PODCAST: Fuel

" I had an idea that... "

I only realise that I am waiting when the voice in my head becomes a narrator...or that " living " only becomes " waiting" when you start telling your life as a story shaped by events.

I tried explaining this idea to Peter Giese. He shut his eyes and listened very carefully and patiently.....He'd never given "waiting" much thought he said. He pondered my idea and talked to me about memory, how we use memory to predict and manage the future. I talked to him about the failures of my memory. As I get older everything starts to become harder to remember because it's more predictable. Predicting future events makes them more manageable, less memorable, more probable and less threatening....Peter shut his eyes again, smiled and explained the German word vorfreude ( "pre-joy). Then we agreed that maybe...the act of anticipation somehow reduces our ability to manufacture memory...

Then I spent a week wandering around my flat unable to write anything.

And then I wrote this.