I got sidetracked today and ended up in Piccadilly.
There, I entered Waterstone's. It's been a little while since I entered a bookshop – not all that long, actually, but I used to enter them more regularly. It still seems odd to me that there isn't a bookshop on every high street.
I suppose Waterstone's is not the best place to revive my enthusiasm for book browsing. I used to find it impossible to pass a bookshop without going in, and it was often that I would buy when I had only meant to look. At the Piccadilly Waterstone's – a huge shop, I should add, for the benefit of those who have not been – I was not at all tempted, though I thought some of the covers of China MiĆ©ville's tomes not badly done.
God knows how many titles there were on the shelves. Thousands, at least. Tens of thousands? I'm not sure. In any case, I began to feel like a death metal fan trapped in the easy listening section of a record shop (excuse the archaic references). Really, what was there here to interest me? I suppose some people really think that these are what books are – that this is it. Maybe I've become pickier as the years go by – I know I have – or maybe the world really is blanding out, or polarising between corporate bland and ultra-obscure.
There were one or two things that I would not have considered a waste of money – that would have felt like real additions to my bookshelf. W.G. Sebald. Thomas Disch. Actually, I was tempted by W. Somerset Maugham (Cakes and Ale), but didn't in the end.
In my life I have often felt bitter at my sense of exclusion from 'the mainstream', but there in Waterstone's, I did not feel bitter.
At some point there came to my mind something Ligotti has written, that the pessimistic author only "writes his own ticket to obscurity", or something like that. This in itself can be seen as a source of bitterness, but not today. Instead I thought, "Popular is popular, alternative is alternative, how else can it be?" I suppose it's not quite that simple. There are exceptions and there is mobility. Still, I had no desire even to take the books from the shelves here. I knew that they could have nothing to say to me personally.
So, why complain if I don't belong where I know I don't belong?
Because there is nowhere I belong? I didn't think of that at the time actually – I've just thought of it now. Well, yes, there is that. But actually, I'm not doing badly IN A WAY. No, really. I'm not. The saturation of mainstream success is death by meaninglessness. Even if I am entirely forgotten when I die (sooner or later, I will be), it will only be because I have 'found my level'.
Still, I know how fragile moods are, and I don't count on this to be constant with me.
There are things that I want, other than what I already have. What are they?
1) I like creative collaboration. I wish that my writing was successful enough that I could meet up with certain people around the world who I feel I have something in common with creatively and do weird, interesting projects with them.
2) I do feel tired often, and I think there is a discrepancy between the amount of time and energy I put into writing and what I get back from it. I'd like to be successful enough to remove this discrepancy, simply because I keep hitting bottlenecks, and I know that my best work is still unwritten. I'd like the energy to write it, to revise it, to put it out.
3) I'd like to have some place that I didn't feel I might have to leave at any time – as Nick Drake might put it, 'a place to be'.
That's it. Unless I'm allowed to be really extravagant, in which case, there's plenty more.
Anyway, from Waterstone's I went to the Japan Centre, which has moved to Lower Regents Street. I couldn't find what I was looking for there. I found it underground, in Mitsukoshi, nextdoor. I won't tell you what it was, because I don't have to.
“Popular is popular, alternative is alternative, how else can it be?”well, i volunteer to be the art director of the movie when you find a producer. i do have an extensive imagination. you will need me. :lol:also, i have the same three wishes. i guess we just have to wait. but of course, keep on working. š”
Sooner or later we all expire for one reason or another. I’m further along the probability curve than you are but if there’s one thing I will not do it is to contemplate my own death, at least not yet. For me, having lived a fair time already I’m more interested in maximizing all the time I have left and doing all the things it’s possible to do, ceteris paribus, and living each day as if it were my last but never with any feeling that it could be.You’ll perhaps know I tend towards optimism, though I can be pessimistic if I allow that feeling in, and that of course would depend on circumstances, mood, and all the associated things that make up pessimism. What I’m saying is that I’m not naturally pessimistic but I have no magic bullet to ward it off, except my desire to look for an optimistic outcome or deal with a pessimistic scenario and find a way through. I know that branch of Waterstones and to me it’s an Aladdin’s cave, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Originally posted by I_ArtMan:also, i have the same three wishes. i guess we just have to wait. but of course, keep on working.Yes. Until weariness overcomes. I do cometimes think we should all get our own Clarence angel at about the mid-point of our lives to show us how the world would have been without us, just so we get an idea of how we’re doing.Originally posted by lokutus-prime:Sooner or later we all expire for one reason or another. I’m further along the probability curve than you are but if there’s one thing I will not do it is to contemplate my own death, at least not yet. Hello John.It won’t surprise – I think – to know that I contemplate mine every day. I don’t feel like I have much choice in the matter. Sometimes it’s a disturbing thought, but more often than not that’s because I’ve been recently talking to other people or reading their words. Words stir up mud. A lot of the time, these days, I simply think of death as the time when I’ll be able to stop worrying about deadlines and rent and whether I’m an interesting human being, and if beauty will survive, and about all the other stuff that mud-stirring humans make you worry about.I should add that although I used the word “pessimistic” in the blog post, I don’t think of myself as a pessimist, largely because there’s no point in doing so. Therefore, please don’t feel that you have to, as it were, be polite to a pessimist. Or if you crack a smile, don’t think, “Quentin wouldn’t approve.”
Found this interesting, and just wanted to put it here to remember it:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14170036More later…
Hello Quentin,”Words stir up mud”Well said. they do indeed. I stated I will not contemplate my own death, but that has not always been the case. Back in 2006 I read something a good friend was saying on his pages and it caused me to write the following in December of that year:I think I will die in a time unknown,on a day not here and the sky not shown.I think I will die when the sound of life’s hornfades and slips under the velvet green.I think I will die when I close my eyesand the essence of Me is no longer seen.I think I will die when the energy lightflickers and turns from a color bright …..[/COLOR]In context I was not depressed or being depressive. I was being philosophic in a quiet contemplative way, my own death ” in a time unknown, on a day not here and the sky not shown. ” I am not ever trying to be polite to a pessimist, but I tend to “sense the tone” on any blog page and I ‘go with the flow’ on occasion because I am, surprise surprise, a free spirit and will write as the mood takes me. But now that you encourage me to crack a smile and I know you will approve, here is one in iconic (pun) form.:)