Blue Saturday

Day's off to a strong start. Here's a fist bump. 🤜

Say what you feel, sometimes it comes out uglier than you expect, but they are professionals. Good luck!

good luck NV!

Yeah, they've seen a lot - good luck and take care!

good luck mr vague!

Didn't shut up for the duration :D

👍

Solid value for money focus

Good stuff

i had thoughts but that's me done thinking for a day or two. counsellor seemed good. go back in two weeks to start working on my nonsense properly.

at least this was incentive to have a shave this morning

anxiously misread this as "go back in two tweets to start working on my nonsense properly"

good luck w/everything NV!

well now here's my theme music today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cw2PeikVgo

Was this your first time doing something like this and does your head feel cleaned out of shite?

no it was my umpteenth time and i still felt woozy afterward - didn't sleep properly last night and this was the first time i'd had to get up this early in ages. but the counsellor seems like she gets me and i feel like i get her, this could be productive. and altho it was just me rambling i felt like i at least pulled out some threads that are part of my long term dissatisfaction. two weeks is a long wait between appointments and this was just an intro really. i need to do some thinking obviously but thinking is hard and i'm often told i think too much, i dunno, Wolves are on tonight, i'm going to watch them in the pub and start doing difficult stuff on Monday or something, lol another Monday.

(Dé?) Luain gorm imo. Pissy cold weather and I’m going to Scotland tomorrow where it will undoubtedly not improve on that aspect. Am looking forward to not being woken by kittens though.

stalled by a sudden glum wave today: i'm surrounded by a proposal i'm about to send off, another one i think i've cracked (and anyway i'm sending it first to advisers not the actual target), the page i'm preparing for the professional org i just successfully (if very belatedly) joined, a mountain of research material for a big long piece for an anthology i kinda effed up the first draft of but got a very helpful and not-too-rude feedback report from the editor plus an extension yay, and i have another good proposal idea just motored into my brain yesterday…

but ppl on twitter were discussing the medium-term health of *two* mags i want to start working for (possibly bad) (which isn't a surprise to me but), and do i really want to move into e.g. academic research even if it makes (some) sense in the wake of the book? it's not like it's a happy sinecure lol. and i'm all too aware i owe a bunch of ppl a bunch of stuff which they've already paid for and the money is long spent, and instead i'm scrabbling around for subbing work and writing assignations (and getting some but nothing long or lasting so i have to start scrabbling again before i finish) (and i always put so much work into the writing that the money i've been paid is in the end negligeable): i ought to be much more employable than i seem to be but i don't seem to know how to re-tool my self-presentation after i quit my nice safe magazine-proofing space to do the book, and it all collapsed after i left.

and if my health isn't getting worse it isn't getting better, and shouldn't i just be thinking abt selling up and retiring somewhere cheap and picturesque except it feels like giving up ? and all i can think as i nervelessly look at place i can afford is that ppl i know and care abt are all scattered to every point of the country and if i move near one the others will all be offended but if i move near none if in ten years (if i have ten years) i'll be near no one and that seems bad too. i don't actually want to move out of london but i'm hardly going out and about much in london any more…

some of this i'm know is just belated deflation after the book getting published and vanishing quietly in a super-chaotic world (exactly as i knew it would lol lol). but some of it is feeling that my time is passing and the things i very much cared about and committed myself to made no great difference then or since -- if they didn't actually make things worse they didn't stop things getting worse, and i can honestly feel my "fuck you then, this is all wrong and will end badly but YOU do it YOUR way" responses (tantrums) gathering and gathering. plus the space i so much wanted to work at the heart of in my 20s and 30s has just become so unremittingly dreadful except in tiny pockets (and their medium-term health etc etc) and while in a sense i still trust my instincts (i am very arrogant) i know perfectly well and have always known that they are not pointed towards breakthrough success and never were. good work that a tiny number of people appreciate. if it pays some bills that's a bonus. which bonus increasingly rarely comes. my best breaks always came when one of the tiny number of people acted off their own bat to point me in a good direction (or lol even to employ me). all the good jobs i ever got i got bcz someone else noticed they were advertising and pointed me to the advert (and coaxed me into applying) -- except the best one, where i was just rung up out of the blue and asked if i wanted to do it.

so i'm just about ready to send off the first proposal -- the delivery guy just this minute brought me my printer ink, which is sort why why i had this space to go glum and vent -- and here i am thinking "how will i feel if they say YES? happy? or just harrassed all over again?"

half of these seem like way better problems to have than many ppl's problems on this thread -- "oh noes what if they like my idea?" -- so tl;dr i got old and how did that happen, is there game reset?

