One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others.
Why I'm not listing my top anything of last year or next...
I’ll always remember where I was the day Gabriel García Márquez died. I was stood in the afternoon light of a bee blossom April in a room my mum had just left. Radio 4 was still buzzing low and serious. You could trail her across the house through the different tones of radio that would follow her footsteps. The full bass of the kitchen, the echo of the Roberts in the bathroom, the thin chatter of the unmoving portable DAB by her work desk. None of them told me she was gone forever, instead they each broke the news that Márquez had also left us.
This was the first of many moments I could not share with her. Perhaps the most minor but I’ll never forget that specific ache of a message arriving too late to be delivered. Not bad mum, you’ll forever share this day with one of the literary greats you so admired.
It’s a nice coincidence. No offence to Jack Grealish or Arnold Palmer, Guy Ritchie or Jack Ma, Karl Lagerfeld or even Colin Firth but my mum shared her birthday with no one who held that much significance for her. On the other hand she and Señor Márques share the 17th April with Benjamin Franklin, Linda McCartney, Eddie Cochran, John Paul Getty Jr, Norman Hunter, Barbara Bush and Schopenhauer’s mother.
I’ve long been haunted by the idea of that other anniversary we travel through blindfold each year. The black birthday that goes unsung, uncaked and ironically with no candles to blow out. After my mum died I searched her diaries for any reference to the 17th April in case the day itself could have known it was waiting for her, could have nudged her each year with some tingling sense of anticipation or clarity. Her diaries were sparsely entered, mainly a space for the tides of her depression to spill as ink, forming soft round rolling letters that belied the fury of their feeling. April 17th never got a mention.
This is the sort of astrology it is easy to pull apart. That Jacks Ma and Grealish share their success through the coincidence of first drawing breath beneath a Virgo sun is a story to stretch any credulity. I would delight to discover that both the footballer and the billionaire share my mum’s love of a to do list, her deep satisfaction at a well swept garden path or even her antipathy toward anything other people thought popular, but I doubt it. All comparisons are odious but of all the governing principles used to group people or ideas together, raw chronology is amongst the worst.
Dates are a drift net that trawl together things that have no real right to be compared to each other. This is why I don’t want to know your list of best films of 2022, or best books, or best TV shows. “Best” in art is always dubious, “best of last year” is as random as ranking Pele, Vivienne Westwood and Mike Hodges. This is why I also don’t want to hear your review of the past twelve months. Yes, Queen Elizabeth II and Mahsa Amini both died in the same year as the Lionesses won the European Cup and American women lost the constitutional right to bodily autonomy but this does not mean the year expressed a new narrative about women. 2022 saw both Gareth Southgate and Donald Trump fail to win either the World Cup or a controlling influence in the US senate. I’m not one for predictions but after this year I think Southgate will really struggle to mount a campaign for president in ’24.
We all have the need to make sense of events as they happen. Some hold this is our conscious mind’s key ability. Not to govern our actions but just to create a compelling story that implies a plan being followed. Like a fraudulent magician appointed by a despot to control the tide who twice daily has to fake a spell to make it look like she is the force rolling the waves back from the shore. The only magic is the story, is that the story is believed.
The year in review is not just irrelevant noise. Like GDP, it’s a distraction from the far more important patterns that really are out there. ’22 was the year of strikes, of NHS collapse, of war in Ukraine but none of this makes sense seen from this angle. A bad frame skews the picture. A year is not a story, it’s a key hole we choose to peep through. A tangle of narratives play out, some ancient, some new, some short, some apparently unending, none best viewed from here, on our knees with one eye shut.
The release dates of films or books tells you nothing about their creation or their creators, only the market’s guess at what the audience might want. And what magic does the market use to foretell the future? It looks to what the audience just liked a moment ago. For markets the future always looks like yesterday afternoon. So don’t tell me what you liked last year, tell me what you miss.
Unless you are a farmer, or a gardener, the seasons of your life are not bound within the cycle of the earth transiting the sun. Neither is the true story the days you spend breathing. Trend lines are backed by more historical data than the crease marks that arc across your palms but both can be used to misread the future. A rare form of cancer is an outlier, until it forms inside you, at which point it becomes not rare for you but frighteningly commonplace, disgustingly popular as it spreads throughout you.
Without seeking to draw connection between Pele, Vivienne Westwood and Mike Hodges, I was saddened by the deaths of all three. Especially Mike Hodges who I’ve paid homage to in a way I hope you’ll enjoy.
I hope you already know this, but the market has decided January is month my wife’s book can finally reach your eyeballs. If you enjoy the tinge of grief in my writing then you’ll love her dive into the depths of this emotion. It’s funny, raw, compassionate and very clever offering both comfort and clarity and I am stupidly proud of her for writing it. Pre-order your copy here.
Lastly my screenwriting course returns at the end of January in a new Kings Cross location (or zoom if you prefer). Called “Find Your Voice” my aim is to teach you how to use the physics of storytelling to write more like yourself in all your glory. It’s fun and has been described by past students as “the best investment I’ve made in writing my screenplay” and “a true masterclass in screenwriting.” Book your place here.