I Am Celebrity
Like Jimmy Rabbitte from Roddy Doyle’s “The Commitments”, or the other three from U2, I’ve often fantasised about being interviewed. By a journalist or TV host or something, now, not by the Gardai. (Being collared laying nailboards under the tyres of Cillian Murphy’s Hummer is no picnic, lemme tell you. The fucker’s lawyers are hounds.)
It’s hard to stay rooted in reality when you’re so desperate for recognition, you’ll even eat the scenery of a film playing only in your head. I pine for erudite interrogation on how my prose could be dissected to reveal characters’ ulterior motives. I compose lists of acceptable questions, and present them to Swe.Ge after his eyes have ignited at my request for him to give me “a proper grilling”. I don’t long to be followed by paparazzi or anything – certainly a few hobos have followed me around in my time, flashing enthusiastically – but I do love the idea of people being interested in the words I toss about. I think it’s because all writers know, deep down, that writing is a useless skill, but would like to be reassured that there are still those out there delusional enough to think the pen is mightier than the sword, all the same.
So when I was asked if I would be part of a panel discussing blogs and blogging and bloggers and blah, I jumped at the chance (for “jumped at the chance”, you can assume I read the invite with interest, wandered off somewhere after a pretty butterfly, ate some crisps, became embroiled in some local fiasco, and remembered to reply a week or so later). I do blog, after all, and blogging is writing, and writing is ART, and I am an ARTISTIC SOUL, and much more worthy than some administrator in the construction industry. What could be better than sitting about with other bloggers, waffling about “process” and “audience” and Damien Mulley’s new tattoo? “There’ll probably be free coffee too,” I frothed, prompting the woman next to me on the Citylink to move seats.
So I shall be appearing on a panel at Kinsale Arts Week tomorrow, chaired by Fiona of Pursued By A Bear, and with shavings of Daily Spud and snippets of Exceptional Lives. It should prove eye-opening, ear-reddening, and nose-bleedening. I’ve completely changed by mind, in other words. The idea that words will fail me bothers me more than the male models sardined in my porch, yes it does.
Because that’s the thing. Unpaid writing is hardly noble, and bloggers are the least glamorous of all the scribes (stop gouging your eyes out, you at the back). I’m not sure I’m cut out for Arts festivals. I swear in a Galway accent, wear trackie bottoms, and I never go home at closing time. I shall feel a right fraud surrounded by people with home-printed t-shirts, causes and canvases; can you call a blogger a proper writer, when anyone can be a blogger? I mean, not everyone can be an artist, because you need to know about paint, and not everyone can be a singer-songwriter, because guitars are well expensive. All you need to be a blogger is an internet connection. Even Bebo profiles have blog modules, for fuck’s sake!
Plus, don’t you have to shmooze when appearing at an Arts festival? I don’t mingle very well. In fact, until Swe.Ge just pointed it out, I thought a mingle was what you got when you put a Minstrel and a Pringle in your mouth at the same time (orshagsmic, by the way). I went to the opening of the Arts Week last Saturday, just to orientate myself, and spent my time giving Micheál Martin funny looks and wondering about the u-Value of the windows in the hall; I spoke to no one, for fear they’d see through my representing such a dodgy new medium.
I think it would take more than a healthy Facebook presence and an Irish Blog Award to make me feel like a worthy addition to an Arts Festival schedule, you see. I may have to go in disguise. Perhaps wearing a bohemian headband that represents the efficiency of the pharmaceutical industry in their binding us to over-the-counter pain medication, and a dress I found, most artistically, in a skip round the back of the wet house? Either that or I just wait until I win Big Brother; I’m sure I’d feel less guilty about appearing at an Arts Festival if I was a proper celebrity.
What do you lot think? Sweary the visionary, or Sweary the charlatan? Can one compose an ego from entirely recycled materials? And what the fuck will I do if Micheál Martin turns up again?
Should you wish to give Sweary a proper grilling, you can turn up tomorrow in Kinsale, Co. Cork, at 1pm at the Carmelite Friary Centre, give the nice person at the door ten yoyos, and take a front row seat. She promises that even with all her talk about blogging being the punk movement of the literary world, she won’t spit on you.
Sounds like a good event. Pity the republic is so far away from the backward rolling hills of Louths mid-region. I’ve been following you punk literary postings for only a few months but you’re in a different league to some people, ie you can write. So go give em what for and dazzle them with you lack of mingling skills.
