No Mancunian Candidates
Sunday, August 29, 2004 , 8:46 PM
I’m on the train on my way back from Manchester. It was a nice enough weekend away with friends, and a reminder of what good company Philip can be, but I can safely say now that I’m really not into gay events. The ethos of that scene — the silly hair-dos, the drinking and smoking, and the high camp behaviour — is at odd with who I feel I am.
The people in Manchester are ugly, too.
Patrick again demonstrated his incredible pulling power: literally within moments of our arriving in a club, some rough pony of a man would amble over and dance next to him. If Patrick wanted, the man was his for the taking. Now, Patrick is a nice-looking guy, very cute in a boyish way, but he’s absolutely nothing like the elfin, two-tone haired, bejewelled, and muscled clone-ideal that everyone on the scene was trying to emulate. But like some kind of Dr Leakey of sex, he could just pick out whichever of the Piltdown men he wanted, and he was off.
And me? Back when I first got home from Canada this summer, I was going out of my mind: all that visiting with friends and family left no room for anything of a romantic nature to happen. But I got back to Edinburgh and enough continued to not happen that my seemingly quarterly heat passed. I didn’t feel compelled to connect with anyone this weekend. That disinterest was compounded by the lack of talent there (according to my purely subjective criteria… Blah blah blah — end of disclaimer against potential charges of excessive egotism/superficiality.)
Philip, Patrick, and I were joined by Omar, someone they’d chatted with on Gaydar (the love-it/hate-it core of gay UK internet life). Our friend Jamie from Glasgow was supposed to join us, but received a promotion that required him to go on a training course this weekend, so Omar offered to go in his place. He and Philip are joking and talking across from Patrick and I, who are both plugged in and listening to music. Happily, Omar and I had a chance to get acquainted yesterday while Patrick and Philip were off napping and shopping, respectively. Omar’s from Italy, working over in Glasgow now, and his English, while strong, is heavily accented. I find when I’m in a crowd and it’s noisy or there’s some other obstacle to communication like this, I tend to tune out. So some time to talk one-to-one while walking through Manchester’s strange old-new mix was welcome. He’s a nice guy, and was a good addition to our mini-gang of travellers.
Last night, though, I wasn’t really into the scene, and we’d already spent the afternoon doing laps of the cordoned-off gay quarter, so Omar’s intensity about being out on the scene, lookinglookinglooking jarred with my frame of mind (I struggle with my own desperation, let alone being in someone else’s). Meawhile, Patrick’s powers had got him stuck in a drama between some random bloke who’d chosen to dance with Patrick and a group of his friends who didn’t want him to (something about a boyfriend). I picked up my jacket — which was a mess from some silly bint knocking it into the swamp of filth on the floor — and Philip and I went outside for air. We sat on the low concrete wall on Canal Street, the opaque green water below us, with cans and bottles bobbing past. The various segments of gay society — old, young, male, female, fit, fat, muscled, handicapped — walked back and forth like a kind of show (complete with drama — a crying boy with Liza Minelli hair yelling at his boyfriend, slapping him across the face, then chasing after him when he left). I also got to say hello to a little white and brown terrier who made me wonder if a dog might complete my existence. Patrick and Omar joined us outside after a while, abandoning their trysts in the club. We said goodnight to Omar, and walked back to the student residence where we were staying. The three of us sat up joking in my room until we finished the last of our beer (bought for the train-ride), then went to bed in our plank-like beds with the duvets that were exactly the size of the bed (which actually doesn’t work). But, hey, you can’t beat é15 a night.
The sheep in the brilliant green fields outside look strangely pink. I’m not sure if it’s the sunset, or because they’re wet.
It makes me happy, being back in Scotland.
I have this whole week off!
Stepping Backwards
Thursday, August 26, 2004 , 9:29 PM
Washing my rain-wet face just now, I could smell an odour from the drain. It’s been raining so much in Edinburgh lately, I think the water is coming back on us, refusing to go away once we’ve soiled it. The city council has told us that it’s okay that the water is a bit yellowy. Of course they have.
