Still feeling woozy and disorientated, my fingers as I type not quite feeling as if they’re mine. There’s a kind of numbness in my fingertips.
My copies of the new things have arrived. Instantly I think about a line from Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George, neatly summing up the joy of the painter’s process:
‘Look, I made a hat / Where there never was a hat.’
I feel this applies particularly when, like the George of the musical, the creator in question feels rather lacking at being a normal human being, away from the world of making or writing. It’s perfectly possible to be creative and NOT be a Colin Wilson-style outsider or dysfunctional or bohemian or battling with drug addiction or just strange. But if you are feeling lost in the world, and lost in your life – whether for a moment or a lifetime – seeing the finished results of your creative act really helps make sense of the relentless confusion of it all. Ah yes, you think. THAT’s what I’m good for.
Whether it’s something I’m good AT is neither here not there, not when it comes to deciding to make the things in the first place.
Last time I put out an album, I mentioned it on an email mailing list. Someone piped back unkindly along the lines of, ‘Woo! Well, look out, pop charts!’
Well, yes, it’s unlikely the album’s sales will give Nickelback any sleepless nights. But if a tree falls in a forest and no one blogs about it, it does still make a sound.
‘I’m rather happy with the way I fell just then,’ thinks the tree. ‘I fell in a way that was purely me. Other falling trees are available, and have better press agents, but none of them fall quite like me. Maybe no one heard me. Doesn’t matter. I still did it.’
Look, I made a book and a CD. Where there never was a book and a CD.
