The Marginalia of the Modern Day

The beautiful filth of writing and why it should be treated with celebration, not snobbery

 The art we unleash from unexpected places

I would like to identify myself as  a writer, I have written after all for much of my albeit short life; although to what authority I appeal asking whether I am worthy of this title, I know not. For does status as ‘writer’ lie in the adverb itself, or in the resultant product, or in publication? There are potentially multiple paths we can take with this definition – paths which offer clean definition amidst an art which I believe is, and should be, dirty.

The word ‘dirty’ may well cause upset in itself – bringing forth connotations of illicit sex and stains and sordidness. In actuality, the adverb ‘dirty’ according the OED is ‘Covered or marked with an unclean substance’ – a statement I believe describes, not defines, the process of writing quite well. This is the liberation modern writing and writers should revel in; taking a pure white page, whether electronic or physical, and filthying the page with ink. Well what makes ink and its product – words - unclean, you may say? It is of my view that any writing is unclean in comparison to that ascetic, blank, expressionless page it is put on. Like the art of a painting lies in dirtying the canvas.

And there is certainly something deliciously indulgent about that.

But why this obsession with the dirt of art in an article concerned with marginalia? The answer  is this, that this is an article inspired by the historical process of writing, as well as its future. I draw personal inspiration from, for example, a coffee stain left within the markings on my first year university essay. It told  me of a life beyond the oft-anticipated impersonality of academia. Writing is often subject to this gaze, I feel - Stereotyped as the work of academics or eccentrics sitting in solitude, in silent rooms. This stereotype can be discouraging – even children with the potential to write grow disillusioned by the craft’s association with the rote of learning and routine. Such a stereotype exists and yet is frustratingly distant from what good writing is.

The ‘goodness’ of writing is indeed subjective, yet so is the wiring itself. Writing captures the particulars of experience and this should be recognised; recognised that what matures writing is life, not its suspension. There is, I feel, a sort of snobbishness which tempts us to reject the association of writing with ourselves, our immediacy; causing us to question who needs poetry at a time of character limits, social networks, Instagram where a photograph can tell a whole story?

Because writing can tell the stories before it, during it, upon it.  Writing shapes and shares geographies, from the graffiti tag on the street corner to a whole novel such as Steinbeck’s ‘grapes of Wrath’; both share the similarity of language and association. The popularity of Humans of New York for example, lies in a combination of the photograph – and then, the text, of course, which pushes the boundaries of it.

Writing after all, is a creative impulse which comes from beyond the margins.

Of course, your writing in its final form may be limited by margins, but there is a poignancy in that the content has the potential to break boundaries. I was inspired to this conclusion by works I have read recently – ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone De Beauvoir and ‘By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept’ by Elizabeth Smart (works which assert both extensive information as well as passionate prose); works which involve female liberation but are not defined by it. And not only does writing produce broken boundaries, but it is a product of such a breakage. The plan for this essay, afterall,  was written on the underside  of  an old sketch, a product of recycling, just as Emily Bronte gathered ideas whilst chanting round a table with her sisters in Haworth. Writers are not polished, preened figures though the final pressing of the book may be – of course, only on the surface. Emily Bronte herself indulged in violence, once hitting her pet dog with such force that it drew blood. And to consider Emily Bronte just for another moment, it is of especial drama that in Wuthering Heights itself, we see one of the protagonists, Cathy, revealed not by her adherence to doctrine – the hymn book she is given to read by the servant Joseph – but by her scribbling on its pages, her marginalia. In their own time, writers are often producing, more marginalia it seems, than anything else. Wuthering Heights was  regarded as ‘abhorrent’, even 20^th century works now considered ‘great’ such as Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ were received as ‘dirty’ in the most pejorative sense, seen as works circulating at a dangerous edge of society.

And it is my aim to defend such dirt.

