Baboons Are Coming

His full beard looks itchy but you’ve never seen him touch it. He’s taller than average, his fingers the length of the longest sentence. He’s 34. He was married. Then he wasn’t. It’s been a year since that went pear-shaped. There is a story there to be told but he isn’t ready to tell it. All I know is that the marriage was not longer than an election cycle. That no children came out of it. And it was amicable. He steps around that conversation like you would step around a dark manhole with a missing lid. He lives alone, in an SQ with a fireplace outside which he lights on cold nights and warms by with a whisky while his mind leads him on a long leash. He loves whisky, a bourbon guy. And he prefers to drink it alone. To think. He’s constantly thinking. “I live a very active inner life.” He writes. “I move all over the world, standing in one place. There’s no time for sharing.” He doesn’t go on dates because he’s taking time off from that circus, nothing to see out there. He says he’s taking a year off, “not to make any decisions, not to think about the future or career or anything.” Just him, his fire and his bourbon.

He could be on the spectrum. Actually he is on the spectrum. The attention type. I suspect he’s also OCD. His shoes are always too clean. His nails clipped close. His clothes – always jeans and a round neck t-shirt – without creases. He seems like a difficult man to live with. The type set in his ways. Who slips into unexplained bouts of silence. Who hates when you move his shit. Who hates the skin on potatoes.

He dreams of being a farmer one day. A farmer who writes. He’s my current student in the one-on-one masterclass. These are folk who can’t attend the normal masterclass for one reason or another; their schedule can’t allow, they hate the idea of sitting with people, they hate people, they are on the run from the law, they seek something more intimate with their words…and so they prefer to pay more for that: a hybrid of online class and face-to-face meetings. [Email me for inquiry for the next one; [email protected]].

So we meet for coffee on Saturdays. Two hours of talking about writing, which means we talk about life because writing comes from living, yes? Dead men don’t write sentences. Honestly it doesn’t even feel like work for me. It feels like a long conversation. He’s intriguing; curious, interested, invested, explorative and a thinker. I learn things too, about myself. He asks questions: “How do I know that my writing has improved?” “Where do ideas come from?” “Where does one find their audience?” “How can I maintain consistency without it being boring?” “How do I share my work?” “My father is quiet, like me, but he is the one guy I really have long conversations with. How is your relationship with your father?”

Last Saturday he suggested that we meet at his favorite cafe off UN Avenue called Waitabit Coffee Collective, one of those bohemian cafes that writers would lazily describe as quaint or cozy. All things that it is. What is indisputable is that they had the best mocha I have ever had, served in crockery I wanted to slip in my pocket after. We sat outside, on the small round table that was too small to accommodate both our long legs. I remember telling him that writing is a slog mostly, you keep your head down and nudge through the blizzard of words. “The view out-looking-in is deceptive; that writing is entirely a romantic experience.” He chuckled, “perpetuated by writers themselves. However, isn’t that also because writers are always pursuing an ideal, a vulnerability?”

Well, there is definitely a reclusiveness to writing that has bred romanticism. The idea of being alone, and undistracted, somewhere, translating your imaginations, whimsical thoughts into tangible emotions on paper. What they are, I think, are idiosyncrasies, more than they are romanticism. Personally I like the idea of going away to a place with a water body to write. First, to escape the repetitive rigour of everyday life and second to seek a headspace that is wired right for the task of writing.

For this latest book, I went off to Castle Forest Lodge to bang out some problematic bits of it. The book was developing problematic joints, as books tend to get when you leave them sitting unattended for long stretches of time, and I needed to get that oiled.

I liked Castle Forest Lodge because it sits at the slopes of Mt Kenya, in the thick of a rainforest, by a valley. There are freshwater rivers and falls which I have never bothered to go see because I find waterfalls too noisy, too monotonous. The drive there is half the beauty and to get to the lodge you have to drive up the mountain, through a canopy of silent trees with their silent secrets before you stumble on the lodge. The grass is ever green. The accommodation consists of lodge huts with fireplaces and a hot water system rigged from burning wood stoves at the back. Network is rubbish, which is perfect. It’s always nippy in the mornings and evenings, but during the day you can drag a chair outside onto the lawn and read a book in the sun. If you are lucky it will rain at night.

