VinceT

Things have been a little quiet here at VinceT.net of late.

Being on vacation has something to do with that (:o) but also, the good news I guess, is that I’m half-way through a new novel. Tentatively titled ‘Escalation’

[though I know that my last novel, Family Rules, went through three titles before I arrived at that, so I wouldn't hold any hope for the new one to appear under Escalation!]

the story took me completely by surprise. I’d started the year feeling a little lost because, for the first time in a long time, a creative venture wasn’t pushing to find release – I’d just published Family Rules and Garbled Glittering Glamours, a veritable buzz of activity which left me tired but fulfilled. I was filling my time looking at screen-writing techniques, movie structure, etc. Partly because I was bringing my first script, Team Building, to a finish, partly because Family Rules was entering process for a screenplay adaptation

[pre-emptive thanks here to Timmy Quinlan and James Patric Moran]

but mostly because when it comes to creative process I’m a learning monster! So, with my head full of acts, sequences, heroes and archetypes, when I caught a local news story in passing I was amazed at how quickly the skeleton of the new novel blossomed out. I’m about 45,000 words into Escalation at the moment and the writing is very enjoyable.

And yet.

And yet, I’m feeling… What is it?

Down? Sad? Demoralized? Melancholy?

A bit of all of those, I guess. But it’s darker and pulsing.

I write to be read. When I don’t receive feedback I very quickly fill the void with a story of “no-one’s reading” – I know this isn’t true but the written medium places distance between artist and audience.

It’s different to my other abiding creative route, music, where the act of playing, alone or with a band, is shared energetically with an audience – sometimes dancing, sometimes listening, sometimes talking throughout the whole show (:o) they’re at least living and breathing there with me – and changing something in my energy can cause a tangible change in the flow between us. Writing is solitary, I have to pre-empt that energy long, long before it’s going to happen.

We write for ourselves; to reinforce something in, and to, ourselves.

Of my published novels, two were written from a deeply intuitive place – Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? and Family Rules – in the process of writing them, like the best songs I’ve written, I was only partially aware of what I was creating, flowing in and among the threads of the story, discovering the characters, events, and even unseen parts of myself. Karaoke Criminals, and now Escalation, are more structured, a conscious act of story-telling. This doesn’t make them lesser art, just a different experience. Reading my collected poetry of the past couple of years, Garbled Glittering Glamours, I’m able to remember times, places, and emotions that filled each of those writing moments.

I love writing. I love discovering the story as it threads its way through and around me.

But right now, I’m finding myself questioning whether anyone is reading. It’s a mixture of anger, resentment, sadness, frustration.

[none of it linked to money, sales, royalties or material success, aside from that they are indicators of the reading - we artists long ago gave away dreams of sustenance through art]

I write to be read.

And when I think no-one’s reading, it’s all too easy to fall down the rabbit hole. Particularly when that no-one is a friend.

I always buy CDs by friend’s bands, I always do whatever I can to encourage their process. I try to get to their gigs. I’d buy their book, if they were writing. I do it because I love them and love the fact that they’re doing what they can to make the world a better place.

But I know how many people have read my books.

And, but for a small number – you know who you are and have my complete, utter, and endless love – my friends don’t appear to be reciprocating.

Which is where the sadness comes from.

If you write, paint, sing or create in any media, you know how lonely it is; you know the vulnerability of the act. When a little voice whispers in your ear that even your friends don’t care to support you, it’s an awful, demoralizing vacuum in which to try to create.

[if you make music and have ever played to a near-empty room, take that feeling and multiply it by many, many, many times and you won't even get close to writing when demoralized]

But create we do.

We will.

Or let me personalize that.

But create I do.

I will.

Because I can’t not do it.

And, my friends, would that you were as generous in your feedback as Lorain, who commented on Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? I’m honoured and humbled by her gift to me. In the meantime, I’ll keep on doing good by you, I’ll keep encouraging you to be vulnerable and to make the world a better place. But I won’t be waiting for you to do the same for me.

And now, I guess, I’ll see how many of you have read this far.

