Tag Archives: Writing

Door to the River

03/12/2012 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

After graduating from Glasgow University in July 2004, I had several ambitions in life and like many arts graduates none of them involved having a career. Well at least I had absolutely no intention of retraining as a history teacher, which at the time appeared to be the only option available to me. Instead I embraced a hazy world of denial and escapism and this involved travelling around Europe on borrowed money and giving up a £65 a week bedsit on the Great Western Road. Such an undertaking came partly as a lust for knowledge and a desire to explore new cultures and languages. Scotland for all its charms is geographically isolated, monolingual and bordered only by England.

However, I must acknowledge that one of the most compelling reasons behind my desire to travel was the chance to ditch my joke finance job at the Abbey National. So before I abandoned Glasgow for the olive fields of Andalucia, I had one ambition left in life and that involved writing my own fanzine. Such was my love of Kelvinside and its bohemian leafy character, I came up with a pun title derived from a mediocre John Fante novel and set about producing an irreverent guide to post-graduate life in the West End of Glasgow. An inky offbeat publication capturing small town blues, film reviews, Chinese takeaways and unwise polemics against high street chuggers. Ask The Kelvin seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unknown to me in the mid-Noughties, I had set about producing a dead tree publication long before the wonders of tagging, Tumblr and all the social interactive elements that assist writers today. Unable to share my thoughts on a global scale, there was no danger of Ask The Kelvin ever going viral. Living in a make-believe world I knew at the time I couldn’t make any money out of a fanzine but for some strange reason I felt compelled to make one anyway.

On embracing the self-funded model, I produced fifty copies at the local stationary store and distributed them at Fopp, Offshore and a ragtag collection of Byres Road charity shops. Back then Facebook didn’t even exist and the audience I secretly lusted and craved for during my sleepless nights in Otago Street never quite materialised. Indeed looking back it does seem really twee and provincial, especially when I compare it to some of the sexy projects on Kickstarter.

Based in New York and providing a self-funded platform to raise funds on a global scale, Kickstarter allows random individuals to become patrons of their favourite projects. Almost like a counter-culture version of the BBC Dragons’ Den, Kickstarter involves a video pitch alongside a synopsis explaining the reasons why you should support them. Not with a lazy like you can get away with elsewhere but with hard cash.

Kickstarter is an amazing place to support new talent and my personal favourite is theNewerYork, an experimental lit mag based in Brooklyn that celebrates radical poetry, love letters and seriously weird pieces of art. Like stumbling into your favourite record shop as a 17 year old and discovering heroin tainted rock zines for the first time, if you tire of the NewerYork, you are tired of life.

Surreally decorated with unfamous quotes and the occasionally haunting story, their magazine blows my wee Glasgow fanzine out of the water. Beautifully humbled by their efforts, I must confess that on reading their e-version, some 3500 miles away in an English metropolis, I never stood a chance back in leafy Kelvinside. Alas I am now older than the 23 year old locked inside a Glasgow bedsit but still similarly way inclined.

Unlike the NewerYork I don’t think I would get $8,119 in funding for the second edition of Ask The Kelvin, even allowing for the social media tools available to young writers and artists today. However, I do take some inspiration from one of their many slogans: everything has been done before, so do it better. 

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Quarter of a Century

01/16/2012 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Glasgow is a city with a brooding gothic soul. A city I once wrote about regularly, even if it was just the banality of routine. With its violence menace, religious iconography and twee bourgeois sensibility, Glasgow captured my imagination at a particular period in time. Back when I described the insignificant truth of this solitary journey to the cinema on a cold weekday evening. A melancholy love letter so to speak. I had just turned twenty-five. 

Tuesday, 10th January 2006

Moth to a Flame

I go the cinema when I’m bored and lonely. It all begins with an over familiar route through the West End and after several twists and turns I will magically stride through Garnethill down towards the largest cinema building on Planet Earth. The beginning of the journey is arguably the most comfortable upon the eye, it is invariably dark and rectangle shades of affluent light can be seen frozen behind coloured glass. I walk across the Byres Road up towards Great Gibson Street, where mercenary cranes hang over an underdeveloped patch of soil; it is a docile but rapidly changing stretch of road.

