inventive

I love to mess with the way things ‘should’ be. Accordion to whom, is what I want to ask? Although I do recall, clearly, the easy hours of English Literature at A level, the rule book the size of a small country and berating my errors like a crowd of elders blocking any off roading. It isn’t that I don’t respect the construction of a good sentence. I absolutely do. In fact, I am the very first to throw a badly written book out the window. However, the essence of good writing is not a perfection of grammar. But, wait. This may not reflect my own truth. As a student of the language, of the best way to construct a sentence with noun and verb, avoiding adjectives, adverbs and other ads and coming into land on the line to say something remarkable, I appreciate that the only time anyone can play with a structure is when they know it very well. Perhaps this is why, when I read bad spelling in an official piece of writing, I cringe and throw. There is no excuse, these days with every help available online. Grammar check, spell check, information check, all is there. It is a case of not bothering and not bothering is, well, cringe and throw.

But, and this is key, the person who dreams about writing a book, essay, short story or children’s book, should never ever and ever again bother with whether or not they have a diploma in the complete labyrinth of English language, and it is. A labryinth. You can get lost in it for weeks and nobody is looking for you. You have to get up, dust off and keep going with your eyes crossed. and your brain a bucket of worms. It is important, nonetheless, to gain understanding of how language works and this is why. We have softened the borders of our language and let in some ghastlies. We have allowed in the complete change of a single word’s meaning, losing, on the way, a g or an h and this does matter, not necessarily to hold on to the old, onto what was, but just to know it was there, once, a part of the scaffold that lifted a writer higher. We, the Brits, are still celebrated world wide for our writing, our films, plays and tv series. We are strong with our understanding of our language, and its structure. And sometimes that confines us, especially if we did not do ‘well’ at English in school or have been ridiculed and mocked for our ‘wrong’ use of words in a sentence.

Bin all of that. We need writers and not just those who have gained degrees or diplomas and (often) done little with that stored knowledge. We need enthusiastic passionate writers who don’t even believe they are writers. The works, the classics, the honoured novelists, I revere and respect. But, people, these times are new. We are living in a conundrum (look that up!). An anomaly, a confusion, a splitting of the ways, a confoundment on boundaries and with a big hole in that wall which offers an opening into something new and scary. If you have that drive, do not die with your song still in you. Do not accommodate old rules, confinements, mockings or perceived prison bars. Fly. Do it. Write. The experiences each one of us have tucked under our belts over this past year are fuel for Talk, for Story, for Ideas that break boundaries of space, time and language.

Come on people. I know there are many out there and I will tell you why. We have so very much to say now. We have gone through loss, grief and struggle, pain, abandonment, sleepless nights, eating up, eating down, evasion, confusion, anxiety and identity crises. In the old days (I remember them) we knew who we were, where and when we met. We collided, avoided or we came together. We knew parameters and levels and the land on which we stood. We knew the way forward and the way back. This all came from the ‘elders’. They spoke and we believed, well, not me, but I went with it anyway because there was no other direction on offer. Now we are spinning like tops. Circling each other, unsure. And it is a writer’s perfect space. Use it. Talk about it, write about it. Let the pain rise and the sky fall. Let the anger out and watch it turn into rocket boosters. Let it out. ‘out’. because it if doesn’t ‘out’ we, as dynamically creative individuals, will just join the ranks of those with mental health issues who have gone beyond inspiration, inventive creativity and a Sunday dinner with pavlova instead of tinned custard; those who will bury this year of troubles and sink down into a permanent Lower case.

Just saying.

As we move into Easter, the weirdest yet, without family around the table, perhaps even without eggs, we are having to be inventive. I think that is one of my favourite words, perhaps because I have been re-inventing myself all my life. I like this, no I don’t, I like her/him, no I don’t, I want to be an air hostess/intrepid explorer/dancer/aid worker………no, maybe not. Perhaps we are all like that as new fizz comes into our mental veins on hearing of someone else doing any of the above, until the morning comes and with it an abundance of realism, dammit. I often think morning has a lot to answer for. By the afternoon, anything is possible, I am possible, what I long to do is possible and I can go to bed with the absolute certainty that I will awaken to a dawn never known previously, one that affirms my breakout plans. It hasn’t happened yet.

Today is Good Friday, or Easter Friday if you don’t buy into the Good bit. Either way, it is a time we look forward to, as we do Christmas and Birthdays. Our own, anyway. But this year we can look until our eyeballs fall out but we won’t see what we want, what we have always known. First time ever for my generation and below. The Aboves knew it of course. War was woven into their memories, as this one will be for us. Everything this Easter must be done remotely, or from a distance. And it matters. Regardless of how inventive (there I go again) any of us are, it still hurts. There’s a slump in it as if life is lying doggo and we have no idea how or when it will wake up again with a Ta-da! We are moving along, going through the days, hope alternating with despair, bright and beamish one minute and sad as Eeeyore the next. It’s normal, its acceptable, more, it’s human. We long, we love, we care and without touch it feels like homesickness. Nostomania. Our instant leap to logic creates a pedagogue. This teacher is one of those I longed to flick cold chewing gum at, without being caught. Telling ourselves we must only think of the positive can send us captious. We might criticise others for walking twice a day, or those who shop every day and we know they do because they live upwind of us and the shop is downwind. We must take care we don’t let that thinking be our guide. Each one of us is required to make our own choices, our own decisions at this time. I remember, weeks ago, people saying to me….We will wait for the official decision on this, or that, whilst I had decided to release the carers and lockdown. Waiting never suited me.

So, I say, people, steer your own heart. It will guide you right, always. I notice some visitors have come to the island. I have a few opinions on that, not least because they may extend this time of lockdown just by travelling here. However, I won’t let myself become the judge. Instead, I will continue to make my own decisions, listening to my own heart, my best friend. As, I am sure, will you. There is no room for dithering these days, nor waiting for the official ruling, nor, even, asking someone else their opinion. After all, we all know at our deepest level, what we need to do to survive and to make sure our loved ones do too.

Happy Easter my friends. I wish you serendipities by the score. No matter what is to come, we may be broken, but we are not beaten. We are strong, intelligent, wise, loving, emotional, caring humans. I salute you all.