'A' is for All mirth and no matter

I know I said I would post one entry every week. And I know it’s been close to two since I made that not-so-ambitious pronouncement. Well, I have an excuse – a real live actual one, far removed from ones in the ‘my dog ate it’ category (although I have plenty of those too). Here it is: I was away in Swansea, graduating!

Yes World, I wore the gown and the funny cap and walked up on stage in my high-heels – I didn’t even fall over! – and became an official postgraduate degree holder (even though I received my certificate in the post about five months ago). It was all very grown up and dramatic in a solemn, hallowed sort of way. I expected to feel differently afterwards, grown-up and hallowed perhaps, but all I felt was excruciating pain in my feet (which went away soon after I changed into sneakers again). So no, the ceremony was interesting and all, but not all that. The best part of the trip, for me, was simply being back in Swansea.

I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I decided to go do an MA in Creative Writing in that very rainy part of Wales, but I know I wasn’t then intending to be a writer by profession. It wasn’t until my second semester in Swansea that I decided, or rather realized, that I wanted to write stories for a living. Day after day, I sat in a park bench with my notebook and pencil, so immersed in my stories that it felt almost physically wrenching to drag myself back to the real world. I've hated deadlines all my life, almost as much as I hate being told what to do, but being the compliant sort (except with my mom), I grit my teeth and I get on with it. At that time, however, it wasn’t at all a hardship to think of a deadline, because I knew I would get there in my own time, but still the time that had been determined for me. Because writing wasn’t hard for me. There was teeth-gritting happening then too, when the right words wouldn’t come, or at an interruption when exactly the right words were coming, but I loved that part of it too. Quite simply, I loved writing, and I was happiest when I was doing it. Being back in Swansea reminded me that.

There is this park, in the Uplands area of Swansea, known as Cwndonkin Park. If you enter by the main gate, you will see a garden – bright flowers meticulously grown and tended to make a pretty arrangement. Pretty, but artificial. Walk further down and small stream gurgles along on your right, the green more natural here, but human hands have curbed it just so you can see the charming little wooden bridge there, and the stone engraved with Dylan Thomas poetry. Not natural, but beautiful just the same. Ahead, if you turn left, there are tennis courts. But turn right... You might as well have entered a different realm altogether, because it is hard to believe that the deep dark woods is real, and that it actually exists less than thirty feet from the tennis courts. There are benches there too, and a tarred path running down, but they don’t detract from the wildness. For the sheer beauty of the untamed is overwhelming – tall trees with large leaves, moss-covered stone, and fairy-dust. You see, on those rare sunny days when the rays slant through the leaves, jostling for space amid the ever-present shadows, there is more than dust that shimmers there. If there is ever a place that you can stand in and believe that it is magic dancing up that shaft of sunlight, it is in that wild part of Cwndonkin.

How can one not write when in Cwndonkin?

That was, in part, my justification for not writing ever since I left Swansea. Where is the magic and atmosphere in bustling London, in the crowded tubes and neatly-trimmed parks? How can I be expected to write here?

Being back there, remembering why I love to write, why I decided to be a writer, I realized that if I choose excuses over what I thought I loved to do, then I am not meant to do that at all. It all comes down to this: Do I want to write? If the answer is yes, than I must just get on with it. It will be the one thing that I will be doing all for me, only for me. And so I must remember the pleasure it gives me. And do it for that reason alone. Later, much later, I will think about publishing, selling, making a living. Right now, simply writing is enough.

***

Okay, I didn’t mean to get so deep today. Truly. When I typed this post’s title, I was intending to write about something else entirely. I am now well over my 500-words-a-piece mark, but I have to justify my title, so here it is:

I used to think I liked Shakespeare. I have always considered myself a fan of his plays. It wasn’t until Tuesday last week that I realized I never really knew Shakespeare’s plays. A play is written with the intent of staging it before an audience – that is what makes it different to any other dialogue-ridden bit of prose – I had heard this a long time ago but I never really appreciated what it meant, because I had never before watched a Shakespearean play, or any play for that matter, performed live on stage before.

Much Ado About Nothing has been my favourite Shakespearean play since high school – it was one of the plays in my English Literature class curriculum. I adored it. I used to be able to rattle off the dialogue at will, I had a massive crush on Benedick ('I do love nothing in the world so well as you...' – how can you not fall for that?) and I always thought Claudio was a jerk. One rare memory from high-school that still makes me grin, as opposed to the ones that still make me cringe and/or blush, is being praised by my professor in front of the whole class for my essay on Don John’s villainy.

Anyway, I digressing (I do that a lot), the point I was trying to make here is that I went to watch Much Ado at The Globe last Tuesday, and that’s when I knew.

It was a revelation. Or maybe several revelations. I understood something fundamental about writing and the way that words are construed, and, in the case of a play, the way they are presented on stage. I understood exactly what acting is supposed to be about, and how a different actor can (and is supposed to if he’s any good) make you feel a completely different way about the same character (I also realized that stage actors are way cooler than film actors). Most importantly, I understood Much Ado in a whole other way. It was little things, nuances in an actor’s voice, inflections that made that small, significant difference between meaning one thing or the other. The stage completely bares a piece of writing, doesn’t it?


And while this momentous epiphany was occurring, I also had a fantabulous time because man, those guys were good! Did I say good? I meant BRILLIANT! Consider me a regular at The Globe!

***

Well, there you go. I am writing again! Just a stupid blog entry, yes, but at least it’s something. I am also going to revisit my endless-novel, give it a serious once-over. I imagine it needs a lot of work before I can concentrate on moving ahead. Maybe I’ll scrap it and start over, or dump the whole thing altogether and start another. There is certainly no shortage of stories in my head.

Bye now!