves and gave in. The rain slid down my face. My shoes were flooded. ‘Oh stuff it, it’s dark and I’m not going to meet anyone I know at this time of night anyway*. Bring it on. "Be thou me, impetuous one!" It’s only water.)’

(*I did actually run into someone I knew though, ha. What are the odds? A familiar figure walking up the street towards me through the rain. It could have been a rather beautiful filmic moment if I hadn’t looked so much like: this <-- click the link.) 

So yes. I got utterly, utterly drenched (and we - the three of us in this little flat - have stayed bundled up inside all day today). When my flatmate had a cup of tea waiting for me coming in through the door last night, I could have cried with gratefulness. 

♥

Song a day:

Friday's song: Pool House by Dustin O'Halloran because I was listening to it while I was working, and listen often when I'm writing. It's from the film 'Breathe In' which is one of those lingering kind of films that is on the one hand kind of beautiful (in terms of the cinematography, the music, the natural feel of the acting, the subtlety) and on the other hand is kind of devastating and unsettling (it's about things spiralling out of control, about a dangerous idea that should stay just that). 

Saturday's song: Jump for my Love ...because I came across this clip from Love Actually again this morning and it made me laugh (and is exactly the kind of thing that would happen to me). 

♥

Note: Pictures by Japanese illustrator Rie Nakajima (I can't find  central website to link you to, but I found these pictures: here.) 

I lost two cities, lovely ones

In July I read a poem every day. I picked most of them at random: either choosing a title I liked from one of the poetry books around the house, or asking friends for a suggestion. Once or twice I just stumbled upon a poem online (like Anya Silver’s 'Doing Laundry in Budapest' which then led to an afternoon reminiscing about a childhood summer in Hungary).

Although, as I say, I found most of the poems that month by accident, it was interesting (and also a little unsettling at the time) how so many of the poems seemed to speak to the theme of loss. Poems about the meaning of it, the inevitability of it. Loss of certainty, loss of love, loss of objects and people and a clear sense of self. I wasn’t sure if that meant anything. Maybe I was just hyper-sensitive to that theme – being worried in July about losing, about being lost – or if it was just a strange coincidence. Maybe it’s just the case that all writing grows out of a sense of loss; whether it mentions the word or not, the shadow of it lingers somewhere nearby.

Anyway – I write all that as a lead in to say that I’m going to try and go back to reading a poem every morning. The one that I read today was ‘One Art’ by Elizabeth Bishop, a poem that starts with the line: ‘The art of losing isn’t hard to master...’ I've read it before, and I like the rhythm of it. It also reminds me a little of something I wrote back in April actually, about losing buttons. I thought I’d share it with you (read it twice. Read it aloud): 

♥

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

♥

(Pictures are by illustrator Alice Ferrow.)

this.

Yes. (From 'Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy' edited by Neil Astley).

Dear July, twenty four to twenty seven: here and up and down and there

Dear July,

I don't particularly like hospitals. They're tight-packed spaces with low ceilings and beeping machines. They have square yellow lights that squint down from grey tiles; they give you a headache after a while, if you didn’t have one before you arrived. Hospitals are lined with alarming signs. (Germs! Germs! Now go wash your hands!) They have windowless corridors. They smell of things you can’t place. Hospitals are places you don’t know what to say. Do you chat about ordinary things (last night’s dinner, the TV last week)? Or keep conversations limited to clinical matters (symptoms, and fluids, and test results, and bruises)? How can you be sure what you’re saying is helpful? How can you make sure your words aren't lost?

We visited my Grandpa in hospital this weekend and when the hour was up, after we’d said goodbye – squeezing his hand, waving to him through the window as we left the ward – we went down to the café on the ground floor to get a cup of tea before driving home through the rain. Looking round at the other café-goers – all sipping paper cups or sharing crisps and ham sandwiches out of paper triangles – it struck me how we were all there for the same reason. To visit. We were there on a ‘have to be’ rather than ‘want to be’ basis.

‘I mean – you wouldn’t just come in here because the coffee’s good,’ I said to my parents, fiddling with the Twix wrapper on the table. ‘No one really wants to be here. Everyone here’s only in this space because they need to be...’

Somewhere in the midst of the troubled air, though, hospitals hold potential for great kindnesses to happen. They’re where people feel at their worst, and where others have to step up and become the best version of themselves to be a support. Growing up with a mother and sister who are both nurses, there has always been much talk in our house around ideas like ‘caring for the whole person’, around 'being with’, and 'intentional presence’, and good communication skills, and how listening is so much more than just 'hearing'.

