The Biography of the boy who would become O W Dawson (1)

Only O W Dawson knew he was going to be a big star. Even the closest people around him, the kind ones, had their doubts.
He had a comfortable upbringing. Comfortable. And liberal. It was difficult for this boy, from a comfortable suburban background to bounce off the sides when there wasn't any sides to bounce off. In many ways, this was typical of the the kids he knew as a young boy. Sunny East Sussex, with it's seaside, holiday air, was hard to rebel against. But in the transition from boy to man, rebelling is a right of passage.
Luckily for this child, the sides started to close in. Sadly however, it crushed his spirit for a decade or more. Yet in his recovery: the death of the boy, O W Dawson was born.
Like many, He is a complex bundle of contradictions and untruths. He, like many friends would say, was arrogant to a fault about his abilities. Yet this is contrary to the massive weight of doubt that he carries. He can come across as his biggest fan because of the deadpan delivery of moments of supposed egotism, he is like this about his beauty as well. But it is a threefold notion. He, on one level, says with dead sarcasm that he is talented and pretty for a boy, yet on a second level, he doesn't believe this. Thirdly, however, this is then becomes a source of self-criticism if someone else in the room, the field, is considered better looking or more talented. It comes a stick to beat himself with. He, it would turn out, has many of these sticks of which to torrcher himself.
Only O W Dawson, would start to write, with a ghost writer, it has to be noted, his biography before he became the success he saw for himself. And, like no-one else, did he only write it for himself only to read.
At a time when he was still in the final stages of his decade long recovery from the rocks of adolescence, years before the publication of his seminal 'The Great Western City', he began the book that would the one you are now reading.
This period of his life was a crossroads. He left the retirement coast of his upbringing six years before now to Glasgow, the muse of his most complete and seminal work. The force behind this 500 mile travel north was his soul-mate and spine, S L Bartlett. She, for many years, gave him comfort and motivation when his was waning. She acted as a catalyst to become a creative fountainhead. Initiallly, the move was to study at the prestigious Glasgow School of Art's Mac Architecture School. After completing his first two years there, making some good, long friendships, he became shipwrecked again. The ghosts of his teenage years had followed him.
New and fresh thinking and big city living created a vale for a couple of good years. This was just a vale. Glasgow's winters made a prefect backdrop to what was to be the closest he came to dying young and unknown. A fear of needles and the intervention of a NHS doctor saved him. This chance run in with the doctor was partly created by the boy himself. He was running low, both in mood and creative energy. He, at this point was starting the third year of his architecture degree, and sinking. He went to his GP to see whether a rise in the dose of his anti-depressants would help. The GP was unsure if this would really be solving the problem or just putting a sticky-plaster over it. The GP wanted to check his blood first to see if all was all-right. The fear of needles had hindered any chance of this happening before, so the GP referred him to a hypotherapeutic psychologist. And it was at one of the resulting session, did the suicidal will become apparent to some other than the boy himself. Shocking was the lack of emotion with which he delivered his plans, the psychologist had no alternative but to call for help. So began the ball rolling, the recovery of this soul, this boy.
Treatment was fast coming but very slow acting, and it would take another three plus years to really fix the inner ills.
In this interim period, this transition, the creative thoughts slowly but reassuringly started to come back. It was by no means an easy time for anyone in his small family circle. Which became a burden he privately acknowledged. He fell back on the mask of complex contradictions and clichés. He told his mother and sister, still living in his hometown, that he was better than he was. He painted a picture of how he was on his better days, making out that every day was a better day. This however was not a complete image. He, for many years during this period, suffered from a lack of energy and consistency. One day he would be full of running yet without ideas or plans to execute. Other day, quieter day, he could hear the near-silent voices of his inner creativity. Yet this quiet was because of the lack of movement of the boy's physical self. The complete fool. A situation of self defeating unconscious folly of which he would become aware of but have no answer.
This subconscious control of the boy's mind would eventually resolve, with extraordinary results.
O W Dawson was as much a character as any scripted in a play or written about in a story. A persona, with a made up name. It would become the vehicle to launch the new, fixed man from which boy grew into.
O W Dawson was five years younger than the boy he replaced. The age of his only full sister.
O W Dawson, the author, the actor, the man was conceived in the lull time. The boy wrote about him in his mind, the still, quiet times. He imagined how he would be.
Based in part, on the better time from his past, and in part, on the inner talent and cool aura he knew he had hidden, the myth started to become reality.
In his weekly visits to his psychoanalysing consultant, he discussed, without separating the two: the boy and the character, his plans for his future, and the boy's past. Many dots would be connected. And like all others, the amazing confidence and assurance with which the boy knew the future was in part, written off by the doctor. This was due to the lack of belief in the boy's ability to control things out of this control. The man he was becoming was still only going to be human. Yet, the boy's non-grounded otherworldly view was undiminished.
The boy was, in many ways, a product of his time. Growing up in the 80's, he was materialistic but also lacking the everyday understanding of money. Money became a series of numbers on a computer screen when both S L and the boy started to live independently of their parents. Money in the bank was ideal but not a true motivation in life. Cars, a number of classics, a sting of flats in various locations in many countries was. The ability to learn things the money would grease the hinges, was also the driver. Fame and cash was always how O W Dawson described his goal, but this wasn't really a fair comment. To learn to fly small planes and helicopters. To race cars as a skilled amateur, to meet heroes of his great interest: formula one and Le Mans. To get a garage space for both S L and O W to fool about with vehicles he only had models of as the boy. These were the true goals in his life. That and the ability to to fund the dreams of his closes family and friends. To provide every want of S L.
His goals, it would aspire, would not be as far away as other would think.
He, in many ways was a boy of luck as much as one of talent. He missed so many opportunities when suffering, he would grab more when well.
He wasn't one, however, to make his own luck. Luck was luck in the truest sense. For some, when things were quiet, they would do, they would agitate. This was just not the boy's way. Not on a conscious level. He did realise though celebrities of the time, that having one sting to their bow was not enough in the age of self publishing, self creating, self broadcasting. He looked inward and was truly honest to himself when looking for a talent that could be usable without the need for tutelage. Writing. He was dyslexic. Growing up with it in a generation when disadvantages such as dyslexia were actively sort to be helped, it wasn't until university he was diagnosed with it. In fact, it wasn't until his early twenties did he even complete this English GCSE. He learnt to enjoy writing, which was a chore as a boy. Reading, another chore of hate, was still longer before it was considered a gift; a treat rather than punishment. The boy was always articulate and gave the impression of well read intelligence. This was not the case. He, in his late twenties, had only actually read onecomplete book from cover to cover. He, although not a reader, was a bright understander of ideas and theories. At the Mac, he could more than bluff his way though intellectual discussions about subjects that required in-depth reading, just by picking up what was being said by others at the time. A talent that never to his knowledge became apparent.
The boy was always considered bright but always so far from his full potential.