Before that, I stepped into my tenement building, which smelled like Mary King’s Close, the ancient alleyway dwelling I toured with Margaux last night — which is much-refurbished, and nicely too. I also learned that the city fathers did not wall in the plague-sufferers there, but actually gave them money, bread, and “Edinburgh pints” of beer, which are equivalent to three Imperial pints.
Before that, I walked home through the rain, under scaffolding and trees that didn’t shelter me from the damp, but rather collected it to drop it on my head, as if from a trick bucket perched on a door. The streetlights reflected off the pavement stones, making it difficult to tell what was a broken-off tree branch and what was a worm. I avoided them all, just in case.
Before that, I sat in the spiegeltent with Sheila, watching a poetry slam at the Book Festival. I didn’t want to go because I’m a bit drawn out from all the live performance I’ve seen in Fringe events I’ve attended lately, because Sheila woke me up with a text message this morning (I’m not good at sleeping, so it’s killer when someone tears that blanket from my head), because I didn’t want to pay for yet another night out, and because this is the one night I might have had to myself. In short, I was in a crappy mood.
The poets, though, were lively and funny, spewing out funny, clever words that snapped me out of my mood and back into place. Someone used a line tonight (which I see now is from Luke’s gospel): “To whom much is given, much will be expected.” I thought about this blog with shame, about the grocery-list-type writing I’ve been doing here recently. There’s a thing called “showing up on the page”, and I know when I’ve been doing it or not. I’ve been making an effort to do it for work, but not here. And I want this to be a fairer representation of me than that.
To be fair to myself, I’ve been preoccupied with my self-publishing projects and my two recent visitors. Tomasz and Margaux were both wonderful company, in different ways. And company is such a lovely thing. It may be the best thing one can have in this life. I know myself, though, and I get my energy back by being on my own — so I’ve been going for extended periods lately without having access to my natural state. I’ve also not been doing my own work, which stresses me. Oh, and spending bagsof money.
And it’s not over yet: this weekend I’m going to Mardi Gras or Pride or whatever they’re calling it in Manchester. Why am I going there again? I don’t like the city, and I want to see Scotland, not England. I’ve also got a mental image of being stuffed in a club with drugged-up, screaming, over-coiffed gay people. The last thing I want to do is step into that picture.
But this evening I gave up my mumpiness and had a great time. I just need a good sleep. Besides which, I’m going to Mancs with good mates, so there’s a very good chance I’ll have a lot of fun. Even better, I have the promise of the coming week entirely off work. I’ll be able to rest, have me-time, and catch up on all my projects.
Phew! So here I am, on the page, caught up and dried off.
Tender mercies
Tuesday, August 24, 2004 , 11:24 AM
Ow, my head.
Last night, Patrick came over for supper, arriving just before Margaux came
home from exploring Edinburgh. These two great friends from different
regions on the map of my life came together, and we all got on like a house
on fire.
This happened over two bottles of wine and three pints of beer, so I’m
feeling a little tender.
…But happy!
Monday, August 23, 2004 , 9:42 AM
I received a very encouraging letter from a publisher on Friday who’d read the manuscript of Idea in Stone, and was re-reading it. It wasn’t a ‘yes’ (he’s still deciding whether or not to publish it), but it still made me feel pretty damned good, and went a long way toward flushing out last week’s bitter feelings.
I hung with the gang on Friday, going to see the Improverts (who, in making up sketches on the fly, were better than things I’d paid considerably more for in the Fringe).
My friend Margaux from Toronto showed up on Friday on the way home from a trip she won to the Olympics, and is here with me until Thursday. Many good conversations are coming out of her visit; her brain is a formidable thing. She’s fun, too.
I also attended some readings and a workshop in the Edinburgh Book Fringe. It’s nice to be in the thick of it like that, and I hope that a community continues around this thing throughout the year.
Must get to work now…
Bitterness
Thursday, August 19, 2004 , 11:14 PM
I’ve been busy.
