I did a gig OUTSIDE!!!
And why my podcast is dormant, and a rant about the soulless marketing of art in the modern world. And also something about feet pics.
The basic gist is that I pitched a radio show to a friend in the industry, and he said yes!!!!!!!
So I’ve been researching subjects for us to talk about, so I’m a few weeks ahead. I’ve also been sorting out my finances, properly, which takes ages as I find it utterly intolerable.
And I’ve been ill. Had a bad tooth or two which put me off doing much.
And I’ve been tweeting, which is a terrible thing to do really. I might seek help.
And I’ve been outside. Here’s the evidence.
I went to Dulcimer bar. It was part business (networking) and part performance (also networking if you think about it). As always I read some improvised comedy poetry, in the hopes of testing it on an unsuspecting public and building up a body of zany material for stand-up nights, as I’m finally getting into stand-up.
I’m still a poet. But apparently rhymes about my cat shitting on the bed are more funny than heartbreaking. Who knew? (I knew, but I like my on-stage persona to be blissfully unaware of how funny his stories are. It adds layers. In fact I’ve been told recently that I have great control over an audience, which is a terrible thing to tell a man who often writes about apocalypses. I could start a cult. The church of Virtualism is already pretty much a thing.)
Being a funny poet might mean I will struggle to sell to the miserable poets who frequent instagram, but that’s fine as I don’t like them and they smell bad. I mean seriously, what kind of person puts a drawing of a boob next to a poem about the ‘socioeconomic impact of the coal industry on quasinormative bingbagsexual bodies’ ? It is such a strange thing, like some artistic spasm, a pornographic yell-sneeze in the middle of a eulogy for a beloved friend. It doesn’t fit. It makes zero sense. But I guess badly drawn boobs get clicks. I wish my boobs were badly drawn, but they aren’t. They are perfect.
ANYWAY POEMS
Here I am. I read some “translated love poems from countries I made up” which is such a vile concept for comedy that I am tempted to make it the 9th poetry book I work on this year, and I’m excited to write country names that people will later claim are offensive. One of them is Elderlyshire, another is misrepresentedinthewesternmediastan, and another is yellowedtrousersshire. It’s the kind of thing I find incredibly easy to write, but that other people find inexplicably hilarious and can’t write themselves. I think this means I am again, re-finding my voice (I apparently had a very strong writer’s voice at uni, but I think personal circumstances knocked it out of me in 2019. I got the short story voice back, but I abandoned poetry almost entirely until fairly recently).
And here’s the audio. I’m on right near the end.
Yes, that’s right. I am becoming a poet again. I never really stopped, I just had a weird few personal years where I’d write the sporadic odd thing and hide it from my future self in a network of subfolders. I also had the irritating habit at uni of ONLY writing poetry whilst alcohol was in me, and now I barely drink I realise dimly that I have trained myself.
My body now produces decent poetry only when I’m on the drink, as if it’s some sort of defense mechanism. Either that or I only think it’s worth writing when I’m pissed.
All of these make decent quotes. Someone pitched the idea of a “serious poetry book” to me and I am working on it. This is part of my body of work, maybe. I don’t find myself as interesting as other people do though, so be patient.
I’m not one of those grumpy fuckers who requires misery to write, I’m quite the opposite. I need to be in a good mood to write the grim, dark stuff you love so much, so in an era of personal tragedy my brain was not poetry-shaped. I have had to hit it with a comically large spoon, denting it in all the right places.
I did manage to write Who Built The Humans? though, which is an impressive feat. I bet you didn’t know that I wrote ALL of that book’s first draft either from my bed (for the first two or three stories that didn’t make the cut) or from my living room floor, as I didn’t have a desk and slept near the front door for security reasons. It was a weird few years, but what makes me feel really good about myself is that I still powered through and produced a fucking good book, regardless of external pressures.
Afterword
So I’ve been thinking.
It’s my sister’s 20th birthday today. Time is moving despite my constant tinkering with brass-coloured contraptions in the garage. Our childhoods were weird,1 and life just gets weirder.
I abstained from forming new relationships from 2018 to 2022 because I was afraid there was some genetic trigger that might turn me into a man like my father. I probably missed out on a decent thing with an old flame, but that’s okay.
I didn’t get my plan, “A book a year” done as advertising WBTH has taken a year itself. I realised why tradpub is so sexy to many writers: Selfpub takes up ALL of your time. But I love it. I’ve been working pretty intensely with my client Maria to make her book as beautiful as possible, and I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. I’ve also been coaching her, so thanks to me she now knows which way round the next few stories should be, or at least how to make them flow better. It’s nice to have a positive impact on someone like that, to show them their potential and help them realise it.
If I was the type to vociferously whine about my childhood I could have turned it into poetry, and I’d be a millionaire now because miserable poetry sells better than feet pics, which by the way, a few people have asked me for recently. I am tempted. Onlyfans money is insane money. I could buy a house with feet pics.
Thanks for reading this very weird post. I hope you liked it. More short stories coming soon!