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Thinking about drinking
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Tuesday, October 05, 2004 |
I'm writing about alcohol for a new pamphlet. It's a strangely elusive theme - I'm coming at it from a variety of angles - being the daughter of an alcoholic - having addictive tendencies myself (but mine are manifest in the work zone - just can't leave it alone) - and also being madly attracted to drinkers or substance abusers of one kind or another. Still trying to save my dad? Or get his attention? Still admiring those dreamers, romantics who can only breathe in an atmosphere of illusion, whose skewed perspective on life can only be maintained by quaffing? Anybody can drink - and I can't bear to be downtown at the weekend, the whole place alive and dangerous with roaming pissed up blokes hunting down their equally pissed prey - little girls in big heels and tiny frocks who look as if a pint would drown them. But poets who use drink or drugs to fuel their mad imaginations - Edgar Allan Poe, Dylan Thomas, Jim Morrison, Charles Bukowsli, Shane McGowan - hmm. Not many of them are women, are they? Do I admire Nico or Marianne Faithful in the same way? Er no.
My favourite poets are usually mad rather than drunk - Sylvia Plath, for example. Control freaks out of control. Is this the zone? Is it about control? Or being controlled?
I find it impossible to write if I've been drinking. It just doesn't work for me. I need to amass all the brain cells I can get to write a single line. And I can't bear to have a hangover.
If anybody out there has a view on drinking and writing - let me know.
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| 2:42 AM
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