The sharp gradient tightens the muscles on both of my legs and I have reached the peak of the road, where in sudden twist of fate I feel compelled to go down the hill towards Gibson Street. I used to live around here, the car park is still a muddy disgrace, littered with crass aluminium shells and alien sized craters. The park dominates the area, it is a spooky place and lit only by a curved silver moon; its iron gates lie open but I dare not enter. I stride past fancy Lebanese and Scottish restaurants, it is an ordinary night but they both appear full of people. I cross over the gentle river, there are no grebes or mallards to be seen and only now do I start to accelerate towards my destination. I twist past two Protestant churches and a cold young fox lying dead in the leaves. The road ahead is empty and without a soul, it appears darker now, the motorway is within walking distance.

I head towards Charing Cross, it is very quiet and all the cars have gone. It is not the right time but I prefer to take to the skies than walk alongside them. I adjust my legs and walk over an arched granite causeway; it elevates me above the carnage of the roads and provides access to the mysterious ways of Garnethill. I am in the city now, there something sinister about this place, something threatening, although my mind is playing tricks on me. It is dark right now and no one is here. The street is awash with neat green lawns and vacancy signs, there are places to stay on my left, while to my right there are scattered bins and graffiti strewn fire exits.

I walk ominously closer and there is a Catholic Church approaching, which is separated by yew, rowan and a piercing iron fence. This secretive place of worship performs mass in Latin and the priest is kept hidden behind a secret silver veil. The church is small but intimidating and I don’t think it likes me at all. I walk on alone and without a God, the winter air is biting my cheeks, my hands are beginning to get cold now.

I walk towards the famous art school and admire its subtle and decorative style, there are no students in the nearby eighties lounge. I am almost there now and feel like a distant stranger, people are on the move down below me, there is a collection of buckfast and vodka sitting alongside a corrugated steel gate. The streets are colliding into one, there are cars passing by me, it is now sparkling with light and the silence has gone.

The Pen is Dead

09/14/2011 By in Arts & Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Letter writing is an increasingly rare occurrence these days. With the rise of smartphones, there are simply more convenient ways of expressing our feelings. As a frequent note jotter myself, I despair at the slow disintegration of my own handwriting. Although I do take solace in that I still compose my thoughts in legible English. For the shape of most people’s written ovals, loops and slants has been in terminal decline for decades now. Writing a letter to your friend has almost become a Victorian anachronism. It’s something quaint and romantic but no longer necessary. Like revitalising dead languages in areas they were never originally spoken, letter writing has now become a sentimental way to communicate.

Chatting online is more convenient nowadays but handwriting forces you to slow down, to think, to form your thoughts more carefully. Everybody’s handwriting will die out eventually without regular practice. Each year I witness my handwriting deteriorate and I still scribble my thoughts down on a regular basis. But note jotting doesn’t require anywhere near the same level of discipline as writing a letter. There is something about pressing the tip of a pen against a page and watching your thoughts form right in front of you. Letter writing is a genuinely cathartic experience and it helps you remember things. Unlike any messages you may compose online, there is no undo button in real life.

As a former teenage boy of letters, I feel something has been lost by the instant muses of mobile technology. When composing your thoughts on paper, the writer has to form relationships entirely dependent on their written skills. Letter writing is certainly a more genuine way to express your feelings. Receiving a handwritten letter in the post will always feel more meaningful than a hastily composed email or Facebook message. In fact putting pen to paper feels almost too personal now. Composing something online is easier because the medium provides a cloak of anonymity that a pen cannot provide.

With the evolutionary demise of handwriting being predicted by some experts, there is a now a romantic movement trying to restore the art of letter writing. The Domestic Sluts are kicking off a debate in London this week about social media and how our letter writing has changed since we started emailing. Does it really matter that we don’t write by hand anymore? On a practical level it doesn’t matter at all. Our need to communicate has never been driven by romantic sentiment. Once technology is established in people’s lives, it doesn’t go away. Indeed the very existence of a restoration movement suggests letter writing is dead already.

Romantic movements meaning well but they are niche by their very nature. Letter writing was never meant to be a kitsch lifestyle choice. Letters are now exhibited as period pieces in retrospective galleries, where once they lay on the porch floor awaiting to be torn open. With the rise of modern technology we arguably exchange more messages and communicate than ever before. Progress is inevitable. But as our handwriting passions slowly die, it sometimes comes at a price.

