Fig. 1.1
And what is it to be, this book I donât write?
1.
I have a friend who loves making lists and music. He is a lover of music and making lists about the music he loves is a way to bring them closer to him; to the ways he might come to know such loved music, to how he might begin to understand the music he loves, and what he might then do with all of this understanding, knowledge and love of music all packaged up together in one neat list. One list made then becomes two, three and more; the next list is always already another list of the lists of loved music he has made. The lists he makes are made with a love of music which is naked and wanting, stripped and seeking, through a system of prompts and processes which put into motion which songs, albums and music make it onto this list or that. There is a list for the top rated 200 albums of all time; a list of songs with one, two, three, four and five stars pasted next to them; a list of music in a folder on his laptop with the tag âNo, not everâ. And there is a list of songs, albums and music which has not yet even been put through his paces. For Christmas I gave my eldest son the book 1001 you must list-en (sic, hear) to before you die (Dimery, 2017), and together we are slowly making our way through the list. At last list-en we were somewhere at the end of the 1970s and each song is list-ed for later list-ing on his own set of lists.
I list-en to him talk about his music lists and I see a man in love with both. The words he writes on lists about music become lyrics in and of themselves, a song leaning ever closer to finding the feeling that sits just beneath the music he loves and that which matters most in the world. His lists of words are lilting and the very sweetest of songs. I tilt my head slightly to list-en more closely to his singing, the let(te-ring)of the words of music on his latest list fall gently into my ears like soft rain. It is not long before I am lost in my list-ening; I watch as his music lists make their way slowly and tenderly to that place which I have secret-ed away. His list-ing about music, sits softly down beside me, takes my hand, and I am in love; with the lists, with the music, with the man.
It is not long before my thinking and wondering about his list making lead to me the word itself; list , spelt L-I-S-T. I find the âLâ words in an old dictionary I have in my hallwayâmy Paâs dictionary, a Merriam-Webster 1948 editionâand flip the pages over. I catch myself and stopâfor a moment, a minute or maybe moreâto savour the sense of homecoming that touching the leather letter tab brings; cool, smooth and aware under my finger. I close my eyes, my breath barely there and bated; tasting the scent as the fine paper turns and fills the air and my head with the very idea of going elsewhere. My lips move in a silent ritual, âShow me a-way, take me a-way, fly me a-wayâ; itâs a whispered invocation to imagination to be, to be-come and to be-side me. I slowly open my eyes and to my surprise there are no less than twelve definitional citations of the word list. They consume one whole column of one whole page and begin with a listing of verb versions of the word. List, v.1, meaning to prefer, to choose or to be inclined. List, v.2, in nauticle parlance as to lean to one side. List, v.3, from hylst (hearing), to harken, to hear, to list-en to. I pause for a moment, finding myself list-ening to the ways this word is presented. List, to-lean-to-choose-to-hear. List, v.4, to insert in a list, as in public service, as soldiers, to en-list. List, v.4i, to enclose for combat.
I think and wonder of the synchrony between the man who loves lists and the verb list as listed here; a man who has chosen to willingly enter the lists, living both and loving the challenge they bring. I think and wonder whether in listing-to-lean-to-choose-to-hear he would see his love of lists and his lists of love in the same way; perhaps it is my own list-ful thinking seeking to list him. With one eye fixed on the list of verbs of the word list, the other has been secret-ly leaning, choosing and hearing the noun list. I think and wonder, not for the first time, about the wisdom of reading a-head, getting a-head of thinking and wondering in the hope(less) assumption that it brings you a-head to the elsewhere you hoped to arrive at when you first began. I think and wonder about where my desire to list him in this way is heading. I would like to think I am leaning, choosing and hearing him in my listing; my love of words and the man who loves lists touching, so close.
List , n.1, a row or line. List, n.2, a line enclosing or forming a border from the Old English liste. I think and wonder about the ways in which the definitions of list are now edgingâleaning-choosing-hearingâtowards categories; the ways that lists contain and control our thinking and wondering about the world through words. A list is a way to order, re-order the dis-order of thinking and wondering, and then to do it all again in reverse to dis-order, re-order and order the world into thinking and wondering. Lists bring our thinking and wondering so close, right up close to the edge and beyond. As I began thinking and wondering about writing this book, I had most unexpectedly and wonderfully fallen in love; in love with words once more, and in love for the first time with a man who loved words too, and especially the writing of lists. Our shared love of words and writing led us to talk at length about the books we loved to read, as well as the books he and I would love to write one day. Neither of us had yet written a word and just like that a deal was done; we made a commitment to one another to write 500 words a day. A commitment to write; a commitment to write the words we love; a commitment to word our worlds alongside each other as we fell in love. Come what may, no matter how perfect or problematic the prose, the deal wasâand still isâthat we would always share our 500 words with one another; no compromise, no possibility of putting words in the bank, no care for how long 500 words might take to write. You might even say that we are holding each to account, that is, to a-ccount of 500 a day.
There are days when we set ourselves a writing task; to pen a poem in the style of a songwriter that I like and he loves, to make sure we include a miscellaneous and quite random object in our daily 500, or perhaps to remember a moment where something was at once lost and found. There are days when we simply sit together in solitude and set ourselves the task of âtwisting and turning our hearts aroundâ (after Frank, 1952/2000, p. 282) as a way of sorting, sifting and settling into the words and worlds that seek to be written in that moment. One of the favourite parts of my day is when we sit together and talk about the 500 words we have shared; whether the words are working or not in the way each of us intends, the way the words are travelling and the kinds of worlds we and they are travelling through. We smile, shrug, frown, laugh and sigh as our conversation connects constructive critique with a growing sense of ourselves as becoming writers and intimately more and more entangled in each otherâs words and worlds. It is my love of both which brings me to writing and holds me there, intimately, so close. And it his love of lists which inspired the way the words in this book have been brought together; a number followed by 500 words or more; in and of themselves a list.
2.
Diaries and rooms, ordinary affects, dreams I tell you and the troubling secret lives of them all hold a certain kind of promiseâthese are the works that sit as inspiration beneath the way in which the words and worlds in this book on, with and for critical autoethnography come together as writing in pieces of 500 words or more. At this point I am caught naked and bare between adoration (yes, itâs true; in love with the way you have with words to will your way) and apology (I am sorry in advance for the willful way in which I bend, twist and re-fashion your words to follow my will which may not be the way or the will you intended) for the women whose writing this piecing together of embodied emotion and experience somethings pays homage to. Virginia Woolfâs stream of consciousness literary style, which I first became acquainted with when I read A room of oneâs own (1929/2001), followed by her more well-known novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) and perhaps lesser known collections of diary entries and essays, puts forward of a way of writing about, throu...