Writing at a time like this, Matthew Perry, Studio 60, The Flotilla of Lights
The idea of writing (or, even, writing about writing) feels pretty difficult at a time like this. A year or so ago I signed up for a morning newspaper subscription — to put myself in touch with the world, I thought, after feeling so cut off from it during the pandemic. And so now I wake up every day, pour myself a cup of coffee, and spend the first thirty minutes of my waking hours sitting with the worst news possibly imaginable. It’s a tough way to start the morning.
When I’m done with my brief portion of heartbreak and terror and conflict, it’s hard to sit down and try and write about things that seem so much smaller and less important. It’s an oppressive feeling trying to think about a speculative fiction chamber piece, the mechanics of a domestic relationship, or a literary adaptation when reality — inevitably — intrudes.
Of course, what I’m feeling is guilt. Guilt, not just because I’m sitting safe and secure at home, and the weight of what’s happening is abstract and philosophical for me, rather than material as for so many. But it is also guilt at how I’ll-equipped I am to negotiate the arguments, to understand the right course and — as a writer — the inability to bring what little skill I have to bear on a situation that feels so knotty and resistant to being unpicked. Basically, (and I understand how insensible to the real tragedy that is unfolding this sounds) what is happening is very difficult to write about. And yet, writing is what I do to understand.
It’s a great temptation to lean in and express your horror, or take a side and write about the savagery of the other — that, at least, would have the benefit of flowing more easily. But it doesn’t feel right somehow.
I’m put in mind of the well-trod Yeats quote, from The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” — which I’ve never read as a criticism of belief, so much as a reproof to those of us who consider ourselves good but equivocate — basically, of liberal inertia. We want, I think, to affirm humanity — but what chance of that in a situation that is so intractable, and in which humanity seems in so short supply? Both-sideism is tempting, but a dereliction of duty, this situation is not symmetrical, it never has been — and yet the lack of symmetry only deepens, I think, rather than resolves the moral quandary. And staying silent, of course, is moral abdication.
If we’re to write at all, we have to write about the world — but at the moment I’m so uncertain of my relation to it.
Matthew Perry died last weekend, which was incredibly sad. As is often the case when someone dies, his passing made me think about myself — a guilty and unattractive impulse, I know.
This one hit me pretty hard — almost as though a small building block of my personality had been chipped away. When I was shaping myself as a teenager, FRIENDS seemed at the centre of everything. It wasn’t just popular, but also — for the times — progressive, the voice of a metropolitan, more open way of living. It feels dated now, but to a boy in a parochial small town in the North West of England, it felt like a very alien, but somehow achievable and better world.
As a boy who wasn’t traditionally masculine, and wasn’t very attractive to the opposite sex, but who thought he was clever, it was quite natural for me to gravitate towards Chandler Bing as a model. He used wit as a shield and sarcasm to cover his vulnerabilities. And the way he spoke — much copied and mocked since — had a skittering music to it.
While FRIENDS was of course incredibly important to me, my favourite Perry role was in the short-lived, highly flawed Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; back then I was a big Sorkin nut. I rewatched a couple of episodes and they have, of course, aged badly: not least because of the gender politics. The nostalgia at watching it, though, was pretty comforting.
Sorkin’s TV really tried to do a play in 50 minutes every week — and to maintain that over twenty-two episodes a year. And not just a chamberpiece, but the sort of big American play you’d see mid-century; a Miller or a Williams, with themes and stakes and gravitas.
More important than Halloweens or Guy Fawkes’ Night in our little corner of Edinburgh is an annual ceremony that we call “The Flotilla of Lights”, which takes place on the Union Canal in the final mile stretch before it terminates at Lochrin Basin. We were there on Saturday night.
The flotilla consists of fifteen canal boats, as well as several model boats preceding them (kindly provided by the Edinburgh Model Boat Club). The boats process down the canal, strewn with lights, often with live music being played, though rather mutedly as this stretch of the canal passes through a pretty populated residential area. The tradition is that sweets are thrown from the boats to those on the bank who hold lanterns.
There is an extremely charming, home-spun atmosphere to the proceedings, but even compared to last year there has been a noted uptick in professionalism and the imposition of some straightforward Health & Safety measures. Back then, as we stood on the bank, we were swept up in the sense of Bacchanalian anarchy, as sweets flew through the air, and gangs of feral children scrabbled in the darkness in an attempt to win their prize.
This year — a warden with a loudspeaker explained that stewards would be patrolling with bags of sweets for those not lucky enough to secure them through the traditional way, “Do not panic,” she repeated in a stentorian voice, “DO. NOT. PANIC.”
This message was underlined by a bearded, fifty-year-old steward with the look of a Renaissance pirate who was standing near us. He was wearing a fluorescent jacket, which had been personalised with the name SINBAD. “We don’t approve of scrabbling,” he told us, and then “I need to make it very clear to them: they are better sweetless and dry, than having sweets and wet.” Then he continued on, sweeping the bank with his small torch, laying down the law as necessary.
The flotilla, though a little late and in the wrong order (the warden with the megaphone kept announcing the wrong boat: “Are they overtaking each other before they get here?!?” we heard her murmur to herself sotto voce) — was quite lovely. Our favourites were a boat that had created a representation of Forth Bridge, strung with lights along its length, and one with a singer with an acoustic guitar on the prow, sweetly singing — a little disconcertingly — Radiohead’s Creep.
Then, as quickly as it started, the flotilla was over and the crowd — that had been held somehow suspended in the cold night — started walking back home, witness to something surprisingly spellbinding.
The very kind and excellent writer Cole Haddon has a substack himself, which you can sign up for below. One of his latest posts is an interview with Sarah Phelps, which is quite wonderful.
