Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Breathaliser on your computer

I can't write my blog today because someone might read it.

I think back on this life that is half over or half begun and the inadequacies leap up and snap at me. I think about my manuscripts. Words that I have poured over, hoarded, worried at. Worn words, and frayed. I think about the process of catching beautiful ideas, bright flashes of life, fireflies that I have secreted in my bottom drawer till all the light is worn out of them. My real writing. The stuff of my dreams.

But here I am each day, weeding the true stories from my past and piling the clumps of dirt and limp spines of grass and the occasional wild flower in a heap littering the footpath outside my apartment for all to see.

So now my green waste moulders on the internet, stale and unread, at best glanced at, one click in a dozen. I have no control over how you read it and little control over how I tell it to you when I have to post something every evening.

So I did this and I did that and none of it is particularly interesting. And isn't it just a little sad to think of the middle aged woman disgorging her secrets, her badly fading youth discarded in someones bed so long ago. I think of nightclub singers, impersonators, people who perform with monkeys and it makes me uneasy. Sometimes I see a reflection of myself in someone elses romantic fiction and I am ashamed. Then I read something beautiful, bitter-sweet. I want to hug the pages or eat them and some glimmer of hope returns.

So anyway, there will not be a sexy blog today because the writer has developed acute performance anxiety.

I will, instead, mention an invention that I would like to release into the world. It is a breathalyser attached to your computer. Before you write a blog post or send an email you must blow under .05 on your computer or the thing will power down. You just can't click 'send' or 'publish post' until your blood alcohol has returned to a reasonable level.

Until I have invented this and it is on the market, expect a post tomorrow night and tomorrow. An 'I did this and this and this' ad naseum. Then one day there will be a complete memoir and the whole will be greater than the sum of it's parts.

2 comments:

LiteraryMinded said...

'I think of nightclub singers, impersonators, people who perform with monkeys and it makes me uneasy. Sometimes I see a reflection of myself in someone elses romantic fiction and I am ashamed. Then I read something beautiful, bitter-sweet. I want to hug the pages or eat them and some glimmer of hope returns.'
You aren't alone there :-)
I think the breathalyser should also be installed for Facebook.

T-Bone said...

Yes, maybe the writer may regret posting something they've written in an altered state but I don't think you'll find too many readers who don't appreciate the candor and honesty of a drunk piece of prose - especially if the skills have survived the affects. I guess the question that remains is; are we writing for ourselves or the reader?
Great stuff Furious.