I didn’t get a circle A tattoo, but I might as well have.

One of the most influential things I discovered in books was anarchism: the idea that we could live without rulers. That it is our responsibility to resist the concentration of power in any single entity, be it corporate, governmental, or religious.

It’s a worldview that’s helped me understand the world and make decisions ever since I was seventeen. I was in the market for a new moral framework since Christianity was no longer working for me. My Catholic all-boys highschool was a stifling environment that I had been immersed in for years, but I remember the precise moment of my disenchantment: a grade twelve religion class taught by a gym teacher who didn’t even try to answer the questions I had.

In a way it was similar to why I set down fantasy novels in favour of science fiction — the hand-waving magical explanations weren’t as satisfying as complex rational ones. So I yanked out the RELIGION cartridge in my brain and chunked in the POLITICS one.

And there it remained for 30 years. Until now.

I started to make movies out of spite. I had a number of exciting conversations around adapting my first novel that came to naught, and was left with an unsatisfied feeling. This idea of making a movie had been awakened in me, and then abruptly shut down. I’d never really seriously considered it before, but now the idea was a grain of sand in my brainfolds.

My first novel launched twenty years ago today. To mark the occasion I’m publishing the first of a series I’m calling the Fallow Essays, reflective pieces on art and cultural production from the vantage point of having spent two decades walking this path. Each will be accompanied by a recorded conversation with an artist peer.

***

I have a guy in my head.

I call him Niles. Picture a hulking acne-riddled teenage loser with a punk rock haircut, a white denim duster jacket and big boots, walking down the street muttering to himself angrily.

For decades, when I heard Niles behind me, I’d walk faster. Or cross the street to avoid him. I resent Niles, and he despises me. Or at least it seems like it. I’ve never talked to him.