Excuse my
outburst
It’s done
It’s over
I’m balancing
love
with hope
for my future
I’ll see you
tomorrow
on pages
and silicon
thank you
for reading
you have
my love

If you read, please let me know; writing is a lonely place, made better by even the shortest of visits.

When we moved to New York from the UK in 2003, we found ourselves in a (relatively) sprawling semi-basement apartment in what was claimed to be the oldest brownstone on the upper west-side. It would be our base for around a year before we relocated here to Connecticut.

I was working on a project split between Manhattan and New Jersey, so spent most weekdays traveling out of the city – counter to the traffic flow – and getting home in the late-evening. Effectively, while Jane and Elise had the city all week long, I really had it for the weekends and, if lucky, a couple of days during the week.

Not that I was complaining; I’m the luckiest man in the world, blessed with a lucky career that allowed me to use my strengths much of the time, and that brought me across the pond to live slap, bang in the centre of the most exciting city on earth.

On the drive out to Jersey, I would listen to ‘Teach Yourself Spanish’ CDs, or formulate more ideas for my nascent novel, Family Rules

[which wouldn't see full light for a further 7 years]

while also thinking through the final stages of Karaoke Criminals, which I was still working on. Later that year, I would take the decision to publish Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies?

It was a fertile year – my stressful corporate life feeding energy into my creative pursuits, all over-amped by the ‘on-ness’ of living in Manhattan.

Of all the lucky things I experienced, when I look back on that year in NYC, I think about the books.

You see, the apartment we were in was lined with bookcases, and everyone who’d lived there had left behind books. All genres, all periods. I only wish we’d been there longer and I could have soaked up so many more stories and perspectives of the world.

One previous inhabitant had been interested in black history and literature, as a whole section of the bookcase were given over to books that I, a Brit steeped in contemporary fiction, hadn’t ever had on radar. Two books I remember particularly are:

• Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
• Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

These beautifully crafted stories of proud people confronted by change were beautiful. And I never would have had them without the luck of being in that apartment.

Living in the apartment was like an ongoing American history lesson, taught by novels that I knew of, but had never read:

• The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
• On The Road – Jack Kerouac

All of these stories grounding me in the history of 20th century America. Had I been there longer, I might have chosen any other period and dived in – there was a Mario Puzo section, Mark Twain, Herman Melville. Many, many others.

Oh, and Hemingway, of course – The Old Man and the Sea is one of my Dad’s touchstones

[more from the movie than the book, I think, but I've been known to be wrong!]

so when I found the book on the shelf, it got read )

In the years since, I’ve tried to build on my luck – and the gift those previous tenants gave me – by consciously going ‘off pattern’ and buying books I normally wouldn’t read – most recently, at the suggestion of some friends, stepping into Charles Bukowski; William Burroughs a while back.

There’s no grand point or learning from this reflection, just my acknowledgement of the luck I’ve experienced and the gift that unknown people gave me without even knowing they were giving it.

Stories are precious, they transmit our collective wisdom, they are told to be told again. Please, if you’ve read a book, pass it to someone who hasn’t; or at least leave it on a shelf where someone might find it years later.

Please make someone else as lucky as I’ve had the chance to be.

Interesting overlap of words between Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? (below) and Family Rules:

Produced using wordle.net

Memento 1: Snapshots and Tattoos

As we draw to the close of the year, I want to tell the story of my 2010. And I will. But first, I need to share 2001, the first year when life truly held up the mirror and said “stop.”

Loudly.

In 2000, my team at work had won a national award for innovation in recruitment and retention. There was love and connectedness in this small group of people who had come together to achieve something magnificent. I had been in corporate life for a decade, and my natural home – Talent and Organization Capability – for 6 years. And though young compared to my peers – I was 32 in 2000 – had been recognized for my own talent, earning my position on our local HR leadership team. With that promotion, I’d also entered the management ranks, where additional incentives kicked in, including bonus, share-options and company car.

In the common view of most in corporate life, my career was rocketing and I had ‘arrived’. My young self felt justified through my performance. I was proud. Others read that pride as arrogance – not my intent, but I can understand how my behaviour implied that.

