Am I an imposter?

Dispatches from the empty theatre of cultural capital, and notes on the Substack economy

Don’t scroll away. Please give me your attention. I’m desperate for it. I need it. I’ve a 30mg prescription of fluoxetine and the medical records to prove it.

I’m so interested in the economy of writing. Of all of you sitting here behind your screens tippy tappying away at clacky little keyboards desperate to have the hot take that starts the fire of a writing career that maybe - just maybe - will take you away from the skull splitting boredom of waking up and brushing your teeth and going to work and completing your KPIs. You want it so bad you’ll share another Carrie Bradshaw meme just to see if anyone’s biting today.

We’re all just one good idea away from being the kind of person people buy the Observer for on a Sunday or has book launch parties in the London Review of Books.

I think I would die to be that person. You would too.

My whole life I’ve been convinced of some kind of nebulous potential - but am I actually an imposter? Can you be your own sleeper agent, blissfully unaware of the fact that you’re actually SHIT?

I’ve sat here reading my own work thinking “god that’s good” and then stared at that lonely singular heart below (I gave it to myself) and thought… am I… am I LITERALLY INSANE?

I know we’re all reading our own hot takes and having to take a sip of milk because we think they’re just SO SPICY. But are we all just too wrapped up in the myth we’ve spun around ourselves to recognise mediocrity when we see it?

Listen. I want to quit my job and live in a cottage and write interesting things. I want to be independently wealthy so that I can afford to pitch all day. Don’t you? You do. I know you do.

Are there any working class writers writing cultural op eds in the guardian right now? How many? What’s the percentage?

I feel like invoking the ghost of Bordieu (is Bordieu even dead?) when I say this: but the economy of writing is not a meritocracy. If it were, I’d be reading considerably better articles in the paper. Success, as well as being about being able to come up with a marketable idea, is also determined by your cultural capital. Having a book launch at the LRB is a sign you belong to a certain kind of cultural group. It’s a little class based - but it isn’t restrained by the barriers of class per se. It’s restrained by culture. By whether you’d look out of place in white cube. Or if your dad knows someone at Conde Nast.

My desire to have time and space to write is recognition of the economic reality that often creating good art requires the financial freedom to be able to do so. The creative industries are fuelled by the bank of mum and dad and I’m fucking sick of it.

I’m sick of needing the validation of an audience, but please what is the point of art if no one is looking at it? I feel like I’m performing a one woman show to an audience of everyone and no one and I’m desperate to catch someone sneaking in at the intermission, and standing at the end of all this to say “that was interesting” before exiting into the night.

No I’m not, actually. That’s a romantic idea but I do not want to be a starving artist scribbling in obscurity. I can’t afford it and it’s embarassing. Yet it’s also embarassing to admit I want all the audience members. I want everyone. I want all the cigarette girls and the school groups and the ticket stub guys and the people outside to see my thoughts and whisper “this is good and you are worthy” and I am so ashamed of wanting it that I wrote and rewrote this sentence with six different metaphors and I’m still not sure this one is right.

We’re all on a lonely lacanian quest to be seen. To have the audience recognise us. This feels like I’m taking you on the back stage tour of a show that hasn’t sold any tickets.

I think maybe we need a reframe. Maybe we need to acknowledge that we’re probably all brilliant. All of us.

We can all see right through it. The curtain is up. Someone’s sweeping in the halls. The house lights are on. My voice echoes around the empty stage. The only applause coming from the LLM I have employed to boost my dwindling ego. We’re all here, writing substacks to an audience of none, bitterly watching our lack of success like its a wound and trying to figure out if it’s gone septic yet.

We come up with a million one-man shows performed to empty theatres, then write our own bad reviews and replay them in our heads when we still. can’t. get. to. sleep. and we’ve forgotten to take our meds and keep replaying the intoxicating feeling of applause tempered by every bad thing we’ve ever done.

Please tell me you’re doing it too. I don’t want to be the only one.

I’m not, am I?