It might not be that obvious but I’ve been shifting my methods of creating and sharing these days. I have become more of a private person in my middle years but I still feel the need to create and to share those creations. The pandemic might have forced my hand but I’ve been veering towards this way of working for a while. Instead of aiming at getting into print, I’m posting poems on this substack. Instead of readings and gigs, I’m posting a monthly podcast where I read out some of my new work and engage in the noble discipline of patter. And instead of writing, conceiving and (sorta) touring the odd one-person show, well, I’ll be making a little something like this:

This is the project I’ve been working on for the ten months since I stopped live-writing poems while playing video games on live streams. It’ll be available to watch from 3pm (BST) today [21st September). It’s a monologue about main character syndrome with accompanying video game footage and some stuff I made while farting around with Unity. I didn’t really realise it was about main character syndrome until I wrote the video description last night. I was originally aiming for a cross between a philosophical essay on the self and a guided meditation. But like all these projects, it always goes in another direction and you have to make do with how it turns out and throw it into the world anyway.

Similarly, I initially scripted it to run just under an hour, then I hacked away at the script, tore chunks out of the initial audio recording and finally left some more chunks of video on the digital cutting room floor. I hope that its twenty five minutes don’t outstay their welcome.

I already have an idea for the follow up, but with a new academic term beckoning, I doubt it’ll come to light until next year.

For now, I hope you enjoy First Person. It’s beginning to grow on me.

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