I wish I’d seen more of that while we were at the hospital this weekend. What I saw was not unkindness. No one was unkind. It wasn’t quite that. Just – there was a definite absence. Of communication. Of warmth. Opportunities were missed. 

I found myself wanting to say: listen, I know it’s busy and late at night and the guy two beds along just swore at you when all you were trying to do was check his blood pressure. I know you’re completely shattered because this is your fourth nightshift in a row and you didn’t manage to get any sleep before you came to work because the flashing clock by your bed kept reminding you how little time you had left till the alarm went off and the kids were crying and then the neighbour decided it would be a good idea to strim the hedge outside your bedroom window and you couldn’t block it out. I get that. I’m not judging. But it would it be too difficult to say hello to the 'patient' you’ve just come up to with your clipboard? Would it take more than a minute just to tell him your name and what you’re doing before you start poking and prodding and plugging him into that machine on the wall? Could you maybe take two seconds to look him in the eye and actually see him? Because he’s not having a very good day either. He doesn’t want to be here either, lying in the middle of this high-up hospital bed feeling very exposed and frightened, though he might not say that out loud. He likes to joke. But if you looked at him, you’d see it. Could you at least, please, could you at least say your name?

I didn’t say that, obviously. But I came away thinking this: the small things we do are not insignificant. Saying hello. Touching hands. They’re not insignificant. So we mustn’t forget to do them. And this:

Lord God, let me never become so busy or distracted, or so rooted in routine, or harassed, that I forget to acknowledge the ‘personhood’ of another. That I make them feel less than human. Let me always be attentive. Being present is a choice. Help me to choose it. Help me to remember it. And to do no harm when I forget.

‘It is important that awake people be awake,’ writes Stafford in the poem I posted a few weeks ago. ‘The darkness around us is deep.’

♥

Notes: 

Post-script: I hope this doesn’t come across as judgmental. Thank-goodness for hospitals, and thank goodness for the staff that work there, and the people – like my sister and my mum – who intentionally practice good care. I know they’re in the majority. They work hard. And it’s a thankless job at times. I don't know - the staff at other points in the day may have been very attentive. But when you see someone you care about being talked over, and looked past – it can be quite unsettling. (And makes you quite determined to never get sick yourself.) 

(Today’s poem: ‘Little Summer Poem Touching on the Subject of Faith’ by Mary Oliver. Today’s title: from Norman MacCaig’s 'Visiting Hour'. 

Pictures by: the quite lovely Julianna Swaney. You should look her up.)

Dear July, twenty one to three: linking.

Dear July,

I’m trying to finish up a chapter of the novel today. I always feel slightly self-conscious calling it that. ‘The novel’. It feels a bit presumptuous on my part. ‘Whadda you think you’re doing, bozo? You think you can just “write a novel”? Get real. Go do something your own size.’ (Because apparently my inner-critic sounds like Danny DeVito.) But: that is what I’m writing, I guess. A novel. So I should call it what it is.

Anyway – I mention this because today (and yesterday and the day before) I've been focused on writing the chapter. Thus the quietness on here. I don't have a thought-filled letter today. But in the absence of that, I will direct you to three things I’ve been enjoying the past three days:

[One.] The light-filled photographs in the 'My Month of Sundays' project on Netherleigh’s blog: here. Bit of context: two bloggers (with very beautiful Instagram feeds here and here) have started up a hashtag for people to capture and share Sunday moments. I kind of came upon it by accident (as I do most things on the internet...) and the pictures made me quite happy, so I might try and take part in the project, should any of my Sundays in the coming weeks be spent doing things other than typing away at my laptop.

[Two.] This article by Hallie Cantor in the New Yorker: ‘Everything I’m Afraid Might Happen If I Ask New Acquaintances to Get Coffee’. It made me laugh. (The trials of being an over-thinker.)

[Three.] This song by The Oh Hello's, found over the weekend. I’m always looking for new music, so if you have any recommendations, send ‘em my way.

Enjoy.

♥

(Oh, and also two poems from recently: 'Mirrors at 4am' by Charles Simic and Mrs Midas by Carol Ann Duffy.

The pictures: from recently. The view from my train window, a feather on the street, blogging about the sun on the train in the rain.)

Dear July, seventeen to twenty: Budapest heat.

Dear July,

Today, a rather dark rainy heat-up-some-chicken-soup-to-make-yourself-feel-better kind of Monday, I’ve been thinking about Hungary.

The year I turned twelve, my family spent the summer in Budapest. My Dad was working over there for a few months, so we went to be with him. It was hot. The hottest it had been in years, apparently. We watched a lot of BBC World in our little apartment (the only TV channel in English and we grew thirsty for words we recognised) and there were continual cries of ‘Heat wave! Heat wave!’ on the news. On the days we went into the city – our feet clapping in flip flops, collecting dust from the streets – we’d practically sprint from one café to the next, buying bottles of cold water or Lipton’s lemon iced tea to gulp down. We spent all of our days in shorts or swimming costumes, jumping and splashing into the blue pool outside, diving for coins with goggles sucked onto to our faces. We had to sleep with the fan on full and windows cracked open – the sound of crickets and dogs barking and the opera singer next door practicing scales echoing long into the night.

We wiped watermelon juice from our chins, and licked peach juice off our wrists. We ate lemon sorbet ice-cream every other day. We put ketchup on pizza like the locals. We ate the best thing I've ever eaten - a big deep-fried fritter-type thing topped with sour cream and grated cheese called 'Lángos' - and have never found again since. Almost every time we went out for dinner, we’d order 'cucumber salad' as a side: cucumbers soaked in a vinaigrette dressing. One time we ordered ‘Grandma’s special cucumber salad’ because the name made us laugh, but when it arrived, it was just a plate of fat dill pickles (which forevermore made us suspicious of food described as ‘special’). They had bizarre translations for things on the menus. ‘Diced curd with graves’ was one option on the desert menu (literally no idea). ‘Chicken throat shaped pasta’ was another.

We went to the circus while we were there – silver clad trapeze artists, cats jumping from great heights onto red cushions. We visited a park full of old communist statues. We went to Lake Balaton and felt the mud squelching between our toes. We went into supermarkets so big the staff had to roller-skate from one end to the next. We bought vegetables that came straight from the fields, meaning they hadn’t been prettified, meaning the closer you got to the produce stalls, the stronger the smell got, meaning sometimes you’d pick up a nectarine and it would look deliciously juicy face up, but when you turned it over the reverse side would be crawling with flies. 

♥

Living in a country where we were constantly faced with things we didn’t know – food, words, buildings, customs – could have been a small disaster. The three of us – my brother, my sister, me – were still quite young so were prone to whining, as children sometimes are (‘Whatsthat?’ ‘Idontlikeit.’ ‘Idontwantit’ ‘Whatsthat?’). But that summer knocked it out of us, I think. We had so much fun, and my Mum taught us to think of everything as "an experience".

‘We might not like it,’ she said. ‘But it’s all an experience, so we’ll just give it a go.’

‘It’s an experience,’ has now became short-hand for: ‘That was weird, but strangely wonderful’. By the end of the summer, we’d all grown a few inches; our hair had turned a few shades lighter, our skin had turned a few shades darker, and we’d stopped complaining as much. We spent the last few weeks laughing our heads off at things that no one seemed to find as funny as us when we got back home – ‘Well, you just had to be there, I guess.’ – but that was okay. We didn’t mind (#heatstroke).

♥

I came across Anya Silver’s poem 'Doing Laundry in Budapest' today, which set me off on this path of reminiscing. (Forgive me. I hope this post isn't too long or self-indulgently nostalgic to read.) We have no photographs of it – they all got lost – but it’s a summer I remember in warm bursts of colour. Orange and browns and reds.

Silver (the poet I was reading today) writes about pickles, and covering her shoulders to get into churches, and the begging ladies on the street who sold half-dead flowers to passers-by and I recognised the images in her words: I’ve been there, I thought. I’ve seen those things. I’ve eaten those pickles. I bought those flowers. 

♥

(Pictures - letters of the Hungarian alphabet - by: Anna Kövecses. 

Also: this song by reminds me so much of being there - it was 2003, after all. My sister and I listened to Delta Goodrem's album on repeat the first night we were there. We'd somehow managed to convince ourselves that there were terrorists running about outside our hotel so were trying to distract ourselves. Like I said, we were pretty young and had poor geographical knowledge so we had no idea where in the world Hungary actually was. Ha.)