In love with a dead man

Yeah, so I happen to be falling in love with Capote. What of it?

Okay, it has zero to do with his looks, gleaned only from the black and white back covers of original Penguins. And the man was gay so even if we had coincided chronologically and geographically and socially ... well, as you can see, it's too ridiculous to even contemplate.

But my God, his mind. His sensibilities and sensitivities. His view, his outlook, his expression. He could turn phrase, but it's not just that. He saw what mattered, and he knew it mattered. From his writing, Capote seems like the kind of guy you could sit down with and talk to—really talk to, human to human. And he'd get it.

Yeah, temperamental recluse, whatever. Who cares? Love is blind, after all. I'd get him a rye on ice any time.

[home]

[Black hills rising
in this dark place
although we can't see them
they're out there,
they'll wait.

Don't let me go,
or forget how it feels
to be here at home
held tight in this place.

This lonely home of mixed and fickle fates.

All of the hopes
the mistakes we're making
the rivers we've crossed
and the losses we're taking
—none of it matters,
not to this place.

It's here that timeless longing waits.]

That's not what I do

Recently I've been approached by a few sources for what I consider churn-and-burn copywriting work.

Churn-and-burn work is any request that belies the enquirer's lack of concern for their brand's engagement with their chosen audience. These are people who don't actually care what they say to the market, as long as they get their conversions.

Asking a content developer you've never met to provide a quote on the basis of a two-line brief, or telling them you're not sure of your product's unique selling proposition but can they write the content anyway, screams, "I don't give a fuck."

If you don't give a fuck, I don't want to work with you.

Without wanting to sound like a complete wanker, Jesus H Christ people, actually communicating with your audience is what you're paying me for, so, presumably, you'd like me to take that seriously. I can only take that seriously if you do.

A decent brief, a willingness to meet, some shred of respect for your own brand—all these are evidence of your taking things seriously. You may be in it for the money; I am not. And I don't want to be the one trying to build up your brand amidst a hopeless corporate atmosphere of I-don't-give-a-fuck.

If that's your game, may I refer you to any of the countless freelancing exchanges online. They can help you, but that's not what I do.

The ghost writer

Sometimes, the ghost writer doesn't have the energy to pretend any more. Sometimes, she can't find the mask and pantaloons required to be you, can't make the vocal chords replicate your voice or the pen your hand.

On those days, she just has to give up and be herself. It's all she can manage, the simple putting together of sentences in her own voicee. Saying things in her own way, not trying to pass them off as yours.

Of course your readers will believe literally anything. Anything. But she knows the days it's just not in her. They're rare, but when they come there's something soothing and restorative in being able to be herself, if only for a few paragraphs.

On trauma

Night, by Elie Wiesel, was one of the most horrendous texts I read for school. The education board must have wanted to sort the wheat from the chaff that year, because as well as Night they subjected us to All Quiet on the Western Front. If you hadn't wanted to burn something down after the first book, you did by the close of the second.

The thing that struck me about these stories was how anyone could get past the experience of war, of a massive, surreal, ongoing trauma like that, and continue to build themselves a life afterward.

The problem with trauma is that it expands your understanding of what's possible in the world in horrible directions. It makes the unconscionable real. And this makes it difficult to reconcile the experience with whatever comes after—however calm or pretty or peaceful it may be.

There is a myth that children are more resilient about such things, but it really comes down to the individual. I like to think it would be easier to overcome trauma as an adult, but I know this isn't true. Similarly, if the first years of a life are spent in trauma, the "normal" world forever after can seem alien, like a movie set or a painting into which one has somehow strayed. It seems so real, yet it jars so strongly with the first truths we knew about ourselves and the world—truths that are as ingrained as how we hold a fork or recite the alphabet.

How can one make sense of worlds, realities, at complete odds? How can both be true? Inevitably we apply coping mechanisms from one world to the other, with disastrous results. Inevitably.

