The Creative Monster: A Memoir (Preparation)
For almost twenty years, I have been consistently compiling thoughts, entries, doodles, photos, art, conversations, stories, dreams, rants, events, travels, anecdotes, advice, observations and commentary about everything in my life. Written and archived only for myself, in 2019 I finally had time to consolidate, reflect, transcribe, order and refine this stack of content into an autobiography.
After typing tens of thousands of words, transcribing more than 500 pages, digging through decades of photos, editing emo discourses, elaborating further on the juicy and beefy bits, locating pieces of media and other fun content, I’m now in the process of developing a rough outline. Working first to consolidate and refine everything, I’m now shaping this work into a formative memoir, separated into four (or five?) books amongst as many Google documents.
So far, it looks like this:
Book 1 will be light, fun and colourful, much like my childhood itself, focused on art, exploration, adventures in 1980’s / 90’s nostalgia and growing up as the black sheep runt in a whitewashed, blue-collar 1st world post-industrial Canadian town.
Book 2 will be more juicy and coherent. Expanding from a centralized urban radius, it features an expanded focus around my entry into post-secondary education as a young adult, the adventures, exploits and misadventures therein. It also chronicles my entry into the worlds of work and adulting. Looking back however, it seems unnecessarily emo and overthought in comparison to more current work….
In Book 3, things get truly interesting. Beginning shortly before my decision to leave North America, its scope shifts to national to beyond. Set mostly in Berlin, it is based on an actual travel /relationship journal I kept from 2013 - 2017.
According to myself (in an IG post back in 2017), Book 3 alone features “five years, four continents, thirteen countries, one relationship’s rise and collapse into the seeds of another, five apartments, three deaths, various jobs, two passports, ten weddings, dozens of concerts, plenty of flights, twenty-one sketches, scores of lifelong friends, a whole ward of newborn babies, a few secrets and one formative adventure.”
Book 4 is an entirely different beast, seasoned and rising from the rubble left behind in Berlin in Book 3, metamorphasized by resolve and exposure.
Hungry, diligent and revivified, Book 4 again expands in scope, and explores international pursuits, relationships, career development, life choices and the realities that hit home in your thirties. As I’m still writing it, I can’t tell you what plot twists await, but to quote Bowie: ‘I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I can promise you it won’t be boring.’
