Protective Procrastination + Potential Energy

Woulds and Wills and Mights

About four months ago I had an idea that I would go to Prague and photograph all the bachelor parties there - the personalised T-shirts, the drinking rituals, the sacred and insane beer-bikes. I sat on my sofa and thought up the whole thing beautifully from start to finish: I’d interview the different members of each stag, and perhaps find one guy who was really out of place, and he’d be perfect for a singular portrait, and then of course I’d make a photo book of it. My mind leaped and bounded forward to how it would be received (brilliantly) and ultimately picked up by a cult magazine, about which I would do a humble instagram post and receive Likes and Comments. Suddenly, like being snapped out of hypnosis, I came back to earth, and thought (correctly might I add), I am never going to do this.

And so there is that familiar feeling: blowing up the balloon of an idea only for it to pop a second later— feeling awash with the elation of doing something, then suddenly being back in the real world, catastrophically a person who hasn’t done any of it.

In Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals there’s a passage where writer Sasha Chapin, after acknowledging that he had ultimately failed at becoming a celebrated novelist on a par with David Foster Wallace, found himself liberated. He writes “a precious state of being can dawn. You can look around yourself and say, okay, what is actually here, when I am not telling myself constant lies about what it is going to be one day?” That last part felt like a giant finger pointing at me. Despite their non-existence, all of these imagined, unrealised projects form a picture I paint of myself as someone who could do them. A precarious personhood indeed, sustained by a rickety foundation of woulds and wills and mights.

I think there’s something else at play though. Dreaming of how a project will unfold in its entirety is so addictive because you can luxuriate in the excitement of having a good idea (best part ever) while also avoiding the step of actually following through (hell). It is like hovering at the threshold of the room rather than stepping through the door & finding out it might actually be an empty cupboard. It’s almost funny how systematically I pick up my phone or make a cup of tea when something has just clicked into place.

In a letter to Ethel Smyth, Virginia Woolf writes “[I’ll] let myself down, like a diver, very cautiously into the last sentence I wrote. Then perhaps after 20 minutes, I shall see a light in the depths of the sea, and stealthily approach - for one’s sentences are only an approximation, a net one flings over some sea pearl which may vanish; and if one brings it up it won’t be anything like what it was when I saw it under the sea.”

The rarity of finally finding a way to retrieve something from my own mind and capture it in a way that might, god willing, rouse some understanding in someone else— transmitting a glimmer of what I, sitting there tapping or photographing or filming, am, or feel, or think. Yes, we can be forgiven for hovering near the pearl for a second while it still resembles that perfect, precious, fully formed thing.

But, of course, the ritual distraction is what makes you come up for air and lose it. Joyce Carol Oates said “constant interruptions are the destruction of the imagination. The only thing that’s bad for writing is being interrupted.” In his book On Writing, Stephen King writes that the only thing your writing room needs is “a door which you are willing to shut”. I am constantly walking over to the door to stick my head out for no reason at all.

But shut the door I must!! And I do, sometimes, of course. It is so funny that my Prague idea hinged fully on the surprising and spontaneous participation of others, and yet I wanted to fill in all the gaps myself. If I had just taken the first step of going to some random ice bar in Berlin to take photos there’s no knowing the wonderful chain of events that might have ensued. (I am doing it again).

✤ ✤ ✤

As absolutely no one will have noticed, I missed my April Substack, which is a shame. Must remember this is meant to be fun and that there is no one waiting to beat me with a bat when I do not follow a rule that I alone created. Quick Recap of April in snippets:

1. I went to Rewire in the Hague - described as “a festival for adventurous music brimming with exploratory spirit”. After briefly browsing the lineup and feeling 98 years old, I decided to arrive and go with the flow. There were a lot of names which were like, numbers, and the main venue was called PAARD, so often you would find yourself saying an alien combination of words like - BATU and K9 are in PAARD tonight.

2. I worked and worked and worked and bedded firmly into my new job. With it has come a strange familiarity - making friends, taking my shoes of at the office too much, exploring sense of self via google slides etc. Much to write about at a later stage.

Love you all

Xxxxxxxxxxx

This was my favourite song I saw performed at Rewire - I sang the line “do you want potatoes or rice tonight” over and over again for the entire weekend.