Where I Fall - V.15 - by where-i-fall
Reviewed by : Mr. Cadbury
I've talked to Neil (a.k.a where-i-fall) before. I found him to be an affable guy, pleasant to talk to and most enjoyable company. This site, however, is not some fucking friends drop-in centre, where you walk in bereft of validation and walk out with "validation" - a poor facsimile of praise, neither meaningful nor sincere. Better to tell people, regardless of personal feelings towards them, the uncompromising truth; harsh though that might be, it's harsher to let them believe a lie. So, after that little warning and some fortifying Polo Fruits (or should I say, some fortifying four packets of the little devils), I made myself comfy and started reading his diary - then I realised that it was 4 in the morning and I really should go to my bed. So I did.
Now it's 7:35 in the evening, and I'm bloody struggling with this. It's a diary, and yet it's not. The overriding theme of the diary seems to be one of emotional release; spewed forth from his brain, transferred to electronica through the clatter of the keyboard. There's plenty of evidence that this is the case : the entry titles (which happen to be how he's feeling at that precise moment, nothing else), his entry on self-harming and the overwhelming sense of unhappiness in almost every entry. This throws up certain issues, to be honest. Is he using the diary as somewhere to soothe his troubled mind, rather than for the expression and expansion of writing ability? Will this - in turn - lead to a degree of stagnation in his writing? The answer to these questions is yes.
But if we're talking about content, then this stagnation is merely associative of the depressive state that he's in - in which case, the writing is finely done (though not without the odd spelling mistake). You cannot help but feel how he feels; it jumps out at you - and it's because of his writing style, not in spite of it. Then again, there is only so much you can read of it at a time, because of that; there is only so much despondancy that you can take before you become almost immune to it. The impartial reader feels for the guy, because he details how he is feeling for you, but at the same time, the subject tends to be easily pre-empted. You know he never went to college again, you know he's counting down the days to meeting his online buddy in the flesh, you just know what he's going to say.
I can't wholeheartedly recommend him to you, though I do like his writing. He'll have his fans, he'll get more fans of his writing, but I can't help but get the nagging feeling that his writing goes over the same ground, over and over again.
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u p p e r s
Though he dollops on the emotion, it is efficiently presented.
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d o w n e r s
However, because of what he appears to be going through, his writing has grown a phobia of development. He needs to work at it. Not a criticism, though, more a suggestion.
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