age: "kicking on 60"nationality: Scottish
type of visitor: regular
drinking: two cups of coffee and a diet coke
eating: tuna & sweetcorn baguette, fruit scone
Derek writes on a pad of lined A4 paper that nestles in a black leather binder. The top page is numbered "2054". During the hour we share a table, he writes pages 2055, 2056 and 2057. There are no line breaks. At a conservative estimate of 300 words per page, he has written a 600,000-word paragraph. He listens to music - a folk group called Silly Wizard, I learn - as his giant paragraph accumulates more words, sentences, pages.
I ask him what he is writing. "Whatever comes into my head when I'm writing it." I ask him if he reads his journal, and he says no. No one has ever read it. It's purpose is not to be read, but to be the thing he writes in as he explores the present tense. I ask him why he does it, and he tells me that many years ago a section of the right temporal lobe of his brain "started to rot -- it's the opposite of a brain tumour, because tumours grow by feeding". The illness resulted in epileptic fits, 18 or 20 a day. To cure the fits, he had an operation to remove a small section of his brain, since when he has a different kind of memory, and is drawn to writing down the present.
He has retired from his role as the Director of an advertising agency, and is forward-looking and content. As he starts packing up to go home, I notice among his belongings an impressive-looking book on Nietzsche. We agree that life is a perplexing and adventure, and say goodbye.
-Sep2708.jpg){kind=link}
2 comments:
I want to read this writing of the present (or a little portion of it, anyway)- did you get the chance to sneak a peek at any of it?
No I didn't, but I wanted to. I wanted to photograph a page of it but I lacked the courage to ask. And maybe my desire to read it, though natural, was out of kilter with the spirit of what he's doing. So probably it was best that I didn't read any...
Post a Comment