found text: note from 17-04-2010

Scott realised with a slam, a physical slam of twilight epiphany, that [they] had it all wrong. When [they] imagined [their] future – a future after school, after rent contracts and after serious romance – [they] appeared to hold being an idealised bum as [their] future goal.

[They’ve] been reading too much of the Beat Generation, [they] thought – [they] thought that wanting to spend [their] life in a dingy cellar apartment in a foreign city – smoking, drinking, dabbling in drugs and befriending petty criminals – was [their] idea. It wasn’t [their] idea. It was Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs’ idea. Fucking and drug-taking as an artistic mode still exists, but – Scott reasoned to [themself] – it is no longer aspirational.

Desiring to move between fridge, typewriter and bed (with various people and substances stored around each) may be a wonderful idea for a life – but enough prose and poetry exists that’s been written about that lifestyle to almost stifle the market. And Scott doesn’t even like drugs that much. And sex is always stressful. But writing is fun.

The dream, the image, may be a squat filled with heroin addicts and poets, but in reality [they] think what [they] want to live in is a well kept, small white apartment near a cinema, a bookshop and a cocktail bar. And [they] want a piano in [their] apartment. Just a small one. Electric would be fine. [They] don’t think that’s a huge thing to ask. But that doesn’t mean [they’re] not fascinated by degradation. [They] just want to experience it through art rather than life…

(17-04-2010)