James Dylan Squire's Blog

Crosses

jamesdylansquire — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:35:10 +0000

I’m stepping into dangerous territory; and certainly not virgin land. If I begin to compare myself to him my protagonist, or Francis, I can see where it can lead. Dangerous territory indeed; like the students who repeat their paradoxical and memorised lines on pseudo-socialist, anti-establishment recycled trot; I do do an awfully good impression of myself.
I’m frightened of what is to come, I’m frightened that what I can offer won’t be enough. I write, and write, and divulge, and digress, and then I finish. But still something pulls me back, it restrains me from letting go. Mark said to me not long ago that I needed to send my novel away, just to get it out there, because its killing me holding on to it. Sure enough he was probably right, but instead I put it to a folder marked ‘old work’ on my computer to join the other tens of thousands of words that I’ve commited to illuminated screen. I began something new, and now I’ve finished it. And what worries me? It’s length? Well its only a tad shorter than Gatsby. Its content? Perhaps someone is interested in my story. And what to call it? What to summarise it as? How can I fit it into an a4 page of description. Sure – selling it is the editors job, its the agents job, its the publishers job, but it needs to be marketable right? It’s a business after all. Is it a social novel, is it a story of love, is it a story of desperation and desire, of dreams and waking? Yes. But then what isn’t.
I begin to compare myself to Francis, and things seem to stray and bubble on the horizon; a heat wave shimmering and refracting the sun; blinding me from what I need to see.
Perhaps I should just send it. Unedited, unabridged, undrafted. Perhaps just one, one agent. Pick him wisely.
And should I tell anyone. Should I breathe while I sleep, and dream the impossible.
I don’t know what else I can be if I am not a writer, I’ve known this is me for so long, and yet now fear reigns down, and I just don’t know what else I can be if I am not a writer.

Heartbeats

jamesdylansquire — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:01:09 +0000

Where rivers freeze, and blackness greys
Heartbeats, heartbeats, how to convey?
Memories twitter in January delight
The city smoulders, and we waste away.
Snow paints white as frostbite bleeds
The bulb bangs bright and breaks with speed
Darkness erupts as I remember that night,
Lost thoughts drunk as your image recedes.

Where blackness greys, and rivers swell
Life beats, life beats, and people do dwell
September is spring, and I dream of you
And to the past, fare thee well, fare thee well.
Scotch sleeps between different towns
Tickling the hearts of all but do frown
And with this hazy sprinkle, I dream of you,
My heart beats, my heart beats, my heart beats
with sound.

4th Time Around

jamesdylansquire — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:38:36 +0000

“[they] were intended not for neurotics whom a draft of water could calm if properly administered, but only for great sleepless artists who had to die for a few hours in order to live for centuries.”

- Vladimir Nabokov

Your Protector

jamesdylansquire — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 00:04:16 +0000

The arched ceilings confuse; their intricate brickwork and vulumptious and fluttering curves give the impression of some medieval scholary and temptation, but their white wash looks like architecture dropped on its head, from the present. The spring will soon be upon us and what was I looking for? Enlightenment?
The night was teasing; the carols were beautiful and every bit as nice as I remember, and there is something, as a music journalist, that is naturally mindblowing about a choir. Even in the obvious choices lay beauty and love; the crossovers in ‘Ding Dong Merrily On High’ wrapped me up in a shivering bubble last experienced in the depths of a techno night; except here the effect was reached with just the voices of a crowd of people; unamplified, amazed. I look down to the candle below and the tears of wax drip down through the card protector, and lightly burn my fingers beneath.
There were more that blew me away but I listened with intent during the stories; the basis of Christianity; something I have a great interest in. Everyone I know of my age condemns religion. There is little middle ground amongst my age bracket, not many who are nonchalant toward it. I have an interest almost because of that reason; and because my family is, on the other had, rather religious.
I’m tempted to go the whole hog and get ‘the complete history of Christianity’ and then soon just becoming a recluse and reading it cover to cover. I look down to the candle now, and as I find I haven’t had the awakening perhaps I dreamt of, or perhaps imagined would happen, I simply see the wax bleed and bubble; quickly rushing down its own neck. No; there is no change; all that I can do is enjoy the music, as my mind drifts to pinnacle moments of religion related west wing.

Highly enjoyable evening.

Mykonos

jamesdylansquire — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:41:17 +0000

Today at work.
I thoroughly enjoyed the anti-monarchy rant, though I disagreed throughout mostly. My like for the monarchy is really quite unexplainable; I don’t really understand my attraction but I have one nonetheless. Also was quite bemused by the openness of my Hungarian colleague’s rather blatant anti-semitism; all suffixed with “I no racist.” No, no, of course not – you’re right when you say the Holocaust was “overplayed”, “exaggerated”, and “used for excess sympathy” when the Jews “want to take over the world, and buy Hungary,” that’s not racist at all.

