(life:) razorblades included
dan holloway
text © copyright 2010 dan holloway
cover image and design © copyright 2010 daisy anne gree
this is the smashwords edition, published 2010 by eight cuts gallery press
the author asserts the moral right to be named as creator of the works contained in this book
dan holloway is a writer, researcher, blogger, journalist and curator. he is a founder member of year zero writers, a space for writers to work on the literature they want to create, free from commercial pressure, and deliver it direct to the reader. he works on multi-arts collaborations and runs the eight cuts gallery, a virtual and real space for arts without disciplinary boundaries. his work has been published, amongst other places, in one in four magazine, xcp streetnotes, emprise review, and the indie handbook. his novel, songs from the other side of the wall, is available to download for free or to buy in paperback (details on his website)
dan can be found at
http://yearzerowriters.wordpress.com
http://agnieszkasshoes.blogspot.com
http://danholloway.wordpress.com
http://eightcuts.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/agnieszkasshoes
other books by dan Holloway
novels
songs from the other side of the wall (2009)
other
SKIN BOOK (2010)
“be spectacular and die living”
for my wife, for being the most spectacular person i know
for oli, sabina, and penny, the most extraordinary voices of this or any other generation
and
for daisy (likewise) take this with you into the desert
introduction: live
Camus was wrong. Whether or not to kill oneself is not the only question. That would be as absurd as those old romantic novels that ended at the altar, as ridiculous as Ewan MacGregor walking into the credits choosing life. The difficult question, the one that matters, the one we have to answer in the real world and not the halls of learning, is what the hell you do next once you’ve decided to live.
For all that so much of the material in this book deals with death, this is a book about life. It has two starting points, the two things we wake up to every day – that it would be so much easier not to open our eyes, but to lie back down and slowly forget to breathe; and that we do not. We take that magnificent, exhilarating, impossible, anarchic, destructive, mind-boggling, terrifying decision to live.
Choosing life does not mean oblating oneself on the altar of beige. To live, in the belief that it is somehow easier to do so than to die; to live, and to believe every obstacle is thereby behind us; these are acts of self-deception I long to able to perform, but can’t. For many many people, making the choice to live means a daily struggle with, and embracing of, pain, hurt, and helplessness.