S11E22: texture/texture

I’m in a writing group. I think I’ve mentioned it before. I’ve done a lot of writing these past couple of weeks. A lot is percolating, somewhere in my subconscious. Snippets of dialogue bubble out of my brain at inopportune moments: you don’t know the agony of creativity until you’re trying to write a monologue in soap.

I’ve been back at work for three days and only just got round to publishing these, so here. Have some textures.

I did my first snippet of stand-up in front of the writing group this week, and it was an absolute delight. It was a pleasure. It’s about socialist film and the labour theory of value. I got really good notes. I learned a really valuable lesson too: that you can fill your five minutes like you can fill a jar with marbles. You don’t have to fill all the space. Or maybe – space is part of the filling. Rests take a beat, just the same as a note takes a beat, and they’ve both got equal value and you can’t play the thing without the rests.

Now obviously I don’t seek approval from external sources by baring my soul in the public square, but it’s still nice to be told you’ve got the beginnings of something good.1

I can’t connect it to anything else I’ve yet written, but it’ll come in time, I’m sure.

water carves water
under water suspended
a cloudy snowmelt

I found myself thinking about how weird water is while watching ice bob in a glass with a cloud overhead

Do you know your own textures? Imagine the rubber-band consistency of your small intestine. The dark, dense meat of your liver. Do you know how smooth your bones are? Do you know how smooth they aren't?

Grin in the mirror, and see your bones jut from your gums. You can touch them with the muscle that lies in your mouth; touch rough with smooth. Your tongue knows what your teeth feel like; what a tongue feels like; what all sorts of things feel like.

Look at the hairy-bellied tarantula. You know how that will feel on your tongue, don't you. Your tongue knows. It would be like a kiwi fruit. It would pop like an eyeball.

Taste the forbidden fruit
  1. Shut up. ↩︎

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