Today I had a conversation with one of my dearest friends which, I think, explains the silences here of late. We were discussing her latest putative peccadillo, a builder in the city who may or may not put out. As they are both married, this is a subject that must be danced around carefully, like a handbag on the disco floor. Halfway through her dissection of his problematic marriage - his wife doesn't understand him - I announced that I was bored. "I do not care," I said, "For this uninteresting detail." "It's not uninteresting," she replied, sharply, "It's just that you've reached a stage in life where you've heard everything before and news no longer feels new." Bloody hell: how sad is that? It set me thinking. When I was a young reporter, every story however small, excited me, be it a golden wedding or the woman in Savage Gardens who was accidentally boarded into her own home by the council. Then came the day when even tragedy lost its impact. Zeebrugge, Lockerbie, Hungerford - the detail changes, as does the basis of the emotions and the information that follow - but the story is broadly the same. As I listened to my mate's tale of misapprehension and misadventure; watching the blundering lorries of middle-aged sexuality, one pink, one blue, rushing headlong at each other on the same carriageway with the drivers' feet hard down on the accelerator pedal, I'd suddenly hit the 'off' switch. I'd lost interest in the detail... This is not good for a writer. I must push myself back into the heart of everyday minutiae. The question is, how?
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Today I had a conversation with one of my dearest friends which, I think, explains the silences here of late. We were discussing her latest putative peccadillo, a builder in the city who may or may not put out. As they are both married, this is a subject that must be danced around carefully, like a handbag on the disco floor. Halfway through her dissection of his problematic marriage - his wife doesn't understand him - I announced that I was bored. "I do not care," I said, "For this uninteresting detail." "It's not uninteresting," she replied, sharply, "It's just that you've reached a stage in life where you've heard everything before and news no longer feels new." Bloody hell: how sad is that? It set me thinking. When I was a young reporter, every story however small, excited me, be it a golden wedding or the woman in Savage Gardens who was accidentally boarded into her own home by the council. Then came the day when even tragedy lost its impact. Zeebrugge, Lockerbie, Hungerford - the detail changes, as does the basis of the emotions and the information that follow - but the story is broadly the same. As I listened to my mate's tale of misapprehension and misadventure; watching the blundering lorries of middle-aged sexuality, one pink, one blue, rushing headlong at each other on the same carriageway with the drivers' feet hard down on the accelerator pedal, I'd suddenly hit the 'off' switch. I'd lost interest in the detail... This is not good for a writer. I must push myself back into the heart of everyday minutiae. The question is, how?
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2 comments:
Get the blood pumping always seems to be the answer to me, when my emotional generator runs on empty. Go to the gym, have an affair, do a parachute jump (all three would certainly accomplish the job) - it's a bit like pressing Refresh when Google is slow to load
Except 'refresh' is instant, and all the others require pre-input of one sort or another to effect a result:-( Anyway, I've spent too much on handbags to afford the gym, too much on sweeties to get myself a paramour, and not enough on problems around vertigo to consider a parachute jump. I wonder if chocolate would do the trick?;-)
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