Russell Davies

London Review of Caravans - Fitzrovia

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Stepping stones into the dark

(I feel like I've posted this before but I can't find it...so. It's a bit that didn't make it into the Do Interesting book. Though, clearly, it should have)

The Australian author Helen Garner wrote a magnificent essay for The Guardian about happiness. She said she’d finally realised that it wasn’t a thing you got after a lifetime of striving but something that you ‘glimpse in the corner of your eye’ Something elusive, that slips away before you name it. 

And then she writes:

“So I’m not going to spend what’s left of my life hanging round waiting for it. I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness – moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist. Things that remind me of other things. Tiny scenes. Words that people choose, their accidentally biblical turns of phrase. Hand-lettered signs, quotes from books, offhand remarks that make me think of dead people, or of living ones I can no longer stand the sight of. I plan to keep writing them down, praising them, arranging them like stepping stones into the dark. Maybe they’ll lead me somewhere good before I shrivel up and blow away.”

And then she tells you about the things she’s noticed. It’s magical and mundane.

A bit about pens - not in the book

Taylor Swift has three different pens which she uses to write different types of songs. She writes her most gothic overwrought lyrics with a quill pen, all scratchy and twisted. She writes poetic literary stuff with a fountain pen and she writes the bouncy bubblegum stuff with a glitter pen, like you’d find in a teenagers pencil case. She confessed all this when accepting a Songwriter of the Decade award.

Slightly disappointingly she says these pens are imaginary.  “I don’t have a quill. Any more. I broke it when I was mad.”

People who write for a living are intensely interested in this kind of thing. Get together with a gang of writers and they’re not arguing about influences or iambic pentameters. They’re gossiping about tools. Has anyone found a source of Alwych’s? What’s your workflow in Scrivener? How much does everyone hate Word?

Of course, there are always a few isolated individuals who airily contend that the tools don’t matter. They can write on anything, anywhere, they don’t need a special chair and a special pen. They look down on the rest of us. ‘Just write’ they say. And if you’re one of them. Great. But why are you reading this? This book is for those of us who occasionally need a nudge. We’re looking for ways to make things easier and one of the ways to do that is to make them exciting and pleasurable. So if you get pleasure from writing with a particular special pen, fantastic. Just make sure you carry it around. If you’ve got a favourite fountain pen that makes you feel slightly like you’re Joan Didion skewering a contemporary more then embrace it. Maybe get the hat and sunglasses too. Whatever it takes to get you writing.

Try this: treat yourself to a slightly more expensive pen or pencil than you’re otherwise normally use. Make a little moment out of using it for the first time. Let the ceremony of that first mark carry over into your writing and get the flow going.

(The book in question)

You've gone and got national acclaim

I've finally screwed up the courage to look inside my copy. This is the first page I turned to. Made me smile. I'm taking that to be a good sign. (Moody chops)

From 1966

I've started to notice/collect things that are the same age as me. Born in 1966. They feel like things to compare myself against.

This tree, for instance, is on the estate where I grew up and was planted around the time we moved in, which was around when I was born. It normally looks old to me. Gnarled. But every now and then it blossoms. That's inspiring.

I got this watch off ebay. Less than £30. It claims to be from 1966, which is good enough for me. Still going! Also inspiring.

Or there's this magnificent mug. From 1966, when celebratory football merch was somehow tasteful. Hasn't aged at all.

Small, sturdy networks of affinity and interest

I am going to quote Robin Sloane at length now, because this seems very true:

"Last week, I joined hosts V. V. Gane­shanan­than and Whitney Terrell on their Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast to talk about “social media after Twitter”.

I mention this in our conversation, and I want to under­score it here: where the internet is concerned, we are in a crisis of discovery. Anyone with inter­esting new work to share — their own or someone else’s — rummages in the tool shed, looking for a seed spreader or a slingshot, and emerges with an egg beater and a single unmatched glove. Is this all we’ve got??

Maybe it seems odd to make that argument while the great algo­rithmic engines of YouTube, TikTok, etc., pump away, stronger than ever, powering a whirlwind of media unprece­dented in history. They do sometimes circulate inter­esting new work; they do sometimes sell books. But that’s the breath of the gods, and I don’t want gods. I want tools.

I suspect there is no easy remedy. Or, maybe I mean to say: if it’s easy, it’s not a remedy. For example, if the Twitter clone called Threads becomes widely used, if its discovery algorithm really starts to pop, if it becomes a place where a new writer can build a mean­ingful audience … won’t that solve this problem? Of course not! Anyone who has used Instagram for more than six months, and therefore expe­ri­enced its slippery caprice, understands this.

The strategy is the same as it always was: cultivate small, sturdy networks of affinity and interest. Connect them to each other. Keep them lit.

Bookstores and libaries have had this down for decades, of course. These days, their rock-solid reli­a­bility feels like a super power.

I always have a lot (too much) to say on this subject. You’ll find more such rumi­na­tion in the podcast."

It's the joint

What a lovely book. Really, to do it proper justice, I should have shot it in the AceJet style.

London Review of Caravans - Exmouth Market

Friendly

The London Review of Caravans - London Bridge

Noisy

LVMH idea

I was walking through Soho at 7:30 this morning. Saw a woman in a green suit striding down the middle of an empty street, carrying a handbag and a briefcase. Following her was a hotel porter trundling a huge green wheelie bin. Turns out it was just a coincidence. But for a while I was convinced she travelled with a wheelie bin. Which would be a brilliant idea. Just chuck everything in.