But all of this is preamble to help set context for 2001.

In late December 2000, I was coming down with flu. From the Christmas shutdown, I looked towards an early January 2-day leadership team off-site to be held at a hotel about 12 miles away. My transport at the time was a 600cc sportsbike and, looking at the wintry conditions and how I was feeling, I booked an overnight room between the two days so that I didn’t have to make the risky journey home and back. I even said to Jane that I didn’t know whether I should be riding at all.

The off-site happened – full of the usual naval-gazing, planning, hope and resignation; promises to do things differently that lacked the commitment to be remembered beyond the flip-charts upon which they were captured. With my developing flu, I hardly had the energy to become my usual frustrated self. The meeting ended and I wrapped myself up in my biking protective gear, heading out into the cold night, conscious of the slushy rain that was falling, leaving a slick coating on the road. As luck and irony would have it, the local Audi garage was a mile away from the hotel and I stopped off there to look at my prospective company car, which would help me not have to ride during the winter. Then, once again, out into the night and its treacherous road conditions.

I don’t recall the accident. All I remember are flashbacks in the ambulance. In those flashbacks, I appear/wake-up

[I'm pretty sure I passed out with the flu while riding]

in a gentle corner, realize I’m too fast for the conditions and weigh up front-brake or back-brake. For those who don’t know bikes, a back-brake skid would slip the back wheel out from under me, dropping me under the bike and into a skid (towards the wall). A front-brake lock-up would stand the bike up, with the possibility of flipping me into the air in the direction of the skid. In the flashback I make the (wrong) choice to try and feather the front brake.

From my injuries and the damage to my helmet, I must have flown through the air, landing on my left side, chin, shoulder and hip. Two bones in my hand shattered, everything else was very bad bruising – my protective gear had saved me from much worse damage.

I woke up on a gurney, with my legs aching

[my friend Terry had broken his neck a decade earlier and when we were with him in hospital, we had to keep asking him to try and wiggle his toes - I had been wiggling my toes so much to prove that my neck wasn't broken that my calf muscles were cramping]

unable to move. Doctors were looking at x-rays, one of which I noticed had a cigarette lighter that I’d had in my inner pocket. I disappeared again.

When I came back, Jane was sitting by the gurney. I still couldn’t move. I told her to take the cigarette lighter out of my pocket; that it was confusing the doctors. I disappeared again.

Throughout the next few days I disappeared and came back again with regularity – a symptom of my need to recover and the heavy, morphine-based sedation that had been applied. People visited, some of them real, some of them imagined. I only learnt of their presence through discussion once I’d recovered.

In those days, I experienced vivid hallucinations, mostly played out on the ceiling as I lay immobilised on the bed. In one, a rotting pile of meat in an empty warehouse, replete with flies and maggots; in another, a reformation priest climbing into his hiding hole by the fireplace, looking back over his shoulder and asking me to be quiet while the soldiers hammered at the door. These were not dreams – these were real events playing out in front of me – and I could not get away from them.

At one point, I awoke in floods of tears, and could not move to wipe them away, just as I could not remove their source.

“Why are you so unhappy?” I asked myself, “life’s going great. You’ve got the career, you’re being recognized. Why are you so unhappy?”

The answer was simple, and had been in front of me all along. Work had become the big thing and everything about life that I loved – Jane, music, writing – had taken on the role of potential escape routes. If only I got a recording contract I wouldn’t have to work, if only I got a publishing deal, if only… if only… if only…

In my period of forced meditation, I had no choice but to contemplate how I had got here, how I had chosen to be this person, and I decided that from that point on I would be the person I am, a plate juggler, a renaissance man, I would do everything I’m made to do and never again let anything become the one big thing that excluded all else.

I came out of hospital having made a deal with myself.

In the next few months, I revisited and finished ‘Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies?’, my shattered hand was recovering so I made only a small amount of music.

Besides, my working life was falling apart.

