I had an email from a reader today pointing out that I hadn't written on Superchilled for a year and encouraging me to start posting again. I checked the blog and it has indeed been a year. I'm a little flattered that I've been missed. Truth is I have a number of half written posts in 'notes' on my iPhone accumulated over this time. Times when I've felt inspiration on a plane, train or in a gap somewhere in a consciously chaotic world.
So I'm going to post some of these unfinished posts, because maybe they're more interesting unfinished than they would be if I finished them. Not quite the 'unfinished symphony' but grabs at least from my mind over the recent past.
About New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve until I was in my mid twenties was spent around a campfire with extended family and perhaps an odd smattering of friends. Staring at the animated embers, chatting about the past year and contemplating the year to come. There'd be an occasional song, a lot of laughter and at midnight the big thing was streamers being thrown at the person opposite you over the fire then falling into the fire and burning..
About Love
Falling in love is the subject of countless songs, books, movies and, undoubtably, psychology sessions. It's a time when your whole biochemistry is modified. You see the world in a different hue. The person who is the focus of your attention is fascinating, beautiful and flawless. At least that's how you'll see it. You want to spend all your time with them and pine for them when they're not around. You may even feel incomplete without them.
It's understandable that people get addicted to falling in love and move from one budding relationship to the next once the biochemistry normalises, the flaws enlarge and beauty fades. And right now you're expecting the talk about 'staying for the course'..
About Travelling
And as I sit down on this Free-seated Yangon Air flight I sense something in the air. And it's not the plane. There must be years of vomit here, all not quite completely cleaned up. And every seat I try has it. I start to wonder if their budget for cleaning and customer experience is higher or lower than their maintenance budget. And pray that it is lower, much much lower.
Not a hell of a lot of postage. But there you go. I started reading the second book by the author of London Preppy during my recent travel, finishing it while on my annual pilgrimage to Byron Bay. "HIGHLIGHTS OF MY LAST REGRET" by North Morgan. I enjoyed the read, but yet not. It's an unrested book. Maybe finishing it and moving onto something a little closer to me was what let me finally relax, and mid way through the break my sense of unrest was gone, a light switched off.
4 comments:
Welcome back - we all miss your posts !
Thanks
:-)
Always good to see a post from Superchilled...
I agree regarding North Morgan's new book - I enjoyed it, but is still smacks of an author trying to find themselves, with a stylised representation of growing up in the US, which he did't. But perhaps that's his genius?
Thanks Martin, I think North's choice of a straight protagonist rather than gay is probably market driven, but his skill, as with London Preppy the original blog, is in observation of gay culture, with his descriptions of such in this book some of the better elements. I think he'd do well with a gay protagonist. His writing would be more honest and more insightful rather than trying to act the part of the straight man. But maybe he's trying to hone his skills at getting inside the heads of more than gay men. I'd be starting with what I know well, and then branching off once I'd had success with that.
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