 Dirt is that which is unclean, unordered, unsterilized , even accidental – like the coffee ring on my papers, the expletive. People often refer to the soil of the earth as ‘dirt’; seemingly because of the layers and grains of potential it accumulates. It is easy to believe that creative inspiration lies in sterile, aesthetic environments with books alphabetically ordered and amidst silence. But it is not from that most writers write, for many writers , they are dragging on each experience of marginalia – the unusual at the edge of society, those inexplicable emotions at the edge of our consciousness, and in fiction, alternate realities which supersede the boundaries of what we know.  Such potential awaits the reader, whether as exaggerated as the science fiction of Ursula Le Guin for example or the interpretation of nature given by Ted Hughes in his haunting poems concerning nature, especially ‘Crow’. Some may believe me unjust in placing the persona of these two writers – Le Guin, oft seen as a liberating feminist figure, and Hughes, who is often stigmatised as the opposite – so close in my prose. But this is part of the point – for I want to illustrate the versatility of writing, both for readers and writers, how it projects and perfects personas, and shapes them. I am of the view that we can use writing to shape ourselves, explore our views and opinions, as well as involving ourselves in the medium which can challenge others.

And in the modern day, I believe that there is more and more opportunity to write.

This article is titled as it is in avocation that some of the best writing, I believe, does come from the edges of society  - in looking beyond the print and experiencing the edge. There is a thrill in running ones finger along an edge – whether the edge of a knife, a piece of paper, or an open page – it brings forth a kind of expectation.  If art is to be judged (as it often seems) on its expression of accusative feelings, thoughts, location, then why is there so little focus on the kindling of creative energy? Perhaps it is because there seems a stigma against spontaneous creativity – there seems something ‘wrong’ in writing straight onto the laptop, or keying some quick ideas into a phone on Westminster Bridge (as indeed I have done). They are all perceptions, just as writing arises from. In turn, it is my conviction that the multiplicity of perceptions involved in good writing should be celebrated – people may be amazed  how easily watching people pass by, passing through a different street, closing one’s eyes and listening the wind, the layers which compose our day, can be inspiring.

There is nothing wrong with spontaneous creativity.

In fact, there is all the more reason for writing to flourish as an art in the modern day, considering the extent to which social margins and boundaries are pressured and pushed. An example of writing at and on the margins is encapsulated by the ‘Beat Generation’ of writers in  the 1960’s, both in Britain and America, who celebrated the apparent potentials for non-conformism in the written word – evident in the use of ‘beat’ itself as an adjective, which can be interpreted as negative in terms of to ‘beat’ down (popular usage in American colloquialisms at the time), yet was intended by associated writers such as Kerouac to advocate a new side, celebrating the musical associations and hipness of the word ‘beat’. For me, this is just a brief illustration of one of the great powers of writing – it is room for re-interpretation, remoulding. There is something both satisfying and liberating in taking lived experience and translating it through the pen or the keyboard.

Taking the words of the poet Allen Ginsberg for example: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix – these are the opening lines of his epic poem ‘Howl’ of  composed between 1955 and 1956. It is a poem electrified by  anger, the unpunctuated pouring lines apparently reflecting Ginsberg’s angst at an American society which attempted to place people within its margins.  In the poem there appears much allusion towards the destructive nature of the creative impulse,  an interpretation which can still be explored today – as was the case in a recent programme aired on radio 4 titled ‘Recycled Radio’ and it’s concern, ‘Art’. There was a delicious doubling here – not only was the programme composed of past radio clips thus questioning whether what had been created was a rough collective or actual ‘art’, but also the content itself questioned what ‘art’ was. There was a haunting analysis of art, on one level, as a kind of ‘hunger’ or appetite, which even frightens the artist concerned. This could be seen amidst the academic stereotype, that those who ‘can write’ consume the regurgitations of the past desperately, reading book after book. But artists like Ginsberg advocate beyond that – they fuelled themselves with experience, non-conformism beyond the word, as not only evident in Ginsberg’s own life – drug use and blatant promiscuity – but as seen here in his use of language. For example, here, his use of ‘negro’ to describe the darkness of the streets; typically a word used as a noun to refer, often negatively, to people based upon their ethnicity. Through writing, Ginsberg was not only turning racial discrimination on its head, but showing the potentiality of text to turn heads.

And will heads still turn? People often seem afraid of writing –  and fears to circulate; fears of rejection, of ridicule, the fear of being on or portraying the edge of society. Fear of writing fallen out of favour to be eaten up by computers or television.

