I woke up this morning with my own newest music and spoken word track in my head as my daily ear worm. It felt strange and oddly annoying and pathetic. I opened my eyes to the emptiness that is the bed when M gets up way before I do at weekends, and felt nothing but desolation. On the day when I’ve released a new novel (A Fear Of Heights) and a companion spoken word & music track - Goddess Mother (The Real Name For Everest); you’ll be familiar with it as it’s the poem Chomolungma which I posted up here not that long ago.
That voice in my soul - “A book and a track out on the same day? Self-published? Hybrid. And you’ve been plugging the book to death on your socials. Who do you think you are?” I almost got up to come into the office and delete it all. Instead, I forced myself out of bed, into my clothes, and down here to plug some more. But even that still felt wrong, on so many levels. Almost like the Royal Family awarding themselves and each other gongs they’re not entitled to.
I do feel like a fraud. I have gone out and staked my claim for recognition of my skills as a writer and as a song writer and spoken word artist. On whose authority? My own? Does that have any validity at all whatsoever? That’s what keeps going round in my head - that and the fact that there will be precious few sales (although I must say thanks to those loyal and hardy souls which have pre-ordered it already; stock coming very soon).
Perhaps this feeling, and I suppose people will tell me it’s Imposter Syndrome, is because my perception of myself has always been wrong, that I have depended all my life (or at least until I started having therapy) on external validation, and that the person and the soul and the thoughts I see in mirrors of any kind are distorted and bent and damaged beyond recognition because of how I was made to feel when I was a kid. Perhaps. But even after therapy, those shards of the painful and cutting glass of emotional abuse still stick under my skin.
I shall now go for a long walk to try to exorcise those demons all over again, and hold my head up high and feel proud that, as a middle-aged and exhausted man, I have still had the energy to create two pieces of art which are very close to my heart, and which DO have the power to move others.
Here are the US, UK, and German links for the book.
And here’s the universal and international link for the track (which you can also find on all major streaming platforms).
Ordered! And congratulations. It's the ultra-competitive world we live in that makes me sometimes feel like a fraud -- "on whose authority am I an artist? my own?" -- and it's hard to still that voice in one's head. But the work is the proof. Thank you for continuing to do it, both here and in your books and music.