about yows

“It’s really weird that you should have happened across that one. I’ve always felt really weird about it. In fact I think I’ve deleted it from my documents because I can’t find it! I’d always thought it was just ridiculous and I should never show anyone, but I had this weird affection for it and so in the end put it in the appendix as a sort of compromise – to the part of me that wants to be taken seriously and to the other part that of me, that’s a bit nuts. I think I ideally wanted it to be discovered exactly the way you did, for it to be ‘happened upon’ without my shoving it in yours or anyone’s face. Maybe that’s the only way that piece can work…?
Anyway, process? We were set a task by Pete to write an “urban”, concrete-ish piece. It made me want to be a bit sick but I went with it. I think everyone else came up with psychogeographic stuff about the underground – which was probably what he wanted.
I messed about with multi-language genres and then I let myself get sort of sentimental. About London maybe. Then I put it away and forgot about it. Then I started playing with punctuation and using noises and verbal sounds as punctuation instead of pauses and silences. And then I put it all together, only it was less mechanical and considered than that. And all in the space of an afternoon, in case I made it sound like a long seasonal shift.
Editing is weird with me, I write things in a sort of flow, thinking to myself, “I’m going to really work on this, just get something down and then mould it later. But then the text is completely impenetrable, it seems to just lock together. And so I patch over and stitch on – and then that seems to lock together. And the more I try and loosen it the more it seems to resist me interfering. Isn’t that weird? I’ve started talking about it as if it’s alive.
Who knows where it comes from? And I just don’t know how conscious it is. I think the less premeditated it is the more of that “zingy” energy it has. And I really appreciate that description. I think if there’s one thing I can do I think it’s zing.”