Well would I be wrong to say that there is an ever-increasing demand in the modern day for the type of fiction I allude to? A popularity lies in pushing limits and as a student I should know this – considering the events of fresher’s week, the influx of alcohol, popular culture. But this is not just amongst young people; boundaries are breaking all the time, thoughts escaping into new fields – the growing acceptability and popularity of erotic literature, the now apparent normalcy of seeing a person wearing earphones, listening to another reality, whilst out on the street. It is evident that people want to get beyond the mundane, get beyond the routine – people want to look at the narrative of their lives and underline parts for emphasis, score bits out, re-word, re-write.

What we want is an elaborate fiction.

It is fiction like this which comes from lived experience. Fiction, creativity, writing is within walking through the streets and reflecting, being conscious of the complexity of someone else’s expression as they wait for the bus, the roll of mechanical motion beneath the feet. It is a journey to write just as life is a journey through experience, and  is about time we recognise that writing and writers need not be solitary or stigmatized, but should be celebrated. For example, the contemporary writer Will Self, has grown to be recognised not only for his writing, but for his walking habits which seemingly fuel such – in 2006 walking from London to Heathrow, it is this disengagement from the expected and the embrace of the unusual or marginal – like the art of the solitary walk, which feeds a script.  There is a wonderful culture in writing itself to be unwrapped; the concept that some rent rooms to write in, have rented bodies on which to base their descriptions, others write best whilst on the move or in bed, some write notes on the back of their hand, others carried in a notepad or laptop. It is an eclectic mix – morally subjective, ever to be interpreted.

As a writer, whether I have earned myself the title or not, I gain a kind of comfort in even the negative experiences of my past, because when I apply them to writing, they become experience and influence rather than regret. In this way, writing has the potential to heal as well as hurt, and as we have seen, provides escapism, as well an entrapment. It is an ever-continuing paradox.

I want people to explore writing just as writing itself is an exploration which should never be downplayed. It should be recognised that some of the best writing arises from an exploration of the edges  - taking one’s life to new rooms, feeling a different sensation, feeling pain, pleasure, anguish, writing carries beyond the mundane, out of the margins. Now there is all the more opportunity to do that – the opportunity to be able to glimpse in and out of people’s lives on social media, transport which allows us to travel further and faster than ever before –whether down the road or out of the country. The experiences we don’t expect, often push at the margins the most – writers often return to refresh material on illness, on travel, on experience. That is what makes writing brilliant.#

Words and writing are a little like loose change – sometimes we underestimate its value and ignore its contribution to a final captivating product, dirty like lose change – words are the material from writing, often dug from the least expected and often most interesting places.

So this could be seen as an article encouraging an exploration of the edges.  The same could apply to reading, like Nabokov observed that the best reader sat with their book of choice and dictionary – always plumbing the depths. For that is what good writing offers – depth – the depth we can lose ourselves in, and depths which should be valued, wherever from we take inspiration from our writing. This depth may be technology, it may be in films, in talking to new people, or recalling conversations with old friends. Writing is of many guises.  That is what makes it brilliant, dirty, devious and fun, with the power to transform even regret into potential.

Margin

It was the point I had left

On my left

With a kind of rejection

The words weft on the page

And the section

Unmarked, virgin

It confessing a chastity

Regardless of sense and reality

It believed itself precious.

The second sense, jealous

What that which could see

Lusted back for that emptiness

The coffee had ringed

As she sat in her nightdress

Whilst the husband poured tea

Across the public park.

The mistress had shaken her hand

As hers had

Bone-thin

Marking over the paper

Tears in the margin. 

Ribs

Her voice floated to him over the line, as if just tangible, it had a softness which rippled across its reception, like touch. It was in this he indulged, before comprehending the content of her words.

“Tom, we’ve found – what we think are – remains – yes…”

Her pauses in speech were throaty and urgent, almost pulsing, reminding Tom of the time he had trapped a wild mouse under his thumb and watched the tiny cell of the heart ricocheting against the papery skin.  He clasped the same thumb beneath his fingers, like a weapon.

“Tom?”

Ah, the cadence of that call on the inversion! He let his tongue brush over his teeth, as if preparing the same subtlety of reply – calculated, necessary. If only, he thought, he was not in the office – the singular cell with the computer chair and name badge on a numbered uniform with read ‘Officer Beet.’ He secretly dreaded the moment where her breath would wane if he did not answer and she would say ‘Officer’ with the singular, stripped-down tone she used for everybody. No, that was not going to happen.

