Southampton
An End for The Emergency Kisses
Having been offered a new job, I now live in Southampton. This has come after numerous life changes. These extend to The Emergency Kisses. Or, at least, this iteration of it.
The Emergency Kisses began in February 2023 under the title La Bête (a reference to Borowczyk’s 1975 film, changed when the unrelated film of the same name was released). As with most of my creative output, it was a product of joy: the joy of writing; the joy of getting to have a life full of language; to have a jaw and fingers and lungs and throat that can do words and sounds.
The project unveiled itself as it progressed. This isn’t as cynical as, ‘Oh, artists do whatever they want and invent meaning later.’ Anyone who’s engaged in a creative practice knows the process is like dreaming. The longer one stays with it, has a relationship with it, the more sense it makes.
It became apparent I was playing with my longstanding critiques of autotheory and creative non-fiction. Over the course of two decades, I’ve seen these forms of writing go from a minority in the contemporary avant-garde to being the darlings of MFAs, to being housed by mainstream bookstores. Nothing makes me happier than for Maggie Nelson to be seen as the queen she’s always been. But to see her influence rendered milquetoast was an object lesson in literary acceptability.
Where autotheory was well-wrought and workshopped, The Emergency Kisses was rough, ecstatic and spontaneous; where autotheory elevated and redeemed personal experiences, The Emergency Kisses floundered; where autotheory integrated critical commentary, The Emergency Kisses placed critical commentary on par with non-normative knowledge production through dream, synchronicity, aleatory and stream of conscious; where autotheory could be full of self-importance, The Emergency Kisses not so much; where autotheory pursued high culture, The Emergency Kisses prioritised horror movies and classic British rave.
Now that I know what I’ve been doing, I’ve done it.
This Substack will remain, if only to notify readers of my new books and online publications. All of the previous posts have been removed. It makes room for the new. In synchronistic fashion it’s all very May, very spring. I might publish some of those previous posts in book form but I’m in no rush.
To close this chapter of The Emergency Kisses, here are some photos of my sunny new home:
