Writing classics

‘Gonna write a classic’, sang Adrian Gurvitz. ‘Gonna write it in an attic’.

Which is probably the only place in the house you could write it and make it rhyme. Writing a classic in the downstairs loo or the box room just doesn’t work at all.

Personally, if I was going to write a classic, I wouldn’t really be too worried about where I wrote it. I mean, if it’s a classic then that’s the important thing. Where the classic was written is irrelevant. Perhaps Gurvitz recently had his attic converted into a classic writing space and as such wanted to share his pride at the extra room his house possessed. I think we can all understand that.

I once wrote a short story about a man falling off a tall building who had many complex thoughts on the way down. One of them was the realisation that falling through the air at great speed was a very pleasant sensation but the thought of hitting the ground at that speed wasn’t particularly nice. I genuinely wonder does it hurt or are you splattered so quickly you don’t notice.

Anyway, the point is not the story but where I wrote it.

On a notepad.

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28 Responses to Writing classics

  1. Flirty says:

    I think Jack Nicholson wrote one in a basement once, but that may have been a movie?

  2. Change_Of_Address says:

    I’ve thought about that too, not writing songs in attics but whether or not a drop of say 50 metres would hurt when you touched down.

    Personally, I think you’d experience something like sensory overload; the terror and panic would be so overwhelming that you probably wouldn’t feel it. You might even be dead before you hit the ground, like from shock.

  3. cruddy bang says:

    I heard the best places to write a classic are underground bunkers in times o’ war and scottish cafes.

  4. Monkey Balls says:

    If you have a book, up there in your head.
    The best place to write it is in your shed.
    But if you wanna write sometin’ really bitchin’
    The room to do it is obviously the kitchen.

  5. Medbh says:

    Poor Anne Frank wrote her classic in an attic.
    She didn’t know that then of course.

  6. Monkey Balls says:

    If you’ve a book up in your head,
    Write it down, out in the shed.
    Unless you really want to spoil it,
    Do not write it in the toilet.
    But if you want it to be “bitchin’”
    Why not do it in the kitchen?

  7. morgor says:

    I’d say you’d feel it alright, but only for a split second.

  8. maggot says:

    I read somewhere that by the time you hit terminal velocity you will have lost consciousness.

  9. porridge says:

    “I read somewhere that by the time you hit terminal velocity you will have lost consciousness”

    would be a lot of very flat and wide skydivers in that case.

  10. gurr cake says:

    classic in the attic me arse what happens if you get writers block,and some prick takes the loft ladder away,static in the attic ?

  11. Silly Old Sod says:

    I read somewhere that by the time you hit terminal velocity you will have lost consciousness.

    Very comforting for those of us of a certain size who would probably reach terminal velocity within a yard of a first floor window…

  12. Loco Lobo says:

    Those sudden stops are always a bitch!

  13. Curly K says:

    Ah, Twenty, you are showing your age now, your first line brought me back….:)

  14. SAm Crea says:

    Is Vincent Browne the first Person to write in an Irish broadsheet that RTE News are a pile of tossers for constantly reporting on drug-busts of cannibas, by Gardai? (ie he was implying its a safe drug so why is it news-worthy?)

  15. SAm Crea says:

    Sorry for lack of relevance, but I dont get the notepad thing…

  16. spaghetti hoop says:

    You’ve let the book thing go to your head, Twenty.

  17. Terry Finley says:

    I’m gonna sit right down
    and write myself a classic
    and make believe
    that it came from me…..

  18. kev 1 says:

    I’m gonna write my classic in my luxury 35 th. floor penthouse guest bathroom overlooking the plush recently renovated docks area. Attic me bollix.

  19. Thanks Twenty. I fucking hate this song. They have to be the most stupid fucking lyrics ever written. You doubt me? Well here’s a few samples:

    I mean it’s not what I mean,
    I mean it’s not what it seems,
    I just keep living for dreams.

    I mean what kind of retarded shite is that? You’d get thrown out of playschool if you handed that bollocks to the teacher.

    I was a stray boy,
    And you was my best toy
    Found it easy to annoy (you)

    Holy sweet mother of fucking Jesus. Do you see the way he manages to cleverly rhyme boy and toy with annOY? Oh dear, ooops, have to stick a ‘you’ at the end of the line. Never mind, doubt anyone will notice. Yes, very clever if you happen to be a lobotomized gaelgor. He squeezes out the same kind of lyrical afterbirth when he pathetically tries to rhyme attic with addict (now).

    Come on Twenty, you’re a man of letters now. You can’t be making references to this kind of sputum:

    And I loved you in all the wrong ways,
    Now listen to me say,
    If it changed to another way.

    Aaagh! We hates it. We hates it.

  20. chuntzu says:

    Pity Dustin didn’t find a nice quiet attic somewhere – that we could lock him in and burn the feckin’ house down!

    On the other hand, a puppet turkey representing a nation state [for such we are, and secure in it] at the Eurovision twat contest – now that is a classic.

  21. Marguerite says:

    Aren’t you going to write a classic story about being cited as one of the top ten ‘icons of our time’ in this weekend’s Sunday Tribune? A nice piece I must say…shame you were sharing space with Katy French and Damien Rice…

  22. galwaywegian says:

    Can’t hear that song without thinking of the other one about sailing away to Key Largo. Think it was the same summer.

  23. Scaryduck says:

    “My lovely horse
    Running through the field…”

    Now that’s a classic. And it was wrote in a stable.

  24. Twenty Major says:

    And Jesus was born in a stable. Or out of a donkey’s arse or something.

    And that Top 10 icons thing was strange. It was like he surrounded me with lots of people that I hate. Katy French was on top of me. Bleurgh!

  25. Marguerite says:

    There’s a mental image you don’t need…
    unless of course you’re simultaneously a necrophiliac and reader of the Sunday Independent, and of course you could never be accused of the latter

  26. Twenty Major says:

    Definitely not the latter, that’s for sure…

  27. No Good Boyo says:

    Gurvitz was an almighty beardy dil. I saw him interviewed about “Classic” on TV once. He had no idea what to say, and the desperate interviewer ended up asking him about his spiritual life. Gurvitz lazily drifted into claiming he was a pious Christian. The look of horror on his beard as he realized what he’d said, and what his manager would say, was almost a pleasure to behold.

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