Layers

I've started writing the novel, and today, I took a walk a bit further than yesterday, beyond the viaduct, into an area I've never been. Freud coined the phrase 'cognitive dissonance', meaning an instance where something can be familiar and yet foreign at the same time. And I felt this today. Because today's walk is pretty much where I'd like to set this novel of mine. Of course, in a psychogeographic novel, setting or place is more than vital. Here's another quote, from Coverley this time about literary psychogeography, which he thought was an 'extra-literary existence somewhere between reality and fiction.' And walking through the mud and unfamiliarity today, I did feel that sense of borderlessness. The going was rough in places, muddy, not particularly 'pleasant'. At one point, in a dip, someone had scattered rubbish: empty take-away containers, crunched-up plastic bottles, almost like a feast had taken place there next to the river. Further on, the river was louder, a flicking blue tongue, and I was, actually walking downwards as if getting down into the bowels of somewhere. At one point, I didn't even think I knew where I could be, precisely, and there was no phone signal. All of this will feature in this novel, of course, one way or another. On the way back, it struck me that there are layers to this place of ours. Look.

It's not just the way I've taken the picture, is it? And I like this picture, the way there's washing hanging out that's clearly unlikely to dry in such dampish weather. That's proper Black Country, that is, hanging out washing when the air is wringing wet. It's like a dare, that washing hanging out there like that. And it's made me think about my characters and what they're like: a fully formed Black Country farmer comes to mind, stubborn, proper Black Country; a wandering woman and an outsider. All the layers of them. That's all I have, for the moment.