On dis-ease
A beautiful state of emergency, or a a scabrous state of foreboding?
To be diseased is to be ill at ease. Set apart from ourselves, hovering on the brink, unbalanced, neither fully right, nor fully wrong, a little out of tune, out of focus, fuzzed on the periphery.
A mind out of synch (disordered), a body out of touch (disharmony), a state of bewilderment (disarray), feeling lost (disorientation), hopeless (disbelief), and helpless (distrust).
On emptiness
On silence
On going slow
The nauseating weight of words, via Harold Pinter
Whenever I get stuck with a piece of writing, when I have an idea but am unconvinced by my attempts to resolve it, I turn to the masters on my bookshelves for advice.
Always generous, always wise, eternally insightful, the books they have written and which I hold dear never fail to provide inspiration, sometimes usefully diverting me down another path so that I can return to my own with renewed hope.
Words to live by when you're struggling to find your own
For days when you feel torn or dissatisfied, when you wake up and all the toughness of determination seems to be weakened for no apparent reason, the words of others can save you.
They can fill the spaces between moments of clarity or confusion with meaning.
Where you stumble to understand let alone express yourself, and where you understand but can’t do the feeling or the knowledge justice, it can be useful to delegate the task of communication.
What difference do words make?
“Screw or fuck?” asks a member of Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), to which another responds, “screw, it’s more visceral”.
It’s one of many striking moments in the 2014 film Pride, which tells the story of how in 1984, a group of lesbian and gay activists from London befriended a struggling Welsh community during the UK miners' strikes.