Poison-pen letter to myself
Trying to explain what this piece is about would take me longer than it did to write it
I started a new job this week. After the first day, Alex gave me a piece of advice: DON’T FORGET THE REAL MISSION. Don’t get sidetracked. “Easy to get sucked into a day job and lose track of what you want to do with your life.” I wanted to write it on a Post-It note and put it on my bedroom wall but, by the time I got home, I was just too tired.
The thing about me is I take most of my advice from two friends called Alex, one sitting on either side of my shoulders whenever I make a decision. Both happen to have a last name starting with A, which makes differentiating between them on paper even harder. Since I often use real names, confusion may be the easiest route to anonymity in my texts.
In the office today, I performed the same task over and over from 10 am until I was done. I won’t lie to you, this is no art job—it’s very corporate—but I plan on keeping it so I’ll spare myself the risk of exposure and keep the specifics of the task to myself. All you need to know is it was very repetitive and just simple copy-pasting and checking that spreadsheets matched up. I couldn’t help but think, Someone should teach a computer to do this. But no, AI has to make shit art instead. Either way, I enjoyed my day. Once I get into a flow, work like that gets me as close as I’ll ever be to meditation. Some of my friends don’t understand why I’m into that kind of admin but, if I must have a day job, I’d rather it be that than anything which requires me to think.
I had a podcast in the background as I worked. I’ve been digging into The White Pube archives lately, so I started listening to It is as if you were doing work without even stopping to read the title. The episode covers “a café scene that captures the desire to escape home responsibilities. Amidst diverse patrons, the narrator plays a game simulating work, reflecting on societal pressures and the future of automation. In the game, mundane tasks offer a sense of purpose, highlighting the monotony and anxiety of modern work culture. The game reflects on the potential future where AI replaces human labour, leading to existential questioning amidst societal shifts and uncertainties.” The episode description is a quotation because I did not write it, ChatGPT did. After that one, I listened to the I <3 London episode just because it was longer than any of the others, and I didn’t want my manager to think I was going on my phone all the time.
I don’t feel like I have time to write. Who does? I work a 9 to 5. Of course, I had a different excuse up until Tuesday when I started this gig. I was too depressed or too busy or too bored or too scared of hurting someone’s feelings. Don’t fool yourself — It’s about making time, isn’t it? Whenever I get myself into this particular thought spiral, I remember what they say in The Hundreds:
Once, I needed the perfect time and place to write. I stood in my way like a poison-pen letter to myself. But slowly, under the velocities of worldly reals that came and went, I learned to write in my own skin, like it or not.
Making money, making dinner, taking care of people and stupid shit, getting sick or getting well, getting into and out of what presented, I ended up with a writer’s life. I learned to write in thirty-minute episodes on my frail mother’s dining room table with a three-year-old playing with old plastic toys underfoot. I took notes on my phone at a doctor’s office. I started the day writing in bed even though I had only ten minutes. Over time, I became allergic to the long-winded and roundabout, cutting words down to size. But then I’d become attached to a word fern shooting up in the space between words or I’d be surprised by something energetic already somehow taking off.
Some people have long, lean writing muscles; mine are shortened and taut like a repetitive stress injury turned into a personal tendency. I can write anywhere now but not for long, and it’s only in the morning that I have that kind of energy and interest.
Things are usually in my way but that’s the thing about writing. For me, it’s an arc sparking in the midst of what’s already freighted. It knots up on what crosses its path in a bit of bark, sparks on a sliver of rock, turns its back on someone.
I could take the time to write when I get home but the temptation to hide under the covers and watch silly television will be too much so I am writing on my commute. Got in early to leave early, it’s only 5:04 pm. And by writing I mean I am sending myself voice messages on WhatsApp which I will transcribe later. The office is an hour away from my house and it’s pretty much a straight line back so hopefully I’ll get a lot done by then.
I got lost on my way home. I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going. My phone doesn’t properly work anymore so the only app I have is for the bank. No Citymapper. I had been so confident I would get back easily but somehow I ended up in the wrong place. I’d get annoyed but this deviation reminded me of thread, a poem I wrote for The Elegists about a year ago. (See here on page 16)
I’ve been in hibernation. No one knows where I am. A few times now, I have run into someone on the street only for them to tell me they didn’t realise I still live in London. I have been off Instagram too, due to the aforementioned lack of storage.
I am the kind of person who feels extremely depressed when they are unsure of their next move. In It is as if you were doing work, Gabrielle de la Puente wrote:
My job is like that challenge in Takeshi’s Castle where contestants have to run full pelt across half-sunken stepping stones, not knowing which of them are unstable and will tip them into the water. If I was cooler, or if I had more energy to imagine these things, I would dream of a world without work, but I have a carnal urge to always be doing something.
