Restless Narratives (Copenhagen Poetry Club)

This was orignally an edit of this piece made specifically for reading at Copenhagen poerty club. Since then though I've really fallen for this version so it feels like the more canonical version of the piece.

A friend of mine said to me recently in the midst of a serious though not at all heated conversation that he thought I got bored a lot. He of course and at the very least meant my work, and I concede my record is a good few relatively short stints at workplaces. He probably meant another upcoming thing but that's for another time.

The truth is I think if anybody else had said it I'd have felt an internal whatever. But not from him, and when it was echoed by another two good friends it sort of has to make you think.

The funny thing is explaining myself in these matters aloud is hard. Not because it can't be done but because, as I'm realising with many decisions, the basis for them is not entirely rational and honestly how do you impart that?

My first temptation was to say things have changed, and I'm thinking I'm nearly 30 as if age is some kind of gating factor to a certain way of being. But that'd be inaccurate, we've all got different paths and comparisons to the general are somewhere between futile and damaging. But maybe the grain of truth is you see more and that changes your aims, goals, wants and desires. Or maybe we just change.

I think I grew much more of a backbone as I got older and I wouldn't swap it. I'm glad that instead of staying in unhappy situations I do something; someone made my day a couple of weeks ago by commenting on that. My curse I'm too prepared to do that and that its perhaps a too often used reflex to my restlessness. Fair criticism.

But when we do make those choices to change things, on whatever basis they may be, there’s a how are we able to do it. I think that’s where those narratives come into play - we tell ourselves things. My friend is worried I might be doing that, painting this beautiful narrative and that reality as it often does would intervene and dispatch the dream.

But I guess those narratives have no inherent truth - their existence doesn’t mean they are right or wrong. But I think to simply find a way of doing a thing, anything, we’ve got to tell ourselves something. Perhaps we have this need for there being a more substantive purpose. Perhaps as a motivation. Maybe it’s a human nature quirk; if we’re making big changes do we have to believe it’s for the better?

The way I'm trying to think about life is as a set of compromises. And that's without the negative connotation, rather a neutral confluence of circumstance and situation. There's nothing intrinsic about where home should be apart form where you choose - that choice as much a surrogate for a chosen set of those compromises - a balance.

My friend’s other advice was to encourage me that whatever changes I make that I at some point tackled the underlying reasons. What I take from that is dreams can get lost. Something of those comrpomises come into play, perhaps whether they aid or enable those very dreams.

Upon this reflection I've a lot to consider.