Metal

I can only write while listening to Sigur Rós' ( ). This feels like a block.

Maybe my writing is firming up with misuse. Stories abuse me from within, then when I sit down to type them out they're caught like a plastic bag down a drain. If my head was a bath, brimming with good ideas and intentions, every time I sit down to write it feels like the bath turns to ice or evaporates or both at once.

Words are... a struggle. I've mentioned this to my students before. The way my head works feels like a poker machine, or a combination lock, wheels spinning to land on the right word, joined with the next right word. They laugh at the slight pause, the distant look, as the wheel clicks into place with a perfunctory ka-chunk. And then my hands, waving about in the air as if to gesticulate the denotation and connotation and wrap the metaphor into itself to create a meta.

I use tree. In describing a metaphor. Well, the extension of the description of metaphor. Saying one thing is another, giving the signifier precedence over the signified. The textual tree is a different tree for everyone, but it's the same tree. Through further description, you can hope to paint a better tree in the mind of the reader, but you can never succeed. 'Tree' is the metaphor for the idea of a physical object. I almost wrote 'living' but then I remembered Christmas trees.

I don't feel like I've taught since July last year. The proper, get enthusiastic, rant and rave and pace and argue and shutupshutupyouneedtolistenthisisimportant weaving a fabric of uncertainty and confusion until threads emerge that question the very nature of text, responding, hating, exploring. That idea that forms that screams that I am important and the things I say and the things I argue and the way things are done is important.

I've taught kids that are, and have been, encouraged to write beautifully not for the sake of writing beautifully but far more pure - to write beautifully for yourself. I've taught kids that only know writing as a mechanical task that requires a strict structure stamped on the page in bolded headlines that scream THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE WHERE YOU CAN WRITE HOW THIS EXAMPLE AFFECTS YOU.

I've read writing that has been elegantly wrought from the ethereal inspiration that shines brightly over some kids. I've read writing that functions like an assembly line robot constructing cars from overused cliches and hackneyed expression.

I want to walk kids through creating a book. I want to take all of Year 9 English for the entire year. The only task for the year is to write a story, print it and bind it. At the end of the year they either get a Satisfactory or a Not Yet Satisfactory. At the end of the year they will have a book that they created. At the end of the year they will have researched, drafted, edited, drafted, edited, researched, edited, experienced, completed, printed and bound words. Singular words, joined together to create clauses which turn into sentences which ramble into paragraphs which interlope to form chapters and novels and books.

At the end of the year, a Year 9 cohort of 150 will have created 150 new books for the universe to enjoy.

Maybe I'm just dreaming.