If The Crowd Are Behind You, You're Facing the Wrong Way

I heard that line (see title) this morning on YouTube; comedian Stewart Lee quoting comedian Simon Munnery. My poetic journey is certainly one of walking away from an audience and seeing who, if any, follow. But walking away nonetheless. I've already managed it with my blog. Take for example my first entry:- "That Email". So far 2733 have viewed that page. And my most recent effort last week in Blogosphere "I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead with it":- guess how many? No, less....no less. Try again...fewer than that.

One. And I think that was probably me. Oh the irony.

Of course one might summise that people peel away because what you have to say is, for want of a better word, shite. Fair enough. But you see, now I'm a dead radio star and a living Poet, I just don't buy into that anymore. Something's changed and, without getting all born again; I believe. Believe in me. Just like I believe in you. As neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl said, there is no greater gift; belief enables us to become what we ought to be and could be.

Going against the crowd though isn't always easy. I feel, for example, that I'm building up to a right corker at my debut gig of new material on Saturday night. But will it stop me? I've just come back from a rehearsal with my trusted fellow poets. They think I should do it but say "the people" will think I'm mad. It's not like I don't even know what I'm letting myself in for. And still I choose to turn. Today is World Mental Health Day. My Mum has bipolar and is currently on a psychiatric ward in hospital. She's been facing the right way all her life, though few would see it like that. If anyone drives me, she does.

In his book, How I Escaped my Certain Fate, Stewart Lee talks about the mistake of publishing unhoned thoughts and half-baked ideas in the form of a blog. Captured in cyberspace for the rest of time.

Have it x

http://www.ruthedixon.co.uk/poems/bipolar.php