The Rooster is my monthly newsletter, in which I put my recommendations behind a paywall for my paid subscribers. Behind the paywall this time, THE new band to know, a veteran artist at the top of her game, songs that will break your heart, three podcast recommends and a brilliant article on Gaza….
This morning I sat down at my desk and perused the news and was once again confronted with that sense of powerlessness that exists in a world when the worst happens over and over again. Then I heard children’s voices singing in the distance. It sounded like a choir? The sound was getting closer. I ran out the door and looked down from my balcony to the street. There was a group of about twenty kids in school uniform, wearing yellow tabards, walking two by two, holding hands. They were led by a guitar-playing man, walking backwards in front of them so he could face them, and singing along. Their voices were so sweet, and they sang freely as they walked.. ‘my lighthouse, shining in the darkness, I will follow you.. ‘.
Such a sweet and innocent little scene. As you can imagine, my day was turned around.
It’s cool again. What heat it has been! Heavy oppressive dangerous heat. Pushing ice cubes through the lip of my sons water bottle before school. slathering him with sun cream. A changing sense of the sun, as a malevolent thing now, something dangerous and predatory, something we must hide from. They were only allowed to play in the shade at break time. Four years worth of a state school squished into the corner of a playground. The concrete hot to the touch. My older kids school closed early.
Life is shifting, changing shape again. Summer means festivals, so the DJs get busy. I’m off to Nottingham this weekend and next week sees my first of two gigs in Ibiza. The first time I’ve played there in seven years. I love Ibiza. It got very bougie and expensive for a bit. Men in linen trousers and those champagne bottles with sparklers in. The money took over. I’m curious to see what it’s like there now. Have had so many intense and incredible experiences there, including getting married! I’m excited to go back.
And last week saw the final night of our Before Midnight London residency. The residency started back in January, I wrote an article on here about why I wanted to do it at the time. Six months later and we’ve done six parties in total, each one completely unique in terms of music but each one sharing the same spirit and sense of joy. That is the overriding feeling I get from these shows — total joy. Because of the intentionality that everyone brings when they come through that door — for respecting the no camera rule, for dancing as much as they can dance, in the time that they’ve got. Did you come? And if you did come how did you get on?
The next stop for Before Midnight is our biggest indoor show yet, at London’s Alexandra Palace on Friday 12 September. If you want to come for a dance at the end of Summer, to a party with no phones, lovely people, and great music, ( house and disco! ) you can get your tickets here
My book has been sent out to authors and I’ve been agonising over imagined scenarios of said authors mortified at how bad it is. Its purgatory this time, the waiting; every day that passes another day closer to the reality that they have read the book and think it’s too bad to quote on. I ask myself who do I think I am? choosing to write fiction? How dare I waltz into the world of publishing, entitled enough to think I deserve to be there? I have been keeping myself distracted by reading other books though. Most recently re-reading The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine and The City Changes It’s Face by Eimear McBride in preparation for our London Irish Literary Salon at the London Irish Centre last week.
I described Eimear McBride to Grimmy as being like the Aphex Twin of literary fiction. A virtuoso, genius, singular world builder. Here are the opening lines of her Goldsmith and Womens prize winning debut novel ‘A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing.’
‘For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say.’
I love the way she has no regard for the traditional rules of fiction writing. How she turns syntax upside down. Writes with feeling as opposed to form. It takes a while, for your brain to stretch itself and allow for the sentences to make sense. But when it clicks there is an incredibly rewarding reading experience there. You are immersed in the mind of a character to an extreme degree, as if you are inhabited by them. She read a passage of her new novel out and it was remarkable having read it, listening to how different it sounded being spoken. How naturally rhythmical it was, like a poem.
Both Eimear and Wendy spoke about their process being one of great risk. A sort of leaping into an expanse of water, writing writing writing, seeing if the story can keep you afloat. Neither of them plan a novel in advance. Neither of them work on plot beforehand. They find an idea, or a character, and they start writing. I took comfort in that. In their faith in the practise of writing. In their belief that they don’t control the characters they write. In how, conversely, the characters control them. Their characters act, and they, the writers, must get out of their way. They must not judge. They must only write as truthfully to their instinct as they can. What will be will be.
Eimear told me that when she started writing A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing, after trying and trying to write ‘normally’, it was only on writing the opening sentences above, that she felt something click. She then wrote the entirety of the book in six months. No one wanted to publish it. Years later, her and her husband visited a bookshop and her husband told the bookseller about Eimear’s manuscript. The bookseller said he was starting a small press and could he read it? Nine years after Eimear wrote the book, it was published through his press Galley Beggar Press.
In those nine years Eimear had to interrogate all her motivations for being a writer. Most impressively, she started her next book, unencumbered by the many rejections she received, she did not compromise her style, she continued to write in her singular way. “I don’t think my job is to cater to the expectations of others” was a line from an interview I watched which stuck with me.
It is a lesson to us all. I’ve seen it in music countless times. You can very quickly sense when two many opposing opinions contribute to a creative project. There’s a muddiness to the feel of the art. Singularity means a purity of concept, of voice. Trust yourself. Trust your instinct. You can only be who you are. If, as writers, our job is to tell stories that bring meaning to the act of living, then we must express those stories truthfully. Otherwise what’s the bleeding point?
Behind the paywall this time, THE new band to know, a veteran artist at the top of her game, songs that will break your heart, three podcast recommends and a brilliant article on Gaza….
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Changes with Annie Macmanus to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.