Talk to Strangers Every Day

An increasingly heavy angst at having to be an adult in the 21st century left him isolated and directionless. Most of his life could hardly be described as happy, so being able to escape from Glasgow, his hometown, was an enormous personal release. The strength of his unhappiness was shaped by childhood abuse and neglect, time in a young offenders’ institution, repeated bouts of homelessness and the hedonistic lifestyle of a techno DJ. He often could not stay in work for very long. Being a bit of an activist against war, racism and injustice eventually found him working in journalism. He endured that farcical industry for the best part of 10 years, almost long enough to lose his mind.But leaving for New Orleans at the age of 38 gave birth to a process that helped overprint his trauma with more luxurious and positive experiences. It was only by writing about it that he could begin to make sense of himself and his life. The longer he was in the US, the more his mental distress came to the fore. Now he knows for sure that the best thing he can do for himself is to constantly increase his surface area. The answer to most of his problems, or anyone’s problems, lies outside. Walk around. Ask questions. Get sidetracked. Try your best to write about it. But do try to talk to strangers every day.

Talk To Strangers Every Day punches through the nihilistic sludge of so much modern writing, more than any creative non-fiction I’ve read in years. It is at once profoundly funny and staunchly critical. The words are crisp and concise, flowing and jocular. This story does full justice to the pure creativity and vitality of the writer’s experience: an ex-journalist, working class, Glaswegian DJ and music fanatic living off the grid in the hearts of jazz and blues: New Orleans and Chicago. His training as a journalist sharpens any fuzzy sensational edges. The book is an unapologetic critique of capitalism, written from the belly of the modern beast, but it’s also so much more than that. The expansive writing birls us through a country rife with contradiction in all its exuberance and malnourished potential, its decay and moments fully lived. Despite a sharp eye on the skewed flourishing and brutality of an impossible economic system, it still holds aloft a certain joie de vivre, transmitted through its rippling prose.– Shane Johnstone is a poet, translator and linguist. He is the author of The Gods of Frequency (Arkbound Publishing 2020) and Govanhill Mythology (Palavro Press 2024). His poetry, translations and critical writing have been published extensively in Scotland, England and the US.