You tried to stop me being a vampire and I am grateful (31st May 1997)

You tried to stop me being a vampire, and I am grateful, but it's no good, it's all I can be, but before I was tormented and ashamed by it, now I feel relaxed and content about it. I don't feel particularly good about myself at times, but I know I never try to hurt another human being, I know I never try to diminish another human being, and as long as I never have anything to reproach myself for, I can feel contentment and acceptance of myself. I have no bitterness for them. If you cannot think positive thoughts, it's best not to think them at all. I prefer to fill my mind with beautiful, intelligent, kind people who I admire and respect and look up to. The ugly people I just politely remove from my memory banks. I only want the admirable people in my memory banks. I feel sorry for the others, because they are only hurting themselves. Hatred does more harm to the possessor, etc. It will be on their conscience not mine. They are storing up an awful lot of trouble for themselves. 

I think Sarah was ignoring the reality of my condition.

It's like a submarine deep under the sea under the terrible pressure (30th May 1997)

It's like a submarine deep under the sea under the terrible pressure, and you suggest opening the hatches. Then I sink and drown.

Autistic people live in their narrow blackened world, their very narrow range. Keep their eyes to themselves, their personalities locked inside. They are perfectly intelligent but it is a flat gramophone record. Most people's intelligence is in a round globe. Because normal people have got fingers, you're presuming I've got fingers too. 

Writing is expelling the poison from your body. Otherwise you will poison yourself. You have all these suitcases filled with mud, and you have to carry them round everywhere with you, in case there are still some specks of gold in there you've missed. 

I'm blinkered. I can't break out of the 2 dimensions to think in 3 dimensions. I can't make that leap to a globe, that can only happen in the first 3 months. That split second sudden mystical inflation.

Lorca was on the brink of suicide when he left Spain (29th May 1997)

Lorca was on the brink of suicide when he left Spain, but America was such a horrible experience, he left pleased to not be like them, pleased to be himself, pleased to be back in beautiful lovely Spain. I haven’t had to be in a room with another person because I’ve had the money in my bank account to be completely free. You’ve increased my range of possibilities for me. Wishful thinking is no good. I can’t be with them. My head’s full of daydreams and fantasies and my stories, I love enjoying them in my head and putting them down on paper when I get them. I never want to lose that. My life had been intolerable and the thing is for me to find some way out of that, to a point where it is good again, and you give me the supporting arm to help me do that. I just came out of a different exit to the one you were always pressing me towards. I’ve lived my life alone and I think she should recognise that. Forcing me to engage with people at work was an unbearable experience. I was disappointed she did that, because that made things worse. Van Gogh had a madness to paint. Cocteau this madness to be a poet. You were trying to kill that, chose to ignore that. 

This room holds so many possibilities for me now. I don’t think you should be disapproving of that. Everyone has to find their own path in life, a river has to carve its own course. I wouldn’t dissuade you from being a psychiatrist. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t dissuade me from being a daydreamer and storywriter. This is my most natural path, it’s where I’m happiest. I’m not talkative, charming, that’s the only way I’m allowed to have sense of worth. People make me feel I’m worthless if I’m not socially skilled and charming, which I’ve always been hurt by. But you did the same thing, made me feel I had to become charming and sociable to have any sense of worth. I think that’s very upsetting—you won’t accept me and give me a sense of worth for being me. There’s a lot of different species in the world, some talkative and some silent. I don’t see one as having less worth than the other, so why do you pressurise me to become the other kind of species. I was being threatened with extinction as the last silent of the species, and you came and helped them extinguish me. Because you’re not allowed to be silent in this world. There’s only room for the talkative species. Well, I disagree. 

I feel people in this world are trying to crush me, and I felt that you just joined in. That’s the saddest thing about my time with Sarah. Just for one person to support me in my right to silence. All my life people have told me you’re not allowed to be silent, which has made the world seem very hostile all my life. He wanted you to give him a sense of worth even if he is silent. Because people are always trying to steal my sense of worth from me, and destroy me. They try and take my self-respect from me. Sarah joined in. 

I wanted you to give me a break and say it’s all right, you can be who you want to be. But you didn’t, just like them, you tried to make me just like them. Reinforcing the view I’ve got no worth unless I am like them. I wanted “you’ve got worth for who you are” but I didn’t get it, I got “you’ve got no worth unless you’re just like them”. I know you’re not talkative, I know you’re not a dazzling social talent, but you’ve still got worth. But you didn’t, you made him feel that you agreed with them, he’s got no worth. I’ve got a real problem that people show no sympathy for, and you didn’t either. I felt sad and frustrated because she didn’t listen to me, she stuck to her agenda. I felt the same hostile pressure that he felt at work, at job centre, at school. You’d sided against him. I hope you haven’t got a set agenda; accept I’m different. I’ve got my own path to follow. I feel Sarah would never acknowledge that. You shouldn’t pressure me to be with people, you should talk to me about how I don’t need people and their snide remarks, give me a sense of worth for being me. You should acknowledge everyone’s got their own path in life. 