I’d say this applies to my life, except I tipped into the water sometime after the Gut Feeling book launch in August and have felt like I’m drowning ever since. I thrive off of five-year plans, even if I deviate from them. In 2024, my five years were up! I moved here thinking that would be as long as I could last in this city, and yet I am still here.
Although I have operated as a freelancer for the past few years, for the past few months I have been using the word “freelancer” as code for “unemployed”. When I finally got the Global Talent visa, I was so grateful for the network of people who facilitated my stay in this country, everyone who put in effort to make sure I had the choice to stay. Still, I’d spent months mentally preparing to have to leave the country, and when I didn’t I felt so lost. Thinking with Jenny Holzer: PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT. I had no idea what to do with myself or for myself, and even less of an idea of what to do with/for everyone around me.
Zarina Muhammad writes, “When you’re at art school, you get visiting lectures and that conversation is part of your education. It’s a valid question that everyone just wants to know the answer to: how do you survive, what are the structures you can use to survive.” I’ve been trying to find more reference points for that by reading Subtle Maneuvers, a newsletter on the routines and rituals of those trying to lead “a creative life”. I guess there’s not much of a point to this piece other than to say I AM HERE!!!!!!! NICE TO MEET YOU!!!!!!!! THIS IS MY BRAIN!!!!!! DO U SEE THE STRUCTURES????? Look at me writing while losing myself in this city. I ended up in Shoreditch somehow. That’s about a 40-minute walk from my house.
The other day one of the best writers I know had the audacity of looking right at me and saying he’s not a writer. I tried my best to convince him otherwise but, after a while, the conversation turned personal. Eli mentioned a visit to Reference Point with a friend of his, a guy—let’s call him Guy—who I hadn’t seen since he was over at my old house in Brockley for a Halloween party four years ago. Oh fuck, it’s been four years since that Halloween party!
It was weird, that party, because Guy either got with or fought with a friend of mine, and I remembered it was a funny story but I couldn’t quite grasp the details. So I called my friend and asked, “What was it that happened with you and Guy again?” He laughed a lot. “Why are you asking me about such old gossip?” He told me the story anyway, even though he could barely remember. “I wouldn’t have acted like that if it happened now.”
Later, I met Lou for 2 for £9 drinks in Dalston, Lou who I have been living with for six months even though we’ve only been dating for eight. Moving fast but with intention. “I hope it works out,” a friend said, to which I responded, “it already has.” A reminder that time is not the only measure of success.
I arrived late for drinks because I’d spent quite some time outside the Overground station finishing up the call with my friend. We hadn’t spoken in months since he doesn’t live in London anymore, so the Halloween story was a good excuse to catch up. It was at that same bar, Latino Hits, that I’d met up with Elida two months before. I was completely lost and she was completely ecstatic, having just left her corporate girlie life for a dream (her words not mine). She’s now working at Montez Press. I told her I applied for that job too, but didn’t get an interview. “They’re hiring a replacement for me at my old job,” she offered, and guess where I work now.
Lou and I don’t do this kind of thing often – they’ve been sober for about as long as we’ve known each other, so if you ever spot us out for drinks know that’s a very rare occasion. Two Pisco Sours and a Latino Refrescante mocktail which they rate as a 7/10. We decided to play a game. “Why don’t we give each other the name of a venue and tell a story of a time we’ve been there?” Lou is three years younger than me, so we have been to many of the same places but never at the same time.
Lou asks for a Dalston Superstore story. “I’ve only been there once and it was so uneventful. Can I tell you a story about a night I wasn’t there for?”
Do you remember when I told you I wasn’t sure if my friend got with or fought with Guy? The answer is both and neither. The story’s quite boring actually, but some of it involved getting kicked out of Dalston Superstore.
“I’m Team Guy in that story. Your friend was in the wrong. Actually, your friend was in the wrong for the Halloween part too.”
“I mean… Yeah. He’s almost always wrong.”
What I didn’t say is that he’s still one of the best friends I’ve ever had. When I first shaved my head at the end of 2020, he kept looking at me at random times and saying FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY. I didn’t get the reference back then. Now, whenever I am struggling with a decision, I remember his voice and borrowed advice.
Lou has ADHD and, as I recently found out, so do I. Our conversations, much like my writing, are based entirely on tangents. It took me forever to tell them this story which should’ve taken five minutes. When I apologised for it, they said it was one of the things they loved about me.
