So this is the end. I’m sorry it has to end like this. It’s not you, it’s me. We had some good times together, didn’t we? I hope we can still be friends. But please, don’t call me.
Yes, breaking up is hard to do. Yet my stint as a columnist had to come to an end sometime. Well, not some time. It’s coming to an end at the exact point it’s meant to. So it goes, as they say in Slaughterhouse Five.
Still, I’m hoping this will be pretty amicable: I really think we should look back at the past six months as a shared period of learning, growing and self-actualisation. I’ve certainly self-actualised the shit out of you guys.
Sadly, not all relationships in the arts can be so mutually beneficial. We all know what it’s like when a favourite artist, once adored, breaks your heart.. Woody Allen, Madonna, Damien Hirst; every art-form has its own icon whose ongoing refusal to call it a day seems to breed never-ending disappointment or desperate self-delusion.
Of course, it sounds melodramatic, even stalkerish, to describe your relationship with a favourite artist in those terms: most of us hardly ever meet ours. Yet, as the name suggests, our idols arouse a kind of passion within us only rivalled, and sometimes surpassed, by our real-world loved ones. They soundtrack our lives; they take us into their interior worlds; they enliven and enlighten our very existence. So of course it can all get pretty messy when they eventually let us down.
I’m currently flirting with the novelist Martin Amis. Flirting with disaster, that is. Like all torrid love affairs, I can’t say I wasn’t warned: I knew his reputation for superficially-dazzling prose masking a hollow heart; the biting sense of humour that belies a cruel, nasty streak. Yet I was seduced by this wily, ageing enfant terrible of English letters throughout my student days and early twenties. Long essays were penned (closer to love letters than critical assessments); books were devoured and re-read in an intimate, specially-ceremonial manner; I would go far out of my way just to catch glimpse of the man, digging out old -interviews or tracking down passing anecdotes in the name of research.
Yet even the most ardent desire can’t blind you to the reality: Amis has been a force in decline for quite some time. Every new book has been met with increasing dread; the excuses I made to friends and colleagues about his increasingly unacceptable public behavior have all but dried up.
By the time I stumbled out of bed to an extended Amis radio interview, I knew we were on the rocks. Reader, I turned the damn thing off. If me and Martin were a couple, we’d be passed couples’ therapy, tear-soaked reconciliations or even a hopelessly-doomed open relationship by now. We’d be into the burning of property, blocked telephone numbers and vengeful attempts to get off with his colleagues.
And yet. I saw him in conversation recently, discussing his new novel The Zone of Interest. And, my, he was like his old self again: sharp, incisive, sage, funny. I found myself out in the cool London air, dizzy, and clutching a signed copy of the book. But Martin, if it’s another let down, I mean it this time; we’re through. Really. Damn you.
Hopefully there will be more dignity in this departure. Hopefully. It helps that, like Doctor Who, I’m about to regenerate into a younger and more dynamic model.
So long and, if you’re ever in my neighbourhood, then look me up. I’m freshly single after all.
The opinions expressed in The Columnist do not necessarily represent those of IdeasTap.
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Image by Chris Peacock Martinez