<3

i'm taking my daughter to the pub but i wanted to acknowledge that post and come back to think about it later

i find myself wanting to reset a lot because the speed setting was wrong, yeah we got older and it was too quick

oh and yr problems seem very much similar mostly: how the fuck to LIVE? (and less importantly make a living)

mark I have nothing useful to say but I know one of my in laws got your book for Christmas and was ecstatic about it

but you should stay in London if you’re happy there. no point in feeling the same somewhere that’s not for you.

Trust me, mark, you'd have even less of a readership within the confines of academia. Keep up the quality work.

And books don't vanish, they go on undercover missions out there unbeknownst to their parents

So I like to tell myself as well. And occasionally those missions turn out to be successful.

See also: Paul Celan's definition of the poem –

A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something.

What the others said and <3 "How the fuck to live" nails it imo. I def feel the dread of it not being satisfying enough for oneself, having to settle for 'it didn't make things worse'. Your work is quality, proven over and over.

xp That's beautiful.

Books definitely don’t vanish. One of my longest loved books is one that is extremely obscure and probably only had one print run - if I knew how to contact the author and tell him how much that book meant to me, I would. If he’s still alive, he’s probably thinking similar things without knowing that he made such an impression on me over the years.

One of my favourites has a wiki page but the link to the author is red text :/

You remain a wonder, Mark - you have rolled the wheel of the world on a few inches and sown a few minds. And I'm pretty sure you have some divilment left in you.

a reason i am fond of ilx is when i first arrived here 20 odd years ago i discovered readers of my old 80s work at nme and wire who were delighted to encounter me and say nice things abt ancient magazine nonsense -- so yes, i do retain my trust in the old "digging a tunnel under world" aspect of it all. i arrived in a bit of a blue mood then also -- i'd recently lost a job i'd really enjoyed (they slimmed down the subs desk and i landed here while was surfing on the internet at my new job which i hadn't yet come to enjoy)* and also i'd recently wrecked a friendship by falling in LOVE and being a bit of a dick abt it (i was miserable and inevitably made the other person miserable too)… so this is where i re-found my feet and got the idea for my first book (starting a thread abt if… and discussing it w/norman phay among others) and also met the gang that included the person who gave me the connections to set up the birkbeck conference which led to the more recent book (= the pinefox! hullo pinefox!) -- so i *can* be pro-active and effective now and then, contra my claims above

my default when i'm stumped or baffled is to plunge deep back into detail, literally making sure the i's are all dotted and balancing this with cryptic mischief here and elsewhere -- and generally that's fine. but i need to get another couple of larger things out into the world before i really am too old and slow, and one of them is something i've spent decades trying to make happen and a lot of it already exists but somehow it always feels like all the doors are shut against it unless i win the lottery and pay for it that way (which i won't bcz i don't do the lottery)

*i stayed for 14 years in the end and it served me p well, and when i quit it all fell apart quite quickly so i couldn't go back but also OK maybe i was a valued part of it

anyway many thx for all the pleasing and supportive things ppl have said!

i enjoy your posts as much as your writing gigs, mark!

or perhaps a better word is appreciate, given the thread

hi mark yr good not bad

whenever i get the sads i just remember that the world ended on december 21 2012 and it helps tbh

also who knows, i might get to drink tomb juice one day

I'll never be a lawyer, cos I can't pass the bar

that’s a lovely post from mark. i’m tired and a bit drunk and in bed but i am feeling a lot of warmth to everyone here.

Blue, weirdly, is the warmest colour

I happened to come across this interview with Henry Rollins earlier today. About work ethic, what motivates and drives you. And in light of Mark S. recent post I thought I'd share. Sure enough there's a lot here I emphasize with or recognize.
Rollins says he sees writing (books) as 'shipbuilding': "I’m a shipbuilder. I don’t want to sail in them. I want you to sail in them. I’m just happy that they leave the harbor so I can have an empty workplace."

Full thing is here: https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/henry-rollins-on-defining-success/

I’m not a tough guy. I’m not brave. I’m just curious. I’m very well aware of how quickly life goes. You know, Ian [MacKaye] and I both have a lot of dead friends. Everything from suicide to overdose to wrong place, wrong time. There’s a lot to get done. Whether you want to deal with that or not is up to the individual. You just make up your mind, like, “I’m gonna write this book.” How many people are gonna read it? I don’t care. How can I control that? I just want to do the damn thing. That allows me to go unrestrained.
I always have like five books going at once. That anyone will read them, that’d be cool. But I’m not making them to get read; I’m making them to get them out of me. You gotta do something with your life. You can watch TV. You can inhale cocaine. Or you can sit down and write, or sing, or jump up and down, whatever it is. It’s all just choices. So much of this is just committing to the time and the discipline and the agony of creativity—because it turns on you all the time.

another middle of the night blue cos can't be with the people I love always and forever and because I was unnecessarily fractious on ILX which started as a joke but was really just my sore head and I apologise, there's no need, hate it when I do stuff that irritates me when other people do it