4th Time Around

jamesdylansquire — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:35:27 +0000

When we sat down she started to talk; She opened her mouth, but running wildly next to her words, her whole body started moving. Skipping and jumping in a summer’s delight with Bob Dylan’s ’4th Time Around’ reverberating against the barks of the trees, before them lay a meadow flickering and twittering throughout the winds of the June morning. She looks at me and I smile, she continues to stare and I drift away. We lean away with our legs dancing delicately amongst the clouds, painting our names in the sky and we drift away.

Sun Giant

jamesdylansquire — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:49:28 +0000

I had a dream this morning about a girl I used to know. Her soft brown hair glows auburn in the sunlight. Her visit made me realise, these dry, calculating, beige girls don’t mean a thing. They pale in the morning light, and the fade in the evening.
I will wait, because I can’t see any other finale than this; nor do I want it.

Signs

jamesdylansquire — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:56:34 +0000

So, as usual at the moment, blogging has become sparse, and thinning by the day. Thee past few months, pathetically seem to have flown by. September to now, the verge of the Christmas month, seems to have blinked past. I’ve done nothing.

One thing I’ve realised is that by June next year I’m going to have to get myself a job of some description that pays as a job would. I’ve recently met someone a few years older than me who over the past few years has amassed the level of journalistic experience that I could only dream of. Admittedly the paths are different; she wandered into political, but mainly economic journalism, though not by choice. I on the other hand, proud of little jobs, extra reviews to do. All unpaid, but there we go.

I’ve just finished reading The electric kool-aid acid test, which I enjoyed. I think as a journalist and indeed as a writer Woolfe is nothing on some of his contemporaries of the self-penned ‘New Journalism’ but where I do find a lot of respect for him, is in that invention of said journalism. ‘New Journalism’ is so fucking cool. I mean theoretically its a postmodernist’s dream, but its not really what tickles me about it. It does genuinelly work well; if some straight-up Times critic featured Kesey and his generation then it never would have come across with the same impact, and insight as Wolfe accomplished. Thompson bettered this; he removed the irritating omniscience that was present and unnecessary in Electric Kool-aid…., while Wolfe directs and narrates, or Thompson merely commentates; the journalist should follow, not lead, and Wolfe’s own admission that he researched through others just feels a little, I don’t know, like it hasn’t truly accomplished what it was trying to achieve. I think Wolfe did a marvelous thing, but it was a precursor to something better.

The other reason Electric kool-aid.. intrigued me so much was because it was such a fascinating generation. America through the twentieth century really is wonderfully exciting; in literature, art, film, and music, and then later tv, everything I like comes from the States. The referencing Wolfe naturally has to instill becomes second nature very quickly; by midpoint the Merry pranksters feel like celebrities, or visionaries, or artists, as much as Kerouac or Burroughs or Ginsberg might do. Seeing the coming together of the beats with the acidheads, and the acidheads with the beatles, was just magnificent to see unravel and develop.

I’ve never, — got distracted by Dave – more comedy. Dave seems to be all I watch.
I digress, and should move on.

I just lack any motivation of sorts. Bah.

We are all ugly, and lost.

jamesdylansquire — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:43:36 +0000

We are all ugly, and lost,
I come to the foot of Clapham Common,
and basked in September’s Autumnal glow,
I see the city falling inwards across its people.
Drunks and hasbeens,
Rahs and Bankers,
Children of money,
Money of children.
Drugs float through the air,
my fingers crawl down by my sides
my fingers touch the soft grass,
in the morning, dew is beginning to form.
The sky crashes
London’s crescendo is silent
But as it peaks the sky is empty
Blue, Vast, There is no break,
Empty but impure,
Open, but falling,
Clear, but muddied.
We are all ugly, and lost.

The Dead Flag Blues

jamesdylansquire — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:42:48 +0000

Editing is such a horrific phase. I’m finally in editing mode; a state of mind where objectively I’ve got to find what’s wrong with my novel, what doesn’t work, where sentences don’t make sense, where ideas don’t line up, where metaphor is too sensationalist, and rhetoric is too obtuse or verbose.
I’m finally at a stage where I can see all of this, and all it means is I can no longer see whats good. Its kind of hit me that this whole thing is just terrible, I’ve suddenly developed a skill in summarising the novel to friends, they seem to like the concept, and yet the novel itself seems childish, uncaptiviating, completley uninteresting, flat, lifeless, unbelievable.
I am truly beginning to doubt my talents as a writer. On ‘Come Dine with Me’ the other day, there was a woman who truly beleived she was a good cook, all of her guests couldn’t stand her food. She got one of the lowest marks possible and it hit her that she couldn’t cook. She took it with a pinch of salt; her realisation was one of a hobby. Mine is what I dream my career to lie with.

September isn’t as happy as it usually is for me.