Discovered just in passing

A couple of ref­er­ences to other sites, just to prove I still read the occa­sional one or two. Firstly, Robyn taps into a very, very dis­tant memory by using the phrase “pixie-led”. Sud­denly, I’m recall­ing the Christ­mas of 1980 in the Cath­cart area of Glas­gow. It was the one and only time I met the Scot­tish branch of my Dad’s side of the fam­ily. I remem­ber hardly any of them, except for my great aunt Ella — a woman built like the pro­ver­bial brick shit­house, with a dirty laugh and fin­gers like rolling pins, which she used to rather indel­ic­ately pinch the cheeks of all the “wee kid­dies”. And yes, I’m aware that this makes her sound like a char­ac­ter from a par­tic­u­larly bad cos­tume drama.

At this time, I was a very intro­ver­ted day­dreamer and would spend hours scrib­bling away in note­books con­struct­ing fanci­ful stor­ies. This seemed to par­tic­u­larly annoy my aunt Ella — she was get­ting on in years, and it was the first time she’d had a size­able num­ber of her young rel­at­ives around her for a big fam­ily occa­sion. Maybe she felt it was going to be last, too. But as a nine-year-old day­dreamer, I just wanted to sit in the corner and do what day­dream­ing chil­dren do. Exas­per­ated, Ella would tell her brother — my grand­father — and any­one else who would listen that they shouldn’t let me be “led by the pix­ies.” Con­fused as to what exactly she meant, I asked my grand­mother to cla­rify: “She means that you’re off with the fair­ies.” I liked that ver­sion even less, so stuck with the pixie altern­at­ive. It soun­ded a little more mis­chiev­ous. At some point, I’m sure I resolved to find out more about this mys­ter­i­ous pix­ies. Alas, it was not to be.

I really hadn’t heard that phrase for 22 years. For more illu­min­a­tion on being “pixie-led”, you can do no bet­ter than the strange little kids’ story (pre­sum­ably for strange little kids) that Robyn also links to:

“You know what I think.”

“What?”

“I think you been pixie-led!”

“Me? Nah, just like my Pa says, dumber than a post with noth­ing in my head but music and dreams.”

Bloody bizarre, but some­what befit­ting of my memor­ies of that one Scot­tish fam­ily Christ­mas — and also a warn­ing against let­ting rural Somer­set types breed with Glaswe­gian towns­folk. Oddness will undoubtedly result.

Else­where, Anna reminds me of some of those won­der­ful — well, won­der­ful but ever so slightly point­less — exer­cises that made up the prac­tical part of my drama degree. Any­one for a game of Zip, Zap, Bop?

Aside: Yes, that’s a drama degree. A degree in drama. Gradu­ated in 1993. Career months involving use of drama qual­i­fic­a­tion so far — five, at a con­ser­vat­ive estim­ate, and even they were vol­un­tary work. Some­how I drif­ted into work­ing on the web, which I love(d). But I am begin­ning to think that it’s time for me to use some of the skills and know­ledge I learned all those years ago, in some form of gain­ful employ­ment. Not much to ask, or is it? Life change com­ing up? Maybe. I’ve been think­ing, any­way … moment­ary whinge over.

So, back to point­less drama exer­cises. If I tell you that at my interview/audition for the Uni­ver­sity of Hull in 1990, part of the day involved con­vey­ing a range of emo­tions towards inan­im­ate objects, and that I excelled by con­vey­ing enraged jeal­ousy towards a wooden garden bench, then you’ll know the kind of dir­ec­tion we’re head­ing in. Still, I obvi­ously made a bril­liant double act with the bench, as it secured me a place on the course.

Anna men­tions the cre­at­ive writ­ing exer­cise that our par­tic­u­lar tutor called ‘Morn­ing Writ­ing’. As, I sup­pose, a form of auto­matic writ­ing, it involves get­ting up and writ­ing solidly for half an hour, from the very moment you wipe the grains of sleep from between your eyelashes.

Get real.

Try to ima­gine the aver­age stu­dent slid­ing out from under the duvet, seam­lessly mov­ing across to their desk, and then writ­ing or typ­ing non-stop for 30 minutes. Then ima­gine a drama stu­dent — a rare breed not known for their devo­tion to writ­ten work (too busy per­form­ing, dah­lings) — try­ing to do that. Exactly. I rest my case.

Except … well, except that I tried the ‘Morn­ing Writ­ing’ routine, with almost reli­gious com­mit­ment, for two months dur­ing my second year at uni­ver­sity. The writ­ing I pro­duced was sur­real, abstract, dis­join­ted and — pre­dict­ably — mostly bloody awful.

There is some wis­dom in the idea of get­ting up early and writ­ing before the world around you comes to life, with all its dis­trac­tions. But, like any­thing, I do think you need to pre­pare — and for me, the early hours of the morn­ing require pre­par­a­tion via at least two cups of strong cof­fee and pos­sibly a couple of Ibupro­fen. My cre­at­ive juices require chem­ical stim­u­la­tion, thank you very much.

Altern­at­ively, of course, just start writ­ing at gone 11.00pm at night, when you’re dog tired. I can vir­tu­ally guar­an­tee that you’ll spew out any old bull­shit, pro­voked by the incon­sequen­tial little thoughts that have some­how drif­ted into your mind. Isn’t the abil­ity to use and abuse lan­guage just com­pletely bril­liant?