Cream (August)

Why write? What’s it for? I mean, writing. A stack of cream cartridge, another Word screen, those miles of exacting centimetres. I know all the answers, I’ve been there before. Learned essays could be written. But why write? Is it ambition, desire, expression, ennui? What does it achieve, disappearing back into time, a name and some words? So many words, so much unread. Waste of excellence, neglect of culture. Pages wait but who reads? Take the cream and leave the rest. If I wrote triple-decker novels set in August, a poem that captured Everything, would I still ask, why write?

Cream (January)

Before Patti Smith made ‘Horses’ she tried some journalism. First job was interviewing Eric Clapton, but when he arrived she’d only come up with “What’s your favourite colour?” A study on gender norms by the University of Maryland asked nearly 2000 men and women the same question. Blue turned out to be most popular colour generally, followed by green for men and purple for women. Reds and yellows, curiously, are minorities. This January I meet the norm, tending to see-saw between green and blue, but draw a line through red. We may never know Clapton’s, but it probably isn’t cream.