Coasting

Came into the office to alter my module outlines and learning outcomes, but I couldn’t write a line. In the office, Sunday, very cold, to update my module outlines, but I couldn’t begin, couldn’t write a thing. Wait for the fog in the head to subside and the fan heater to warm up the room, and then see, but the fog did not subside, it was as thick as before, and already it is half-past-six and I’ve been here all afternoon and part of the evening.

Yes, I waited all afternoon, in the swamp of the afternoon into which the hopes and desires of the morning run to lose themselves, but nothing was possible, I wrote nothing – that was bad enough – and I read nothing. Came into the office, determined to get my administration done once and for all, came in, cold Sunday, ready to clear my desk for the new week, ready to organise myself and prepare my papers, ready to sort out the office and run through my in-tray, came in today as I came in yesterday, but I did nothing, nothing began, and there was only the fog in my head and the cold outside.

Then there was the blog, and the problem of the blog. Then there was the question of the blog, which had tormented me last night and tormented me still. What was to be done? The blog was stuck in ice, I was sure of that. What could be done? It was all over, it was finished, the blog had run aground, the good ship Spurious had hit a reef and now it was wrecked, and what was to be done? Was it so long ago that there was a good string of posts? Was it really so long ago that writing was the first and the easiest thing in the morning, that it was a matter of opening the page called ‘New Post’ and beginning to write?

Yes, it was a long time; I was already lost, already adrift, already running on empty. Yes, it was the longest of times, it was impossible to write, the blog was tired, the themes had been run through too many times, the topics were wearing themselves out and the writing was become too lush and unsimple. The longest of times, measured by the forcedness of the writing, apparent in the effort of the writing, when writing should be so simple, when there should be no problem at all, there never was – not those months of September and October, blissful months!, not until now.

What had happened? Admittedly, the blog had run aground many times before those months. Once it was nearly always aground, nearly always wrecked and there were gaps of weeks and months between posts and strings of posts. But after summer and early autumn? After September and October, when I finally abandoned any attempt at serious literary or philosophical work here at the blog? After those months in which I’d given up everything but crude and obvious rants and lyrical imprecations?

Cruelty of blocked writing. Cruelty of a writing become false, become fake – of a parody of what had gone before and a senescence of style. Writing lost from itself and adrift. The same and the same of the same – when had it finished? When had it run aground? When was the humour lost? When did the humour of epic whining lose itself? How they used to amuse me, those epic whines! How it amused us, W. and I! Magnificent and rambling whines, buffoonery and self-pity become sublime! What laughter! What gales of laughter!

In the evening, the pub, and in the early morning, the blog. A day’s work and then the pub, the blog and then back to the office: happiness of days which turned on themselves. Happy self-devouring, happy Ouroboros, tail devouring snake. What went wrong? When did the wheels come off? Last week? The week before? No matter: the evidence is everywhere: the blog is wrecked and I have wrecked the blog. The blog is wrecked and I have not the sense to stop blogging, but I mean to go on even though the blog is wrecked.

Like the tail of the dinosaur, I said to myself the other night, which doesn’t know the brain is dead. Like the twitching tail of the dinosaur, I thought, whom the message hasn’t reached that the organism is dead. And so is the blog dead, and this writing the tail wagging. For a time, it is true, something happened. For a time, a stream of posts, one after another, one launched on the tail of the other, each day there was writing, each day the surprise of a new post. How long can this go on?, I asked myself – but I did not press the question. How long? – but I tried not to think too hard, tried only to accept the bounty of writing, borne on the great tide of disgust and contempt, borne on a great and vague dissatisfaction, borne by unreasonable resentment and a long, ceaseless whinge.

When were they, those days? I barely noticed their passing, it is true. Barely noticed it, until, by chance, doing what I refrain from doing, doing what I would only do out of great boredom, I read back over a few posts. What disaster! Last night, in for a change, hungover as usual, I read back out of boredom and tiredness, read back as the first Austin Powers was shown on TV, and thought: it’s all gone wrong – surely it can’t have gone wrong, but yes, it’s gone wrong.

When did I take the wrong turn? When, without knowing it, had it gone wrong? I thought I was more alert; thought I was aware, but now like the dead dinosaur’s tail, I’d gone on even though the blog was dead. Why hadn’t the message reached me? Why had it failed to announce itself to me? But it was there, last night, as clear as anything. It was there, the evidence, and apparently to anyone: it was dead, over, everything was finished, a world had closed down, the night had come, the fog was not going to be parted.

