Back! Back in London, back on deck! Thoughts on Botox, upcoming salons, workshops and BOOK CLUB

Patreon Post

People tend towards efficiency. By which I do not mean effectiveness. By efficiency I mean the reduction of effort and thought. You forget whether you brushed your teeth this morning but you think you probably did, because you usually do. You don’t let your brain waste time noticing things that you do by habit. Efficiency. It’s a good thing, mostly. You can read words with the inside letters jumbled because you can assume their meaning from the bare outlines.

Until it means you spend your life guessing at what things are or who people are by their outlines. By their signifiers, by their signals. It’s easier to assume than to find out and OF COURSE we can’t move through a busy city; a crowded internet trying to engage with every passer by as a fully actualised person. We would be hypnotised by the blades of grass in a field. We grow out of that kind of focus as the world enlarges itself dizzyingly and we realise we can’t cope with all of it. Sometimes the answer to that feels like coping with none of it.

People trend towards the unexamined life because it would be crippling to have to think about *everything* all the time. That’s correct and reasonable and survival and all that. It’s also less terrifying. People want to make their choices set-and-forget, sometimes regret, but at least not having to make the same choice again and again and again.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of having a small person who I take around with me; a life where every single day I have to negotiate how much “work-work” I’ll be doing and how much parenting work. It’s so much harder, but I prefer this version of the hard than waking up in ten years realising that I did life on rails.

It might seem unrelated but this week there was a story about that billionaire who takes youthful blood plasma to stay young. Also I heard a lady joking that all mothers should get free Botox and a friend’s mother is freaking out about turning 70, and it sent me into a spiral about the pursuit of the smooth-faced life. It feels like the other face (ha) of the frictionless, optimised hacked slippery-slide to the grave.

So I wrote a poem. As you do.

I’m back from Japan, by the way. Back from holidays. The gig I did in Japan was lovely and weird and had two gentlemen in the front-middle who would not stop talking to me THE WHOLE SHOW. Hard work.

I’m now in London, and it’s summer and beautiful and london and horrible and magnificent. I’m jet lagged, the baby’s jet lagged. We go at 4.30am to the park to see the squirrels and it’s incredible. Last night I had a gig in Essex that didn’t get me home til midnight. If you live a life that allows the luxury of discretionary naps, do take one for me.

The incredible Sam spent my break trying to figure out if this will work; an accessible Calendar so you can see the upcoming Patreonite Events in your timezone using Google calendar, I think even if you don’t have Google calendar.

Can you tell me if this works for youse?

For those wanting to subscribe to the calendar (Google Account required)

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=YWxpY2VmcmFzZXJwYXRyZW9uQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ

For ye that don’t want to subscribe:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=alicefraserpatreon%40gmail.com&ctz=Europe%2FLondon

Alright. It’s 8pm. Bedtime. My brain’s shutting down sectors like a spaceship conserving oxygen. See you tomorrow at the writers meeting, or on Monday for the salons or on Friday for the BOOOK CLUUB LAUUNCHHHH

Xx

A