Phoenix Ark's Blog

All right, that story has been told, and with no revelatory consequences, no kinder human ‘miracles’, so Phoenix Ark must turn back to objective and positive stories in future. That dream probably came out of that song, and far, far happier memories, so that’s only healing too.

Blog Suspension lifted – it’s all I have as a writer, although blogs strictly limited!

I bumped into the sweet black guy at the St Luke’s refuge home opposite my London flat the other day and he told me why, for a year in my own kind of emotional hell, he kept calling me Andy. It happened often, when he was shuffling down the street, with his headphones on, smoking a fag and singing, sometimes wearing his bright red Elvis costume, and usually caught deep in his own hurt head. My own thoughts and emotions had become so raw and slow, searching for some kind of light, trying to stop time, writing that huge novel and imprisoned in the box of myself, it was all about seeing, in reality and imagination, and I sometimes saw his eyes literally bulging from his head, as though blocked emotion or understanding was pressing from the goggling sockets. ‘Andy I knew long back,” he said, “you reminded me of him. He was killed by the National Front.’ What kind of an animal is man, sometimes, and that’s not meant as an insult to animals, and what kind of bastards are out there? ‘You’re a good, guy, Dave’, he said, as he sloped back into his ‘dump‘, and I slipped him a quid and wondered if I’m any good at all. He made me feel better and as Tolkien had it, there can be evil tears. DCD

‘It has happened forever, and nothing can make it good.‘ Mallory, after seven men were killed attempting Everest.

Perhaps that’s it. We have to accept the bad too, even the power of the bad, and try to get it right. Not live in it, dwell in it, or try to right what you just can’t, but accept the scar and be bigger and far braver. Fear does such harm, though it’s necessary sometimes too. A commentator said mountaineers have an element of selfishness, deep down, perhaps madness too, misunderstanding the eternal drive, but Graham Greene said writers need a quality of ice too. Mountains to climb! Of course, Mallory ‘lost’.

‘One must conquer, achieve, get to the top, to know there is nothing that mustn’t be dared.’ Mallory.

‘Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves.” Mallory.

Um, I think I seem a little bitter! Maybe it’s fear and sorrow. Maybe it’s courage and madness. Maybe words mean nothing at all. No, they mean everything, and nothing at all…string some bow invented by Paulo Coehlo, and keep shooting straight and true! He had three wives, and likes light and big mountains. He also has a huge foundation that helps lots of kids.

Audrey Niffenegger, as it happens an enormous fan of an ex’s, and author of The Time Traveller’s Wife, had it so right just now about Social Networking, blogging and the internet, at the Edinburgh Book Festival. It is often like people shouting at each other, with little time to think, digest, pause, and really create. It is often actually a threat to the real value and power of the written word. But novels are considered things, and so are their ‘creation‘ at and by a publisher. They are living things, in a way, and in all my rants I have always said that Abrams did books beautifully. That’s why it is such a bitter pill to swallow. I have the beautiful edition of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel in pictures, The Adventuress, at home, with its gorgeous green felt binding. I only wish she might use the magic of words and stories to write about men, stop time, and pen The Time Traveller’s Husband! As Shakespeare said ‘Wishers were ever fools‘, but perhaps a poet should always value the foolishness of the heart and keep valuing it, to the end of time. DCD

I think it’s one of the truest satires the Coen Brothers came up with, the story of the writer going nuts, in Barton Fink. Lost to the world of the mind, forgotten by the powers that be in Hollywood, his mind ended up fighting everything and everyone. It was like that three years ago, with love, friendship and editorial support retracted by my publisher in New York, as friendships here were shatted. With a touch of Dr Faustus too, spurred on by the raw energy of Mephistopheles, gazing in the magic mirror of memory and emotion, but ending up with fear in a handful of dust, weaker eyesight, and Helen of Troy gone off to her Upper Flip-Side, for happier days in publishing, Greengrass’s and Central Park. What a joke then when connected people, supposedly grown up or loving people, supporting each other too, branded me as the devil incarnate, or some kind of literary terrorist, alone in a flat in London, threatening ‘Attorney’s notices in New York and London ‘, and virtually demanding a novel about Polar Bears was delivered in an armoured car. It is absolutely unheard of, or maybe it’s not, but fact’s certainly stranger than fiction. I thought they believe the word has no strange power at all, except to make money. Wake up, New York and see the whole, or believe in the stories you edit and the writers you buy! DCD

People often don’t like Grahame Greeme because he was a Catholic. I think books like The Quiet American are amazingly insightful, sad and moving, personally, culturally and politically. But I’ve always wondered about the miracle written into End of The Affair. Do we believe it, take it as pure fiction, or is it there to simply make us wonder? Back to Einstein perhaps, and changing language, and seeing everything as a ‘miracle’, or nothing as. No one around me would believe in at least the possibility of good miracles, of healing and connected energy, despite their talk of God, and out of such harm, and simply went on blocking terribly. It was awful in such a situation. So maybe I just have to start the believing, in the positive and not what seems to define and dictate so many beliefs, namely pure fear. Even believing in ‘Catholicism’, although I prefer Tai Chi. To me it means believing in yourself and others, and the whole of life’s extraordinary adventure, life’s feast, in good energy and the best we are when whole, man and woman together. It generates light and understanding, not to mention life. But we are not fixed in time, pinned by careless and destructive labels, we’re like plants that need many things to grow and blossom, and to make that happen in each other too. Yes though, in fact a quiet sorry from another person would be a little miracle, an act of true awareness, and very creative. DCD

Do watch JK Rowling’s inspiring and moving speech to Harvard Graduates in 2008, on the importance of Failure and Imagination.

You can find it at http://pindsha21.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/im-failing-and-why-that-isnt-so-bad/

Ok, ok, I know, this is no real way to value culture, my own readers, win again, or live, and fans quite rightly have their favourite authors and loved books too. Allow a bit of wit, but the truth is Lauren Myracle was charming, Michael Buckley was a nice bloke, so was I, once, and I haven’t read those other books, except bleeding CBGBs. The truth is, well, you know the truth now, along the Yellow Brick Broken Dream Boulevard of one Girl’s worryingly hard and straight lined New York City, or two girl’s, unbelievable or not. Or do you? There were some Flaming Lips to it, was some deep soul, was a great deal of madness, though sadly not of the kind in Dr Zhivago, ‘Yuri’s alive and I’m mad with joy!‘, but love can actually be rather a bore, especially other people’s – much prefer an ordinary and creative life. Off to get one, one day, and must stop living in memory or movies, especially Half Nelson! Just climb, and climb, and climb, until you see the sun and the moon and the stars again. The big soul connection of everything.

ps Joanna Lumley, on Holy Mountain in Egypt, is charming, human, modest, warm, highly intelligent and lovely.

Told you I lost an editor, in every way you can!