Perhaps this is why so many victims of trauma fail to achieve a post-traumatic world that is calm or peaceful or pretty. For some, it must be easier to reconcile trauma with a post-traumatic reality by perpetuating it. This mightn't be a conscious choice, but one that naturally precipitates from the expectations set by the trauma and the fact that, until someone tells or shows you otherwise, it's pretty much all you know.

Your expectations draw you down those same dark paths, to the hard ground you know better than any other. Perhaps that's where you feel the greatest sense of belonging. Perhaps that's where things make the most sense, where you make the most sense.

This is what trauma does to people.

[no amount of longing]

[past became a dream, and the future a fantasy. There was nothing left: no feeling, no sound, no movement. Balance, yes, but the balance was nil.

Nothing made sense. And nothing mattered.

It was about dealing—about moving through each day like there was some kind of direction, as if  there were purpose. But there was none, nothing. Everything stopped in a few months' time. Everything ended: the plank, the proverbial cliff, the rope. That was the moment the escape hatch opened for good, and the kind, well-meaning humans were jettisoned into the void.

Until then? The motions had to be gone through, the dramas played out as if they mattered. When all that mattered was what had been lost long ago—that which no amount of longing could bring back]

Why "feminism" makes me uneasy

I know it's unpopular to find feminism a bit weird, but I can't help it.

Feminism fights gender inequality on the basis of gender. To me this seems as counterproductive as gender-based discrimination. Saying women deserve equality because they're women is logically akin to saying men deserve something because they're men. It keeps questions of human rights shackled to gender, rather than setting them apart.

On this basis, feminism isn't about equal opportunity or gender equality; it's about women's advancement because they're women.

Perhaps I just don't get it. Here, in my defence, are three current examples of "support" for and "supporters" of "gender equality" that make me uneasy.

1. Greer makes public comment on PM's suits

Why Germaine Greer, feminism's (shall we say?) pin-up girl, would engage in a discussion of our female Prime Minister's suits and how big her arse is, is utterly beyond me.  Isn't she keen to avoid gender stereotypes?

Okay, maybe she loves the celebritisation of politics as much as everyone else seems to, but as an employee removed from the head office of a large organisation because I declined to wear sheer stockings, I submit that what's important in the workplace is work performance. I'd have thought Greer would agree, and engage in discourse accordingly. I'd also have hoped she'd have more interesting things to say.

2. Obama says women get more done

Oh, Obama. Perhaps Congress would get more done if there were more women in Congress, but surely that would depend on the individual women themselves, not simply arise as a happy benefit of their genders? As is the case with men, I believe.

3. The Age reveals that sex sells, and uses the fact to sell advertising

Okay, this may just be gratuitous snarking. A revelation from today's Age: sex sells. In fact, the piece focuses on the sexualisation of children—apparently female children, if this image is anything to go by.

"What's the big deal, sister?" you're thinking. "The sexualisation of tiny tots is totes wrong!" Sure. But here's the context for that story, in the carousel on The Age homepage:

Female children are sexualised by the media because women are sexualised by the media. Media like The Age. Will you take some hypocrisy with your morning news?

Campaigning for equality on the basis of gender reduces questions of capability to exactly that: gender. Surely that's something true advocates of equal opportunity want to avoid.

Write it

I had found my way to the City Lights basement. It was gloomy, and I was surrounded by books. They crowded the walls; they pressed upon me. And I stood before them, numb.

Then I heard it—a small whisper, a growing whisper, louder, louder, louder still. Another joined it, and another. A swelling tide of whispers rose up and roiled around me, words rubbing against words, pages chanting stickily to one another, ideas floating on the air, sliding down the walls, piling up in drifts on the concrete floor.

I felt a welling in my ribcage at the same time. Something was rising up in me, as if called, seduced, given breath by all those words, all those ideas that slipped and slithered around the room. Up it came, up, up, until it reached my chest—the place just below my collar bone.

There it lodged, flattening and spreading and nestling into the thin space above my lungs. Between head and heart. Right beneath my larynx, my voicebox.

This idea wanted control. It wanted to be told. It would not capitulate.

There was only one way out: write it.