Love Letter

7 August 2000
Neil writes.

"All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes"
Tom Waits, 9th & Hennepin

I told you I'd write. I guess I must be a man of my word. It's actually something I'm quite good at; relatively speaking, of course. Better than I am at phone calls: I have real problems with phone calls. The initial moments are the worst: dialling the number, waiting for the ringing to be answered, uttering that first greeting or enquiry or request, making that first communication. But even after that it's sudden death: one of you has to constantly have something to say or it's all over. Chatting to someone in person makes reasonable allowances for the odd silence here and there, acceptable pauses to slurp tea, collect thoughts, feign interest in the newspaper clippings pinned to the wall. But on the phone if more than a few seconds tick by without any action that's it: you go staright to thanks for calling, I'll see you soon, bye.

But letters I can do: there's no pressure, no need for spontaneity, no sudden panic as I realise I should be marshalling my thoughts to make a reply when all my thoughts consist of is the fact that I should be marshalling them. I can take my time, gestate, let it gradually form in my mind; not necessarily in any coherent form: a phrase here, a topic there, I can put it in order later, re-arrange it, cross things out. there's no need for my brain to work quickly, I can think about it whilst I'm making a cup of tea or just let it form in my mind over the course of a day with no conscious effort at all, and then I can write it down and check it and change it completely until I'm ready to send it off, perfectly formed.

That awkward factor of impulse is almost completely negated, which makes me blurt things out, stupid and crass, anything to fill the silence or make me seem like I have something to say. and for once I have a void into which to speak, a blank page which won't interrupt or swing off at a tangent before I've finished what I have to say, won't bulldoze through when it grows impatient of failing to follow the falteringly expressed opinions. Freedom of Expression, that's what writing is to me; somehow the logically conceived and passionately held beliefs which make so much sense in my mind and turn into such stuttering gibberish en route to my mouth, regain their dignity and cohere on the screen, self-belief building alongside the lines of carefully crafted clauses tacked onto one another.

I have the same tools at my disposal. the same words, rhetorical devices, shades of nuance, as if I's speaking to you: but whereas then they would shift, slip and tumble with a mind of their own, somehow now I am the master. Each word has implications, a whole sheet of resonance beyond its simple meaning, and if on impulse the wrong one falls out, even if the information it conveys is superficially the same, its implicit associations could disrupt everything I was trying to say to you. This way I can be sure that every word is right, hand-picked, thoughtfully selected; no jarring inelegancies or clumsy repetitions as my brain, under the torturous pressure of immediacy, goes blank for an alternative. This way my mistakes and my embarrassments have been deliberately chosen.

I'm still the same person, of course, writing gives me no special powers; I'm not suddenly able to say clever things about memes and post-modernism and things I don't understand. And the articulacy of the writer is no less the Real Me than the ineloquence of the talker. But it does mean that I can say what I'm capable of saying, the things I've always wanted to tell but never been able to speak, to communicate without the pressure of thinking on the spot or the intimidation of your gaze, to shape my words into perfect little units like God is dead or I love you.