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Out of the Office

08/16/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

With an estimated two billion English speakers in the world, I have been flirting with the idea of taking on more freelance assignments. Anxious to improve upon my curriculum vitae and hungry for additional funds, I have sought to use my creative writing skills for the betterment of mankind. Freelancing is a precarious way to learn a living. With a spasmodic income, no job security and endlessly chasing new assignments, it certainly does seem like hard work. And while I would much rather be writing blogs about sex, riots and Cesc Fabregas in my spare time, I have to confess it doesn’t pay the bills. So like many others with a love affair with the English alphabet, I re-shape atrociously written text and provide elegant prose for companies and individuals who are incapable of writing it themselves.

Many successful writers claim that freelancing is like discovering a new planet. Whether its girls selling knickers on eBay, setting up a recycled teapot business or writing up toilet gags for an industrial cleaning website. Freelancing has the power to shatter the traditional principles of time and labour. No more early mornings, boring meetings or the gnawing acceptance that you are chained to a particular space for months upon end. With the power of modern technology you can now eat sardines in San Sebastian for lunch, before in theory, returning to your laptop to finish off your latest assignment. Such a routine sounds very fanciful and in reality the majority of freelancing takes place in bedrooms and kitchen tables. Cabin fever is never going to be to far away from a freelancer’s mind.

Even poets, journalists and writers require an internal discipline to get things done. There is a misconception that creative types can spend their days watching clouds form into continents awaiting their latest epiphany. Deadlines are an inescapable fact of life whatever your occupation might be. As long as there is a market for what you do and you’re prepared to work hard then freelancing certainly does provide new opportunities.

Previously I’ve found myself writing about the benefits of industrial cleaning, leather handbags and fairytale medieval towns. There are millions of global English speakers transferring their businesses and services online and luckily for me not too many of them can write particularly well. Sadly the financial rewards are not spectacular and you have to be extremely bold to freelance on a full-time basis.

As while nobody likes being told what to do, there are still outstanding benefits of working for the man. Usually these involve paid holidays and luxury of going to Tuscany for two weeks and drinking copious amounts of red wine. Indeed you also have weekends, public holidays and sick days where you don’t have to look at an email, spreadsheet or anything remotely affiliated with Microsoft Office. Freelancing is a young baby that requires constant attention. Those working in the offshore economy don’t really have the luxury of ignoring their inbox for two weeks because business will just go elsewhere. Likewise the pub landlord can’t close the pub in August and expect a queue of thirsty customers when he comes back from holiday.

Even when I am excessively pragmatic about earning a living, I still privately maintain a delusion that somebody one day will offer currency for my written thoughts. Previously I’ve tried to bury my creative desires but extinguishing yourself is not a good ideal really. Even with each passing year the hunger doesn’t go away. It still doesn’t pay the bills though and, wanting to be useful, I take comfort in being a monoglot scribe and having the potential to be my own boss.

Evolving English

01/20/2011 By in Arts & Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

If reading your Facebook page doesn’t send you into a murderous rage then obviously you don’t have any issues with the English language. Such is the eclectic range of friends in my feed, I frequently find myself laughing at some of the witty, charming and hilariously stupid updates. One anonymous connection of mine  ‘…wishes this abses would go awa no am nae gan 2 the dentist i hate them al burst it myself’. Facebook inevitably provided this young Scotsman with counselling and advised him ‘Dina mean to scare u but my fiance’s cousin died from one, burst and all the poison went into his blood and into his brain. Better get it sorted!’ And while that does sound extremely painful, what I found interesting was not his abscesses but the near impenetrable use of the Scots dialect.

On wanting to discover more about phonetics, I decided to go along to the Evolving English exhibition at the British Library.  The concept behind the exhibition is the historical, political and social origins of the English language from 5th century runes to 21st century ‘txt-speak’.  As a matter of principle I have always written text messages in proper English. Such is my aversion to typing without vowels; I regularly had to endure severe financial penalties throughout the pay as you go era. With a flush new phone contract, I can now compose long messages without having to scratch a voucher card every other day. But with unlimited text bundles and small screen technology no longer so constraining, there are no excuses for txt-speak anymore. Yet in everyday life I find this linguistic phenomenon remains as potent as ever before.

For nearly a decade now I have dismissed txt speak with a barely concealed contempt. Some of my prejudices were further exposed in an innocuous conversation with a womanising guy who insisted ‘all girls use LOL’ when they are texting. By doing so he unknowingly confirmed that getting a ‘LOL’ out of a girl is an essential part of the modern courting process. Laughing out loud I passively acknowledged his sexual prowess and considered LOL to be feminine ever since. In stark contrast any self-respecting man using this abbreviation is beyond contempt in my opinion. But why I am being so blatantly sexist by inferring only women can get away with such frivilous language? Modern text abbreviations are often open to interpretation as this heart warming tweet reveals below.