If it’s difficult to write, then do not write. If it gets in the way of work, of real work, then drop it. And now? Fussily, I deleted some posts and broke up some longer ones. Fussily, late at night, I cut some posts and rewrote others. But wasn’t this a sign that it was over? And when, today, foggy and cold, I read back over what I had written, wasn’t this glancing back already a sign that it was over? But how could have it been sustained? How would it have continued itself, day after day?

It had settled into itself, my style. Who should I blame? Who was to blame? The interminable and self-involved novel I’d been reading and admiring? The poison of that novel, just the opposite of fresh, quick Bernhard? The sluggishness of that novel, in which the worst of its writer revealed itself? Just now I went to the shelf and picked out Josipovici’s The Big Glass: now there is a novel! What a novel! How sure in its judgement! How deft! It begins marvellously and runs along marvellously. This, the best of all his novels, the most marvellous of all them, begins wonderfully – there’s nothing better – and I can follow by my pencil markings the marvel of this and that passage, of this and that formulation.

Study! I tell myself. More sobriety! I tell myself. Handke is a bad influence, I tell myself, especially the late Handke, especially the swamps and inland seas of late Handke, I told myself. Above all, keep from late Handke, I told myself, and stick to Bernhard and Josipovici. But was it the fault of Handke? Was it his fault? How happy I was reading No Man’s Bay! How happy I was, even last night, finishing its 480 pages! In truth, it was nothing to do with Handke, my malaise, and it would not cured by Josipovici.

What, then? A couple of glasses of Cava? A half-bottle of fridge-cooled Cava, poured as I used to pour it in happier days of blogging? Or a bottle of beer – one of the bottles of real ale delivered by Tescos the other day? Ah, but drinking will not help. The gym, then – more exercise? More cycling about? More time on the Elliptical Trainer or the Treadmill? Then, shuddering, I thought of another sign of decline: hadn’t I been taking notes on things to write about? Hadn’t I been copying phrases down from here and there? What horror! What uninspiration! Truly something had come to an end!

And didn’t I have several deadlines approaching – wasn’t I to speak first there and then there? Didn’t I experienced the propitiousness of the approaching deadline which sent me into any activity except writing a paper? The horror: complacency was filling me. Horror: I am becoming a coaster. Horror: I’d reached the plateau, nothing more was left, there was nothing higher, and there was no longer the thrill of ascent, no longer the test of the climb. I had found a metier, a style. I’d found a way of writing which was a way of not-writing.

Where the thrill of discovery? Where the style that discovered itself by my fingers? Where were they, the sentences and paragraphs borne by discovery and the movement of discovery? In truth, I’d always known the weakness of my writing. Yes, if there was anything I could say of myself it was that I was a weak writer, that I always overreached, that I was always overreaching and failing by overreaching and in full knowledge that by overreaching I was failing.

That I said of myself and knew of myself. But didn’t I pride myself on writing nonetheless? Wasn’t it the fact that I wrote oblivious to talent, to ability, to fluency, to clarity that was the secret source of my pride? Wasn’t it that obliviousness that was my buffoonish glory, that writing without regard of my poor taste and my ineptness, writing that was only failure and buffoonery, but was writing nonetheless, writing written nonetheless, regardless of all obstacles, that was my sole right and claim to writing?

I thought: to write from non-ability, this is already a great deal. I thought: by my non-ability am I entitled, by incompetence am I licensed, by a desire to write not even with nothing to say, not even with no means to say it, but without an ability to write, with, in fact, an inability to write, a non-writing that already set writing off course – yes, by that I staked my claim to writing! By that I thought, it is justified, this writing.

Non-writing. W. had said, you should do something else, and I had said, I can’t, I haven’t the ability. W. had said, why not do something else, and I said, I can barely do what I do – I can barely do it, and that is the point, don’t you see? This over Tequilas a few weeks ago, four hundred miles away, on the south coast. This as we listened to the Harry Smith anthology. Over Tequilas: it’s the fact that I can’t do it that’s important, do you see? And when W. demurred, I said, that’s because you are bourgeois! And we laughed. ‘I’m not bourgoise’ – ‘You are if you present it as a matter of choice – I want to do this, tomorrow I will do that – you’re a bourgeois’. And then we laughed.

But that was it, non-writing in writing, the non-ability to write but writing nonetheless, the wrecking of elegance and good taste, the triumph of bad style and bad construction. And what was I now? A coaster – one who coasts. A coaster, which is to say, one for whom non-writing is nothing. The first principle of blogging: inability. The second principle of blogging: indefatigability. The third principle?: Endlessness. Or at least as much of it you can achieve in an hour (an hour: absolute limit for one post, and one I have now reached).