“Eliza.”

Even the trip of the tongue of the stressed syllables of her name thrilled him – a kind of rush, so to speak. Perhaps it was all those components which made up her identity he adored the most, he mused, the scent she carried with her like a layer over her clothes, the peculiar souvenirs of herself she would leave patterned across her desk – rings, tissues crumpled but apparently clean, pens exhausted and bloodless. Perhaps that was how he truly saw her – like a composure, pulling energy from everything into that one precious system.

Or perhaps he was bored, as Angie had said. Yes, ‘Bored’ had been the very word she had used to describe it as she had leant over the struggling fire, attempting to light the gas. Angie was his wife – a pale unsubstantial woman – those very features which once enchanted him, now irritated him. On living with her he realised that her skin’s supple transparency, her vacant stare even at moments of intensity,  had  apparently no shocking or harrowing source.

“Perhaps I’m anaemic.” Is all she had said.

She had started saying it more often now, Tom mused passively. But everyone is inclined to repeat themselves once in a while. She certainly had repeated her accusation of his being ‘bored’ being the reason for his attraction to another woman. He hadn’t even meant to tell Angie about Eliza – it was a presence which seemed to unravel, hot and awful and human, one day as they were eating dinner.

They were eating chicken legs  in a vague kind of sauce Tom could not remember, because  Angie said they looked ‘better like that.’ He remembered saying ‘Thank you’ with that compulsive emptiness of politeness, allowing for customary few minutes of food-scraping silence before telling her about his day. It had been an average day, he told her of a case of a woman biting a man in the hand at the doorway to a pub, he might even had mentioned Eliza… once, perhaps twice. He looked up. Perhaps three times.

His wife’s face had been something striking and set as if transcribed from a mural.

“I knew it.” Was all she said for a long time.

And then an endless reduplication of ‘No, No, No.” Tom tried to ignore it at first, thought she might be having one of her fits again, where if he touched her, she shrunk away from with bared teeth and tousled herself into a feudal position, fingers mulching into the taffeta carpet. He didn’t want that. He stripped the first chicken leg and noticed she had finally quitted. This comforted him, and his voice came easily.

“What was that all about?”

Her lip quivered as she flung watery exclamatives back at him in dashes.

“Eliza! That’s the woman you like, isn’t it?”

Little thought preceded his answer – he was the type only ever to give the minimum amount of dedication to a question. There were much greater things to dedicate oneself to.

“Yes, I like her. And-?”

But even his attempt at a question was broken. Angie’s eyes faltered a little and then her face seemed to dissolve before him, a sudden awful flush of liquid, clawing fingers, the mouth raw red and hanging open. Even her body was animated, giving sporadic little shakes, which even Tom saw as quite remarkable, given that she hardly seemed to move otherwise.

“Angie.”

He watched the sobbing mass assemble itself a little. His fingers were grey and greasy, as if symbolic of the only kind of comfort he could offer in his situation – a detriment of something else eaten long ago, perhaps love –

He continued.

“But I love you.”

 And his sequence was almost perfected. He saluted his presence in the conversation with the prepared expression.  He fell back smiling into the domesticated, droll, shop-bought bliss of modern ‘love’ – handed it to her like something polished and incredibly dense, and watched the colour expand in her cheeks and then settle again.

“But - ?”

“No,” he said, smiling, even adding the complementary gesture of his hand stretching, albeit non-comitally, towards the goose-flesh fingers of front of him “Of course I like many people. But I love you.”

The repetition had a pleasing ring to it, he thought, like the reverberations of a bell which he imagined dancing through Angie’s eardrums in their tiny crisp-thinness.  That had silenced her. She had spoken nothing on the matter since, even if her body resented the fact, sometimes stalling in front of him in a kind of apathy of resentful gestures. Sometimes she would look up from mincing the steak, or unhooking eyes from potatoes, or sewing shirts, and just look at him. Just like that. She stammered like a child over-tired, the putty of love soft and congealed in her lap.

But it was ultimately just a ‘phase’ they were going through. Tom knew that.

The phone filtered it’s version of a ragged intake of breath.

“Would you mind - coming lending a hand - ?”

