Trickster Is Me

‘Abandon form and trust the voice.’

So said Martin Amis to Clive James in the podcast I listened to for the umpteenth time as I rode the train home tonight. Those shows make me unbelievably happy and the Amis interview is the best of the lot. And his is a good piece of advice to be posting when supremely tired and aching in eyes, brain, and legs. I’ll trust to voice and assume that something I say here will make sense to somebody.

***

Tonight I’m bitter, a bit bewildered, and tired like the damned. It’s all normal for a Thursday. These are the moments when I feel the most rebellious. Always do the opposite of what’s expected. Or the opposite of the opposite.

The last week or two, I’ve been dipping into Lewis Hyde’s ‘Trickster Makes This World’. The subtitle is ‘How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture’ and, for obvious reasons, when I spotted it in the local Borders, I was drawn to it like filings towards a tax inspector. Good read with some stunning passages. It contains some of the best lines I’ve read all year: ‘To learn about intelligence from the meat-thief Coyote is to know that we’re embodied thinkers. If the brain has cunning, it has it as a consequence of appetite; the blood that lights the mind gets its sugars from the gut.’ I gave a whoop of delight when I read that last part. Perhaps it’s some misguided projection on my part but I identify with the trickster. I once wrote a 90,000 word ramble about appetite and poetry and reading this reminds me of the things that interested me back then. The trickster is the embodiment of sublimated appetite, an escape around vices and into a different kind of eating, growing, procreating.

Why do I tell you this? I don’t know. It’s not funny or inkeeping with anything. Listen to my inner voice. It’s just me. Tricky old me.

***

I still see the woman the train who never stops typing. She’s worn her keys down until the surfaces have gone and they’re down to the black plastic. People write too much. I say that but I should really look into buying a new laptop. Ideally, I should look into buying a new life. Amis talks about writers whose talent turns gangrenous if not followed. I feel it within me on these nights when I barely eat because I’m so exhausted. I don’t even know if ‘talent’ is the word for it. Feels presumptuous. I prefer to think of it as a hunger. It’s the insatiable appetite to do what I want to do. I’m not one for being told what to do. Friends say it’s my big fault. Hairs on my back turn into the Grenadier Guards when I’m ordered to do anything. Working for others makes me deeply unhappy. I become a different person. I keep describing it as a form of attention deficit disorder. I cannot sit still and seek distraction.

Today I met somebody who said that they look for ‘career progression’. I gave a shiver. I told them that I don’t think like that, which I assume to be true because I believed it when I said it. Yet I wonder if it’s the right term for my peculiar form of indifference. I don’t feel like I have goals in terms of arbitrary titles within arbitrary institutions. Is it money in the bank? I suppose I want that. Enough to be happy. No more. But whether I’m senior or junior to somebody else doesn’t concern me. I’d be full of self doubt in either situation. I just want to be read and for people to laugh at (think about) what I write and draw.
***

Not for the first time, I’ve been thinking about agents. I sometimes wonder if I should just sign a devil’s pact: ask somebody to represent my work for 50% of the income. I’m no good at selling myself. I just don’t do it. I don’t play the game. Failure is my own doing. I don’t try to succeed.

***

Abandon form and trust the voice. It’s a seductive idea. I’m sometimes too obsessed with form. Narrative feels like it should be there in some pre-ordained structure. My novels tend to get difficult when I fear they don’t have a shape. Perhaps I should stop thinking and just write, trust that I’ll find something along the way. Not thinking worked in the past. I think.

Coming into Piccadilly this morning, I finished the first book of ‘Molesworth’. Reminds me of Burgess, a little of Joyce. Strange book with the most basic form. It’s just a series of self-contained lists. Wonderfully written and Searle’s pictures keep me just as entertained. The look in Molesworth 1’s eye transfixes me every time.

***

What exactly are Gladiators? Why do I feel like throwing the cat at the TV whenever they come on? The ads talk about records being smashed and legends made. What records? Man in spandex balancing on podium while other men in spandex hits him with a large rubberised baton.

There’s a guy who travels home on my train. He’s a body builder. It was raining when we got off and he tried to run for cover. Hilarious. He’s incapable of bending his legs. Incapable too of crossing his arms. Imagine a man in splints trying to do the 100 metres. A form of paralysis, perhaps. He’s given himself a disability. Perfection comes at a price.


***

Twitter confuses me. I’m not sure I like it but I like playing the game. Trickster. That’s me.