& J: Joshua Bradley: Blog

Sketch for something else

When I no longer smoke are the conversations with homeless people, drug addicts and other smokers I will no longer have. Over Christmas I was in Leeds, walking the streets, smoking. A young woman, seeming drunk, unsteady, asked for a cigarette. On the condition she could roll, I acquiesced. She laughed, complimenting me on my English, in a heavy Eastern European accent, which I couldn’t place exactly. As I passed her the accoutrements, I asked ‘where are you from?’ Her eyes darted about a moment, and she replied, high-pitched, ‘I don’t really know any more!’ A pause, then: ‘I came here looking for my father, But I can’t find him anywhere!’ At this point I offered her a filter, which she accepted. Our little transaction complete, I bid her goodbye, and wished her luck in the search for her father. At this she looked confused. I explained, ‘I hope you find your father.’ To which she replied ‘No no no, I’m looking for CIDER, not father!’ She giggled and I said good night. I’ll miss things like that.

My notes tend to look like this. When I’m lucky enough to have made them at all. More often they simply don’t exist, and gradually the half-formed experiences, revelations, ambitions and remembrances I live cease to exist also. At least in my conscious mind.

So this is a note to myself; a note to remind me to make these notes, on scraps if necessary, but then to avoid the temptation to discard them afterward. To formalise and give structure to my thought processes. This is how I increasingly perceive the worth of the individual blog: not as marketing tool, link farm, forum for debate, revenue generator, but as aide memoire. A place for me to collect those things I’ve found interesting- if for only a moment- and thereby build a set of reference points, contextual information to inform subsequent work, thought, et cetera.

But there’s more: it’s one thing to make notes, it is quite another to research and think on a single piece for a number of days or weeks. This latter activity (it reflects sadly upon me) I have somehow avoided since graduation. I am interested to see what happens if I re-engage with this style of thought, after years of studious evasion.

Happy New Year! My resolution is articulacy. What is yours?

And do not let my reader exclaim against this selfishness as unnatural. It was but this present morning, as he rode on the omnibus from Richmond; while it changed horses, this present chronicler, being on the roof, marked three little children playing in a puddle below, very dirty, and friendly, and happy. To these three presently came another little one. ‘Polly,’ says she, ‘your sister’s got a penny.’ At which the children got up from the puddle instantly, and ran off to pay their court to Peggy. And as the omnibus drove off I saw Peggy with the infantine procession at her tail, marching with great dignity towards the stall of a neighbouring lollipop-woman.

- Vanity Fair, Ch.XXIII p.257