Eliza entered his mind again, slid into his pulse so it was if he shifted and answered with nothing but the sense of her – his longings upon the complex cordials of her eyes, her hair, the way she laughed as if sweeping together the sounds of travel, knowledge.

“Of course.” The two curt words were enough for the moment.

He slipped from the chain of the receiver and only his long black coat seemed to chide the excitement of his limbs together as he crossed out of the office and towards the car.

*

Eliza walked out from the thicket not like a fawn but like a flickering image of the foliage itself – endless capsulations of life suddenly extended to him. He took a shallow breath as if to avoid her incense.

“Is everything alright?” He managed.

It was Inspector Eliza Smith who replied with a grave kind of sterility.

“Remains. Think they could be human.”

Tom allowed himself the freedom of accepting the flow of her body and following it as she turned, turned with something youthfully bohemian in her small step, a kind of freedom which defied any restraint of uniform or stickered, metal-plated identity. She was beautiful, Tom thought. And she was evidently worried – he watched the sequins of perspiration silt her brow as she swept through the cast-capes of ash and beech, throwing up the leaves with the front of her shoes. She had not been an Inspector long, and Tom found himself almost consciously savouring the complexity she found in everything – her emotions still raw and dripping. Experience, over time, had somewhat closed over his, like a soiled poultice. Numbness had long-replaced the thick shots of fright when contemplating cases of arson, rape, murder.

She was still surprised by the fabric of the world.

And almost unbeknown to himself – he prayed it was human.

Human remains.

Human, he told himself, meant something. Like her voice purred over the receiver, asking for an ‘Officer’ to accompany her – he knew it was him, he could sense it like a wild dog shrieks at the scent of imminent mastery. Ironic, he thought, whetting his dry lips with his tongue as she started to slow in front of him in her pantomime of authority – human remains. One human dead, whilst two remained, together.  He imagined the shock stealing into her face on her realisation, perhaps her dread, and he having to stand and hold her, constitute something in a moment of a profound innocence being taken, taking her to him like a protector. Just the aching necessity of touch – and touching later, in terms of that strained old cog of conversation at dinner – human remains would give him something to talk about. The prospect of even making Angie look up from the porcelain depths of her plate and reply something like “Really?” or “Where?” Perhaps he could even sleep with the pith being slowly unwrapped from his heart –

“Here.”

The words were issued, sharp as the point of her finger.

It was a difficult alcove beneath a shrivelled beech – she had evidently taken much effort to refine her search, and she stood pensively, the very presence of her body seemingly expressing to him her intentions. He noticed that her positioned one knee against the back of the other, an almost statuette gesture, as if anticipating being frozen to stone and daring to retain a fragment of the unique. He liked that, he thought. He almost told her. But his voice vied for something different.

“It’s alright.”

The words bristled with possibility – on the boundary of comment and comfort, confidence and conversation. The tongue trilled over his teeth, not nervous, but somehow eager – the idea that death could allow for their union. It was curiously thrilling, and the wind licked around him, peeling back to the memories of her leaning against the counter in the office kitchen, the weight of her body positioned somehow like an art; fabric moving against her skin as if it had been poured like a liquid, she told of freedom of movement and the country – a chance for change, even as she unhinged the flesh of the apple clean from its core, there was something invested in her movements.

The prospect of human death would obviously upset her – stalling those delicate features, perhaps even her breath. He comforted himself against the cold gnawing curiously at his fingers. He would hold her then.

“Please will you have a look,” She managed, and yet it was a crease of anger which crossed her face rather than shame. “I can’t.”

“Of course.”

He slipped to his knees like a ritual and felt the cold, scared salt of the earth crumbling a little beneath him like a necessary incense. His eye, tempted to slip back to her and all she held, eventually managed to focus itself into the incision – a sort of clawed-out cave between two roots. The space seemed to gloat in its investment of acridity, warmed with age. A single spider-web stretched almost entirely over the entrance at the pure-water thinness of a lens, and yet no spider could be seen, Tom noticed. Strange.

Then his focus froze.

