huck

Ah, I have pre ordered the dvd. I like to watch films like that in my little hole I call home! Something escapist about wrapping up under a cover with some tea that takes me back to childhood memories.

Thanks for your comments, nice to hear I've been more concise, something I've been working on.

The death of magic - yes indeed! You could put it that way. Traditionally I think our twenties was the time for us to get to grips with our independence, see what's out there and stuff, before deciding on a career and settling with a family and stuff around the age I am now. It was traditionally the time to be a journeyman. In theory, I should now be a master of whatever I'm destined to do with my life. And, actually, I am feeling my art and poetry cohere.

I think we mean different things by 'peace'. I don't see peace as a kind of 'end' or 'rest' or anything; I think true peace comes in the midst of hard work, you know? Is that anything like what you meant?

It is an optimistic parting of the fog, yes. But I'm still in a quandary over what to do about Ian's patronage. If I may compare him to you - you politely ask me for contributions to Bouville, and I'm very pleased to oblige, though I always feel I'm doing it more for the sake of yourself and the others than for me, trying to, you know, be encouraging and stuff. Ian is more grabbing. And I don't hear from him anything like as much as I hear from you, which is alarming in light of how much he's made out of what I've given him. I haven't had a conversation with him (by mail, phone or in person) since the day he came round back in the summer to photograph all the drawings he used in the film. In the meantime he's made The Quarry and put it on youtube, made a shorter film of just my drawings, put it on youtube and called it 'Iain Hunter', large as life, spoken about me in the Dunfermline Press (which is actually quite a prestigious paper as local papers go - it's won UK-wide awards), and now this article, with my pictures, in the Fife and Kinross Extra, which shit-loads of people will see, including, probably, half the folk I went to school with and stuff. I send him e-mails and he takes ages to get back to me, and when he does he doesn't even answer my questions or respond to anything I spoke about; he just says "How's it going? What are you up to?" In short, he has become more of a 'distant patron' than a friend. And that's just shit. He's begun to feel like the kind of guy who would steal your clothes after swimming in school, so that that everyone sees you naked. I'm dramatically more exposed than I was prepared for, and I wasn't even given a chance to prepare.

I still don't know about success and fame and money and stuff. I feel like I've been connected to earth by a thread since I was 20 or so, and I'm frightened to gain the weight that would bring me down to earth again, I have a kind of spiritual/religious fear of such a sullying. I think it'll happen, though, whether I like it or not; so I might as well go with the flow, right?