”I have periods when I just can’t get anything down on paper at all; often I need to be in a pretty vulnerable state emotionally I find”
Dave Wiseman
As soon as anything happens that affects me emotionally I am usually more engaged to sit down and simply write, and this effort is usually rewarded as I find it is a completely catharitic process, but more so as it also has the effect of ”steadying me” at that time. This is partly why I wrote diaries through the most emotional parts of my life I think.
I have rarely been disapointed by what I wrote looking back now, as it all serves to place me back in that position of say, a decade or three decades ago and I can better understand how my thinking has progressed or some times retrogressed since then, more clearly.
The diaries have been invaluable in writing the text for ‘‘Sex, love and life’‘ as they have served to remind me both contextually and metaphorically why I made the decisions I did at various times in my life and also to show me quite how emotionally engaged or otherwise I was with the people, the world around me. Sometimes they have served to remind me what I have lost, for example and in particular, an emotional and spiritual connection with other men (in a non sexual way), which I valued very much in the past.
Equally, there is something about the age old cliche of the getting of wisdom as you age, which nevertheless I think is generally a truth and makes up for the slow drip, drip, drip away of the ´blossom of youth´ we all go through but are seldom confident enough at the time to understand or enjoy. Although that´s perhaps entirely as it should be!
Video and audio interviews with the author:
To be added shortly