Just I don't know the pub is there to not be alone and then you realise wow I was still very alone and everything vanished like a ghost house. The wrong vices, timidly, insanely, boringly, needily not even self-destructive or not. I think I'd avoid myself after a certain point in the evening. Counsellor said something biochemical about the weird feeling of clarity that comes in the middle of the night but I can't remember right now and anyway

yeah it's all biochemical but the existential, the whyness of it. Is there only distance? How did I get raised so needy and unsatisfied by accident?

hate it when I do stuff that irritates me when other people do it

i know you set yr standards in these affairs v high bud, but the above behaviour is basically 'existence' afaict

hi NV and mark, you're good people - all the best. sorry I can't offer any more eloquent or stirring encouragement but there it is

thanks for the Henry Rollins quotes LBI, I had thought I was past the stage of my life where Henry Rollins would be inspiring but nope, that's pretty good there

also I'd love to read more about "something biochemical about the weird feeling of clarity that comes in the middle of the night" but I have no idea what to Google for and it's somehow apt to leave it as a dark, half-understood concept

also, pt.2 - mark s twitter recommendee J4m3s Butl3r posted some Celan y/day and I thought how I should really read* more (some, any) of his stuff and then I read this thread and pomenitul's also great Celan quotation, so - where to start? (there is probably a better thread for this)

* read = buy, perhaps in German, and file unread next to the similarly unread book of Rilke poems my German is very much not good enough for, or perhaps the other clump of unread German books, which coincidentally are next to mark s's book which I also have not read yet, ugh @ me

thanks spacey i am going to go back to the middle of the night thing next time i see the counsellor. something to do with chemicals in the brain subsiding it was.

also lol full disclosure i had always assumed Celan was French because of how his nom de plume looks

aps, I suggest starting with Selections (edited and with an introduction by the great Pierre Joris).

Even if your German is lacking (as mine is, and direly at that), hearing him read his work is a shattering experience imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhO81S666Ok

I'd also like to point out that his brief and little-known stint as a Romanian-language poet in the early 1940s is no less remarkable and I prefer his work from that period to most of his contemporaries'.

thank you, pom! (and NV too)

I hope to investigate your recommended title via a library soon, and possibly a bilingual edition of poems too, though that's out on loan. Are there good English translations of the early Romanian work?

the aforementioned James B tweet included a link to Celan reading Todesfuge, and, yes, remarkable, shattering.

(pom's link has English subtitles if you turn CC on and that one ^ does not, alas, but the tweet thread links to the text of a couple of English translations)

My pleasure! Selections features one of the early Romanian poems – a Surrealistic pastiche of sorts, but hardly the piece I would have picked to represent that facet of his work. Reportedly, there's a 2003 volume that collects them all in English, but I have no idea what those translations are worth.

a low so low I don't even want to begin to describe it. I feel like I've been nothing but a burden, a user, a disappointment all my life. perfectly self-absorbed child, even this fucking thread is a manifestation of that.

I don't have a melodramatic solution to it. I know reality is never as extreme as I'm feeling it, or at least I know that's what I'd tell somebody else. But that doesn't mean those feelings can't be broadly true, doesn't mean "depression" can't be a selfish self-dramatising response to selfishness.

I'm lying here feeling like the end of the world with a little inner voice telling myself (or the outside world, I don't know) that recognition is part of recovery. But the sheer amount of work to climb out of here, to change myself, to have a viable future for anybody - it feels insurmountable, or it feels like I'm buried under it.

so I lie here passive and create a wilderness and call it self-care.

How are you doing now NV?

I have had a bad enough week with mine, but on top of that I’m very tired (I think I’m coming down) so I’m not really dwelling on it. The two are possibly interrelated as well - I am always very tired after a bad spell of it. Having said that all my sinuses seem to be going off at once, so. Probably shouldn’t be reading The Stand atm!

I don't know if people who haven't experienced it realise how physical mental health stuff can be sometimes.

I had a good session with my counselor yesterday. Dunno if it was "productive" but it was grown-up and I felt understood and I feel like I can see the beginnings of a possible path forward.

So after I went to the pub and well I *probably* shouldn't have but I mostly enjoyed it and it was mostly therapeutic but I should probably not do the buzzer in the pub quiz after an all dayer.

And now I'm a bit hungover and my brain if not yet my stomach is hungry and I can't be bothered to put outside clothes on or cook anything but I really want sweeties and I shouldn't spend Just Eat money so maybe I'll sneak up behind myself and go out before I realise what I'm doing.

And the psychic devastation is well down from Monday but I really really have to do stuff and I might be kidding myself about my own capacity to do stuff, we'll see, it's the weekend anyway even if I am a layabout, I will try to try on Monday.

Oh and I don't think my daughter's talking to me at the moment but hopefully that will pass.