Polymatheia

A Sunday essay about keeping the cup running over

You’re not supposed to pay yourself compliments. And the laugh of that in New Zealand is most people, if asked, would point out that they’re very good at it — among the best in the world at being humble eh.

I’ve written a lot of words, and now I can say that for most of my life I’ve been a writer. Certainly clocked a (mostly) good 30 years anyway. I’ve published a lot of those words too, barely keeping many for myself. It all goes out. That’s become a part of the process. You can’t move forward, without a marker of where you’ve been. All the posts, and poems, and podcasts and playlists — they’re all a thick line of biro on a pole. Testing the water.

I first put a toe in by reading poems to whoever cared. And when I ran out of those people, I just assumed a few wouldn’t mind if they heard them anyway. Trial and/or error.

Eventually I hit up the open mics, with both caution and not all that much self-awareness. I was instantly pretty good — and different — but I certainly never left the audience wanting more.

The maths books from the mid-year sales were filled with ideas, many of them masquerading as finished works. And I was also hand-writing my first music reviews and then typing them up and sending them off. When I switched to a computer, I would fill a disc with thoughts about albums no one cared for, and drive it in to hand-deliver to the newspaper. Then email caught up, and the transactions were smoother, the writing improving all the while, even if the comments, reserved only for disagreements, continued to be sure I was in fact getting worse.

In and around this, writing about movies, writing about art, writing about wrestling, short stories, interviews with whoever asked, and many that didn’t — and fiction that blurred with real life, and a real life that sometimes read back like fiction.

Whenever I caught a plane, not that much of an option in my line of work, nor in the down-times due to the remuneration from my line of work, I would write down ‘writer’ in the occupation space. That best described both what I did and my ambition. Just write. Anything. Everything. All things at least considered…

Imagine writing down Otrovert. Or Polymath. Or Artist. Or Autist?

I don’t need to add this line, yet I have. Imagined it, I mean. But we’re not great at giving ourselves compliments. So I won’t.