Narrative

Ever since I can remember, I have had a narrative going on in my head. I recall making observations, such as "Mell D plans to get on her bike and ride fast through the mud, to get splashed and really dirty, and then enjoy getting all clean and reading her book upstairs while drinking strawberry Nesquik and spying on Vernon and Graham playing football in the road" and "Mell D sneaked up the garden path, no one could see her. She looked at the biggest, fat red roses and felt the velvety petals"... and on and on. Even when I was 22 and had had far too much to drink at a work party and was slumped on a bar, on the verge of passing out, I could hear "Mell D was found slumped on the bar after drinking eight black Russians and three beers"... and in my head I could see the front page and imagine my parents' shame at how their daughter had ended up.

It extended to everything. It was almost as though I was writing headlines and then a story to accompany it. Putting the most mundane into story form has always appealed to me, and it is something I've been lucky enough to do for a living.

Sometimes my childhood narrative would have me at its centre and at other times, I put everyone around me into the ever-growing tale/account of life as a young girl in northwest London. I used to do it so much that I worried that I was odd. Maybe I was. Perhaps I still am. I am constantly observing and soaking up what's going on around me, sometimes exhausting myself in the process. I have to stop myself at times: I close my eyes on the bus and train to stop some of my senses from becoming saturated. I have to plug in my iPod so that I don't tune into all of the conversations around me (I learned at a young age how to listen to more than one conversation at a time, keen to know everything). Too often, I see or hear something and think: "I must remember that" but on top of all the things that I really do need to recall, my brain becomes overloaded and it tires me, and I forget.

I think I need to learn to meditate. To switch off this unending stream of thought, planning, noticing, analysis. I am interested in seeing what happens in the 'silence' that you allegedly experience when meditating. That in itself will be something to write home about...