Year: 2001

Map-making Martyr “Ian Thomas loves making maps. His talent won him respect and a US government job. So why was he fired for putting a chart of caribou calving areas on the internet?”

This is so cool. My first paid film review. And a page all about me. It’s enough to make a man happy to be alive.

I’ve had my conversation, and it went – I suppose – as well as could legitimately be expected. You hope for more, you expect less, and you pray that you don’t get kicked too hard. Today’s been generally hectic, but for the first time this week I feel like I’ve actually accomplished something. I wrote my first review for the BBC Film website: “Fly Away Home” [Video | DVD]. I will of course let the world know when it’s up on their site. As the first non-survival-related activity that I’ve managed to complete for quite a while, I can’t help but experience a slight upturn in my spirits.

Dear Mr Quayle, It has come to my attention over the last few months that you bear a certain amount of animosity towards me. As we know from our studies of ancient texts, vengeance stimulates vengeance, and without an external party to steer one towards justice and equanimity one can – I’m afraid – only reciprocate. But this does neither of us any good. Can you not look around you at all you have and, from such a position of success, take pity on those of us forced to battle each day for whatever crumb of self-respect we can muster? Can you not take strength from the size of your home, or your salary, or from your acknowledged potency, intelligence and wit and – recognising that you have won any perceived battle between us – be gracious? Yours, tongue firmly in cheek, Tom Coates.

I’m feeling unhelpfully nervous this morning. I have an important conversation to have which I want to be completely relaxed for, but I’m not. It’s an absurd conversation to have – it won’t get anything accomplished (or at least I doubt very much that it will) – but I decided that I needed to have it, and here I am. I’ve got to do it now.

What I did last night: I’m going to let Davo do all the hard work of explaining what happened, so I can just say ‘thank you’ to him and Nick H. for indulging me and momentarily pulling me out of my current funk.

I finished reading The Music of Chance in Bristol on the weekend. It’s one of those books about pushing your life all around you until it collapses and you’re finally left with nothing of any value. It’s an intelligent pornography of self-destruction, later debased by books like Fight Club and Invisible Monsters. I heartily recommend it.

On repression: If you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t say anything at all. That’s how the old saying goes, is it not? What if there are things to say, good things, but you can’t concentrate on them? What if the one thing that you can’t talk about is the only thing that you really want to talk about? What if it pushes everything else out of the way? What then?

I read a lot of Freud when I was at University. Repression is what you do when the impulse or desire or memory or truth bubbles up from within you, but is stopped from entering the conscious mind by the super-ego – the part of the brain that stops you becoming the slave of your basic impulses. The thought remains immanent – just below perception, and bubbles up in strangely symbolic dreams and eruptions of irrationality in your everyday life. Like cryptic, confusing posts on a weblog. Like writing that doesn’t go anywhere.

Sorry about the paucity of updates. For a variety of reasons I don’t really feel like I can talk about much at the moment. Everything will be back to normal in a couple of days. Promise.

I’ve had better days.