Chapter 5. What Can My Passion Be If I Am Not Born David Attenborough
- Personal
Title: What Can My Passion Be If I Am Not Born David Attenborough
Object: Dinosaurs on a beach
12 associations
- Bones
- Shorts
- Englishness
- Milly Molly Mandy
- The Secret Seven
- An Irish Mum
- Resentment
- Library
- School
- Toga
- Fake it till you make it
- Your pain becomes your passion
The title sentence comes from me trying to work out the selling tagline for 12-words 8-stations, my book. This book. And who is my ideal customer? My niche. I think I am writing for people who want to be writers. And I’m hell bent on not talking about race anymore. So, I imagine I am talking to writers like I was, who want to learn how to write. But maybe they don’t exist anymore. With new technology and creators does anybody look at anyone’s heart anymore? To give value everything is a how-to book. How to act like a fucking robot in 12 steps. 3 steps. 5 ways to trick some fucker out of money. So, I have been trying to lock down my tagline. Who am I here to help? Who the fuck am I here to help?
I’ve got it down to, I’ve got as far as:
‘Unresolved emotional pain kills creativity. 12-Words 8-Station provides the framework to confront these ghosts. Lay them to rest: Resurrect your creativity.’
Well, that’s a fucking lie. I live in my pain. Why the fuck do I live in my pain? I never talk about anything else. Why the fuck do I never talk about anything else? Then I realise something. Well, I realise it from 2 angles, maybe 3 angles. I’ve never known any peace. That isn’t true either. My mum and dad love each other when I am born. I am hot-housed. I am part of their love. She teaches me to read long before I go to school. Education means a lot to an Irish mum when they have had to hide behind hedges prevented from being educated when the English occupy their land. And he loves numbers. He can do them in his head. He goes to work. He picks me up out of my cot when he gets home. Sometimes he works overtime. Sometimes he buys her costume jewellery. Tasty pieces that suit her neck. We sit by the fire. Other times if she is angry in a Bette Davis kind of way she throws the jewellery in the fire cos she can’t be bought. He refuses to pull it out because he can’t be brought to his knees either. Other times they dance in the moonlight that comes through the long, tall window of the big room we rent from her mum who is living with someone else’s husband an Englishman who she has 2 kids to. The respectable lady now. With old lady glasses and not a dash of who she must have been to produce 4 kids without 4 dads and a charge sheet as long as her arm. I am happy. They are happy. Chorlton and Medlock are happy. Like brownstones. Like ghetto New York brownstones. With loads of nations and loads of ethnicity coming home from work. And loads of kids outside doors in prams taking in the sunlight. And record players oozing music into the night. And Teddy Boys with quiffs. Angie and her friend Gill Roddy with sticky out skirts. What Gill Roddy’s mum does is to pay the bills.
I think I read this once, and I can’t be bothered to look it up, and if it wasn’t David Attenborough, it will definitely have been someone like him, born in khaki knee length shorts, in a Milly Molly Mandy life with friends who live The Secret Seven life who I wouldn’t have wanted to be when I live in glorious Chorlton and Medlock technicoloured grey with someone hollering for Eddie to come for his tea. And streets that are wide for the horse and carriage and houses the place and the people the place was built for. The dinosaur bones of a lost civilisation. I think I read once that David Attenborough and his dad hunted for dinosaur bones on the east coast littered with dinosaur bones and this action makes the David Attenborough we know.
Chorlton and Medlock built for the Victorian upwardly mobile. We are the rats. The happy rats on the deserted ship. And far away in books is David Attenborough and his brother Richard. Being hot-housed by society itself. Born into the rights of Englishness. Cut off from Little Richard oozing out of a bedroom window. That isn’t a bedroom window but the apartment of a whole family. With the cooker on the landing. Dreaming of better days. While enjoying these days. In the Bowling Green. A pale ale. Bodies really close. That’s how he touches her back. ‘The minute he touches my back.’ ‘The minute he touches my back.’ My back. My back. My back. The floors are floorboards. They are loud. Loud. Loud. Loud. ‘Hey Jack.’ ‘No, a whiskey. She said a whisky.’ Women don’t smoke on the street. Until they’ve had a few.
Okay, I’m trying to avoid blaming Angie. Because, actually, it may be simply that they are upwardly mobile that cramps their style. That stops him touching her back. That’s what us working-class are taught. You have to move away from them. You have to … Maybe, maybe, that is why there are no working-class writers before the revolution of Look Back in Anger. Saturday Night Sunday Morning. Maybe they are deliberately suppressed. Cos, if they aren’t upwardly mobile. God forbid. How will we sell them a lifestyle they can never have? Cos if you ain’t born in khaki knee length shorts you sure as fucking hell can’t fake it.
This morning, I get my tagline down to:
‘Unresolved emotional pain kills creativity. 12-Words 8-Station provides the framework to resurrect this pain. And make that fucking pain your creativity.’
That’s the truth. That is more like the truth. Angie takes me to school on my first day. Subliminally I begin to learn lessons straight away. Fake it till you make it. The objective is to assimilate. Osmosis. Become an Englishman. Do not whatever you do admit you were not born in khaki knee length shorts with a spyglass in your hand. Interested in everything. Especially bones. Learn everything fast so no one can accuse you. No, they are not accusing me. Not in 1964. It is only 100 years since abolition. I have promised myself I will not talk about race anymore. But fuck, how much can change in 100 years? There are people alive today who have lived 100 years. ‘You have to try twice as hard,’ my mum repeats. ‘Because of the colour of your skin.’ So, I do. There are blue book and green book and red book and all kinds of fucking books. I devour them. Literally. Other people have 8 gold stars. I have 40 gold stars. Other people do their homework. I devour the walls with mine. Pictures as well as stories. I make sure to colour in the toga. Purple. The people who win wear purple.
In both Look Back in Anger and Saturday Night Sunday Morning their pain is their passion. Both white males. Those born in khaki knee length shorts have drained the colour from the world. His brother Richard Attenborough caricatures a gangster in Brighton Rock. Like Laurence Olivier wears black face to play Othello.
And the library teaches me more. Week in week out. I love my journey to the library. I have no idea I am swallowing resentment. I have no idea they will never let me in. To the worlds I now admire.
- Muscle Memory
· Your title: What Can My Passion Be If I Am Not Born David Attenborough?
· What object do you see?
· What are your 12 association.
· 15 minutes to write. Include object, and 12 associations. Under your title.
- My Discovery
It is time to remove the stabilisers and let's just ride side by side. We may not yet know our destination. But we like the scenery. And we enjoy each other’s company.
- Your Discovery
· In your comfy place in your allocated hour, journal about your discoveries.
· Aim for 3 A5 pages. I want you to get used to a creativity hour that truly belongs to you. I want you to create a habit you will miss if you don't do it.
· Don't try to keep anything from your journalling, the energy is already spent.
· Have Saturday off.