My friend Tomasz visited me last weekend, which was sweet. He’s such good company.
I’ve also been preoccupied with this whole self-publishing thing. It’s taking up a lot of my mental space, but it’s mostly welcome to. It’s an exciting project. Of course, because I’d committed myself to such a big undertaking, something happened that I recognise by now: the opportunity for “refusing the call”, as Joseph Campbell would term it.
Basically, it goes like this: you receive a call to some adventure or another, but with that you’re also always presented with a dissenting call, a voice that says “Nah, just stay here. This is safe and comfortable”, or “That’s too dangerous.” Sometimes that voice comes from inside, but other times it comes from the world around you. In this case, it was my friend Kirsten, saying, “I don’t think you should self-publish. I think you should find a publisher. Did you really reach everyone? Show me your submission package. Maybe you could do something to make it more effective.” She was perfectly well-intentioned, and there was a lot of validity to what she had to say. I put her messages aside, because even if I go my own route and self-publish the second book, her ideas for promotion are excellent ones.
My life, though, was using her as the invitation to refuse the call. But I know I should do this. I don’t want to write a single other supplicating letter to a publisher when I can do this myself. What’s the difference between their presses and mine? Nothing. Some money, and some artificially-generated sense that they have all the marbles in this game. Why, oh why, should a business have a say in who is and isn’t a “real” artist?
Unfortunately, revisiting this idea of “Why hasn’t someone bought this book in the past four years?” just played into all the doubt and bitterness I’d been feeling about not being published.
I think I’m a positive person. Yeah, I carp on about things that I think are tasteless, stupid, or disappointing, but only because I’m forever trying to figure out what I think is important to do, be, and create. So it’s felt really gross having this bile in my mouth about the literary world — the place where my stories have to go when I’m finished with them.
I want to do this thing in a spirit of possibility and sharing, not because I’m saying “fuck you” to the establishment. It’s proving hard to shake that feeling, though. Thing is, I honestly don’t really know the establishment.
I did take a mosey through the grounds of The Edinburgh International Book Festival the other day. I’ve generally stayed away in distaste, because it’s really designed to play into that celebrity/fan dynamic, which nauseates me as someone who believes that everyone is equal and worthwhile, and because the situation makes me feel denigrated as an also-writer, sitting at someone else’s feet. JK Rowling gets her own tent built — hey, great for her, honestly. But I don’t want to go sit in her shrine. Why would I? What would I get from that?
I wanted to see what the press that has my manuscript is displaying there — only to find that they don’t have a bookshelf there this year. I found a book, though, by theScottish Publishers’ Association that will prove helpful, because it tells who the publishers are in Scotland, along with the literary agents, print production houses, distributors, and so on. It’s exactly the information I needed. I’m going to their event on Tuesday about “How to Get Published” or somesuch with my writer-friend Sergio. Hopefully it’ll have some ideas in it that I haven’t already read about. If nothing else, there’ll be a literary agent there on the panel, and I am under instruction (from myself) to grow some bollocks and speak to this woman about Idea in Stone (or me in general).
Speaking of Sergio, I met with him, my friend Sheila, and two of Sergio’s coworkers from the Camera Obscura. We’re talking about creating some sort of publication between us. Yeah, more self-publishing! Carol and Phil are both photographers, each with a very different style from the other. (You can see some of Phil’s work online.) Carol and Phil brought portfolios of some of their work, and Sergio sent us a story by e-mail yesterday. My God, these people are all talented! It’s lovely to be surrounded by that, and makes me feel good about creating something with them. (Of course, all being creatives, we could really use a good administrator-type person with lots of follow-through.)
