Writing with ash

Yes, people want to be free, in whatever way the word free might mean to them in particular, but they also want to have a leader they can believe in.

It's as much the job of the artist to investigate regression as it is to promote progress. Memory, after all the great mineshaft of art, is a form of regression. It seems to me that the notion of progress is burning down the centuries as if they were lace curtains hanging on the hearth of some old cottage in the north, just waiting  to turn into flame, but we can't seem to organize ourselves to be able to live without the notion.

I spoke the other day to a writer friend who'd just shown me a poem he'd written. He's a prize-winning poet,a young man with a wife and a 2-year old child.

The poem was dark, sparse, serious, a meditation on the promise of technology of making our lives better and that promise's effect on the human spirit. It demanded to be read twice, and I did. 

Do you want feedback? I asked.

Yes, he said.

I think you have to avoid trying to appear too wise, I said. And that perhaps in your next draft you write from the point of view of a young father.

The first bit of advice had been given to me by an older writer to whom I'd sent a packet of poems years ago; the second bit was my own, made up on the spot while the young poet took notes, already burning down what he'd just written.