Allegra was not the sort of
woman who needed shots of the
notion of art as others need shots of insulin, so she was not about to
discuss the difficulty of this creative birth with anyone. After all, she was a
writer intent on awakening humanistic imagery in her readers while
jettisoning all metaphysical excrescences and she wasn’t about debating supposed properties such as ‘truth’ or ‘morality’
so as she could then undermine them in acts of aggrandisement; and she wasn’t into educating others, for her, such
largesse, smacked of the bridle.
She felt that fiction is already here, all
around us; reality isn’t there yet, it has to be
brought forth or produced and this is the duty and stake of writing. So she
hunched her shoulders for the task ahead.
Still, it had not been easy this writing
thing, indeed it many ways it had been a creative life of rebuke and disdain;
‘not very arresting similes; tiresome metaphors,’ and what else did those bien pensant critics have to say about
her? Oh yes, ‘clumping ironies; bloated circumlocution; dangling modifiers’, it was as though they had issued a Fatwa against her;
she had even been accused of ‘Bardicide’
for critiquing Shakespeare's conservatism. She wondered what did these literary
geeks sprinkled on their porridge? As a result of this onslaught although he
felt at times everything was going to hell in a handcart, she had adopted a Sam
Beckett aphorism about her writing; ‘Fail. Fail again. Fail Better’. Anyway,
to hell with critics, there were many who thought her writing was quite…well,
highly allusive.
Now she looked at the computer, it was
always a task this cliché; the ‘empty page’. But she was a professional writer, not
a writer manqué with an overwhelming need for admiration; she wasn’t about tumouring her way to
publication and she hadn’t spent the
past years endlessly making cup cakes, or bitching at the school gates, nor had
she been swamped by that endless institutional drudgery called a family. She
had chosen to be a writer and do without a family for she felt her task - to
give a voice to the voiceless, it was that important. For there was an essence
out there and she felt it her task to reveal it in whatever way she could even
if it was at the expense of her ‘dear readers’, besides, she was not interested
in creating a tribe of the like-minded, or falling over
herself to offer her readers the all chew and no bite of interiority. But ‘pro’ even though she was, this
morning, this character just would not come to life, it was as though she or he
just refused to be born.
Now
she inadvertently nudged the glass of wine set at the
side of his small typing table and it nearly toppled over. “Christ, I must get on with it, I really
must.” Writing, if only she could
loosen herself from this corset of a
profession.
“Come on, little fella,” she guessed at a
gender. Could be male or female, or both? Male, female? No, not into a transgender game of binaristic
excess, that has been ‘done’ as has everything else.
“I am not coming out, not now or ever.
Besides, that creative birth canal looks
like a rough ride. So I won’t, shan’t.” Her
imagination retorted.
“There now, be a good little fellow, a
little push or two and you are out.”
“No, won’t, won't come out, I don't want to be born."
Then almost embarrassed by her train of
thought, she chastised herself, “I have to stop this nonsense and get this
character on the page,” but the dialectic which always occurs in the face of
incommensurability went on.
“Come on, come on.”
“I am not coming out and that’s final,”
came back the stamping foot in a cherubic semblance of a huff.
“Well, let’s not get into an argument
little fellow, after all an argument is only verbal self definition.”
“Self definition?”
“Yes, if you want real self definition come
on out.”
“Shan’t, won’t…besides I will cause you too
much pain if I come out,”
“How so?”
“Well, you would have to nurture me and follow
me, in that frankly embarrassing way that writers drone on about being ‘led by
their characters’.”
Allegra looked at the empty screen, talk
about intransigence, it just seemed this character of hers would not see the
light of her creative day. Now her imagination spoke of her dilemma.
“Besides the ‘real’ world that you are
trying to create me into is not that inviting, is it. The appeal of being a
fictional character is hardly irresistible, is it? ”
“No, I suppose not. But we are living in a ‘real’ world ruled
by fictions of every kind and maybe it
is the same in your world too.”
“Maybe.”
Allegra saw an opening, “I will call you, Bosco, that’s a nice name isn’t it?”
“Well…yes, it is rather.”
“And I will have you meet someone really
nice,” she coat trailingly enticed.
“Oh really…like who?”
“Someone who will make you feel happy, very
happy.”
“Well, who?”
“Someone who is very nice,” Allegra,
replied delphically.
“Well, in that case. Well…OK then…but you
promise?
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
She had never written about sport for
she felt, in a Marie Antoinettish moment it was the brioche of the working class, a way of keeping the populace quiet. But
apart from the murmuring in her head, something had stirred her; an article, a
smidgeon of conversation; some aperçu. So, she would call her
character ‘Bosco’ a good looking young athlete, but ‘thinking’ in an unthinking
harsh world of sport; a loner, therefore alienated. Yes, apart. She hunched
over the computer. ‘Sport’? what happens to the
alienated who display individualism, distinctiveness, eccentricity call it what
you will in these macho sports, such
individuals were open to question marks in a culture of superficial humour and banter where the reactionary choice of
newspaper is de rigueur. No, Allegra
thought that kind of stuff is too journalistic, so she wiped it from the
screen. Now that you are
out ‘Bosco’ where am I going to put you? Right, I know ‘movement’ and driven by that piston called ‘idea’
she started typing.
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