“That Halloween was… I don’t know… Something about a storm.” I struggle to find the correct idiom as English continues to be my second language no matter how hard I try to convince everyone otherwise.
“Calm before the storm?”
“No, it was something else. I was getting along with housemates I didn’t get along with before or after that. I was starting a relationship that would ruin me but it was only starting. And it was after a period which had already been kind of tumultuous. I’d ended Room to Grow, I was in between creative periods. Everything before and after that Halloween party was absolute insanity but that night was very calm.”
“The eye of the storm.”
I’ve been hyper-aware of my own mortality since Valentine’s Day, when an untimely death shook up the foundation of the building I live in. I can’t get rid of the sensation that I don’t have enough time, that there is too much to be done in the blink of an eye that is a lifespan.
And yet it’s been so long since I’ve seen my friends. One moved away just a few days ago to start a new life in New York, where I keep getting told there is more funding, more opportunity, more life. I have just signed away another five years to this country.
Even my flatmate, Mari, I don’t see often. I feel kind of bad; we’ve been living together a few months now but we never hang out. She’s in Germany visiting a man who chose to leave this city I have tied myself to. Before he left, he sublet a room as he decided what he was doing with his life. Can you guess whose room it was? I was crashing on Alex’s sofa at the time, trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing with mine. It was strange to be staying at someone’s place while my name was on a lease, but I couldn’t afford to stay in my own home anymore. I had tapped out, booked a plane ticket to move back to Rio. Besides, that apartment had already belonged to so many people. I ended up there subletting from a friend of a friend. I don’t know the story well but, apparently, he decided to go on a two-month trip to Germany to surprise a girl he barely knew. It must’ve worked out because he moved there permanently and left me the room. I lived with a couple that was having a bit of a rough patch, so then they moved out and sublet to a Greek guy for two months and then to a Brazilian couple for another two. Halfway through their stay, I ended up leaving and subletting to Mari’s friend who stayed a month and then to another girl who stayed for the rest of the tenancy. The couple I originally lived with moved back in at some point, but they broke up and honestly I can’t remember which one kept the room because I was long gone by then.1 I left in May and only came back to the apartment once, an evening in September when everyone returned to scrape marks off the wall to get our deposit back. What Sam Johnson-Schlee wrote in Living Rooms:
The spaces we separate out for living in are valuable only when they appear to have always been vacant and waiting for their new inhabitant. Each rental or sale advert is an essential fiction: like pretending to a new lover that you never really loved anyone else before.
Who lives there now? I have no clue. As Zarina Muhammad writes in I <3 London, “London isn’t a great city for object permanence, no one really thinks of their studio space as their forever home.”
When I moved to London the other day (it’s been over five years), I brought with me a book my father owned. He didn’t give me permission to bring it but I see it as an unspoken long-term loan. For years I have stared at the cover of Are You Working Way Too Much?: Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art, but I have never read it. It’s one of those that sits on my shelf, wondering when I’ll pick it up. I believe it was that dude Knausgård who said, during a talk in Flip 2016, that the greatest tragedy of his life is that he would not have the time to read all the books he wanted to read.2 I finally started reading Are You Working Way Too Much? last week but then I dropped it because it would be a bit too aggressive to take that to work on the first week. I took I Came All This Way To Meet You instead even though I already read that one in Paris last year. It’s just that I made so many notes on the margins on my first read, and I wanted to look back on that version of myself. As cliche as it sounds, I went to Paris on a two-fold mission: to escape my own life and to write. I had ruined a friendship that meant the world to me over a man who meant nothing.
I was thinking about all this because I had a whole outfit crisis before meeting Lou for drinks. Since we live together, we rarely have dates where they haven’t seen me choose the outfit. I wanted to look pretty but everything felt wrong, so I did what I usually do when that happens – I looked up images on my camera roll of what I was wearing exactly a year ago. It’s an easy hack; the weather is similar and I own all the clothes so I can just copy-paste my old self into the current one. I can’t believe I’m admitting to this on the internet what the fuck is wrong with me. I wore the exact same outfit as when I was on my way back from Paris last year.
Forgive me for going on a tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent, but isn’t that what this whole piece is? Isn’t that what my whole writing “career” is? My life? It’s funny I ended up in a place where it was fitting to include that Knausgård quote because my manager brought him up over lunch today. One must never forget: You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.3
Another brick – the Subtle Maneuvers piece on Louise Glück, what she has to say on the idea of writer’s block:
I think this silkworm idea of diligence and productivity has done many writers real harm. They discover a style of piece or a subject and then just busily produce replicas. The periods of blankness and silence are desolating. But tell yourself the well is filling up (it is). At the end of a bad period or a silence something will have shifted, your work changed. I believe this passionately. I think everything good in my work I owe to endurance.
