The Words That Formed Me

I have reached an age when many people might expect the important influences to have completed their work and taken their final positions. That assumes considerably more order than I have observed in memory, writing or life. Words have a habit of returning when the listener has changed enough to hear something previously unavailable.

The premise of this book is therefore both serious and slightly ridiculous. A man wakes with songs playing in his head, records them in a diary and later decides to investigate what they have been doing there. Some will unlock memories, others will expose contradictions, and a few may reveal that he has carried borrowed language for so long that it has become part of his own voice. Several may reveal nothing beyond questionable employment practices within the station’s programming department.

I can still hear the child’s delight in “sweeter” and “fatter”, and I do not want the adult to confiscate it entirely. Nonsense has its own value, and not every remembered rhyme needs to be interrogated until it confesses to shaping civilisation. Yet the opening no longer sounds innocent, because I have heard too many desires become plans and too many plans become necessities once the preferred conclusion has been chosen. I have also heard myself perform the same conversion.

Perhaps writing is the place where that contradiction can finally be examined without immediately being resolved. I can allow the logic to remain complete, follow it into the emotional territory it once concealed and speak without first calculating how much of the thought the room will tolerate. The reader is not required to stand at my right hand, but I can at least show them the bridge as I see it. They may recognise their own ashes and temples on the other side.

The analytical Jeff would prefer projections, milestones and a properly funded succession arrangement. He would like to know what lies beyond usefulness as he once defined it and whether meaning can continue producing an acceptable return. The human Jeff is beginning to suspect that some forms of existence do not need to justify themselves through output. He can understand that proposition intellectually while still struggling to live comfortably inside it. The accounts have not yet been finalised.

Oz Jeff Banks developed in a similar way. At first it helped distinguish me from another Jeff Banks who was already known in a different field, but over time the name carried an Australian informality and a slightly exaggerated version of my willingness to be visible. Oz Jeff could write, promote books, tell stories and occupy the public space that Jeff Banks may once have entered more cautiously. Yet he was not an invented Ernest travelling to town for freedom. He was one part of me given a louder microphone.

That may be the real beginning hidden inside the memory. I did not yet possess the voice with which I would later advise, challenge, write and occasionally irritate people who preferred their assumptions undisturbed. I had a musical part and a teacher’s permission, which was enough for that moment. The authority came from outside, but the act of using it began to teach me that a voice could survive being heard.

Age has made me less embarrassed by the human Jeff’s claim. Wanting to be heard is not the same as wanting everybody else silenced, and wanting ownership of one’s contribution is not vanity merely because the contribution arrived wearing a joke. Flavius deserved the line because he understood what it meant within the case he had solved. Brutus could deny him the words, but he could not make the road belong to anybody else.

I have spent much of my life translating complexity into language other people could use. In business, the task was often to hear the technical answer and then find the human words capable of carrying it across the table without diminishing the person receiving it. The internal radio may have been performing a similar translation upon me. It took material I had not yet organised and delivered it in a form already shaped by rhythm, repetition and feeling.

Writing may be the place where the two impulses can coexist more honestly. It is useful in the sense that it may reach somebody, explain something or give meaning to an ordinary life that might otherwise pass without being properly noticed. It is also something I do because the words require a place to go, whether or not another person is waiting with a visible need. Writing does not remove the burden, but it allows me to examine why I picked it up and whether I have mistaken its weight for proof of my worth.

The radio in my head will probably continue to ask, “What about me?” It may ask resentfully on some mornings, reasonably on others and with the Black Dog adjusting the volume when silence would have been kinder. I cannot promise that I will always answer wisely. I can only try to hear the question before turning it into another task, another achievement or another service performed in the hope that somebody else will understand what I have not said.

I also hear the importance of companions. Lidenbrock may possess the driving certainty, Axel may carry much of the fear and Hans may provide the practical steadiness, but none of them completes the journey alone. My younger imagination concentrated on the creatures, storms and impossible landscape because spectacle naturally attracts the eye. My older mind notices the quieter fact that somebody must hold the rope, build the raft, share the burden and keep enough calm for the next decision to remain possible.