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Thursday, May 22, 2008

My Nemesis




















Todd Swift writes to express displeasure at me taking a ‘knock’ at him in this post, and suggests ‘it’s personal’ and perhaps a consequence of the ‘sad mean-souled Irishmen’ that have long enlivened ‘your island’s feuds’. Though this blog is of course written by a persona rather than a person and what you’ve got to understand is that it uses a style of postmodern freeplay yadda yadda, I may as well as put on record that I, the person David Wheatley, since that’s what it says on my driver’s licence, sitting here typing this, have no personal animus against anyone. This is not because I’m some kind of good person, let me hasten to add. I was merely exploring the topic of persona and how it affects the way we write and argue. People who have slagged me off in print, that strange man who used to send me anonymous letters telling me I was a kiddy-fiddler for reviewing his book negatively etc: no grudge against them, no grudge against anyone.

Except for my nemesis, the Mongolian goatherd T’k’k’q of course. I really hate him.

And the human race at large, I really hate it. It can eff off and die a lingering and atrocious death, and the sooner the better.

But otherwise nothing. I trust this clears things up.

3 comments:

Mark Granier said...

Thanks for my first real laugh of the day. Swift Todd must be an exquisitely sensitive soul, bless him (or bless them, I should say). I am amazed that he could take any umbrage at your mild allusion to his blog, especially since your persona on that post kicked the teeth out of one of your older personae.

I love this especially:

"Wheatley's position is foolish for any number of reasons. Students of the philosophy of identity will know that we are never the same twice."

Any number, take your pick. And I didn't realise you had to be a Student of The Philosophy of Identity to paraphrase Heraclitus (even I can do that).

But really, you should muzzle that lone-wolf, self-loathing, alpha-male, pipsqueak persona and make it show more respect; it'll be lifting its hind leg at the TLS next.

Coirí Filíochta said...

"Students of the philosophy of identity will know that we are never the same twice."

~


I blame Copper Nose Henry VIII and the courtier poets who sprang up around him in the flourishing of the first explosion of the printing press, and the dual sparks of English poetic lore, housed in the two cauldrons of learning into which the best minds of 500 yrs of generational fawns, for whatever royal flush their learning lead to, held as their most secret rose-tree dream within; expressed in the canons the deluded try to spin upright as the one true marvelous, the real exquisite, the Leavis sneer, the lack of Joy and no wonder.


Look at the English language tradition, founded on guys like Pope and Milton, challenging young boys whose emotional expression is locked stubbornly inro alpha male nuke ems, as i know.


i got bummed out of every joint going for being to common and speaking my truth, but it is poetry that made it happen, and now i am on the telegraph, with the facists, after proving to myself, dough rules many with less brio ion their personae than i, not gra agus siochainn..

Coirí Filíochta said...

i've just been over and tried to cast a soothing verbal balm to dissolve any potential long-term unpleasantness between the two of you kettles and pots. i know how swift will appear to many, he will get right up their noses, as he is pretty much carved himself a number prancing round the streets of london as a latter day eliot/pound cross, with zero sneery poses, totally straight up, in his many claims, and now lying on a moon sized bean bag curled up with a teddy sucking his thumb, like a 21C fin McCool's moment of tranquil enlightenment after Finegas delivered him the wisdom and McCool became the poet who makes eliot look quaint, unlike swifty who is my mate, in the shallowest of senses. i think i may have spoken to him as petrifiedprozac on the gulag's chat bore (from which i am nor excluded coz of jane holland, again!!!) and if so, saved him and generally noticed his quick wit of picking up the vibe, but the spat 'ere can go only one way for both of you, zilch, as there are many targets and swifty's chosen the wrong one i reckon as yr total humanity is counterpoised with S's, which is earnest enough to reveal a whackiness in which ian McCullough and his lippy swagger was the failed pre-curser of the real Liam who was 100% wiv none to impress but 'imself and his God, the tuatha de dannan, who make a guest appearance in the spectacle of personae i have donned before kevin came along, out the blue, after seven yrs, following the lore, as best one can, and it is true, the return is silence and reality through a sieved intelligence, linked to druidic practice, the 100 stories we know nowt of in the 350 canon we got wheatley, innit?


and all i would like to do now is call on Bodecia to stop messing me about, and let me at the fawns, bring some democracy, as they are all waiting for a leader and if todd and i ride in together, with bummy and his boss laureate, custodian of the original S, as our domestic staff, bending the knee, deferring to me and todd, bummie can be swifts private hand rag and her rantiness, apologise to me for forcing me to go and carry out the next year, possibly, at the Telegraph, ho ho, poetry, is?