September 1st 2012

Dear Blog-fans,

I don't suppose anyone has noticed, but it's now more than three years since last I posted anything. The fact is I tripped over the Himalaya and it's taken me this long to get back on my feet. In the spring of 2009 I spent three weeks trekking in the Everest region of Nepal. A quite fantastic trip. Ideal raw-material for a blog entry, you would have thought. I had hoped, in fact, to develop the piece into something more than a mere diary entry. My hope was (I feel embarrassed writing this) to create a real work of art, a whole new literary genre in fact, combining an elegant mountain travelogue à la Frank Smythe, an ironic romp, a bit like the sort of thing Bill Bryson does, a diverging and diverting eighteenth century ramble in the manner of Lawrence Sterne, also a modernist stream-of-consciousness novel like Ulysses, say, all unobtrusively informed with the philosophical perspicacity and emotional sincerity of, well, Krishnamurti, for example. A dream formula. And a dream it has remained. All hubris brings its own nemesis. Mine has been to be confronted with the limits of my own writing technique and the, at times, unbearable lightness of my own literary voice. Is that voice really me? Who am I if I am not that voice? What am I other than what I can formulate in words? These are very real and immediate questions which you can't just verbalise your way out of. All at sea, doubting my capacity, questioning my motives, wracked by self-loathing, I surrendered to the tug of indolence and went under. If I resurface again now it is for three reasons: a) friends have very kindly urged me to keep at it, b) I have had great fun re-reading my old posts, and c) I suffer increasingly from a sort of obsessive compulsive disorder requiring me to impose some sort of discipline on the chaotic shambles of experience - which I suspect is what any artisitic endeavour is really all about.

So, I'm masking the Himalaya for the time being, and moving the bulk of my forces to easier terrain where they can deploy more effectively. I do not, however, rule out the possibility of a mopping-up operation at a later date!

September 1st is in many ways the real New Year's Day. So, here we go. Happy New Year! I'm posting this now. So I'm stuck with it. Hope you enjoy it even if I don't!

Yours,
ASBO