SUNDAY, 28 JULY 2024

I launched this website last Sunday, so this is the first of my Sunday updates.

I’m always ranting about social media and how it’s destroying the world as we know it, turning us into idiots who take pictures of our food in restaurants, persuading us to click Like to posts by a thousand Facebook friends while not finding time to stay in contact with the handful of close friends who really matter, selling our private details on the sly to commercial outlets, making us all feel imperfect and inadequate, turning talentless nobodies into celebrities, quacks and influencers, and generally adding to the shallowness of life.  

But over the past week I’ve found something to love about Facebook. Its algorithms in their trawl to find out about me so that I can be monetised have clearly worked out that I’ve just published a book of poems and so all week poems have been popping up in my latest feed or whatever they call it, and I’ve read some wonderful ones from Yeats, Frost, Dickinson, Stevens, and so on. And not only poets I already knew, but also interesting new poems from random contemporaries, plus some work, of course, that I didn’t much care for.

The algorithms have also clearly realised that I’m interested in art and this week I’ve been deluged with posts of Hopper paintings, which is great because I’m a big fan. No one does urban loneliness better than Hopper. But if we label him as only the painter of works like Nighthawks, this reduces him to a stereotype. I love his use of light and you can really see that he spent a lot of time in Paris studying the Impressionists, even if his overall style looks very different at first glance.

Going back to the poems, in some ways reading them was a bit depressing to be honest. My book of poems is hot off the press but then I read this fantastic stuff by other people which just seems so much better. I have to tell myself this is not a good way of thinking: writing poetry is not a competition with gold medals and wooden spoons. First, I shouldn’t compare myself to others － every artist is an individual with something unique to offer, even McGonagall. Second, comparing myself to the greatest poets in the English language (and I don’t mean McGonagall) is the height of stupid: how do I expect to feel after I do that?

One of the poems I read again this week was the one by Yeats that begins with ‘When you are old and grey and full of sleep’. A brilliant poem in its subtlety and gentleness and my own work seems like a sledgehammer in comparison. The problem is comparison. It’s a dead end and you just should never do it. It’s like someone who plays park football on Sundays comparing himself with Messi or Ronaldo.

This reminded me of something I read once about Brian Wilson’s reaction to Sergeant Pepper. Apparently he felt devastated when he first heard it because he’d spent so much time on Pet Sounds and he felt the Beatles had put him in the shade. I disagree. Firstly, because － and this is only my personal opinion, of course － Pet Sounds is vastly superior to Sergeant Pepper, more textured and more coherent as an album. But it’s depressing that such a talented composer and arranger should have thought in this way rather than being proud of his own achievement of masterminding one of the best pop albums ever.

I guess artists tend to be sensitive (a less kindly word might be precious.) And I have to admit that, even at the age of 71, I still find it difficult to enjoy writing simply for its own sake, without thinking or caring about how it might be received. The important thing is that when I write, for a short time I step outside of my daily world with its petty concerns and worries. I lose myself for a while, and that really is precious.

This is the cliché about happiness, but it’s basically true: we are happy when we are so engrossed in something that we don’t even think about whether we are happy or not. The journey, not the destination, if you like. Or the process, not the result. This is where we can find the real joy in life, even if only fleetingly.

Oh my God, I’m starting to sound like a self-help guru. Time to sign off, I think. Have a good week everyone.

But first a short note about subscribing and the overall structure of the site.

I’ve created a sub-category in the drop-down menu under LATEST, called Sunday Update. This is where I’m putting this first blog and all future Sunday updates. At the same time, I have moved the subscription and comments pages to the drop-down menu under ABOUT. They seemed a little lost right at the end of the main menu.

With regard to subscriptions, if I understand correctly what the bot on WordPress is telling me, anyone who subscribes will automatically get an email every time I add a new post, but not when I make other changes to the site. In general the only time I will add new posts will be on Sundays and on the first day of each month, so I promise you won’t be bombarded with emails if you do Subscribe. Otherwise, if you don’t want to subscribe, just turn up each Sunday evening and check out what’s new.

Just a quick reminder that emails often get lost in spam, so it’s worth looking there if you subscribe and don’t get any email on Sundays.

As for comments, I explain what I intend to do about them on the Comment Page, which is now in the drop-down menu under ABOUT. But basically I’m not sure yet and will wait to see if I get many, or even any before making any decisions about how to respond to Comments.

Heartfelt thanks to anyone who does subscribe or comment.