Back Again

Months must have passed.

I have moved cities, had another baby, and acquired some well-paid work which gives me pride to mention (maybe I’m not an aching failure) but is as dull as a Manchester morning to talk about. Organisational leadership theory anyone? Thought not.

Turns out, being a new-mum-work-bore isn’t enough, and to get real, it never was going to be. Now I am drowning in responsibilities, I am back, fighting to reach the surface. Art it seems is necessary. Well paid work and a beautiful family are the ordinary person’s pursuits, but it was such a bitch to attain either that I am here, in awe of anyone who has achieved either but nearing 40 and newly committed to make writing if not a daily then a weekly practice. Let’s see.

I have recently devoured a new book, ‘Raven Smiths’ Men’ and it is simply brilliant. Dripping in metaphor so accurate that it’s truth tapers like expensive clothes – I imagine. It has been a good while since I have worn truly expensive (not Vinted) clothes – despite spending my late teens exclusively shopping in Flannels and House of Fraser.

So much is familiar in Raven’s work that nostalgia pinches at my post-natal body reminding me of slimmer times, (perhaps it is that period I think of as our hay day) – a time of club kid realness, think Nintendo Gameboy necklaces, rubber gloves and capes – when mine and Raven’s lives just about overlapped, not that I would be memorable to him and in fairness, until he became a meme King, I always thought of him as that dickhead who was obsessed with self-nudes, though now I imagine this opinion was formed after a one time event. The other thing that pinches me, is that it is another contemporary (I’m throwing a lasso here) who has done startlingly well. Kae Tempest, Musa Okwonga, Salena Godden, Inua Ellams and so many more who I have shared pages and stages with, are all celebrated, accomplished, high achieving, writers; Hell, most of them are even successful poets! I didn’t even know that was possible unless you died at least 50 years ago, and I had that thought two decades passed.

When I was a gigging poet I was at least, motivated to write, there was always an audience needing something new, but given my low hopes for a career in the field, I tried to move away from spoken word and Mighty Boosh bands (we were terrible and I had a booze and drugs problem – which is probably the reason we were terrible) into writing and the short story. But as it is such a solitary and lonely pursuit, the nag of building debt, the pull of aimless ambition and the burden of fatiguing indecision and low self-belief, pushed me towards a career ladder that was more like that Escher drawing with the steps that fold in on themselves. For those that don’t know the reference, think Harry Potter staircases behaving unhelpfully. If only I had done the thing, been brave, dared to marry and commit to my art; where would I be now? Was I ever good enough?

My genius friend Will Conway has adopted the adage, ‘Wear them down by sticking around’ and he is not only prolific but he is startlingly brilliant (and blessed enough, I think on his better days, that he knows it), it is only a matter of time before he is picked up by some phenomenal cult youth movement that fucking gets it and is despairingly flung into the mainstream – I can’t wait! Will has even closer proximity to Raven, but like me, hasn’t been put under the right nose at the right time. Maybe we just didn’t do enough cocaine? The thing that Will cottoned on to which, despite being my longest and most loyal opposite-sex best friend, that I couldn’t quite hold in my butterfly brain, is that we not only create and communicate for the sake of joy and the goddam glory but also, to stave off the nasties that curdle the night and canker our conversations and, if we are unlucky, our relationships – an abyss of dark thoughts. We pour our emotions somewhere and refashion them in search of light and shade, we let them brim through our fingers, allow the imagination to re-wild, to process them (true feeling the premise of all art) so that we can breathe and enjoy it.

What is most annoying about Raven’s book is that, it serves as a guide to his ridiculously cool life and I never knew how to do it. Raven and I were not really writing contemporaries; we had friends in common – in fact we still do – and many of them are also amazingly successful. I have always guessed at what it was that they had that I didn’t and now Smith has enlightened me, at least what it was for him. Nuanced as it is, I will unfairly claim this as him having a Mum who paid his rent through university. There’s much more too it but this is what sticks in the craw.

Some people seem to have read The Guardians ‘guide to life’.

It is important, to be a credible and successful middle class leftie, you have to have a career that pays you enough to access culture, countryside and other countries, or a job that brings you that as part and parcel. But you also have to have enough wild escapades in youth to be able to dismiss the cliche of it all.

I on the other hand have had the challenges of trying to change class (decidedly working class, factory background) without a fucking clue, whilst climbing over and crumbling beneath mountains of trauma. It isn’t just growing up skint, it’s family relationships breaking down at pivotal points, it’s bad company, drugs, violence and rape. It’s vulnerability which makes any sticky hand feel like safety and it is naivety and lack of options, that keeps you unsure of your own power. So you keep looking for a quicker ride to the top but you can’t spot a true angel and you don’t know that you have wings.

Fearless creativity

So I am here, writing about motherhood and miscarriage and finding an unconventional way in the world. I’m writing about the need to write and hoping to learn about writing and blogging. I am doing this publicly to be accountable (though I have failed many times before, I don’t see why that should stop me starting again.)

It would be great to meet other writers and mothers and feminists who are just trying to find a way. Imagine if we built a web of support and solidarity? Imagine if one person reads this and it inspires them or comforts them? That was what used to keep me going back to the stage.