 It was almost immediately in front of him –not invested with mystery or even gore, but a kind of pity, flayed and abandoned and awful. The ground seemed to seep a little beneath the twisted assemblage of bone – it blossomed in places but in a way that marred any possible shards of white with a congealing grey.  Bone seemed to throw up its splinters in a kind of agony, like one shipwreck only united by its dislocation when the beams of wood awn in naked revulsion from the shore. A sensation of soreness ran all over it.

And then, beneath the ragged arches of bent bone, there was movement. Movement like the liquid robes of the clergy through a dripping chapel, dark and heaving with a wordless music. Only this movement was that of a trembling, the lowest form of fear swollen in the form of a septic organ . It mulched like a mouth passively open, grazed by the wind. A sight scarred with decay, yet marked by that certain rural superiority, a permanence – something which would crisp in the air to a relic. The wind, scissoring at the side of his head, made the moisture burn on Tom’s face.  His eyes. A decaying heart  behind a sheep’s ribcage.

There was the sound of metal on foliage, and then the certain pressure of a foot on the back of his knee. He withdrew heavily, as if his body was immersed in some kind of resent.

He spoke with little awareness of his surroundings.

“It is an animal.”

The response was slipped to him like a sterile needle, a scratch at the end.

“And this is a training exercise. You’ve done as required.  Now go.”

He looked up, still on his knees, into Eliza’s face – now closed and cold, as if she was pressed by a layer of plaster, trapping that once free body.

“But - ?”

She bit his protestation clean away by a just the closure of her mouth, lips frozen as if for a sculptor. Shutting out everything with a perfect layer of skin. He was not to be permitted to savour her speech, and his breathing slowed, and he thought of the tongue lying dead in her mouth like a mollusc, like a weeping flesh, like a carcass –

“I-?”

“Officer Beet, you are currently at risk of ruining what has been a very good score so far. So will you please get back to the office? It’s in your best interest…”

Now it was a voice which shifted like the type of honey which strangles the insect. Tom could do nothing but acquiesce, staring up at that perfectly-clothed body, tall and unmoving – and the hollowed-out roots behind her, where a rotting organ teemed with invisible life.

*

The excursion caused him to return for dinner later than usual – the sky even beginning to protest in its thickening bruise.

Angie was waiting for him at the table, waiting with a kind of dependency he had sensed all the way home, pressing on his pulse, his arteries, his very lungs. It still strained the sweat onto his brow as he collapsed into the nearest chair and spoke with a saturated voice.

“I’m sorry I was late. There was a – misunderstanding – “

He felt the customarily pang of guilt that he had not seen Angie before he left for work this morning, that he had instead  slipped onto the street with the liquidity of someone with a secret to hide. Only he had not hidden anything. He had walked to work as the night still condensed at the corners of his vision, and blinds were closed to the streets and all he could see was the occasional dissembled silhouette beginning its routine. His sight had diluted to liquid.

And yet now, her spoken word, sterile, White. Handed to him like dry ice.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.” It was as if the little studs of her teeth were chipping them to brief bursts of meaning. “Tom.”

She said the single syllable of his name in a way which made him look at her, instinctively.

“Tom, it’s our anniversary.”

She was cautious, limiting her face to tenacious little gestures – encouraging, safe, she recognised he was not in the best of spirits and she stalled into her old paper-thinness, simply cast around, coloured upon. It was no injury to her.

He retorted inside himself with a kind of bitterness – many happy returns. Returning was all he did – to work, to this, his foot moulding to the same shadowed stone in the hallway, the street, the detritus of his being was scattered amongst familiars – routines, meetings. Even Eliza. Even her.

“Tom, look, I’ve made your favourite – “

Her voice flushed through the cold flesh of silence like swollen veins, it agitated him, made him swim up for breath in horrible mouthfuls. He had to look up from his hands, past his watch, past that skeletal ticker and its array of assemblages, past the vaguely occupied ring finger. His eyes met her in a question.

Any kind of response seemed clotted behind the platter which seethed with sauce and meat between them. He reached over customarily, catching his face in the clean metal beneath the bone – a face unhinged and empty, devoid of any concrete association of sense of feeling, pooled and thickened  as if  without substance, nothing. Not even a smile. Not even a heart.

“I-?”

He appealed up to Angie.

Her hands were working over bone, wrists blistering thick with scent, mouth dripping. Lips lost as part of a smear.

“Your favourite.” She said simply. “Ribs.”