Monday 31 January 2011

It begins

Last night, I slept very little. And although this is no excuse for verbal compromise, it is however an oppurtunity I think to remove that critical and pedantic section of my brain which so relentlesly detests anything I create. I shall bypass form in favour of content. I shall inhabit a better, purer and more organic canvas on which to splatter my mind that does away with pretentious grinding and manufactured rhetoric. I do not promise that I will always express myself so starkly, but for now I'm going to be honest.

So here we go.

I doubt that I'm a good person.

It is a simple truth to face up to but one that does nevertheless leave me feeling more than little uneasy. So? Is that it? The same self-obsessed, obnoxious, ostentatious remark thrown around to rally pity, wearing that ugly mask of pseudo-modesty. Perhaps that's all I want, reassurance that someone outside of myself can appreciate me. Someone who can somehow see that the 'real me' beneath that external veneer is the geniune article. Someone, who -like Max Bialystock in The Producers- would say: "There's a lot more to you than there is to you". But this is not a confession to inspire sympathy or to exibit my terrible, terrible life in this grotesque museum of words. I'm just not a great guy. Of course, there is no such thing as a 'bad' or 'good' person. We are all glorious wickerworks of intertwined good and evil, wound so tight that the seperation of the two is imperceptible. There are however, some traits to which the label of bad can be justly applied without controversy. My seething jelousy, hatred of myself, the need to feel superior, the selfish position I take, the priviledges I abuse when I live in comparative luxury. Even these words seem stained with the pretense of intellectual elitism. I feel sick. Facing these ugly parts of myself is too draining for further comment tonight. The one positive pin-prick of light that I offer is that at least I know my own failures. And knowledge is power.

I will become good. Eventually.

r.