What is "fired up anew?"
The coiner of this tantalising phrase was not me but the British novelist and journalist Will Self.
A few years ago, I was deep into a youtube rabbit hole when I came across a discussion called "Literature and Sex." The speakers were Martin Amis and Will Self. At one point in the discussion, after Will Self had been speaking for a while, he declared this:
I’m just going to gracefully and gratefully slide … out of the encumbrance of this discourse and re-enter it shortly fired up anew.
Quite apart from its being delightfully smutty, for some reason this final phrase stuck in my ear like a wasp and has since never left me. I cannot say why, but I wanted to do something with it. I wanted others to hear it. I wanted an excuse to repeat it, as I have done under my breath for the past few years.
Hence the title of this blog.
What does the phrase mean to me? Why has it tickled me? What neurolinguistic forces have scorched it on my tongue's retina? I don't believe I can answer that question right now. But I will come back to it. I promise I will come back to it.
For now, I'm just going to gracefully and gratefully slide out of the encumbrance of this discourse and re-enter it shortly … fired up anew.
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