Kevin McGeary

Well, to quote a character in Alan Bennet’s play ‘The History Boys’: ‘History? It’s just one ****ing thing after another’. When I was a kid, anyone who was old enough to have fought in a world war was already of pensionable age. And I was only seven when the Soviet Union – seemingly the last great opponent of liberal democracy and Western hegemony – collapsed.

It was tempting to buy into the popular misreading of Francis Fukuyama and believe that history was over. But now it is very much back, and unlike our forebears in the first half of the twentieth century, we cannot just go and fight for our chosen cause, since weapons of war have developed to the point that using them is unthinkable.

Activities

One pupil has moved from four to eight lessons a week, so business is good. To boost public awareness, I am still holding twice-monthly free lessons via The Mandarin Club. I also did my first freelance work for a gaming company that translates instructions from Chinese. On the downside, I missed out on several freelance gigs that I really wanted and turned down several others that weren’t quite right.

Since writing is a personal passion project, I am generally reluctant to take it on as a paid job. It will be some time before I have much to show for it, but I have some essays, books reviews, and comedy sketches that I have finished writing and should make an appearance this year.

While applying for a tutoring gig, I came across a quote that I once listed as among my all-time favourites. It is by the Paraguayan guitarist Agustin Barrios Mangore: “One cannot be a guitarist without bathing in the fountain of culture”.

Though seemingly elitist, it is true that one cannot get the inspiration to create without standing on the shoulders of giants. Having been off booze for Lent this entire month, I have read on average over a novel a week. The absorption of great literature will hopefully manifest itself in weird and wonderful ways.  

Output

This month’s miscellaneous cover is ‘Angel’ by Jimi Hendrix, a song said to be inspired by a dream vision of his mother, who died when he was a teenager:

The next The Kev album is coming along nicely. I think I have an appropriate song for near the beginning

and the end

There is a line in ‘Empty Your Mind’ part 1 about helping people forget their ‘grey little lives’. But now the unglamorous lives of ordinary people are being affected by global affairs in ways that are impossible to ignore.

Wider World

At the start of this year, the UK, like much of the rich world, was already destined to face a cost-of-living crisis. Now the war in Ukraine is set to wreak havoc on energy prices. This reminds me of an extract from David Lodge’s 1988 novel ‘Nice Work’ which observes how a housewife switching on a kettle is blissfully unaware of many things:

the building and maintenance of the power station that produced the electricity, the mining of coal or pumping of oil to fuel the generators, the laying of miles of cable to carry the current to her house, the digging and smelting and milling of ore or bauxite into sheets of steel or aluminium, the cutting and pressing and welding of the metal into the kettle’s shell, spout and handle, the assembling of these parts with scores of other components – coils, screws, nuts, bolts, washers, rivets, wires, springs, rubber insulation, plastic trimmings; then the packaging of the kettle, the advertising of the kettle, the marketing of the kettle to wholesale and retail outlets, the transportation of the kettle to warehouses and shops, the calculation of its price, and the distribution of its added value between all the myriad people and agencies concerned in its production.

You can read the whole extract here.

As of this week (April 1st), utility bills here are set to skyrocket, as caused by global phenomena. Unlike a century ago, history has decided to put the pandemic ahead of the major war in Europe. Although those times are no longer within living memory, from what we know about humans and history, the world somehow muddles through and learns as little as possible.

I always wondered what it would be like to live through major historical moments. Now I know. It sucks.

Still, we can’t stop living our little lives. Speaking of which, a new song I wrote covers the issue of modern warfare. Here are some things I’ve been up to this month.

Output

I was very pleased to finish my latest Chinese song this month 《某个地方的某个人》， which is roughly my third from last ever piece of Chinese-language song-writing.   It would have been nice to have become more famous and got more media attention over these more than ten years of creating Chinese lyrics, but not being prominent on the radar of the Chinese government has its advantages.

I didn’t bother adding subtitles this time because it is pretty much a translation of my English song ‘Someone Somewhere’.

I also finished two new English songs, ‘Glorious Times’ and ‘Bucket List’ and a new classical guitar video.