Then tonight I went to the launch party of The Edinburgh Book Fringe. Yeah, a fringe around the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It was a beautiful thing. My friend Elspeth was there and recited one of her beautiful, beautiful poems (I swear I heard someone gasp when she finished!), then another poet read, a woman from North Uist (where my ancestors likely lived before emigrating to Canada) sang to us in Gaelic, then a group of Scottish women sang some South African songs. I bought tickets to a number of events over the next few days, and there’s a panel discussion about some arts funding thingy tomorrow morning (oops — must get to bed soon). Elspeth introduced me to a neat woman named Alison, who’s written a book and, like me, has had a number of presses like it and not publish it. From talking to her, I bet I’d like it. Then I talked to Elspeth, her partner Ian, and a man named Richard, who did a very funny piece at a Big Word event I was at. We talked about the arts scene here, and Richard’s perception that Canada has an inspiringly strong independent publishing scene.
Catch this from the Edinburgh Book Fringe brochure — WOW!
This is the first year for the Edinburgh Book Fringe. It is designed to complement the Edinburgh International Book Festival, in that it features only writers not already appearing in the EIBF and only writers resident in Scotland. It is thus a showcase for the many writers in Scotland who remain virtually invisible to their countrymen and women as well as to those who visit Edinburgh from all over the world at Festival time. As current president of Scottish PEN, I was only too aware of how much talent remains unknown among hundreds of diverse writers in Scotland. The aim of the Book Fringe is specifically to provide an opportunity for experienced writers in any genre or language to be heard, as well as some of those in writersé workshops or university courses in Scotland. We were overwhelmed with nearly 70 entries, from which we had to choose only 15. This demonstrates the need of which we were conscious. We hope to continue and perhaps to expand in appropriate, ethical and sustainable ways in the future…
— Tessa Ransford, Chair: Edinburgh Book Fringe Society
Something is stirring in this city of mine, an independent spirit… And I like it.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004 , 5:29 PM
I just printed off an old journal entry I wrote in Disney World that I think is a good example of my writing, then printed off a short story — both of them as little books. At last, I’ve finally found imposition software! “Imposition” is a publishing/printing term for the rearrangement of pages so that they’ll show up in the right order when folded together into a book.
There’s a little program called ClickBook that intercepts a print job on its way to the laser printer and asks you what to do with it. Book? Booklet? CD liner? Tri-fold brochure? This thing has a lot of different options, yet it’s straightforward to use. Even better, it’s just $49.99. The closest equivalent I’ve found is an “XTension” for QuarkXPress, and it costs $1,300.
This is all I want! Today, I’m published! What a great, freeing, democratising thing it is to be able to publish one’s own work at home.
I’ve asked myself what it is that I want, and the answer is “To share my work with people.” People, you’ll note, not publishing companies. Yes, being published would be nice, because it’s a professional stake in the sand, opens up opportunities, and means that someone else will foot the bill. But what’s struck me is that getting published is not salvation. I read an article a few years ago that said the average Canadian makes $13,000 annually from royalities. So I’d still need a job. I have a job, one that I like a lot.
But what about the publicity? Well, the average publishing house will focus on a book for three to six months, and then it’s up to the author to keep the book in existence for other people. So why not just do the whole thing from the beginning? Then it can be exactly the product I’d imagined.
I contacted a bookbinder in Glasgow, and his price is quite reasonable. I can also do a short run of just 200 books. I can sell 200 books.
As I’ve been investigating all this, I’m reminded of all the people out there who are generating their own work, doing exactly what the muse in their coffee cup or refrigerator tells them they should be doing every morning. I like that, and I think it has a lot of soul. I want to do that.
Crap, I know people who are already doing this, and doing well at it. Take, for instance, two nice guys I know from Toronto, Cory Doctorow and Jim Munroe. Just trynot to run into their names on the web.
Cory’s on the cover of NOW magazine in Toronto this week, and his glasses are bigger than mine.
Cory has been working for years on different ways to deal with digital information, and on the rights issues that go along with this kind of transmission. He’s written a lot on e-books, too, and has shown that offering them online for free has no negative effect on the purchase of ‘real’ books, and may in fact help them sell. My plans to self-publish my second book will definitely include a free electronic release.
