TheBanyanTree: An opposing view

[John Bailey]

Wednesday May 25, 2005

AN OPPOSING VIEW

I wonder why they call it 'noodling'? You know, as applied to a period of 
time you spend turning from task to task, project to project, doing lots of 
things but never finishing anything? It's a nice word. 'Pottering' would do 
as well, I suppose. I use both of them as defence against the charge that I 
seldom actually finish anything I start.

I have a lot of those. Defences, I mean. Like saying 'yes, but not now'. Or 
'yes, one day, perhaps'. I hand them out to other people and, I confess, to 
myself. Not sure about that 'confess', but let it pass.

Like my defence, when my back is against the wall, against the inward urge 
or external demand that I write a new book, or finish an old one. 'What do 
you think this is?' I am prone to ask, defensively. 'Just count the words 
I've written here.' Referring to the journal, of course. Not to mention the 
poems, paintings and photographs.

Once, a good long while back, having reached the end of yet another failed 
attempt to finish a book, I defended myself to myself, saying that there 
was nothing wrong with making the keeping of a journal and an eternally 
growing heap of poems a life-work. The argument suits me, of course. It 
never finishes, keeping a journal, you see, not until the day arrives when 
you can't pick up the pen or apply fingers to keyboard. At that point you 
either destroy the whole thing, probably the best, most merciful course of 
action, or tie it up in ribbon, lodge it in a drawer, and leave it to 
someone else to sort out in the future. Someone with a bit more 
determination and a lot more sense of the desirability of finished work, of 
product.

It's all about product, you see. There's an all-pervasive judgemental 
demand nowadays, requiring product as a measure of success. A bound book or 
a finished and framed painting. Something tangible, which can be sold, and 
result in visible figures on the balance sheet. The adherents of this 
approach, and that's almost everyone, believe that you can't succeed, or be 
judged a success, unless your efforts lead to a product, and that product 
to an income.

Mayhap. Been there, done that, and I'm still living on the income. In my 
third age I tend to an opposing view, thinking that the labour is reward 
enough for me. Product is for industrialists, so far as I'm concerned, and 
industry is something from which I am, happily, retired.


--

John Bailey   Lincolnshire, England

journal of a writing man:
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>