Activities

Attempts at getting more non-fiction published this year have been at a stuttering start. I have written an article about Tom Lehrer titled ‘The Twentieth Century’s Most Unassuming Literary Genius’. In March I will rewrite it and try to find another home for it.

Tutoring is still going well but I’m always trying to expand my business. This month, I held two free sample Mandarin lessons and in March will hold one for beginners and another for intermediate readers.

I have also started a new series of covers in which, unlike before, I use a proper mic set-up. The first in the series is ‘Where Angels Play’ by The Stone Roses.

Wider World

One of the most talked about books of the past decade was ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’, a door-stopper in which psychologist Steven Pinker argues that we are living through a ‘long peace’ and violence has progressively decreased over the course of history. Most of his arguments could also have been made in 1913, before the collective suicide of Europe.

Times change but of course human nature never does. A megalomaniac in charge of a powerful country has started a war for territorial expansion over a historical claim.  This has again been enabled by the West’s complacency.

Somehow Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy or Brazil, has tentacles all around the world. In the UK, the ruling Conservative Party has accepted £2.3 million in Russian donations since the current prime minister took office.

I don’t judge people for getting involved with unscrupulous players. I had my dealings with China (a country that is highly likely to start a war of aggression against Taiwan at some point in the 2020s), but the way so many people have allowed themselves to accept dirty money reminds me of a quote from former Literature professor John Carey: “The face of evil is neither fearsome nor formidable. The face of evil is weak, self-serving, and a bit pathetic. Not so unlike our own.”

Having completed Dry January, I got a lot done this month both creatively and professionally. This year I am also going to give up drinking for Lent and Sober October, and maybe in 2023 it will be OYNB (one year no beer).

Activities

To boost business, I have started offering free online Mandarin lessons at least once a month. At the moment, one of the lessons is for absolute beginners and another is in intermediate reading.

I am also hosting various events related to both language and music. Six months’ worth of China Book Clubs have already been scheduled. The next is ‘Little Gods’ by Meng Jin.

Output

When it comes to future albums or gigs, a song is either a show-stopper or not worth including. This month I finished two English songs – one about a lover with a heroic flaw and a mock pop anthem – but will probably rework them later as they are both in the demo stage.

I have also finished a new classical guitar video:

Wider World

The world is watching nervously at the prospect of Russia invading Ukraine. That is, the democratic world. China is less afraid. Although not technically allies, Russia and China have increased military cooperation in recent years. A war in Europe could empower China to take Taiwan while the West is distracted, as the nationalistic blogger Huashan Qiong Jian has said.

Alexander Gabuev, a China expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center think-tank, has said: “If war happens, it will be a huge distraction for the US. For China, that would be an opportunity of the same magnitude as 2014.”

As the recent Peng Shuai episode has shown, the Chinese Communist Party is as autocratic, thuggish, and opaque as it ever was. There are a million things wrong with the West, but when I compare the two, I am reminded of a quote from Clive James, ‘Democracy is even more important for what it prevents than for what it provides.’

For me, and many others, 2021 is ending as it started, under house arrest. I have just tested positive for COVID for the first time. I’m 37 and fully caught up with vaccines so should be fine but will take things slowly in the coming days. December has been another busy month.

Activities

To increase and diversify business, I have joined a new tutoring platform, Music Tutors. It is a sleek and highly reputable organization that I can’t wait to start teaching over.

This month’s main piece of writing is an essay about why I am abandoning a major writing project, for the time being. It contains a bit of literary commentary and mostly memoir. It was cathartic to write.

Output

If I write half as many songs in 2022 as I did in 2021, then it will have been a good year. The final song I wrote this year is another long, experimental one. It is titled ‘Music to Make Love to’

Wider World

This month’s China Book Club was Philip Pan’s ‘Out of Mao’s Shadow’, which was published in 2008. It begins by pointing out that at the time of writing, China was going through the freest and most prosperous period in its long history. But the book covers the battle for the soul of the People’s Republic and the various characters involved:

On one side is the venal party-state, an entrenched elite fighting to preserve the country’s authoritarian political system and its privileged place within it. On the other is a ragtag collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, hustlers, and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open, and democratic China.