These people have got no inner resources, and desperately need entertainment from outside. I have got massive inner riches, so everything outside can only be a drab and poor substitute. This 12 months safety and composure behind me will make me stronger and more able to resist their attempts to change me. You opened me out and made me more vulnerable to their attacks, this strength has enabled me to protect myself better. 

I’ve achieved some limited objectives, which is miraculous. I think it’s really stupid to expect me to go straight from 26 years of fantasy life to sudden brutal real life in 16 brutal weeks. That could only destabilise me more, and make things more unbearable. 

Bitter and betrayed, he went to New York for six months. He was so bitter he wanted to go somewhere that he hated, so he went to New York for 6 months. There he found himself, by recognising what he didn’t want to be, by recognising what he rejected, and what was special in himself and in his homeland. Then he never looked back. 

Our difference of opinion: she thinks it’s a matter of learning. I think it’s a matter of irreparable damage to my brain during those first 3 months. 

There’s no point being alive if you can’t be yourself. I’d rather be that sore thumb sticking out than cut that thumb off to please the stupid people. I’m supposed to change to fit in with the people who make snide remarks at me every day. These people are trying to crush me and she’s taking their side against me. I think she should recognise I was unstable when I came to her, I didn’t need her pushing me as well. You kept opening me up, making me more and more vulnerable, I couldn’t take it anymore, it was hurting too much. Why did she do that? If you’ve got a bleeding wound you need to protect it. I like Peter Sellers because he was fucked up. I like reading about autistic people because they have no relationships, will always be frustrated in attempts to have relationships. 

Me as a little boy is like my brother. I love him. Beautiful sad little lonely boy. I miss him. He died when he was 4½ years old, that’s when his life ended. I’d give anything to have him back again. You should say it doesn’t matter, you’re different but you’ve still got worth. But you didn’t, you put the same pressure on me to stop being different. My differentness is the best thing about me. I don’t want to be mediocre like them.

Going down the road I felt like Oscar Wilde (28th May 1997)

Going down the road I felt like Oscar Wilde, Stephen Fry. Beautiful and ugly at once.
I am fascinated by this expedition into my interior. It sounds quite pornographic.
I'm like black, I take everything in and use it but radiate nothing back. It absorbs light and heat, and radiates nothing back off again. It becomes a closed hothouse system inside the black.
An exotic Oscar Wildean, Brazilian granite, Victorian, vampiric world.
It requires a leap of faith I cannot make. It's over the black horizon: I can't see it. You say move towards it and you eventually will, the new world, but I say you are just sending me closer to the edge where I will fall into black space, it is increasingly less safe the further I move towards it. I stay dead in the centre of all the centrifugal forces and will never get pulled out to the edge, like a marble on a gramophone record. I don't want some bland empty new world, I want to stay and make a better job of the old world, start to mine all these cultural and moral riches that have always been here untapped. Now I can start to make use of them. When you've given me the ability to mine all the riches that have always been here, why would I want to travel to some new world there. I wanted to go, when everything felt dead here, I was not living in a treasure chest, it had become a suffocating coffin. Lorca wanted to go to New York, which he knew he'd  hate, because he had to escape the deadness of Spain. It is saying Sarah helped me to be more myself.

I took a 6  month holiday to the New World, and came away more Andalusian than ever. Lorca came to New York feeling dead and feeling Spain was dead, but though New York was so loud and noisy, he came away feeling in comparison he was more alive and Spain was more alive. I'm sure there's a flaw in this plan. Ah, that's the clever bit. You've got to adjust your thinking. I am different. I'm not like you. Most brains are like a globe, but some are like a gramophone record. This is genuinely how I see the world. You describe a world I don't recognise. You describe a world you inhabit, but you've no experience of my world. It is a flat gramophone record. That lack of stimulation at birth, prevented the two dimensional gramophone record from mutating into a round globe. The left side of my brain is just a black vacuum, it was never built. So that could be quite a problem for you. Every so often you meet someone who makes you wish you were a globe. You've been waiting 26 years to mine the gramophone record, all the incredibly complicated recorded treasures in every groove, with no start in sight, then you meet someone like bob and the gramophone record suddenly wants to be a globe, otherwise it can't bear life anymore. You try and make it happen, get me over the edge to the New World, but like elastic after 6 months I snap back again. With relief, to be a gramophone record again! The riches! And now you find the gems and jewels are starting to come to the surface. You can start mining now. Your eyes are suddenly filled with the riches, you cry with joy and pleasure. Why would you ever consider leaving now. Sarah has given me the ability to mine the riches now.

It was the desire of a gramophone record to become a globe. Then after 6 months elasticated stay in the new world, he snaps back, and now the desire of a gramophone record to be a gramophone record!