Considering that nearly 2 billion people on earth speak varying forms of English, I began to question my own relationship with the language.  Despite having a distinctive regional accent, I have always composed my words according to how I think rather than how I speak. And while I love reading dialect in novels, stories and poetry, I continue to mock ordinary people who express themselves in txt talk. Following the finest traditions of prejudice, I have always dismissed txt-shorthand as a form of illiteracy and those who use it to be really ignorant and lazy.

Although this is to disregard the evolutionary nature of English and texting is just another example of the malleability of the language. Constantly changing and evolving from the 5th century, English has never remained static and while txt speak is subject to serious derision by conservative academics. It isn’t that much different than some of the ludricious office jargon I have to endure on a daily basis, where mangled words such as ‘hyper local’, ’granularity’ and ‘consumer facing brands’ are considered gospel.

Even some of the most cultured and intelligent people I know are prone to a good LOL now and again. Indeed I have a new found affection for people who Laugh Out Loud but for reasons unknown to me I still think men who use it are idiots. Alas despite being enlightened by the British Library, I refuse to use LOL on grounds of principle. Instead I have an alternative expression of mirth in the form of ’haha’, which I regularly use when reading about ex-school colleague’s gum problems on Facebook.

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Think before you click

01/09/2011 By in Press & Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

On becoming increasingly worried I am becoming addicted to Facebook, I began to investigate why I incessantly clicked on my smartphone for messages and comments I knew weren’t there. It made no sense for me to continually log in for updates when I had checked 14 seconds earlier. Alas I continue to tap away at my glass pane for salvation and while I might have a case of undiagnosed OCD, I suspect something more profound is controlling my urges. By clicking compulsively I am sub-consciously longing to be rewarded by some form of human attention.

Social networking is highly addictive and one of the dangers of this artificial world is that feeds into a particularly modern form of estrangement. Never before has society been so well connected yet the bite-sized nature of the internet often leaves me feeling empty. More so I find myself longing for when people wrote or described their experiences rather than just upload photographs. Writing is never static and can be magically conjured up in a letter, email, blog or an even an instantaneous conversation with a likeminded friend. The danger with the transient nature of modern communications is that any prose will be lost at the time of delivery and there will never be an effective method of preserving your electric thoughts.

When I found myself on holiday in St Ives last year, I had to endure the trauma of my phone dying and being without the internet for three days. Suddenly I had to physically buy a newspaper to satisfy my hunger for stories, news and articles. Once my compulsion could no longer be satisfied, I relaxed and began to enjoy my immediate surroundings and forgot about the trivia electronically stored in my pocket. On returning home to London and logged into Tweetdeck, I was enormously deflated by how utterly inane some of the messages were. Violent streams of spam, link repetition and empty RIP tributes to dead actors, whom the majority of tweeters had probably never heard of until Gabriel blew his horn.

What I fear the most about the proliferation of social networking is the uniformity of taste on applications such as Facebook, Twitter and the truly awful Foursquare. When the majority of people use the same websites, it ruins a romantic idea, of there being a sense of depth or continuity with previous generations. As while there are tremendous benefits in the evolution of technology, I also think it will be responsible for the end of a specific type of geographical culture. The world is getting smaller and mass production is getting so big. If everyone orbits the same ubiquitous superbrands then we are in serious danger of becoming the same.

While discovering new technologies can be exciting and rewarding, I find the lack of originality of the people using these applications to be very unimaginative. When I ceased to have internet access in St Ives, I began to compose my own thoughts, explored the world with virgin eyes and documented my thoughts with a pen. Then I began to remember the great travel writing of Patrick Leigh Femour, Laurie Lee and George Orwell and how their journeys painted new landscapes, religions, people and culture in such a vivid and beautiful way. Their prose remains highly original and distinctive pieces of work, which retains an individuality and a romantic sense the writers were genuinely living their experiences rather than inanely reporting them.

The medium isn’t the only message and while I don’t want to reject new technology, I feel there is some value in disconnecting from the emptiness which pervades social networking. Living in a world where everyone is their own personal marketing assistant, I find myself immersed in this digital matrix. But like junk food on the high street, I recognise it’s not always good for me. Switching off might well be preferable to refreshing an overpriced glass screen and hoping to see a red digit on Facebook.

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