The year after the book was published, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were all blocked in China. Now the entire non-Chinese internet is effectively closed. This month, the behaviour of the authoritarian government has reached new lows.

Police arrested six members of Stand, an independent news organisation, which has also been closed down. This took place in Hong Kong, where the world’s most trusted news outlets had been stationing themselves for many decades, due to the relative lack of corruption or despotism.

Then there is of course the bizarre case of tennis player Peng Shuai, who accused former member of China’s highest ruling council Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Her re-emergence has somehow managed to be even more disturbing than her initial appearance.

This all supports the conclusion reached in ‘Out of Mao’s Shadow’, that the government of one of the world’s two superpowers is both to be reckoned with and ‘irredeemably corrupt’.

Year-End Roundup

This year has been creatively excellent, professionally passable, and romantically mediocre. Business as usual really.

The first few months of the year, when restrictions were at their tightest, I lived in a rental while trying to push a purchase through. At that time, I:

• Wrote several songs that ended up on the latest The Kev album, including ‘Someone Somewhere’, ‘The Great British Indie Song’, and ‘Cancel Me’.
• With businesses being closed, options for romantic gestures were thin on the ground, so I wrote what I think are my two best non-offensive love songs, ‘Far Away’ and ‘Open Gates’.
• Finally got a mortgage.

Overall, I have:

• Built and consolidated several professional relationships and made some money along the way.
• Published my first short story collection, ‘The Naked Wedding’, which was the product of years of agonizing toil. Here is a Q&A about the book.
• Recorded in a studio with an actual producer, plus drummer and bass player for the first time. The result is by some distance the best production quality any of my songs have ever had.
• Recorded many new Spanish guitar videos, including renditions of ‘The Flower Duet’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’
• The year was bookended by gigs that I consider highlights of my creative life. One was in February, an online showcase of my Chinese-language songwriting

• The other was in November, the long-delayed triple album launch

Anyone who has written something enviable will have gone through some unenviable experiences to have done so. The most acclaimed generation of American novelists were those who were of an age to fight in the Second World War. These included Kurt Vonnegut, who was a prisoner of war in Dresden, and JD Salinger, who was at Utah beach on D-Day.

Most good writers have not fought in a world war and, contrary to stereotypes, did not necessarily have miserable childhoods. But good writers are resilient.

In some walks of life, newcomers are subjected to all kinds of brutal initiations. As recorded in the song ‘The Apprentice’ by bawdy balladeer Kevin Bloody Wilson:

Singed me eyebrows off with an oxy torch stuck an air hose up me arse,

Pinched the wheels off me f***in’ push bike peirced me ear with a rivet gun,

He’s only the apprentice and we’re only havin’ fun.

The literary world does no such thing to its young. It doesn’t need to. Aspiring writers do enough violence to themselves. Another thing writers tend to have in common is being oddballs. My new year’s resolution as an aspiring writer is an odd one. It is to NOT work on my novel in the coming year, having started it over three years ago.

In most professions, to abandon a years-long project is seen as an unequivocal defeat. But two writers I have studied under – Sean O’Reilly and Ashley Stokes – have written about doing just that and feeling fine about it.

Why I Write Fiction

Most writers have an inspiring story behind why they write. I don’t.

It was late November 2013, on Lamma Island, Hong Kong. I woke up feeling comprehensively terrible about myself, despite not having drunk enough to be hungover. I was weeks away from turning 30, and a few seconds after waking up, I began to recollect why I felt this way.

I was staying with an academic friend Chester (not real name). The previous night he had gone on the offensive about how I was wasting my life writing ‘ridiculous’ songs, when I had a master’s degree and should be using it to hold down a high-status career.

By most conventional metrics, he was more successful than me. He was fully employed when I wasn’t. He was married while I was single. And he was making his own way in one of the world’s most competitive and expensive cities, whereas I had never had a high salary or been associated with a prestigious institution.

That day he doubled down on his claims about my songs and my master’s. One monologue, in which he wore a self-satisfied grin, displaying the confidence of a professional who worked with governments and NGOs, ended with the clear statement that if I continued on the creative path I was on “you’re a loser”.

