Reader, I’ve lived.
(Shout out to Charlotte Brunty. Yes, I
happen to like that spelling.)
*
The flip-side to
making enemies is making friends. I’m going to use the f-word and the c-word in
this blog post. If you are offended, it means you are alive and – at the very
least – semi-awake.
As I navigated my way across the internet, I
encountered all sorts of authors…and people who would be authors if they turned
the spotlight of fancy on the hidden notion of writing.
For those people, writing is the deer caught
in the headlights. Not for long. It darts into the forest and is never seen
again. Even the non-writers I encounter online have many a story to tell. It’s
not all about author-to-author contact.
Mostly, but not all.
*
What strange writers
do I encounter, if I encounter all sorts? Oh, the usual dead ones: former
scribblers who step out of the past with the subtle hello of an atom bomb landing on your plate. The living literary
typing types come in many varieties. There are people who just burble merrily
along, and you wave as they burble at your wave.
Occasionally there are writers who reach out
for help in a moment of crisis. In response, I furnish as little harm as I can
mismanage under the circus tenties. If you can’t do some good, at least avoid
doing any bad.
There are writers who handed me my jaw after
I dropped it during a conversation in which I was stunned by the universe-forming
eloquence of the non-me part of the
chatter. Believe me when I say there’s no such thing as small-talk when writers
are involved. I keep reminding myself of that, and I keep dropping that jaw in
surprise at momentous thoughts wrapped in casual conversation.
It’s nice just to show up to a chat like
that and stay warm by the fire while the words hit me. (Yes, it’s a cold day as
I type this and the heating is effing slow to respond this morning. Sensing a
theme of warmth, if not sensing actual warmth.)
As scribblers, we look for that wonderful
thinky stuff everywhere and write it down if we catch sight of a glimmer.
I’ve encountered tale-tellers who are in
another universe. The searing glow from the luminous presence dazzles the
vision, leaving an after-image that looks exactly like the scribbler. But that
scribbler popped out to the shops for biscuits. All I’m seeing is everything left
behind in words, dancing across the internet. Look at a light bulb and look
away and you’ll still be staring at the light bulb, even though…
The bulb popped out to the shops for
biscuits. In another universe.
*
With surprise in the
hearing of it, I was ambushed by online writers and non-writers who used the f-word and called me friend. An alarming number of people
reached for the c-word and called me charming. I’ve been called the other c-word many a time.
(If you haven’t been called a cunt in Scotland
I don’t think of myself as charming, and I
question the sanity of people who state this of me. As they are writers, I must
question their sanity in any case.
*
All of this
background material informs my view that I should never meet people off the
internet – they are serial killers. Yes, the jaw-dropping writers, the luminous
ones, the people who hauled me out of the water to call me a friend. I can’t
shake the notion that they are all one sharp axe and a decaying log cabin away
from a court-appointed date with destiny.
That’s just Canadian/American cliché,
though. The Canadians and Americans I’ve met online seem to live in cities and
not the backwoods. When they aren’t living in armed compounds. You know who you
are. Big shout out to you across your walled enclosure. No names – it’s harder
to plot drone strikes that way.
*
Why do I think these
people live in log cabins, with mass graves out in the backwoods? They are
writers. And all writers take bleach to their internet search histories.
Writers, far more often than murderers, become unhealthily obsessed with
methods of body-disposal.
There is a healthy level of obsession over
methods of body-disposal – it’s about three internet searches in, but you’ll
cross the line without even thinking it over. Not a pang of conscience. It’s
“research” and not for actual murderising. Anyway…seeking reliable disposal of
a body doesn’t automatically mean you offed someone. No, there’s a mere 98%
chance of that.
*
How do I appear to
these writers? My online persona is that of the perpetual grump, snarling at
the world and all its petty nonsenses…but these writers don’t believe any of that
guff. With a casual wave, my grizzly bear grump is transformed into the
teddy-bear slump. I am dismissed as non-grumpy, and slide under the
table…snaffling a few chocolate biscuits as I go.
Having trouble shaking A.A. Milne from my
thoughts.
*
Yes, I’ve been
genuinely grumpy on and off. Online and off. If you haven’t pissed people off,
you haven’t lived. And if you haven’t pissed people off online, you’ve never
been online.
