Big Thoughts #2

Everything I write is sorta like a conversation. A conversation that I want to have. The greatest thing in life, the ABSOLUTE best, is that sublime exchange that really resonates right down into your bones, where you truly connect with another human being. It’s the food of life. For a minute, an hour, a day, everything seems surmountable.

But, how often does that happen?

When I first discovered Dorothy Parker and Fran Lebowitz in the 90s it was like discovering a limb I’d never known I had. They seemed to be speaking to me. Their words were my words and I realized I wasn’t alone, sort of like in The Chrysalids. There were people who spoke my language, however different the dialect. Ditto with Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, S. J. Perelman, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Clemens, Wes Anderson, and Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger and Hunter S. Thompson... With the discovery of these people there seemed to be more air to breathe, more space to move in, more sense in the world, a place, finally, that felt like home.

This may be why I write. For that Feeling. Yes. It’s a conversation with myself, but hopefully with you, too.

I hope to reach you the same way, and that the effect is the same.

Alistair