When I asked what he suggested I do instead, he said “I think you should market yourself as a short story writer”. My Master’s degree was in Creative Writing, kind of. I completed it in 2006, three years before I met Chester, and I have never held an opinion in my entire life with as much conviction as Chester held his opinion about my master’s degree.

Subsequently, becoming a published short story writer became on obsession.  

I did partly ignore Chester’s advice. I’m nuts but not that nuts. I got a job in a multi-national company that he described as ‘selling out’, I did fine in the job but was never fully engaged because of my fixation on short stories.

Two important books I read early in the journey were by authors of about my own age. ‘The Incarnations’ by Susan Barker is set in China and is the kind of book that aspiring writers should probably avoid because it will make them feel inferior. The other was short story collection ‘Spoiled Brats’ by Simon Rich. It had a mixture of technical accomplishment (which I was a long way from acquiring) and unpretentious joie de vivre (which friendship with Chester had knocked out of me).

Eventually, after countless drafts, bleeding onto the page every working day for three-and-a-half years, and spending thousands of pounds on tutors and mentors, the acceptance letters started to arrive.

Most short story writers are used to being annoyingly asked when they will finally write a novel. Learning to ignore overbearing people has never been my strong suit, so I set about beginning one in late 2018.

Literature is one of the few fields in which megalomania is a good thing, so it was time to write my magnum opus.

The Novel Itself

My novel (working title ‘Fallen Souls’) is a psychological thriller in which a woman is relentlessly stalked by an anonymous internet user who knows intimate details about her everyday life and claims to have known her through four previous incarnations.

It has had multiple beta-readings, including from Darling Axe, Fish Publishing, and The Literary Consultancy. Each rewrite has been more polished and fleshed out than the last.

Aside from bringing it up to standard, there are other reasons why it will be very difficult to ever get published. The viewpoint character is a woman of colour from another culture. She is also a sex worker who does not unequivocally hate her job. The more I rewrote it, the more I side-stepped these problems. The different culture that Lotus is from is a fictional one, so no need for a sensitivity reader from a nationality that doesn’t exist. The portrayal of the sex industry is even-handed, neither relentlessly bleak nor breezily positive.

Also, the more I rewrote it, the more prominence the male antagonist received. If I ever complete it, the novel might spend as much time in his shoes as the heroine’s. This would help either embrace or evade accusations of the male gaze.

Even so, nobody ever wrote anything good by pandering to trends in the publishing industry. And issues with marketability are not a good enough reason to abandon a creative project. When a subject is taboo, there is all the more reason for writers to write about it. So why am I abandoning it?

To work, a piece of writing needs to be unpretentious, it needs to flow out. It also has to be necessary. At this point, I cannot think of a reason why continuing with ‘Fallen Souls’ in the near future is in any way necessary.

Why does anyone write anything?

There are many bad reasons to write a book. These include fame, fortune, and a place in history. There are far more sensible, less laborious ways of achieving those things.

The only good reason to write is that creative people are wired to create, as cats are wired to hunt. Few people understood this better than Gustav Holst, who wrote “Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you”. The most creatively fertile periods of my life happened when I didn’t force it.  

In all good stories, the central character goes through big changes, and my journey as a writer is a more neatly-structured story than any fiction I have written.

Writing has caused me to pick up a lot of valuable habits, including to finally start setting standards for the company I keep. The first person I formally cut out of my life was Chester. In a good story, every character wants something. Chester wanted to be listened to and be thought of as wise and sagely. I listened to him very carefully and reached the only conclusion I possibly could – he is about as sage and as wise as that bloke on the Internet who fucked a horse and died.

The best advice I have ever received came from the literary translator Bruce Humes, who won’t mind me sharing this:

To say that the time spent on this novel was time wasted would be like saying that time spent on training for a marathon was wasted by every competitor who didn’t win.

I once had a summer job selling books door-to-door in Illinois. Our rather cultish Tennesseean employers gave us a special vocabulary to describe our situation. Getting the cops called on us was called “the blue light award”. “Executive exercises” were a ritual similar to the New Zealand Hakka that we carried out in the Denny’s car park every morning. A zero-sales day was known as a “character building day”.

Writing a novel is as character building as it gets.