It’s still hot and humid, maybe that’s why I’m not thinking clearly

One thing I am working on at the moment is a series of essays on such fascinating subects as me and the things that I think while I’m busy being me (Oh, so you mean you’re writing a blog? No, I do not mean that, please shut up brain and let me write).

Partly because of that, and partly because of other reasons, I have been reading a lot of memoir and autobiography. I’ve always loved that kind of writing, that kind of book (Do you think maybe that’s why you like blogging so much? Look, I don’t know who you are, but please do shut up and let me get on with saying whatever it is I’m about to say).

Last year, I started a short course in ethics, and did lots of research and writing about ethics and life writing. I find this an endlessly fascinating area to explore, particularly because I think there are almost as many answers as there are writers. More answers than that even, because each person who reads that writer creates another answer and so on. I think that if I’d done as my teachers had suggested and paid (why do I want to write payed?) more attention to that statistics stuff in Maths I that I would be better equipped to explain to you how many answers I think there are in the questions of ethics and life writing and so forth. Though of course, I do think there are some broad and general conclusions about how we should or should not approach life writing.

One specific area I have been looking at while I’ve been doing that research is performance comedy as life writing. I was messing around with that research a bit more at the end of last week, which led me, by various circuitous paths to be comparing Craig Sherborne’s Muck with Judith Lucy’s The Lucy Family Alphabet. No, comparing isn’t the right word, but looking at them in the context of each other and in the context of the other forms that each uses and has used to say the same and different things.

This led me to wonder once again about which form/platform/format I should use for saying what it is I want to say. You see, some of it is firmly rooted in the essays, some of it is sneaking into my fiction, and some of it is leaking into my show as I rewrite and tweak it for possible production in Adelaide.

So now I’m back where I so often seem to be. In a pickle, and I find pickles paralysing, and it’s no coincidence that we now have a nicely vacuumed floor and probably by tonight I’ll have the kitchen sorted.

(So, look, I don’t mean to bother, but this ‘right form’ you’re looking for, it wouldn’t be blogging, would it? Oh, don’t bother me now, I’ve got vacuuming to do).