The idea is always to rise early and take advantage of the five-hour writing window. That’s 6:30am to about 11:30am. To write, clutching my laptop under my arm, I’d march down the small path to the main house built in 1910 with – it is said – river stones and wood from the surrounding forest. The air is fresh at this time; the birds are awake. There is a sweet smell of woodsmoke in the air, which is my most precious smell in the world. If you sniffed the sleeves of god’s robe, it would smell of woodsmoke. The chairs on the balcony might not be the best for writing but the setting is near perfect. Morning silence hangs in the air. There was a resident dog the last time I was there, very old and deaf in both ears. He would lie in the grass basking in a patch of sun, occasionally lifting his head to gaze around at something he used to hear when he had hearing. He’s most likely deceased now, buried with dignity under a Rosewood tree.

It’s the perfect setting to write, early in the morning. To sit on the balcony this morning in silence and bang out 3,500 words. Maybe 4,000 words on a very good morning. Only sometimes nothing goes to plan. The words turn into tar. The sentences come out made from hardwood. The sun rises slowly over your inability to write full sentences, casting long shadows of doubt and frustration on your work.

You panic, of course. Part of writing is to panic sometimes. You panic because you paid for four nights and you owe the trip at least 15,000 words. You have to pack that in your suitcase to take back home, otherwise this was just a holiday. And you can’t just afford a random holiday, you aren’t a trust fund child. You are the child of teachers. You grew up in white chalk.

Not unfamiliar with this rodeo, I’d know what I need to do. I’d grab a chair to the grass, turn my back on the laptop and read the book I carried; make words jealous by reading other words. Or I’d walk through the dewy grass, getting my ankles wet. Or go look at the horses grazing on a hill behind the property, or stare at the pattern smoke makes as it curls from the wood stove. Meanwhile you feel the presence of the mountain over you, in its veil of mist, and you wonder if God still lives there or it’s just a place where men and women summit to tick a bucket list.

Then I’d go back and try again. And sometimes the magic would be waiting, other times not. And so, in the book you might read a chapter that might not share the same energy as the rest of the book. Be aware it was written during those difficult moments and it’s in those times that the mettle is tested. It’s when skill is challenged. Thankfully, there aren’t more than three of those chapters. It was a generous book. It gave me grace. It gave me the holy spirit of words.

There is a caveat, though. These writing getaways, in my experience, are only romantic the first two days. Great loneliness creeps in in the afternoon of the third day. The nights suddenly seem darker with solitude. Whilst it was romantic to sit by the fire in your room the past two nights with your whisky in hand, to listen to the crackling of the flames and look deep into them, now loneliness howls in your ear. And the loneliness of the night is the worst kind. You suddenly crave a conversation with someone. A warm body in your bed. Loneliness becomes a present nemesis. It’s in your drink. It crawls in your bed. And Mt Kenya is cold, dear friends. Problem with having someone in your bed at night is that you will find it hard to leave them in bed in the morning. Because it’s very cold out there at dawn, so cold your nose turns into a pebble if you leave it out. And to imagine that you are going to leave the warmth of the bed to go write seems incongruous. You tell yourself it’s for the art, for the craft, for something greater than comfort.

Why am I telling you all this?

Three reasons.

One.

It’s Tuesday. We say things here on Tuesday.

Two

I don’t know if you guys are aware but one day we will be invaded by an army of baboons and they will win and all this won’t matter. Nothing will. Not you and your calendar and your smartwatch counting your steps and calories and sleep. Nothing will matter.

Three.

We are taking the last of pre-orders in two days. Oh and since we are on this confusing subject I’d like to say that some of you misunderstood how pre-orders work. It basically means that the book is in print and when it comes out late this week, you will be the first to get it a week before the official launch which is 23rd of June. Meaning you will get yours on Monday 16th of June, not as soon as you made your payment. So, please don’t email passive aggressively insinuating that we might have conned you. We haven’t conned you. [Yet]. We are in print. Monday you will receive your copies.

If you need a copy, please click the link at the bottom of this article.

Four. I know I said two things but the baboons are coming so it doesn’t matter. Three, register for the one-on-one masterclass for next month. I take one student a month. First come, first served.

Otherwise, stay vigilant.

**

For pre-orders of my latest book click HERE.