You can be anything you want to be & other untruths | Quote

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” Each individual member of the subordinate class is encouraged into feeling that their poverty, lack of opportunities, or unemployment, is their fault and their fault alone. Individuals will blame themselves rather than social structures, which in any case they have been induced into believing do not really exist (they are just excuses, called upon by the weak). What Smail calls ‘magical voluntarism’ – the belief that it is within every individual’s power to make themselves whatever they want to be – is the dominant ideology and unofficial religion of contemporary capitalist society, pushed by reality TV ‘experts’ and business gurus as much as by politicians. Magical voluntarism is both an effect and a cause of the currently historically low level of class consciousness. It is the flipside of depression – whose underlying conviction is that we are all uniquely responsible for our own misery and therefore deserve it.”

Good For Nothing

Ali Smith – an endless inspiration

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/ali-smith-how-i-write

A few minutes ago, I was reading this old interview with Ali Smith.

With a few clicks on the keyboard, I found myself in the dashboard of this cobwebbed and abandoned blog.

It’s been quite a while since I read any of her works or went down a rabbit hole of nibbling bits and pieces of articles about the great woman on the internet. And it’s been so long since I last blogged. Pardon me, for I seriously couldn’t find meaningfulness behind blogging about books and literature, when I was not reading much.

At this point, I’m sure that I have lost my 3-person readership. But this is more for me to just write all the overwhelming, melancholic and depressing thoughts in my head and less for the sake of others. And I will try and do less pointless meandering because this is also about Ali Smith and I really want to say something beautiful about her.

Ali Smith Annotation Project | literary analysis

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Ali Smith is my favourite writer for many reasons. Her whimsical prose, her curious characters, the way her works look at everything with such compassion and curiosity, are some of the prominent reasons why her books appeal to me. Her stories are extremely optimistic and they thrive with art and life. But they are not just bubbles of forced fictional optimism. Rather they are the celebration of so many things – art, life, death, good, bad, literature, books, bricks, buildings, form, style, gender, sex, women, laughter, words, ghosts and as I type this with an enthusiastic fervour, the list keeps going on. Because that woman is amazing. And reading her books makes me experience all of these emotions at once.

Ali Smith grew on me over time. Initially, I struggled a little to get into her world. I remember reading the first few pages of Winter and thinking ‘okay, this is one of those pretentious surreal books’ (Oh the BLASPHEMY!!!). But when I finally got into her world and let the quirky, whimsical and witty tone of her stories get to me, I kind of bonded with them.

Ali Smith writes these hilarious, short but whirlwind of stories and they are such a comfort to read.

In 2021, I am on a mission to reread and annotate all the Ali Smith’s books that I own and just pour my heart out about them. These posts aren’t going to be in the form of reviews. I am not going to rate them or recommend them. I am just going to be pretty self-indulgent and write about my fEeLiNgs about them. And I hope that it is interesting and insightful in some ways to others too.

Looking forward to a year of delightful fangirling.

What rhymes with mirth | poetry

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What rhymes with mirth” is a story told in verse form. It’s one of my never-ending works in progress. Verse is such a flexible form and every time I think about this project, I am overwhelmed by the different directions I can take this story. I am not a very good poet, that might be owing to the fact that I don’t write a lot of poetry pieces. Poetry is loose and abstract in a way that I have never felt about fiction. Because fiction has a solid structure. I know there are million different story structures out there but when you think about it, stories are all about actions and their consequences, right?! But there are no such defining factors for poetry. It’s like an abstract painting in that way.

And telling a story in verse form is interesting because I take the straight forward narrative of fiction and the loose structure of poetry and merge them together. And the result is a weird literary amalgamation. And who doesn’t like weird, unusual pieces of literature? I personally LOVE them.

Initially, the story was going to be about a girl who is working as a corporate content writer and she hates her job. She is depressed and sleep-deprived. But one day, this word ‘mirth’ is stuck in her head. She is sitting in a meeting, and she is sleepy as hell, but she can’t seem to take this word out of her head. And as she is thinking about other words which rhyme with this word ‘mirth'(hence the title), memories of her lazy teenage summers crowd her mind.

I wrote these 3 stanzas many months ago. But every time I think about this project and the protagonist, I always feel like there’s more to her than just being a sleep-deprived employee. And I decided to give an arc to this character and write a sequel of sorts. Just a few more stanzas in which I’ll get to explore her relationship with her mother and the other aspects of her life.

Let’s see how it goes. I am so excited for this project.

– Semmozhi