#7 Owen Vince, writer & artist
'I cannot really read my own handwriting'
Owen Vince is a writer and artist living in London. He co-hosts the film podcast Muub Tube and writes Awful Screen, a Substack about film. You can find these projects on his linktree. He’s currently writing a long piece about Jean-Daniel Pollet for The Hinge of a Metaphor, a collection of essays on cinema (edited by Richard Skinner).
Where do you write?
At home (north London). A room with a grey-blue desk and olive walls. I write almost exclusively on my laptop (it is seven years old, and heavy), but also, increasingly, on the too-large Mac you can see in my desk photo. I also use the margins of books and these quite flimsy Muji notebooks. I cannot really read my own handwriting.
Morning writer or late-night words?
Late, the later the better. Night, when other distractions fall away. This is a preference. But I can write all day.
Coffee, tea or any other drinks?
Coffee. When coffee becomes nauseating, tea. When day becomes night, beer.
Handwritten notes or phone files?
Basically, neither. I keep some handwritten notes. They’re really unreadable, a scrawl. I dump everything else into a somewhat chaotic system of Google documents.
Something to nibble while you write?
I vape, usually.
What's your most tempting distraction?
Film. Film is a constant distraction. And when I watch a film, writing becomes a distraction from the film. It’s a funny dialectic.
Any desk essentials?
A pair of speakers. I have these angled directly at my head, the volume hovering somewhere between 25-40%. Phone charger. A sharp pencil.
What's on the speakers?
Resonance FM during the day (particular shout out to Atmospheric Densities, hosted by Kate Carr). If I’m going to a gig in the week, then I’ll be listening to whoever I’m seeing. Instrumental, ambient. I find lyrics kind of distracting. During the evening, I listen to Charles Mingus, Roscoe Mitchell, Eric Dolphy. Evening music.
Writer uniform?
Something comfortable, and dark.
What are your pre-writing rituals?
None. I write all day, whether for my job or for a project I’m working on. Waking up is the ritual, but I suspect I should be doing that anyway. I treat writing as a purely mechanical, functional activity. Like cooking a meal or hoovering a rug.
Perfect bookshop to hide on a rainy day?
I tend to avoid bookshops. My shopping is pretty much all done online.
The best word in the English language?
Probably ‘ditch’, or ‘gulch’. Something to do with holes.
A poem that has changed your life:
I’m not sure a poem has changed my life. There are poems that have changed how I think about language and its function. For that, I’d choose Mayakovsky’s ‘A cloud in trousers’, the entire cycle. Because it is bombastic and confident. In the English language, I’m not sure. I’m drawn to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writers. Ronald Silliman’s ‘He was a visitor’ or Bernstein’s ‘As if the trees by their very roots had hold of us’, but I’m just thinking off the top of my head.