For a while I wanted to be someone else, which I believe is impossible, then a brief 6 months glimpse of what it would mean to be someone else, then with relief I wanted to be myself again. All I know about is what's inside me. Sarah has opened up my interior to me, for my exploration. Like the Amazon was inaccessible and unexplored before the first explorers started to break into it and find amazing unbelievable things.

If some woman had come to me at 19 and said I'd pay for you for the rest of your life, that would be lovely.

People who attack me are envious, because they know I've got more riches than them.

Carmen in Spanish! Yes, I must go now!

See, going to Soho does stimulate my brain!

You're saying if I just let myself go, take the safety catch off. I'm saying there's nothing there.

 

I've realised now quite happily that a vampire is all I can be (26th May 1997)

I've realised now quite happily that a vampire is all I can be, the question is whether you can bear it or find it unbearable. All my life it was on the edge of being unbearable, then after black bob for 9 months it became unbearable, and my life stopped. Sarah made it bearable again, and downright enjoyable. I enjoy being a vampire now, I like the freedom of it. I had a crisis of faith and Sarah was my priest who helped me through it. Sarah was my priest, she talked it over with me for the few months of the therapy, and helped me through. I've gone back to my faith, with great joy and happiness now. 

I'm a vampire, it's no good trying to make me a normal social person. I can only be what I am. I will never find happiness trying to be something I'm not.

 

 

A British Empire ruled by Oscar Wilde (21st May 1997)

A British Empire ruled by Oscar Wilde. 

Eric Cantona enjoyed the photographers crammed around his car, as he refused to answer questions. He relished the abuse. It’s good to be talked about, it proves you exist. Whether it’s good or bad. Nothing bad ever happens. 

Couldn’t I write a straightforward Hemingway story even now? Who have I got? 

Because nobody listens. They just keep asking stupid questions. I love Peter Sellers because he’s fucked up like me. Being There makes me cry, because that’s like me. The last film he made. His lifetime dream because he thought it was about him. Peter Sellers had raging self-hate, that’s why he destroyed all his marriages. It made things worse: From the engagement. Total withdrawal. 

If you go out more, you meet people more, set in chain more possible juxtapositions, like on Monday I went on bus and train and had at least 4 or 5 significant meetings. Get the bus on Friday perhaps?

 

Dreaming my daydreams, writing my stories, without hurting anybody else (17th May 1997)

Dreaming my daydreams, writing my stories, without hurting anybody else, and without trying to disturb anybody else. It's amazing how much abuse that attracts. That's all right. I pretend I am Oscar Wilde, F.G.Lorca. Until I have achievements of my own, I wear theirs like an overcoat. To get abuse thrown at you in the street, you'd think that you must really have hurt someone, but it's not so. It's good. If I am annoying the stupid people, I'm doing the right thing. That's all right. To deliberately try to hurt another human being surely you must be completely obsessed by them. 

The majority of people are of low intelligence and pretty ugly personalities. When they find someone intelligent and beautiful and pure and serene in their midst, they don' t like it. They try to crush you, goad you into being ugly back. I take great pleasure in defying them. I like to remain intelligent and beautiful and pure and serene. So it will continue to eat away at them.

14th May 1997

 

"Deaf and dumb—that is what the French have become"

"Deaf and dumb—that is what the French have become. What pleasure can there be in opposing this stupidity, this weakness, finding happiness despite their eagerness to destroy it, escaping when they believe they have surrounded you, falling in their midst when they've forgotten all about you, splattering them with waves. 

A frivolous and academic race of idiots. Everything I detest. Remarkable minds, noble hearts float on this swamp like wrecks of the charming fleet that once was France and the city of Paris. 

I shall be---all my life and after my death---misrepresented, insulted, calumniated, dragged through the mire. Doubtless I'm paying for the happiness I find in the calm and confidence of those I love. You never stop paying, and you can never pay dearly enough."

Jean Cocteau

"The fact remains that the four greatest novelists the world has ever known, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, wrote their respective languages very indifferently" (9th May 1997)

"The fact remains that the four greatest novelists the world has ever known, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, wrote their respective languages very indifferently. It proves that if you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and if you have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write." "'You want strength, novelty, compactness, intensity of interest, a single vivid impression left upon the mind. Poe is the master of all.'" 

"The detective stories were 'admirable...so wonderful in their masterful force, their reticence, their quick dramatic point'". 

"When Doyle was enthusiastic about a subject it did not have to make sense, and he did not bother to follow it through and weld a story into a logically coherent whole. In a sense, he is the precursor of the children's serials of the 1930s cinema, in which each episode ends on a question mark. How the problem is resolved is of no consequence, provided that it is; he was a victim of the serial-writing habit in which impetus is all."

Somerset Maugham, A Writer's Notebook 

8th May 1997

 

 

Look to the future now (6th May 1997)

Look to the future now.