how to be stupid

Reading is the engine of writing. Tune up. Breathe in the perfume of words and phrases. Become familiar with ignorance. Recognise it in yourself. Admit to being an unbeliever who does not believe in unbelief. Hallucinate a rational and sound mind. Let nations and notions roam between birth and death. Make them rattle with the ecstasies of a puritan until there is no way of bullying them back. Make sure there is no reason to glide behind.

In Bill and the Ufo, for example, there’s no spirit-like guide, but weegie shame, no man of sound mind wants to claim – they live in Faifley. A council policy of putting warty wards on the periphery of faraway places, where farmers grow fields of swedes and turnips breeds familiar faces. A place for novice angels to don a big coat and flutter free, just like you and me.

Fate is born every second. Forget what you’re trying to dismember and might have known; normal is soon outgrown. What remains? A story of chocolate, booze and wains.

Stagger onto the next truth. Writing is a mugs game where only the foolish find fame. I want to hang onto their coattails, think me brilliant, self-effacing and wise. A phoenix that tells no lies. My dears, I don’t want you to realise how half-cocked are my ideas, as I masturbate words on a screen and colour a page.

Writing makes our world a democracy. Strange jerky notions become pixels of everything and nothing, a jaggy raggedness where screen-time forms the norm. Words beaten out of truth, mark the score – loser, once more. Thank you for your custom. Play again.

Rise again. Take shelter in unbelief. Ignore the grief. Write from the heart. In a Kantian voice question: For what can we hope? Writing is the poorest cosmic joke. Throw rocks at the moon. Blame the big boys that did it and ran away. Take a stand and carve out your own hallowed land in which the eyes, nose and mouth of the strangers you see, all belong to me. Here’s the biggest lie. I know what I’m doing and you can see the reason why.

The world is full of good news. Listen to yours. I don’t want to see angels, but to read poetry in your eyes. Hope is the last laugh, before love, the highest reunion. Blind is the heart that is justified, books are holy things, more fool me.