It started with the team which began, literally, to physically disintegrate. Within 2 months of my accident in our team of 11 people, we had 5 pregnancies, 2 miscarriages, 1 case of ME, 1 undiagnosed acute gastric illness and a terminal diagnosis of bone cancer. Here was I with my own post-traumatic baggage, trying to manage, care for and lead this team that was falling apart.

Alongside this physical stress, the company went into a pre-merger recruitment slow-down and the team was reassigned to wider duties. We had gone from a 12 people to 4, with the understanding that the team would regather when recruitment took off again. Little did I know the knives were being sharpened.

In March, at the height of the team’s crisis, the recruitment faucet came back on at full-force-plus, the workload would have taken 14 people to process. We had 4. Performance suffered. And all those who had resented our previous success took the knives from their sheaths. I and the remaining members of the team were working 15-hour days 6 days a week, and other members of the function were double-checking work just in the hope of finding an error they could take glee in correcting. When the work outstrips available resource by 300%, such errors happen. At just the point where we could have united, I was trapped in a game of cat-and-mouse with people who had previously been trusted colleagues.

These unnecessary, wasteful, pointless political games. Colleagues so frustrated by their own day-to-day that lashing out at me was easier than confronting their truth.

Betrayal is a bitter taste.

I wish I could have helped them.

I found myself by the summer once more buried in work, which was trying hard once again to become the big thing.

But Sparrows was finished. And I had managed to keep focus upon my hospital bed deal. I was exhausted.

The world became about days and moments. Make the right decision, catch the error, fix it, deal with the fall-out, shrug and move on. Swallow down the frustration and hurt into a small, molten ball at my core.

All the time, my own mantra: “Don’t let work become the big thing.”

In September, we launched a global approach to defining single, common career ladders and the kick-off meeting was held via video-conference. That Tuesday morning, I sat alone in a video-conference room in the UK, with everyone else gathered in Groton, CT. As ever, it was a difficult meeting, frustrating to be on the end of video-conference with folk who really didn’t know how to run virtual meetings; doing my best to participate, though hampered by technology and behavior.

I stepped out at one point to go to the bathroom. And someone said, “something’s happening in New York”. When I got back to the video-con and my laptop, I scanned the BBC website. A plane had hit the World Trade Center.

I watched the drama of the 9/11 attacks happen via the web, telling the people at the other end to finish the meeting, that they needed to be with family and friends. Not until there was an announcement at their end did they stop the meeting. By this time, all three planes had hit and the twin towers were burning.

I left the meeting room in a daze, stunned as many were on that day. I passed Adam in the corridor – “It’s like Kennedy,” he said, “everyone will remember where they were when this happened.” Plasma screens in our café showed events playing out, the collapsing towers.

Numb, all I could think of were the thousands of people who compromised their lives to go to work that day – who didn’t kiss their partners, who shouted at the kids for disturbing their emailing, who didn’t take a vacation because there was a short notice deadline. My deal had never been more in focus or visceral as it was walking back to my desk that morning.

In the next few days, we moved into crisis mode at work, monitoring colleagues who were travelling in the US at the time of the attacks and who couldn’t get home. The crisis team really came through, and did a job of which to be highly proud. On that team, all of us who had been at political loggerheads just weeks earlier, gathered to deliver what needed to be delivered.

At one point I was chatting with Dermott, my colleague and mentor, who had once told me everything is learning if you’re open to the lesson. Here I was, reeling from 9/11, the disintegration of our team, my good friend Jo facing a terminal cancer.

“I get it,” I said, “what more is there to learn?”

He urged me to stay open.

3 weeks later, Jane and I learned that she was pregnant with our first child, Elise.

And I knew what lesson I could draw from these brutal, brutal events.

At the end of the year, Jane and I travelled to Florida and Louisiana to rest and recuperate, spend time with well-loved friends. I waved goodbye to 2001 changed – a year that started with my nearly losing my life, and ended with a new life to love. Of all the turning points in my life, this was the most profound and fundamental.

Love-peace-trust,

Vince

Like anyone who writes for more than passing pleasure, I have several projects on the go at the moment. And even more that would be on the go if I could only kick myself up the rear-end and get down to it.

