One day in June, I had to dedicate myself to the Ministry of Magic CHASE consortium that pays my salary—this is the body that is funding my practice-based PhD at Goldsmiths. After arriving 10 minutes late (even after a Master’s degree, I managed to mix up my train arrival time to Brighton as my departure), without enough caffeine (there was a tea/coffee station but without a hot water urn in sight—a brilliant illustration of British incompetence), I had the pleasure of watching Nicholas Royle’s lecture about his book David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine.
He says the book is a '“sort of memoir” that meanders through the questions that he faced when he took a voluntary redundancy from an academic position. He meanders through questions of fatherhood (in his case, to 2 young sons, during the pandemic), why one writes, and why universities, the entanglement between writing and dreaming, the connection between David Bowie and Enid Blyton (they both lived in Kent). At one moment, he reflected on digression and how in “neoliberal times”, it is largely seen as a past-time to be avoided.
His comment invited a barrage of questions—someone asked him about “who has the privilege to digress?” (this resonated with me. If I had a penny for every white person I’ve encountered who could fill 5 minutes breathlessly monologuing about their lives and opinions, I would be able to afford a 99p soft drink). He responded that digressions are absolutely necessary. In fact, he mentions that the only way he knows how to write is by digressing. By waking up, fog-brained and hazy-eyed, for better or worse, sat on his keyboard to meander and digress for 45 minutes to an hour.
Another anxious person presses in on the question—where on earth can one obtain/beg/borrow/steal the time to digress. (I don’t remember what Nicholas answered, because at this point my brain digressed down some interesting thoughts.)
I see both points. My takeaway from the morning was an invitation to digress, which is exactly what I did that day. While my body sat in the lecture hall, with different presentations droning behind me, I pondered ideas for new shows, thoughts and dreams that have come around for a visit, emails in which I finally allow myself to speak my mind.
Here are some snapshots:
How is art an act of repair? What are you repairing? How did they hurt you?
A show, about Death and the Professor. The professor has come for a lecture. None of his students are there, just a room full of people all of whom look unfamiliar. Death has come for the professor.
I always felt like my life is surrounded by perfection: my overprotective, religious mother, the church, classical piano. Although I forced myself, I was ultimately not very interested in perfection, and it meant my life was defined by falling short of it. I’m tired of goodness and order. I don’t want to be a better person. I just want to see other ugly, fallible characters who won’t make me feel bad about myself. And oh, I’d also like to laugh, so I can feel a bit superior to all the people who are thinner, richer, more beautiful, more successful and more perfect than me.
The professor says “time is not a thing to be exhausted.”
Readers, I invite you too to digress :)
My first thought was, I have ADHD so everything I do is a digression. My second thought (after I went back to sleep for a bit) is that digressions can be interpreted as interruptions, chosen, forces of positive or foul changes, internal / external / combo.
These are just raw notes.
Maybe colonialism was a “digression”.
Maybe my teenage great-grandmother was digressed into marriage.
Maybe creative digressions resist capitalism.
Maybe my haphazard creativity is a digression.
Like bees digress pollen and birds digress the seeds of future forests.
A digression as a choice might come from privilege.
Or it could be catalytic self-healing. Breaking intergenerational trauma.
Thank you for your question. I wished this was what uni was like. It mostly wasn’t! But there’s time in the the footnotes for dreams to happen!
Very glad to hear these thoughts about digressing, Betty. Makes me think of the flaneur – similarly self-indulgent (privileged?) in many ways, but also seductively counter-cultural!