Batting practice.

 

The timeline goes back to one moment in primary school. I was staring at the lunch hall in the middle of a game of football and remember I decided I wanted to be an author.

I have been a musician since then, and wrote around that. I want to be a musician, too. I’ve done well on that front, but I let it go a while ago even if I am picking it up again.

I have been through my wild phase, where passion and frantic improvisation drove me, my sombre phase, where passion and a lack of discipline lost their charm, and most recently my scholastic phase, where I learned to listen and speak properly. The problem with that last phase is of course that the learning never ends, so you have to draw a line at some point and say I’m going to participate in the game while improving. If you don’t play, you don’t get points. And I’m good enough to survive. I can implement more advanced tactics later, once everything has bedded in.

So I’m writing and ticking off lists. This is the game that everyone knows you have to play. I no longer trust the fire of passion to burn without proper fuel, except in these passages. But that’s because that’s what these passages are for. Still it's the fundamental aspect of the fire that gives rise to its other charms. You may want to put explosive things in to watch them burn, but you turn up in the first place because the heat is consistent. It’s not a matter of function and surprise; it’s all part of the same thing.

Tick-tock.

I hope to win you over still, even if I tell you my strategy.