Tuesday 9 February 2016

Angst

For audio click here 
How can you live in Cardiff and not write about the inclement weather? I’m sitting here trying to think of a story and all I can hear is the clatter of rain against my window and the howling wind that sounds like an asthmatic giant is gasping for breath. Don’t fall into the cliché Gareth, I tell myself. But it’s hard not to when the wild weather is omnipresent. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all full of pictures, videos and stories of the storm and the damage it’s left in its wake. From the waves battering the coast at Aberystwyth to the tree falling on a house in Canton, drama abounds.
And then the wind stops, the rain abates. Silence. I sit and listen. Has the storm blown itself out? Does it maybe look a little brighter outside? Now is the time to write. I try to imagine sunnier climes where the birds don’t cower from the gales, shopping bags and wheelie bins don’t fly past my window, and puddles are not Loch Ness deep. I imagine the sun glinting off the still sea, warmth on my skin and a song in my heart. Maybe I can set my story there. But then it’s forgotten as I am shaken from my reverie by the rattling windows, and the moaning gusts, the rain lashes my roof.   The tick of the clock reminds me I will soon need to don the sou’wester and head into the storm, battling the elements and taking a soaking just to get to school.
I know that right now a thousand Welsh writers are, like me, trying to describe how the wet Welsh weather pervades the soul and embodies the very spirit of the mysterious Hiraeth. Describing how rain drips off the leaves and slowly seeps into the ground becoming part of Wales itself. We are all trying to find the original adjective to describe the wind or a unique verb to portray exactly what it does to the trees or the road signs or the useless umbrellas. Our thesaurus is our friend, if we can keep it from being blown away.
But does the oxygen of publicity we give the storm give it the energy to grow and mutate into a morose, comic parody of itself. Does it feed on publicity like Trump or ISIS? Should we just ignore it and hope it will die out, fizzle away. But we know that like Trump followed Palin and ISIS followed Al Qaida as soon as storm Imogen disappears another will come along. Quiet at first, but then growing in power and searching for weaknesses; desperate for destruction, intent on making life uncomfortable for the masses.

So a decision to make. Write the perfect storm; use the resources nature has handed me but risk falling into cliché or adding grist to the storm’s mill. Or try to block it out and write about a different environment. I’m beginning to miss Prague’s oppressive summers. 

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