The other day I emailed my hero. 

I was thinking about Jono and my vision for Hilton, BOOMTOWN, the gallery, and storytelling. Who’s the landmark writer that I want to attach to a mural? 

Only one name came to mind. A writer who can capture a space, bottle it, shake it around, make it fizz, and then pass it to an unsuspecting human as the ultimate thirst quencher. 

Ivan Vladislavic. 

Open the bottle. I dare you. 

I’d been avoiding writing to him, because we’re told to never reach out to heroes. 

Apparently they’re always a hot mess of disappointment.

Or they ignore you. 

Or worse, they provide a short perfunctory response. The kind of response where you don’t have to be part of the Bletchley Circle to read between the lines. They’re not actually delighted you’ve reached out. Fans are an annoying and necessary evil. And the “luck with future endeavours” they bestow upon you is about as genuine as Balenciaga’s socio-political statement.    

Anyway, luckily for you, and the purposes of this story, “throw caution to the wind” I do not. So taking a note out of my hero’s book I began writing…

Dear Prof Vladislavic… 

It takes only a few words to start something. The spotlight shines brightly, you’re alone on the stage. Self doubt over sounding like an asshole starts to creep in. It’s best to continue and go with it. Wit is there in the background to make a cameo appearance. Reflection settles down the nervous audience. The chorus is there to bring it back when you lose direction. Soon it’s an effortless dance with only a few miss-steps here and there. 

The curtain closes. You press send. You hope the audience is forgiving. 

You wait for the review.  

I expected a long wait. The forgotten ghosts of unresponsive emails egging me on.

And then, five days later, from his private email address, his reply brought the walls of my laptop to life. A voice from amongst the row of lonely silent open tabs.

A landmark.

A reminder to write. A reminder to be patient. A reminder that landmarks are created out of nothing. Every space has the potential to become something more. To become a place.

Stories create paths through the clutter towards landmarks. Landmarks that are created by artists. And if you’re lucky, the community provides the soft landing and believes in, and traverses towards these places.

Welcome to BOOMTOWN. 

PS: Ivan (we’re on a first name basis now) says once he’s finished his new book he might be compelled to write a mural. Luckily, for this developing story, “throw caution to the wind” I do not. Watch these walls.

This morning was reflective for a number of reasons… And, it was also a slow start because freshly laundered linen is a trap. While I was in my cocoon of loveliness, I found myself reflecting on grief and sadness because I’m noticing that April seems to be a challenging month for many of us. I think lockdown makes it even more challenging because we have so much more time to reflect and ponder, and for some there is a collective loneliness. And, even though I’m someone who tends to compartmentalise, sometimes there’s just no way to stop the montages. Those blurry erratic snapshots that reflect the faces of the people who are gone, occasionally shifting into sharp focus and bringing that beautiful sadness of memory. And I remember the opening lines to one of my favourite films, which is locked into my memory…

“He remembers those vanished years as though looking through a dusty window pane. The past was something that he could see but not touch, and everything else was blurred and indistinct.”
(In the Mood for Love: Wong Kar Wai)

Memory and stories are our real inheritance. We should hold onto them tightly, and share them generously. The genre of “everyday life” is underrated and, for many of us writers, we’re intimidated because we feel like we don’t have big enough stories to tell. We also feel as if we have to subscribe to certain styles in order to be successful. Why just the other day I saw a Facebook ad for “Masterclass: Dan Brown Teaches Writing Thrillers”. Now a couple of things went through my mind when I saw this. The first was, “Who the fuck wants to write like Dan Brown?”, and the second was “I know I’ve banned myself from reading the comments but this is too good an opportunity to pass up”. I have cripplingly low expectations, but for once I didn’t have buyers remorse. The comments are fucking gold.

So, no surprises, I won’t be signing up for Dan Brown’s Master Ass but it did get me thinking about my own writing, and writing in the time of Corona. And it’s so easy to write when one is combative and ranty, but when one is quiet and reflective the temptation is to want to be quiet and not to have to speak at all. But if I do that, then Day Fourteen goes by without record, and as my hero Ivan Vladislavic says, “You’re not a writer if you’re not writing”. And it’s because of these words that I thought about the distance between all of us right now, and how it feels to reflect on this nebulous and unknown future that we can’t see. It’s like we’re all looking through our dusty window panes, looking to a future we can’t touch, because it’s blurred and indistinct. And all that we can see is the mark that our breath leaves on the glass as we step away.