It feels as if I have forgotten to write. How can a person forget how to write? Once that art and skill has been taught? No, I don’t mean it like that. Not that I have forgotten ‘how’ to write; but I have neglected to write.
There were too many other people in my head. Sitting in a semi-circle high above me in hooded gowns. Someone in a hostelry explained the influence of the Augustine monastic orders in east Kent. ‘They dominated for over two hundred years’, he said, as if it was yesterday. Imagine that!
Trying to compose a line or two about the sea and chalk cliffs and green grassy downs sprinkled with rag wort and military orchids, and that order of the Augustines are leaning on a wall with mean and sour faces. Discouraging just with their presence and the sense of pointing fingers. There’s a lot more of this goes on than some might imagine.
I tried to cast away these prying eyes and fingers twitching at imaginary curtains, made of ideologies and political positions and the posturings of sectarians.
But also I’ve been busy. There is the day job and that takes time and mental effort. It’s not so easy to switch from the strange language of the corporate world; so weird and empty of humanity. (Let alone Humanism; have these people ever read Erasmus or studied the Family of Love in Mechelen and Antwerp and Leiden? No, I thought not).
To switch into the world where everything really matters.
A friend, a real friend, and we shake hands and our hands linger in a comradely embrace.
As I leave the pub, making goodbyes and silly statements someone opens up their arms for a hug. These things linger for a long time later. They have no money value. An embrace that had a price could not possibly have a human value. Human value; instead of money value. And with human value it’s not about value at all, but the quality without a name. These are different things.
There are accusations of obscurity and people gently saying that it’s difficult to follow. The writing moves around a bit ….hanging in the air are the words they don’t say, ‘ a bit too much’ (in brackets).
These are fair points and if I thought about or concentrated on audience that would differ. I like the idea of an audience although it terrifies me as well.
And sometimes one must write for an audience, to have any chance of being taken seriously as a writer. And then there are times when some hidden psychic force takes over and the words pour out.
And for the person sat at the keyboard it’s pure delight to see what emerges. There is no plan, the words and sentences just write themselves.
If the writer cooks up enough stews of Marx or cakes of architecture or omlettes of historical materialism then the meals can sometimes make themselves.
For the writer, this is rather lovely. And if there is a reader, well you’re coming along for a free-range ride. No artificial ingredients of writing schools or classes. It’s just what comes out,a mystery to the writer, a possible challenge to the reader.
And sometimes, just sometimes, for the writer it’s a form of something. Is it therapy? I’m not sure ( I just deleted a whole lot of stuff about psychology and something rather flat and oddly predictable…but I’m not sure what to put here in its place).
I’ve not been writing because I haven’t really had the time. And now time might be loose and fancy free and in great supply or acute shortage. It’s difficult to say.
For now I’ve done some writing and it’s possible that you have done some reading.
It’s all there. Words, text, the alphabet and life.
It feels as if I’ve been neglecting a friend; the friend of words, and now, here we are again, in a state of mutual aid.
Commodity Fetishism 
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