Hola Sweary–
I am hope you have a nice day and don’t not kill anybody. You are a much bigger celebrity than anyone who live here in the Canarias. When you come here I shall arrange an entire fiesta organized just around you!
Besos
Manuel
I’ll try, social-dullard. I mean, it shouldn’t be hard. People are often dazzled by my lack of mingling skills. Especially when I bulldoze straight into them.
You’ve just given me an idea for the title of my unofficial biography, Manuel. “Siesta to Fiesta: One wagon’s journey into Partah Time.”
So long as no one misreads and ends up thinking I sanction siestas in Ford Fiestas (especially when one is driving said “wagon”), I should remain free from litigation.
Anyone can blog but not everyone can make a good blog. You have a blog (and now a website) actually worth reading so I wouldn’t feel too out of place.
If they say anything about blogging simply burn the place to the ground - the only logical solution.
Carmelite Friary, will they let you in.
You know what I worry about (in addition to the fact that I might suffer from a severe case of rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights when I’m
hiding under the tablesitting on that panel yokey)? People might go there thinking that I’ll look like a potato. Either they’ll be disappointed that I don’t actually look like a potato or I’ll be disgusted if they think I do. Can’t win. As for the schmoozy mingling, I don’t remember anything about that in the contract…Hi Sweary
My theory is that all these webmeets and such are secretly organised by Rupert Murdoch in order to lock bloggers into an infernal loop of blogging about blogmeets thereby saving print media as we know it. Possibly.
Bye
Martin
(administrating in the construction industry since 1991)
Uh Oh Stalker Alert !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’ll know you’re famous when someone asks you to sign a body part.
Although you’ll never be rich unless you write about sparkly creatures of the not-so-much-with-the-night and young boys waving their wands around.
Ah, you’ll be fine. Wear what you want and fart in their general direction.
Some great advice in these comments. Might I add Sweary, that if things do truly break down, don’t be afraid to fall back on the stock fulmination of “I’LL KILL YOU….I’LL KILL YOU ALL”, as you’re dragged from the hall.
I know it’s a cliché, but it can be a very effective threat, because you’re quite literally telling everybody present, that you’re going to kill them. Potent, in my opinion.
YES THEY WILL, VINCE.
Hello everyone, and muchos thankies for reassurances and suggestions related to arson. I will now go to this Kinsale Arts Week thing wearing my trackies with my administratoryly head held reasonably high, safe in the smugness of knowing that the whole thing is a Murdoch-related conspiracy anyway.
And fear not, Spud. We’ll be fine. We are award-winners. We are blogging royalt…
Oh Jesus, we’re fucked.
Ah, Mr. Flann. I didn’t see you there (my fatal error, perhaps).
I do intend to make as much of a mess of the whole thing as possible, become the Kerry Katona of the blogging world, and elevate coddlepot.com to ridiculous, car-crash-style heights in doing so. We’ll be in Heat magazine snorting ants off the back of Twink’s knees before you know it!
Will they let you out.
My eyes flash with titilation at the way you write. You don’t just turn a phrase, you spin it. You are, gurl, a lexicon DJ.
Vince, we shall know by Monday. If there’s no post, then no, they didn’t let me out.
And Kevin - thanks. Your promised fiver is in the post.
Minstrels and Pringles? Genius!
You’ll be brilliant, Sweary.
Enjoy yourself.
I came.. I saw… but I was disappointed. There was no sausages on sticks, pork pie with egg, and not a drap o’ the oul Irn Bru in sight. Just to top it all off, everyone was clothed, and the strippers I was told “aren’t coming on until after the back of nine.”
I thought you was cracking by the way, but the trackie bottoms and the Jimmy Choo heels just didnae gel.
I’ll be waiting in the bar with a large brandy.
Amen
No Fun.
Thanks, everyone. I did enjoy myself. It was tremendous craic, although the audience was far more intellectual than myself, which was worrying. And Jimmy, I think you were in the wrong hall; that sounds like the “Sustainable Communities” gig, which I hear was wild. The person in the trackies and Choos was Duncan Stewart, forever pushing the boundaries of local culture and pissing all over convention. My hero.
Migraine time. I’m off to sleep the sleep of the incorrectly-wired.
Congratulations! Good to hear you were recognized for your work and you had a good time. Did they ask the questions you hoped they would? I’ve always wondered what I’d say during an interview, too. Knowing myself, I’d have to say as little as possible or end up wishing I’d just stayed locked in my basement with my blog.