Big Step...

A mission statement from someone who has deliberately chosen a job that should never require a mission statemente. Nevertheless...

The classic credo of all art - good, bad and indifferent - is never apologise, never explain. I’m have no designs on the first, but I think a wee explanation of what’s going on here, now and in the future is worthwhile, even just for my own head.

I am writing in hope that this little corner of the internet might just be the one that I will feel most comfortable making my own. Years ago, when Facebook was but a nascent method for a socially awkward Silicon Valley student to perv on campus girls, me and a bunch of my friends all wrote LiveJournals. For those of you who don’t share the reasonably specific demographics to have know what that was (is…I’m a little scared to look to see if LJ is still going or has been consumed by the digital version of the Dust Bowl), it was essentially an early blog which encouraged angsty teens and twenties to share their worries, concerns and anxieties, as well as the usual function of a diary.

For whatever reason I have not kept up a diary and have bimbled my way through various social media - both personally and professionally. Facebook was fun for a while and is always useful to enjoy the voyeuristic thrill of watching your sixth form enemies spiral into a cliff face. Yet for every interesting meme or post, there is always the sour taste of disinformation. Any post you pop up that might be making a solid point risks the response of “u ok hun?” or even worse, a parental “don’t understand this…” Twitter was fun at its peak, but I was never pithy enough to thrive there before the Nazi bots invaded. I resisted Instagram for a long time, but I have now managed to curate a feed full of indulgent cooking, remarkable acrobatics, instructive music and goofy animals. While I enjoy soothing myself with its content, I’ve never been that good at being on broadcast. I’m learning and am deteremined to crack it, but it’s not my natural home. I still refuse to go near TikTok as I don’t want Xi JinPing to see me in my undies.

And then I found this place. Enough joke writers, polemicists, nature writers, scientists and Stephen Frys that I follow all trumpeted their Substack that I decided to take a peek. It’s terrific. Like my own little newspaper that I can curate myself, full of the wide variety of writing that suits my omnivorous tastes. More importantly, I think I might find myself at home here, content to unselfconsciously write as I like.

Obviously for the last decade and a half most of my output has been stand-up comic. So much of that is either the slowly evolving lava flow of my set, the Lego brick construction of a Fringe show or the ephemeral fluff of improv. I love it all, but none of it feels permanent. Ditto my podcast (do give it a listen here). I love it, but it still feels somehow insubstantial. Maybe I have a bias for written over audio. But this place excites me.

I am currently in the early stages of trying to get a novel published. I think you could give it the title Boundless Hope and Endless Rejection: A Testament to Human Stubbornness. Told you I can’t do pithy. Still, I want a sandbox where I can throw other stuff that doesn’t make it into that novel or future ones, but I think is worth an audience. I’ve got half-finished short stories, scraps of poetry and spiralling streams of shower thoughts that I aim to stick up on here. Substack seems like a suitable home for them, since publishing any of them on Facebook just seems pompous. Maybe it’s a self-defeating prejudice, but that’s how I feel.

So, that’s what to expect if you come along for the ride. I’ll aim to pop something up once or twice a week. I imagine the stories and poems will come a little later down the line as they do need buffing, polishing and re-wiring. In the meantime, I’m really looking forward to having this space where I can knock about ideas that normally just bounce around the squash court of my mind. Some might be incredibly childish and daft, others might be my attempt at some sort of serious intellectual discourse. Think of it as a high-fallutin’ Viennese coffee house that only sells Robinson’s squash.

Welcome. Here may well be dragons…