Occasionally, very rarely, I’ve somehow
managed to prove that I am not fictional. I once had this accusation hurled at
me…
You
are a real person!
The author in question was delighted to
discover that I wasn’t an artificial intelligence project languishing in an
electronic lab, let out onto the internet in search of world domination and
great coffee.
Another author couldn’t decide. Was I an
unfeasibly young student treating everything as research for a paper? OR was I
the sort of person to set an exam for that type of student, being, instead, a
retired American professor? (Complete with Tweedy Outfit and a sideline of
investigating murder mysteries. Portrayed by Angela Lansbury/Dick Van Dyke.
Delete as inapplicable.)
*
One authorly contact
nailed me as an online friend, with the distinction that I wasn’t quite in the real
world…the way real-life friends are. I countered with the observation that the
hour was late, and I had to return to Cair Paravel for supper with Aslan and
the Pevensies.
*
Yes, the internet is
in the real world, too, surprise, surprise. Tread far enough from one into the
other and you’ll realise that one is patently absurd and nonsensical. The other
is patently absurd and nonsensical and online.
*
Why haven’t I met
these people on the internet and off the internet as well? Distance. For the
Canadians and Americans the distance is great or greater, depending on the
coast. My nearest internet contact is on this side of the Atlantic ,
but still too far away for a casual half-hour visit.
Planning. Expense. Opportunity .
The planning is always there. I accept the expense. But the opportunity isn’t
an easy thing to arrange. The closest I came to meeting an author offline was an
attempted hijacking, koff, koff, was an invitation to turn up at a concert. For
that, a second author decided to fly in and create a literary club rather than treat
the whole exercise as an informal meeting.
But the timing was off, and I was spared the
tedium of a transatlantic flight. Travel from here to there is one thing. But
travel to and from airports to wait for flights…that’s something else. A
something best wiped off the bottom portion of the shoe.
*
I know when I am
invited to a town that I am invited to eat out of someone’s fridge. This is
unspoken. You are staying with us and all
our cats and lizards. Are you allergic to cats and lizards, or bats and
wizards? The big question looms.
What if I turn up and discover that everyone
is simply appalling OR that everyone thinks I’m simply appalling and the
peasants revolt with flaming torches to hand? I suspect I’d generate that effect by
accident.
It’s a bit much to travel thousands of miles
and take up station in a person’s abode on the off-chance that your online
persona handled in small doses will match the offline version in living 3D. I
know I’d be accused of GREAT RESERVE in flying over and booking into a hotel.
And buying touristy tours to go on, just in case everyone is wretched to me.
How to fill the hours before the endless flight back to Scotlandia…
That’s before we get into the business of
axes and log cabins.
*
Yes, the prospect of
flying to someone’s fridge and then having an awkward hour-long meeting before
faking a heart attack and being carried off by a fake ambulance and fake
paramedics who must be hired in any event…
The prospect fills me with gloom. I must
accept the expense, of course. Can’t I just fly in, mumble a few words, and eat
chocolate cake? We’d all be happy, then.
There are authors who believe me when I say
that I’ve just hired a Scottish actor to impersonate me. It’s that simple. I’m a
busty blonde woman in reality.
That’s not true. But it doesn’t stop authors
fearing this is the situation. Don’t you
dare. That’s right. I mustn’t dare to be a Scottish actor impersonating a
busty blonde woman. No good would come of it. I’d be the talk of the Wikipedia TALK page.
*
And so…
*
Here I am, facing
the prospect of meeting an online person in the offline world. The f-word was used to describe me. How do I
handle this real-life encounter, bearing in mind that the internet itself is
still a subsection of real life…
Much planning. Acceptable expense.
Opporchancity? We’ll see. I’m standing…not sure where I’ll be standing. They’ve
taken the map away. (No, seriously. It’ll be back after building work is
finished. So I can’t even see a map of how it looked before the building
started. That is so online strange.)
I’m standing…let’s hope I’m standing.
Waiting for a sign to pop up overhead. Downloading Online Friend: 9% complete.
What’s 9% of that? Boots? The boots. Will
there be boots? You download online friends into the offline world from the
feet up, right? Otherwise, you are into floating head territory. I need to
research this a bit more.
If I go for a meeting with an online person
and never return, then I’ve gone shopping for biscuits. In another universe.
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