Now let me remind you I have been on a walk this whole time. You might be reading this on your screen but I’m not writing it down, I’m just speaking into my phone. I know the way home from Shoreditch so I’m actually heading back now. In Aldgate East, I see Charlie across the street. He doesn’t see me and I don’t try to get his attention; we don’t know each other well and right now I’m just a weirdo talking to myself. I haven’t seen him since we ran into each other in Waterloo, the day I got fined £150 for dropping a cigarette on the floor. Yes, I know that’s a shitty thing to do. I don’t do it anymore. Yes, I know there are ways to get out of paying that fine. I didn’t back then. I was planning on going to New York with my friends at the time and I could just about afford it but, after losing £150 over a stupid habit that will ultimately kill me, I ended up going to Paris instead.
Remember why I went there? Oh yes, the ruined friendship. The Other Alex. A friendship rekindled on Valentine’s Day, when I got on the Oxford Tube to see him. We spent the day catching up on everything that had happened in our lives during the year we didn’t speak.
This was the day when my phone started acting up. I didn’t get reception all day and normally I wouldn’t mind but, on that day, it made me anxious. No matter what I did I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that something bad was happening, that someone was trying to reach me, but Alex would give me access to his hotspot and there would be no messages.
As soon as I said goodbye to him and got on the bus to Victoria I found out about the death. I will never forget that day.
Home again. I like to be here when I can. I would edit this, but I don’t have the time. Or rather, I’d rather spend that time elsewhere. There’s a friend I’ve been meaning to text back for ages now. I saw his message a month ago and smiled, thought to myself I’ll reply later but later never came. I’ve been told ADHDers see time as vertical instead of horizontal, that there is only Now or Not Now. There are a lot of things to be done all at once or there is nothing.
I miss you all. I’m sorry I’m so bad with texts. If it’s not too much to ask, call me. You’ll have an easier time reaching me if it’s here and now. It has become apparent I have poor time management skills. I called my dad a while back and said “Sorry I disappeared the past few days.” He said, “The disappearance is standard. It’s the appearance that’s surprising.” I won’t lie, it hurt my feelings, but that’s not to say it’s inaccurate. I’ve had this Substack for two years and I’ve only posted three times.
The idea to write through voice notes came from my father, a lawyer who in another lifetime would’ve been an artist or a writer. Scratch that, in this lifetime he is an artist and a writer, regardless of his day job. And since I’m talking about my family – the reason I don’t have a formal ADHD diagnosis yet is because the psychiatrist said it’s hard to spot that pattern in my childhood because it was “too structured.” Thank you Mom and Dad for organising my schedule so meticulously that I had somewhere to be and something to do all the time. It seems to have backfired but I appreciate the effort.
My friend Harper says I’m bad at picking titles. I’m not offended, they’re right. If I could I’d title this piece Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through but then I’d be plagiarising T. Fleischmann. I am 58 minutes into the audiobook that took that title away from me but I have realised now I will need to buy the physical copy. The thing is, I have no idea what the book is about. Intangibility confuses me. Things go right over my head unless I can feel them with my own hands. Without a copy to annotate, Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through has been reduced to a soothing voice following me around on walks sometimes.
I think I had this whole thing wrong. It’s not about time, not at all. For months I’ve been beating myself up for my inaction even though my schedule was oh so free. Now I’m running around and yet here I am, present.
If anyone has made it this far into the text I appreciate you. Message me or comment a clock emoji or something so I know this has been witnessed. I’ll let you do something else now. To finish off I’d like to dedicate this newsletter to the guy who said he’d let me publish his book if I published mine. I’ll make you a deal: for every five pages you send me, I’ll send twenty back. I hear you when you say you’re going through it and don’t have the time. But don’t get it twisted, the best place in the world is here and now.
My friend Alex made the valid point that this section was much more impersonal than the rest. I asked him to make notes so I could improve the piece but then I decided to post as is — I have a tendency to completely discard pieces if I don’t act on the impulse to post. I agree it’s more impersonal, but I can see why that was my impulse. 1) Contrary to popular belief, I do not want to share much of lives that are not my own. 2) I did not form many meaningful attachments with the revolving door of people who lived in that apartment and I believe that is accurately represented in the piece.
Don’t quote me on this because I didn’t fact-check.
Louise Bourgeois
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❤️❤️❤️