Taken from an interview I conducted with myself in June 2014. Let’s see how this thing pans out…

—

“So you want to write?”

“Yes”

“What are you going to write about?”

“Not sure.”

“That’s the biggest mistake people who want to write make you know?”

“Really, so how do you figure what you want to say? What do writers do?”

“Writers lead interesting lives. Gives them stuff to talk about. You lead an interesting life?”

“Kind of, you want to hear it?”

“Go on.”

I grew up in various bits of Africa and the West Indies – had a tumultuous relationship with an alcoholic father – have an amazing younger brother and a religiously tortured, hippy mother – I’ve hitched through Europe sleeping in orchards and the tents of some wonderful and crazy backpacking chicks – I’ve hitched through East Africa and been caught in a coup; laid up on the golf course for days and nearly had my head shot off when I took a midnight pee in the bushes – I moved to South Africa in 1994 when the whites were running scared ahead of the first democratic elections; sold drugs for a living and had several friends die or get shot in the process – got married and divorced in the space of 2 years and spent weeks with that wife sitting in the same room as the men who shot her mother in church; a front row seat in South Africa’s healing – I’ve shared a deserted Indian Ocean island with 2 beauty queens and a 100 year old tortoise and spent 10 unremarkable years in London wishing i wasn’t there – I’ve evaded Egyptian police to go and smoke heroin with Bedouin tribesmen on the shores of the Red Sea  – I’ve lived in Thailand and written a book, (unpublished) and dived with sharks – I married a second time and moved to the other side of the world, nearly got divorced again, but ended up having two wonderful children who’ve saved and are still saving my life daily without knowing it. Now I live back in South Africa 20 years after the first time and have decided to stay against the odds. That’s kind of it?”

“Some of that’s interesting. Write about it.”

“But it doesn’t feel interesting to me now. It’s all memories and feels like self-indulgent ancient history, and some of it seems like it never happened, or happened to someone else and not me. D’you know that feeling?”

“So what’s interesting to you then?”

“The navigation, hurdles and compromises of day to day life. The balancing of family and vices. The flicking and flacking between self appreciation and loathing…how this crazy world we’re not programmed for drives us or kills us off. That shit I find interesting. The dumb shit that humans do because we’re humans and have forgotten who we are. The insane madness we subject ourselves to because we think it matters and so on.”

“So write about it then.”

“I might just do that.”

“Good luck my friend.”