I just stumbled across part of a blog entry that gave me pause:
“You are going to have to decide if you’re going to take yourself seriously, and by that I mean you’re going to aggressively seek what your work is worth to you, not what some random group of passersby decide to pitch into your hat.”
http://www.hypercube.org/auntie/
But then, isn’t it better to entertain the people who are throwing a little extra into your hat (especially if you’ve got a decent job already) than keeping your work hidden, holding out for some mythical publisher to “discover” you?
At work, we talk a lot about entrepreneurs who create an “industry by-pass”: sick of over-regulation by top-heavy corporations, they find a way to do things themselves, focusing on creating value for real people with their work rather than playing the industry game. I can only find twopotential publishers for my third novel in Scotland, and one of them has already asked to see my manuscript. All the others publish quaint Scottishy armchair books or have been devoured and turned into subsidiaries of multinational corporations. Even their slushpile is abroad!
You know why I want to do this? I think it would be fun. It’s fun to have a book out there in the world, to do readings, and to have people you don’t even know tell you that you entertained them. It’s a boatload more fun than writing letters to publishing companies.
~
I went with my friend Wendy to see a stand-up comic last night. The evening was bracketed with riveting, soul-stretching conversation with Wendy. The middle part, the bit with the comic? Not so fun.
I’d stopped into The Waverley Pub on my way to The Pleasance and chatted with Liz, who was as quick-witted and engaging as ever. I also wound up talking to two young guys who are up here from England to take in some shows in the Fringe.
(As an aside, last night I was reminded that I already know a lot of cool people in this city. It was also fun to finally do the “talking to strangers in the pub” thing.)
Liz had seen this comic and thought he was very good. So something must have been off last night. He kept dropping the ball, and — worse — criticising himself for it. A comic needs to make the room a safe space for the audience, to be a confident guide. Most definitely, he should not make the audience worried for him. And we were. What’s strangest is that when he was funny, he was really quite good. Whenever he’d get a big wave of laughter, though, he’d let the energy drop, go over to the barstool beside him, sip from the drink he had there, light up a cigarette, then come back and rub his hands over his face, confused about where he was in the set, like there was some knot in his brain about something he wasn’t telling us about — which is strange, because he seemed to be telling us about every little detail of his life.
What’s most uncomfortable for me watching performers is that, as a recovered one, I often see the need that drives the urge to perform. Sometimes that can be transformed into moments of astounding brilliance. Other times, though, it just plain hurts to watch.
Addendum
Monday, August 09, 2004 , 12:12 AM
I had a chat online tonight with my friend Graham in Glasgow. He listened patiently and attentively as I whinged about feeling like a man without a sense of identity or a sense of place, then I listened to some relationship issues he’s been having, about those early, scary days of dating. They were far too easy to empathise with.
After our talk, I picked up my kit-bag and went to The Regent, the pub up the road from my house. (I should go to The Albion, since it’s my local, but The Regent has a gay-friendly atmosphere, whereas The Albion was started by a former manager of the Hibernians Football Club. Maybe I’m not giving my neighbours the benefit of the doubt, but there are certain crowds in which I feel they probably wouldn’t be comfortable if they knew about allof me.)
I got a pint from the bar and sat next to someone in a big, deep, green leather couch. I read the gentle words in Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write while sipping on my cloudy yellow pint of Hoegaarden. My angst fell away without my even noticing, until I walked home with a smile, the yellow sodium lamps doing for the darkened street what my yellow sunglasses had done earlier in the day. The fishmonger’s shop was dark, and all the ice was gone from the slanted display case inside the window, long since drained away through the little hole in the corner of the window-frame. The other shop-fronts were covered over with metal armour. A pub was dark except for its emergency lights, its chairs and stools turned up. A stocky man in a kilt with thick calves in high white socks saw his girlfriend to her tenement door then headed on to the Turkish kebab shop down the street. A couple fought with each other, slurring their words while tipping back and forth in opposite direct!
ions, hanging onto objects to keep from falling over. Shiny black taxis ferried people up and down the Easter Road as I turned the corner to head up my street.
