Just an obser­va­tion, no need to grill me over a seem­ingly obvi­ous state­ment. I reserve the pro­ceed­ing space for mus­ings not guar­an­teed to be of inter­est to any other indi­vid­ual on the planet.

Fin­ished Ondaatje’s “In The Skin of a Lion” this after­noon, some time between a cat­a­lyst and an idea form­ing uncon­sciously whilst read­ing, and leap­ing out once it was fin­ished into noth­ing because I didn’t have time to write (I was on a bus), so I spoke into the air (I walk along a fairly quiet route home)… it said noth­ing back.

Then, a few hours later, I tried to write it again. It hap­pened, it’s work­ing, albeit some­what dif­fer­ently to that first elo­cu­tion and my sub­se­quent expec­ta­tions of how it would work out — because it’s taken on the voice of Ondaatje! I can’t escape that quasi-poetic/prose mix he spurts forth nearly end­lessly! The sen­tences are frag­mented, and it doesn’t feel nat­ural — the voice is not my own. It’s not his, but mine is so affected mean­ing is lost in translation.

It’s like drink dri­ving. Intox­i­ca­tion on the cre­ation of oth­ers lead­ing to acci­dents. Dis­as­ters. The dis­as­ter of inad­ver­tant emulation.