In Defence Of Diary Writing

Messrs. Stevenson and Wobble back in the day

 

 

I recently came across a book review by Jah Wobble which opens with the former PiL bass player expressing his suspicion of - and, indeed, his very evident scorn for - people who keep diaries: 

 

"If one is truly involved in events as they unfold, is there the time or inclination to take notes?" [1]

 

Wobble answers his own question by suggesting that diary keeping is the kind of anal activity that only those who seek to influence the future interpretation of events (often magnifying their own role in said events) engage in.   

 

There may, of course, be an element of truth in this. 

 

But it's not the whole story and as someone who kept a diary throughout the 1980s, I rather resent Wobble's sneering tone and his privileging of lived experience over the recording and retrospective analysis of events. 

 

For some of us - perhaps of a rather more philosophical predisposition than Mr Wobble - there is no distinction between writing and life. 

 

Journal keeping - or, indeed, blogging - is for us a vital form of scripting the self [2] and I prefer those like Nils Stevenson who creatively construct disparate truths about actual events, rather than those who, like Wobble, simply boast they were truly involved, but far too caught up in the excitement of the moment to reflect upon their own experience [3].  

 

Notes

 

[1] Review by Jah Wobble of Vacant: A Diary of the Punk Years 1976-79 by Nils Stevenson, with photos by Ray Stevenson (Thames and Hudson, 1999), in the Independent on Sunday (11th April, 1999). The review is archived on the PiL fansite Fodderstompf: click here.

 

[2] By this term I refer to a reflective and voluntary practice via which individuals are not only able to gain a degree of ethical self-understanding, but also to "change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria". 

      See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin, 1992), pp. 10-11.

 

[3] It might be noted that Wobble did, in fact, publish his memoirs in 2009. A new and  expanded edition of this critically acclaimed work was published under the title Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer by Faber & Faber in 2024. So maybe he was taking notes all along ...