the outlier №245 - post-applause
what to do when the clapping stops?
I’m Ben Mercer and welcome to The Outlier. This letter covers a lot of ground — taking in my move from pro rugby player to author and online man of letters — with reflections on books, interesting individuals, cross-cultural connections and the odd detour.
If you like my writing, press the heart icon at the top to like it or consider…
Is a heat hangover a thing? Last week was too hot to think and it seems to have continued into this one but it’s been a fun one. I’m doing a little bit of work with Kindle, the perfect kind of brand tie up given I love my Kindle, and have been doing background beavering on other matters.
There’s been an offer to come in house at an organisation one day per week for a fixed term and I’m tempted (pending details). It would be like a modern artist in residence position, making a range of media on a theme, and it’s the kind of opportunity my online content aims to attract. We’ll see if it figures out.
Otherwise, I’ve been prevaricating on doing things that are actually quite exciting which is foolish. Consider this my commitment to getting it done and sent to you before Monday…
post applause
A friend showed her first major artwork on Friday night.
The gallery was packed, and her small space, up a winding, metal, spiral staircase buzzed with the noise of the fan. A twitching electric bulb bounced on its string, flicking shadows across the room’s white cage cast by the giant sculpture she’d welded over weeks.
It was amazing. Many people told her so. She went home exhausted but content.
Then Sunday came and she confessed,
‘I feel… nothing.’
Why didn’t she feel different? Everyone had complimented her work, why was everything the same?
It’s a classic performance comedown. Like winning the World Cup and expecting to feel complete, you wake up, you’re the same person and now the world is looking elsewhere.
Liberty yawns in your face. What’s next?
Well, you can go for volume.
Creativity might strike you on the head like an apple falling from a tree but mostly it’s a rhythm. Reps. Like lifting weights or swimming laps. Across minutes, days, weeks and months.
Picasso made nearly 150,000 artworks. Isaac Asimov wrote or edited over 500 books, across science, history, sci-fi, and mystery.
“Over a space of 40 years, I published an average of 1,000 words a day. Over the space of the second 20 years, I published an average of 1,700 words a day.”
— Isaac Asimov
Asimov is an all-time science fiction author. How many of his books can you name?
He might have produced some genius but it arrived by making enough stuff. Another all-timer has something similar to say:
“I tell my students: the moment you finish your book, start another. Don’t wait.”
— Toni Morrison
But having seen my friend work, a consistent output isn’t really part of her practice, nor is there a consistent medium. There’s a lot of sitting and thinking (or at least a lot of sitting). In the gallery, most of the artists exhibited multiple pieces. She showed two. It’s deeply considered.
And that’s because excepting blazes of furious insight, creation is a process of slow revelation. Often the answer unfurls slowly and mysteriously, months or years after you broached the question with yourself in the first place. Sometimes you need to figure out what the question even is before you begin to think about answering it.
The same with life. Some ‘psychological knots within us are often untangled by time alone’. You can’t muscle through every problem. Even if you’re an Olympic athlete.
Despite their muscularity, Olympic athletes certainly struggle in the aftermath of major competition, even if they’ve achieved their dreams. To cope, they’re offered ‘performance decompression’, a system including insights from reintegrating returning military personnel into civilian life, developed to aid their sudden lack of a clear or compelling goal.
First comes a ‘hot debrief’, to learn in the immediate aftermath, then a period of ‘time zero’ away from an athletic environment to relax and process. Only once the dust has completely settled, potentially after months away, do proper performance reviews commence and new goals are set.
Even with ‘time zero’ and its mental and emotional break from competition, it’s unlikely Olympic athletes will do no physical training at all for long. Like I used to in rugby, they’ll probably take a week or two of total rest before reintroducing light, often pleasurable exercise, before ramping things back up.
I’d suggest the same blended approach to my friend – have a total break and sit in the silence of the post-applause aftermath, but before the silence becomes deafening, pick up a brush (or a drill) and create something for nothing but fun.
If you rest and recover and then follow a few lines of enquiry for nothing but the joy of it, you might find untangle that knotty problem or even better, you might discover you’ve found a new question worth answering.
❓Has anyone ever hit a milestone and felt… nothing? What got you through it?❓
a book
I’ve been flitting across a few different texts but the two I’ve finished are Ryan Cahill’s continuation of his fantasy serious The Bound and the Broken. I’ve read the second book in the series, Of Darkness and Light (amazon), and accompanying prequel novella The Fall, available for free on his website, that works as an introduction to the bigger books if you’re on the fence about starting.
These books are a definite improvement on the first, the writing is obviously better and the plot is developing nicely beyond the relatively classic (and therefore obvious) setup of the first. The world is expanding at a manageable rate and the time we spend with the supporting characters is as compelling as the main plot.
I’ve also picked up The Grammar of Fantasy (amazon), a beautiful book about writing fantastical worlds and how to encourage children into reading and telling stories from Italian children’s author Gianni Rodari whose ideas changed how creative arts were taught in Italian schools. I will report back with my findings.
a listen
After a bit of a dull run of podcasts, I’ve listened to a couple of fascinating interviews with creatives this week.
The first is this short Rest Is Entertainment episode talking to Adam Curtis, maker of documentaries in a ‘genre of one’. Curtis has a fascinating body of work and here he expounds on his interests and how they relate to our cultural direction of travel.
The second sees two successful Substackers, Iain Leslie and The Times’ James Marriott, consider the impact of AI on writing both as a practice and a career. It’s more nuanced than you might expect.
a quote
An artist is made by their cuts and grazes
– Laura Marling
lastly
Thanks for reading! My work is made possible by you so if you’d like to support me you can buy my books, hire me to do something or you can become a paid subscriber using the button below.
If you want to help me out for free, you can share this letter with someone who might enjoy it, either on social media or by directly sending it to them using the button.
I’ll see you next time.