Info Work Writing

NEWS etc.

 La fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste is the latest work to be on this website. This work was conceived and written in Montreal, which is also where the narrative is set. To see it, go to the work page and click on the link.       

I often receive unsolicited emails from people offering to redesign this website. I mark these as junk and that’s the end of it. But if I were to reply, I’d write something like this… I realise my website doesn’t look like most others and might look to your as if it’s crying out for an upgrade. But I like it as it is. There are all sorts of websites, but almost all share a certain characteristic – they all look what can best be described as corporate. This corporate look has a certain slickness which might be fine for those who choose it, but isn’t the look I want. Therefore, you might not like it, but the way I designed this site does the job I want it to do. Moreover, you have to admit that it’s distinctive. I’m certain that if you were to redesign it, I’d have yet another corporate website. So thank you, but no thank you.

Down is now posted on the work page. This work was conceived and written in Ostuni, Italy in 2016 and the images taken in London the following year. It has some connections with Reflections.

Because my work is very short (for fiction), I can kid myself that I can strive to make each one perfect, in a way that a novel – or even a 4000 words short story – could never be. At this point, a philosopher would ask: what do you mean by ‘perfect’? In the 15th Century, Alberti wrote that an artwork is perfect because if you add one thing or add one thing, you destroy the whole. For me, it would be when I reach a stage where if I make another edit, instead of improving the work, in my view it becomes worse. In other words, a point where any further revisions will reduce the quality.

However, I have a second criterion: it’s perfect when its formal elements are doing the job I want them to and no other means would do this better. Hence it would not be improved if I started afresh, took different images or wrote a new text.

If perfection is something I strive for, you won’t be surprised to learn that I never achieve it. After a few months or years, I find that my earlier judgement was faulty and that I can still make changes that will improve the work. Like a greyhound chasing an electronic hare, I forever feel perfection is within my grasp, but somehow it is always just ahead of me and beyond my grasp.

Gisela can now be seen on this site. Please go to work page and click on the link. This work has connections with others on the site, in particular to Clouds and Smoke for the images and to Up and Down and Too Much Information for the text.
Gisela was conceived and the text written in Pontresina and Sils Maria, Switzerland in 2021 and the images taken in Bad Gastein, Austria the following year. Why the wait before putting it on this site? One reason is that I like to keep revising a work, albeit only to make minor edits to the text and images, until I’m happy with both. But also because I usually think all my new work is wonderful! However, after a year or two I sometimes change my mind. With time, I’m able to make a sounder judgement about the quality of my work.

Most of my work – and the work that is closest to my heart – consists of narrative in the form of text and pictures. However, the pictures are not illustrations of the text; instead they tell a parallel story, one that sometimes appears unrelated to the text – or at least it does at first. The two elements are different in another way. The text is pared down, sparce, sometimes poetic. The pictures are not meant to look like a ‘good’ , or beautiful photograph, rather they might be more like the kind of photo taken by accident (and deleted) or even like a snapshot, or a video that has been frozen. On the other hand, the images do quite often refer to photography as used in fine art, including mid-twentieth century formalism. The text tells stories which seeks to produce an emotional response. This is quite transgressive in an artworld which considers itself above and beyond such ‘romantic nonsense’. Meanwhile, the importance of the images doesn’t belong in a literary world, going far beyond the occasional, documentary photo used by W. G. Sebald. I’ve found that I’m unable to write a text and then think about what images to use, or vice versa. There has to be the genesis of an idea that encompasses both simultaneously. After that, the first draft of the text is written very quickly. Although ninety percent of the final version might be unchanged, it will have gone through many, many edits – so many that I find I know it by heart and continue to edit it in my head in the middle of the night. I’ll continue and continue until I find I have no more changed to make. I’d like to think that the pictures are simply downloaded and used. In fact, there are always changes I can make and these images are also highly edited. The way text and images interact is what makes my work what it is. I’m convinced that the two elements together produce a result that is unique. However, it is also stranded in a no-man’s land, not quite able to fit into fine art – not even fine art as an expanded field of practice – nor into the world of literary fiction. The consolation is knowing that at least I’m doing work unlike that of anyone else. That’s quite gratifying.

NEW! 

My latest work 'If Only' is now on the work page.