#10 - I'm Not The Man You Think I Am

Dear Morrissey,

This is the part I like.

This state of elation. This two pint high before the world spirals and swirls out of control, and before the restrictive, persistent hangover of tomorrow.

This is my hour. I am never going to bed.

It is 6.05pm in your hometown and I am writing. (Not just this letter – but real writing. The kind of writing that novelists and playwrights and poets talk about in interviews.)

This afternoon and, to a lesser extent, this evening, I have sat and scribbled and scripted.

I shouldn’t ask for praise. But I have to ask somebody.

Every time I attempt to write anything, I want someone to wander in off the street and say, ‘Oh! You’re writing! That’s marvellous. Really, it is. You should keep doing it. Because what you’ve done so far is great…’

I want everyone everywhere to talk continually about how hard, how frustratingly difficult it is even to consider putting an idea down on paper. (Again, it’s less Romantic – with a capital R, you’ll note – to type rather than pen words…)

I am not a modest man.

But modesty is easy to play.

That’s why I’ll never understand arrogance, or people who continually talk about their own achievements. Musicians are the worst. Guitarists and singers. And God bless anyone who has the misfortune of ever conversing with a singer-songwriter.

I’ve met so many people, Morrissey, who talk for hours about themselves. About their gigs and their plays and their poems and their novels; their sculptures, symphonies and watercolours…

It seems they have not yet realised:

Modesty is a Virtue. Even if it isn’t real.

That’s a fact.

(And I should know…)

Jack x