The silence preceding the anticlimax. A pitiful bid for validation or a claim on eternity. One keeps going despite continual rejection and lack of reward, spurred on, presumably, by some measure of self-belief – doomed to ambition by a sense of superiority or insecurity. The fantasy that we have something going on – that somebody is listening, somebody is watching – facilitated by the insidious web of social media that all too easily creates the false impression that one’s life and one’s musings might be of interest to others. It doesn’t seem to occur to most people who write that nobody’s going to want to read their work. Then again, there are enough unread (and unreadable) books out there already. One more won’t hurt.
John Tottenham 