April '99

I'm afraid, dear www peruser, the time has come for Konisberg to disappear up his own generously proportioned, precious, pseudo intellectual, demi educated, and sadly ever expanding posterior.

This is the writer writing about writing.

I'll do my best to keep it interesting. But please feel free to drop that mouse, pull out your Uzi, and let Konisberg have it, should I vanish too far up my own aforementioned flabby, middle aged, tuchas.

Railway station cafes on weekday afternoons, at 3 o'clock are perfect. There's something about railway stations. The transience. People leaving and arriving. 3PM is a wistful, sad, time of day. Early mornings and evenings excite and define. But 3 o'clock is swishy somnambulance. 3 o'clock is a blurry car journey in the rain with windscreen wipers a go go.

Its harder to admit this but I also enjoy writing in Burger Bars. I'm aware of all the righteous political arguments against McDonalds et al. I'm also a vegetarian. (so don't waste words by e mailing and calling me a Fascist twat. By all means e mail and call me a Hypocritical twat. That would be far closer to the mark. Nevertheless pause first, and consider whether it would make the slightest difference to the stability of the Evil MacClown empire, if I stopped going there. I would gently refer you to Mr Lev Bronstein's (Leon Trotsky's pre show business moniker) " Their Morals and Ours", a masterful dismissal of the futility of such individual "moral" protest within a bourgeois framework.)

But the coffee is cheap, you can stay as long as you like, & in all the plasticity and the tackiness, there is some poetry to be had.

Black coffee, apple pie, a serviette wiped over the mouth. A single mother hugs her baby. A black car worker furiously masticates his cheeseburger, scared of being late back for his shift. A shameless alcoholic, sitting in the corner, stinking, pouring vodka into a polystyrene cup. This doesn't always have the mercurial whimsy of the railway station. It is more grounded and earthbound. But it's one huge dysfunctional Mcfamily. All breathing out the air of despair and hope which makes up writing. I hope to trap and condense this.

David Mamet wrote a book called "Writing In Restaurants". If the brilliant Mamet is the aristocracy of the writing world I am its lumpen proletariat.

My book will be called "Writing in Burger Bars".

Since then, gazing around various of my favourite writing cafes, I've noticed that we're not alone. I don't want to give the location of these spots away lest they become the Costa Del Sol of the melancholy scribbling world. Spoilt writing areas. So overrun with would be Plath's and Dostoyevsky's, that Joseph Shmoseph (Joe Shmo's little used full name) and his missus (Josephine Schmosephine) can't get a coffee and a butty.

The Melancholy Cafe Scribblers (MCS's) are not hard to spot. Ah, there's one only two tables away. A bite of chocolate chip cookie, a quick gaze around the joint looking for inspiration, a sip of Colombian coffee, and then pen passionately hits paper. Her head is bowed close to the biro, scribbling, lost in time. She is in thrall to the inspiration. Wowed by her own talent. Her writing, her need to write has elevated her. Her material self sits scribbling at Euston Station, her real self, her soul, skirts the clouds.

Homer Simpson could never agree, but this is better than 2000 chocolate chip cookies.

I've seen many MCS's since I started looking. We're not necessarily published writers. But I've come to believe there's millions of us in the closet, scrabbling around. (In and out of cafe's). On serviettes, on scraps of paper, in notebooks. Better out than in. Expel the creativity.

Every week "The Big Issue" a magazine sold by homeless people in Britain devotes two of its excellent pages to the poetry and musings of the homeless.

It sometimes throws up good writing. It sometimes throws up bad writing. It always throws up interesting writing.

I enjoy people's little diaries, their internal monologues. I love that these dudes are getting heard. The Big Issue helps them to get by financially and helps give them back their self-respect by giving them a job. Not having to beg. It also aims to eventually house, (or more likely bedsit) every vendor. This is all of course more than commendable.

But even men and women without homes have concerns other than food and shelter. Creative needs. Spiritual longing. The need to expel. Full marks to the Issue for allowing them to "get above their station" and express these. Even perhaps risking commercial loss as a result.

Why doesn't every office in the country run a magazine for this type of latent talent? There are Melancholy scribblers, artists, and cartoonists everywhere.

Writing has to "suit the market" to get into print. You have to be the 90's Dickens or Shakespeare, (like Will Self, or Martin Amis) or a gurgling populist illiterate (a 90's dick) like Jeffery Archer to be published. Others should be heard. Need to be heard. Need an outlet however tiny it might be. If you don't want to spend your life vomiting out cliched, nose picking, bubonic plague infected journalism from your PC, then where do you turn?

I also 'fink books are good. Very good. It isn't necessarily true that you'll improve as a writer in proportion with how widely you read. However it surely can't do a great deal of harm to read as widely as you can. (Never mind the pleasure you'll gain). But that doesn't mean the not so well read, ( the majority of the population) have nothing serious to offer. Great writer though he is (and his bitch though I am,) could Martin Amis tell me how it feels to be destitute better than a Big Issue vendor?

Every piece of writing does not have to be judged by its value in the market place. The whole world (our lovely dollar led global village) seems to have been indoctrinated into thinking its not worth expressing your creativity (and more sadly perhaps your creativity is not worth anything) if it cannot be SOLD.

A 20 something poetess friend of mine who has been writing poems for years, recently had one published for the first time in a poetry anthology. Instead of giving her a big hug of congratulation many of her friends asked,

She could slip into a bookshop and read herself in print.

Someone might put down "'The Wasteland", pick up her book, and browsing, chance upon her poem.

Just one line might touch a feeling from childhood. Sparking a momentary embrace between poem and reader. She'll never know this happened to this person. Someone she'll never meet is (unexpectedly) affected for 10 seconds of his/her life by one my pal's stanzas. That's what being a poet is about. Not paycheques.

I'd love to open a cafe for writers. A vegetarian greasy spoon. Open all night. (As many writers like to write at night) In the heart of the city. It would give massive concessions to homeless people. There would be dictionaries and thesauruses on hand. Writing classes each hour for those who wanted to drift off the Streets and take one. But most importantly areas set aside for writing and eating. Writing and drinking tea. Writing and melancholy. A free magazine would publish work completed in the cafe.

It will be a long time before I can afford such a venture. If I ever can. The laws of capitalism would dictate that it has to make a profit. It probably never could.

Jackie Collins makes more each day than Vincent Van Gogh did in his entire life. Few would argue that her work is therefore better. Only gross people measure art by dollars grossed. Why can't Governments see that countries are spiritually and mentally healthier when every bit of creative tension in every nook, cranny, and Granny, is at least given the opportunity of an outlet? Why not launch state sponsored, non profit making magazines, which contain the work of unpublished writers? This could extend to all areas of the arts.

There's so much untapped talent. So many melancholy cafe scribblers.

As with sexual tension perhaps the creative spilling will be an annoying, messy, inarticulate, coagulation. An embarrassment that won't vanish in the wash. Or it could make the earth move for you and others. Whatever. Better out than in.