My main focus right now is re-drafting Family Rules ready for publication later this year – as a way of keeping myself motivated through the re-draft, I decided to post it online while I was doing so. This had been suggested to me by my brother-in-law and good friend, Mark Henning, who makes beautiful music out of Vancouver, Canada (check out Combine The Victorious and Guilty About Girls). Since the first chapter was posted in March this year, it’s had a little over 6000 visits, which is very cool and, to be honest, many more than I expected. As always with a redraft, I’m bored, but enjoying the process of tightening things up; and falling a little in love with the story all over again.

I’m partway through my first original screenplay, working title Team Building, where Office Space meets Lost with distinctly dark outcomes. The original plot-line for TB was hatched in a bar in Ann Arbor, MI with another writer, Elton Greig. It’s been gradually brewing for a number of years, however I have no idea of whether it’s on the mark or not – screenwriting as a medium isn’t natural for me – story, yes… script layout, not so much – and I recently sent the current draft to my mate, Laurence Blyth, who since we were at school together has pursued a career as film cameraman and now DP. He liked it a lot, which gave me the kick to keep going and bring it to resolution – bring on the slaughtered goat!

[that'll make sense when you see the finished movie]

Musically, version 2.0 of the Monkey68 live crew is about to play our first gig (hopefully) towards the end of the month. It’s a very relaxed set-up and we’re having fun. I’ve released a lot of tension that was locked into my playing style and am feeling the benefit. I have a number of songs in development, one in particular that is very close to being recorded – it’s about my dad (who has been very, very ill) and is pretty heartfelt. He is a strong man and has given strength to me – I love him. The song is untitled as yet, and should be done in the next couple of weeks.

Now we get to the fun bit – all the things I’m thinking about…

About a year ago, I launched We Are Story, a writing experiment – and was, for a while, pretty prolific over there. The idea of We Are Story is quite simple. Anyone can join (it’s free) and contribute to a central story, told in ‘pods’ – about 500 words. The only catch is that only 5 draft pods are in play at any one time, and any one writer can only have 3 reserved. This means that no one writer can dominate the story, and that threads can develop without being fully realized by one person. Oh, and once a writer reserves a pod, it’s only live for 5 days, then it disappears. It works much easier in practice than it does to describe it here. Now that I’m emerging from some pretty big life changes, I’ll be heading back over to We Are Story – there’s something about the David Lynch-esque story developing there that has me intrigued! If you write, and want to explore or simply practice, come on over and join me.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I’m going to experiment with recording some chapters of my already published novels: Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? and Karaoke Criminals. I did a test reading yesterday of both and think it may work – though it’s a little weird speaking aloud what I’ve spoken in my head up until now. I’ve done my fair share of acting, and am always reading books to our girls, but there’s something very, very different about speaking my own words. It’ll be an interesting experiment to head down into the studio and record the chapters.

On the subject of Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies?, I’m highly likely to start working that into a screenplay before the end of the year. Jane and I were kicking around ideas and believe that it can be transported from its original British location to the North East US. So, the original’s Ramsgate becomes New London, CT and Certainty will either be out on Cape Cod or up in New Hampshire (undecided as yet). If you don’t know what Certainty is, you should buy the book!

The final major work that’s dancing around in the back of my thoughts is a business book, targeted at my former professional cohort, HR. It’ll draw together various strands of emergent neuroscience and management literature to challenge the function to rip apart all the stuff it’s introduced over the past twenty years, destroying the unwitting and counter-productive bureaucracy of the ‘modern’ organization. It’s working title is ‘Destruction HR’ and the first line will be ‘This book does not contain any best practices’ because HR is notoriously guilty of reading about ‘best practices’

[which, btw, don't exist]

and blindly adding them into their own business – HR is guilty of being a relentlessly additive function. I’ve yet to decide whether Destruction HR will be written and published under my own name or my corporate alter-ego, BadConsultant. That decision will guide both the style and format – so it’s important to get it right up front!

I guess all I can say on all of the above is stay tuned.

[I daren't say more, I have too much writing to do!]

Vince