Something I’ve Never Written About
1. There’s a page in an old notebook of mine, written way back when I was young and stupid, where I put forward the closest thing I had to a creative philosophy at eighteen: I do not believe in silence. When I was eighteen I wanted to write stories that had weight. I wanted to create something that could be used to bludgeon the world into submission. 2. Things I have written about: bad relationships; unicorns; punk rock; pro-wrestling; shaved heads; the veneer of love; envy; sexual ambiguity; writing; aliens; poetry; indecision; growing up on the Gold Coast; living in Brisbane; my hatred of certain dayjobs. It seems such a limited list, on the surface, but in many respects that list contains everything. 3. Yes, I was a pretentious kid. I’m also a pretentious adult. Pretension is an underrated survival trait in the arts, as is an enormous capacity for self-deception. 4. I remember one of my lecturers gendering writing