Summary
As I come to the end of my MA, it’s important to reflect on the previous two years.
My very first term was brilliant. I had a good idea where I was and the direction I wanted to head in after 3 years doing a BA at Chelsea… and then everything went a bit wrong for me for a while after the death of a friend. I didn’t write about it here (and I’m not going to), but I will say that at moments like that one can feel that there are more important things going on in the world than ‘making stuff’… I found it hard to make and I found it hard to write.
Slowly, I got back on track, started heading forward again. My ideas evolved and expanded. I started working in new ways. I felt more and more that it was important for me to have something to say rather than something to show…
…and now I’m in my final term and once again I am contemplating the recent death of another friend. Again, I won’t write about it here, but this friend’s death has hit my whole family – including my son – pretty hard… this time I am thinking differently. My friend who died was a writer and he leaves decades of writing for the world to read. My son – who thought of him as a grandfather figure – will be able to get to know our friend- in a way he couldn’t as a child- through his writing, for years to come.
This has made me re-think the idea of writing and how important it is not only as a way of clarifying my thoughts, but as a way to materialise the metaphysical; to snatch ideas out of thin air and “put them down in black and white”.
That then makes me think of the ‘digital dark age‘ and how so much of what we are creating digitally will be lost one day. Before the electronic age, people kept their written letters and paperwork archived so that now we are able to read their conversations and interactions to get an understanding of not only what they thought about, but what their world was about and how it operated.
I think about the book of ancient Egyptian letters I have and how close they feel to us today in their correspondence with one another. They talk about love, disappointment, happiness, frustration. Two and a half thousand years on and I feel like I know them.
So moving forward, I want to ‘materialise’ my writing. If I am lucky enough to get a publishing deal and write a book, great, I will do that. I think I am thinking about things in an interesting way and am hopeful that others may be interested… I would like someone to be able to stumble across my words long after I’m gone and feel that they know me. That will not happen if they stay in a digital form. This blog will not exist in 100 years’ time. It’s my server. It’s not even in the cloud. So once I stop paying for it, it’s gone.
Words first.
Truth second.
Narrative before both.
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Some things I will look into going forward:
Parafiction
para- (1)
before vowels, par-, word-forming element, originally in Greek-derived words, meaning “alongside, beyond; altered; contrary; irregular, abnormal,” from Greek para– from para (prep.) “beside, near; issuing from; against, contrary to,” from PIE *prea, from root *per– (1) “forward,” hence “toward, near; against.” Cognate with Old English for- “off, away.” Mostly used in scientific and technical words; not usually regarded as a naturalized formative element in English.
https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/37215/parafacts-parafictions-helguera-and-blachly-shaw/
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/carrie-lambert-beatty
Janet Cardiff http://cardiffmiller.com/
Fictive Art
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcSFlgWv3DU
https://doppelhouse.com/sting-in-the-tale/
Audience of One https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43726540
The difference between Hearing and Seeing…
From Tim Vermeulen:
If you hear the voice of God, you have been ‘saved’.
If you see the face of God, you are dead.
