The Giant Clockwork

When I was a student, in my final year of Art College, I created a piece entitled The Giant Clockwork. It was a screen-printed poster, depicting a large crowd of people, pointing upwards as they were dragged and crushed between two gargantuan cogs. It had great meaning to me, this poster. It represented my determination never to allow my life to be reduced to a mundane routine, subject to the limited trappings which I believed society would seek to impose on it. I was going to be different. I was going to light up the sky. I was going to resist the norms, reject the grind, and be exceptional.

That was twenty years ago. I was nineteen, looking down the barrel of my twenties, about to be released from the ease of higher education and out into the wild. I was a burning ball of pure potential. I considered The Giant Clockwork to be a profound piece of work; my testament, my statement of intent. Needless to say, looking back, it pretty much sucked. It was derivative, amateurish, and obvious. But I didn’t think so then, and probably wouldn’t have cared anyway, because it made the statement I wanted it to make. And like a lot of art, that’s all it was ever supposed to do.

Twenty years have left that student behind. I’m now thirty-nine, and staring down the barrel of my forties. As I approach that milestone, I’m surprised to find myself experiencing an awakening. Returning to consciousness to find that time really is the slyest of creatures. Time slips out of the back door while your head is turned. Time leaves you feeling like the victim of some awful sleight of hand; hit with the sudden, sinking, realisation that you were watching the left hand while the right swiftly pinched five, ten, twenty years from you. If only you'd been paying attention, you might have seen it coming and called it out.

But you didn’t. You were suckered. I was suckered.

Until recently, I was a very nostalgic man. I would look back on the good times I had left behind me with affection and longing, sometimes at the expense of the present. No, that’s not quite true. It was often at the expense of the present, and by default, at the expense of the future too. Not anymore, though. Something happened. My perception changed, and now I find myself looking back with a very different tint to my glasses. It seems rose is out this year.

I look back these days and see, not the things I did, but the many things I didn’t do. I see twenty years, not spent, but given away. I see a dead person. John Lennon once said that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Well, John, life is also what happens while you’re not making them.

In my mind, I stand before that student, proudly hanging The Giant Clockwork on his wall, and confess to him that I failed to light up the sky. I have not been exceptional. I allowed my life to be reduced to a mundane routine, and the worst part is it had nothing to do with society at all. I was not crushed by gargantuan cogs. The Giant Clockwork was not out there, it was in here all along.

The student doesn’t understand, of course. And you know what? I don’t need him to. Not now. The student knows what I need. He just smiles his crooked smile, gently turns my head forward, and says, ‘you may be seeing more clearly now, old man, but you’re still looking in the wrong direction’. I smile my crooked smile because I know he’s right.

In twenty years I didn’t change a thing. This simply means that nothing has changed. I’m a burning ball of pure potential. I’m going to be different. I’m going to resist the norms, reject the grind, and be exceptional.

When Is a Writer Not a Writer?

My name is Richard, and I am a writer.

Sounds good, doesn't it? It's the one thing about myself that I'm always proud to tell people (for 'people', read 'anyone who'll listen'). But, am I? A writer, I mean. What is a writer? At what point, or by what criteria, can one rightly refer to oneself as ‘a writer’? This may seem, at first glance, a rather odd question, but it is one I wrestle with from time to time. Usually around the time I tell someone I’m a writer and feel a faint lack of authenticity, coupled with a loathsome voice in my head, telling me I’m a total phoney.

‘I’m a writer', I say.
‘You’re a total phoney', the loathsome voice says.
‘I have every right to call myself that'.
‘Yeah, but you’re not telling the whole story, are you?’
‘I’m relating the important bits’.
‘You’re a big phoney and you smell of poo’.

Let me explain, and at the same time assure you that I do not smell of poo. Not that I’m aware of, anyway.

I’ve written seven screenplays, two of which were optioned for a short while. I’m in the process of writing two novels and I’m a semi-conscientious blogger. I write. I love to write. It’s what I was meant to do. However, like most writers, I haven’t yet reached the point where my craft is my primary source of income. So, I am currently cursed with what people call ‘a day job’. You know, the thing that people advise you not to give up? Actually, my day job is a night job. I work the night shift in a hotel. It’s a thankless, tedious and demeaning job and certainly not the kind of thing you’re going to tell people you do. Not if you have a plausible alternative. Which, God be praised, I do. You see, I’m a writer.

‘Phoney'.
‘Oh, fuck off'.
‘Touched a nerve, have we?’

You see the issue?

So, the questions is, what labour defines you? The work which pays the rent or the work which you love but presently pays you little to nothing? Have I earned the right to tell people I’m a writer, or should I, in all honesty, tell people I work the night shift in a hotel? It’s like being Clark Kent, forever compelled to present that mild-mannered persona to the world, while desperate to tell people you meet that you’re actually Superman. After all, you really are Superman. Clark Kent just pays the rent. Ironically enough, he’s a writer too. I wonder if he gets the loathsome voice in his head?

Is it, in fact, the case that the simple of act of writing makes you a writer, regardless of whether you ever get paid for it? Surely it’s the act that earns the definition, not the result of that act. I mean, is a musician only a musician if his songs are recorded? Is a rapist only a rapist if he gets convicted? No, of course not. That’s just ridiculous, right?

So why, when I tell people I’m a writer, do I feel like such a fraud?

And how much thinking is too much thinking?