There’s a point of giving-over to coming back here. It’s easy to find energy and drive in discontentment, in being a misfit. It’s an excuse for being inactive, or for taking rash, destructive action. That’s fine for a bit. This weekend was about burning up the part of me that wants to sit and complain at how much it chafes to move back and forth between two cultures. But would I have it any other way? Would I give up the knowledge of this stony city, home to Enlightenment thinkers and footballers and shopkeeps and poets and musicians and students and tourists? Not on your life. So my beginning drifts toward the local accent have been washed away like a sand castle in the tide by immersion in broader Canadian speech. It’s uncomfortable; yes. Do I still want the chance to listen to the song in these voices? More than anything.
Being back in Canada made me aware of what I’ve brought with me here. I can’t escape the fact of who I am and where I’m from. But this is good. This is something to work with.
Now I’m going to bed… at the local time.
Sunday, August 08, 2004 , 6:40 PM
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by Hamish MacDonald
At last, I’ve posted the pictures from my trip. They’re in the Pictures section of the site. I didn’t put any comments with them, because, frankly, I couldn’t be arsed. Most of the shots are of people. If you know who they are, or are one of them, that’ll be interesting for you. If not, well, you’ll see some landscapes, an alley you might recognise from some movies like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and you’ll see me in my swim trunks. Woo.
I’m having trouble articulating what’s going on with me since I got back from Canada. I’m feeling culture-shocked, displaced, and generally empty.
I experienced so much Canadian culture when I was home, work generated by people I know. Theatre, music, comedy — so much incredible, original work that reflected “the Canadian national identity”. I’ve participated in discussion about the Scottish national identity while I’ve been here, but hadn’t thought about the Canadian one. Now I’m back here, feeling like part of one thing, but living in another. I’m rootless and confused. It’s like I’m starting all over, as if I’ve woken up in someone else’s life. And this guy doesn’t do much.
I’m having one of those periods in which I feel like a snail — small, insignificant, and slimy. I want to be more evolved than I am. I want to be involved with communities here in Scotland, and I want to be published. But I just spent a day walking through the town, saying only a single word: “Sorry”, to a tourist who bumped into me (because we Canadians do that). I went to a pub up the road last night and had two pints, sitting there by myself, ’cause I wanted to be around people. The terrible thing is that when I get like this, I don’t even call the great people I do know. I feel like I should be being productive or something on the weekend, like that’s the time I’ve got in which to create these works that are supposed to somehow save me.
I ended up in Holyrood Park this afternoon. I was supposed to be planning out — I dunno, the rest of my life or something. Instead, I lay on the grass, watching people play frisbee, obese little children scamper back and forth, white clouds smear across the intensely blue sky, and the green mounds and black cliffs of Arthur’s Seat. It felt good to do nothing, restorative, almost spiritual.
I’m also utterly confused about writing. I’m completely without ideas. Well, I have a little file with hundreds of them, but I can’t get started because my writing-legs are all rubbery. I don’t have any confidence, probably because I’m…
At work, we have this concept called “The Gap”. It’s the permanent distance between the actual and the ideal. It’s what you fall into when you keep focusing on where youshould be, or where you want to be, instead of on where you are and what progress you’ve made. When you keep doing this, you “gap out”, as we say around the office. I’m totally gapped-out about my writing career.
Of course, I’ve just handed myself the remedy my boss developed for these situations: focus on “progress, not perfection”. I work as a writer, and I’ve written three novels. That’s pretty cool.
I’ve been severely jet-lagged this week, too, staying up until 5AM. That probably accounts for my mood. My thinking and my feelings since getting back have felt like a calf that’s trying to stand up for the first time.
<
p>Today, a puff-ball drifted by me and I caught it in my hand. I thought “This is what writing is: it doesn’t change the fact of this thing, but my noticing it makes it exist for me. Otherwise, this would have just fallen to the ground unnoticed. Writing is about doing that for other people.”