LONDON BRIDGE

... I do wish you wouldn't keep pointing that out - it makes me feel both subordinate and vulnerable. It's no fun being me. Plus it puts me at your level and that can't be right. But you must be at my level otherwise how could we have this conversation. Think about it. But I write you. I make up the words that make you up. But if I know it and know also about the ur-writer doesn't that make us quits? But am I more yours or his? Which of you breathes through me? Is it even possible that I write or make you? It's not impossible. Think about it. That just makes it worse. Give me one of those fags will you?

They both lit up. Silence reigned for the first time in half an hour. Charlie had been deep in tranquility - just him and his mantra - a head completely cleansed - a proper and appropriate emptiness. And then this preposterous writer had turned up and his bliss had been riven, split, rent or cleft. Torn apart. How inept to break in just then: to use a breakage to try and forge a bridge. As a craftsman he was pretty shoddy it had to be admitted. It seemed the ur-writer was in trouble structurally and needless to say this writer was no help at all so he was using him as a go-between and intercessor - could Charlie help? A bizarre trinity indeed. He ground out the dog end in the ashtray.

Tell him it's OK. I can handle the intellectual unravelling if you can do the verbiage and he can do the creative shit. Tell him I think it'll work out well - if we've got any readers left by the time we get there they'll be cool with it. It's ridiculously fucking clever - they'll love it ... Go on now, clear out, we've got plot to get on with. I'll do what I can but you've go to give me some slack. One more scene with Petra would be good.

One more thing - tell the man that he can forget ever getting this thing into print - there's not a publishing house that'll touch it now and no low bellied duplicitous agent either. It's dead outside of here. Brave, courageous even, but dead in the stinking fetid waters of 21st century publishing. Potential literature in print has been assassinated by vulgar taste and yet more vulgar marketing. And unlettered, timid, writers. Now sod off.



(TBC)