Call it a comeback

Or is it a reboot, a sequel, or a reimagining?

Surprise!

I bet you weren’t expecting to hear from me again, were you? You’re not the only one.

But here I am, emailing you three - three! - years after I originally launched Brussels Notes in January 2021, to inform you that it’s coming back.

The idea then of the newsletter was pretty simple; in early 2021 I was deep into a Covid-prompted creative malaise, unemployed, and wondering whether Brussels Beer City was still the project I wanted to focus my writing on. Out of that came the idea for a series of short, daily newsletter entries - a little experiment in brief dispatches from life in a Brussels on lockdown. 

And it did the job it was intended to, helping me work back into some kind of creative form and filling time until I started a new job in April that year. It also imposed some much-needed discipline on my writing practice. Filling time is probably a little unkind, because the original Brussels Notes project confirmed to me two things: I like the challenge of writing short form essays, the kind of work I can more easily fit around my present circumstances (kids, full-time job) without endangering said circumstances. It also reminded me how much better I work under a writing routine, and convinced me I was capable of maintaining that kind of rhythm. Lessons I took forward into what was then and remains probably my most fecund period at Brussels Beer City. It led indirectly to the “History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects” series and leaked into some other, well-received work that strayed from what Brussels Beer City articles were to that point - industry profiles, some brewing history - into something more personal.

If Brussels Notes served its original purpose, why is it back? Well, a couple of things have happened in the past six months that prompted me to take another look at it. In the early summer I participated in an essay-writing workshop with Brian Dillon during the West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry. It was intimidating, enriching, and all the other superlatives you would think a three-day reading and writing session with Brian Dillon might be. We talked about what an essay is, what it could be, what we wanted to write about, and how to do it. We read Maeve Brennan and James Baldwin and Annie Dillard. I came home to Brussels buzzing with ideas, but with no great idea about where to put them.

On holidays with the family later in the summer, I whizzed through Ana Kinsella’s brilliant book Look Here: On the Pleasures of Observing the City. As much as I enjoyed the book and Kinsella’s writing about London on its own merits, it also reminded me how much I love good writing about cities. It made me want to write too, which I suppose is high enough praise for a book.

There has been something else, too, something more internal, that I’ve been ruminating on through the Autumn. Some of you will know that, previous to launching Brussels Beer City back in 2017, I tried and failed to start two other writing projects. One of those was a more personal kind of blog, of the genre popular in the early 2010s. The second was something closer to the Brussels Beer City mould, about Brussels more generally. But both failed because the writing was no good - I didn’t really know what I wanted to say - and I had no confidence in myself. If I’ve achieved anything with Brussels Beer City in seven years, it’s at least to change the latter of these issues. I still struggle constantly with writer’s block and with the fear of the empty page every time I sit down to writing something new, but I also trust myself that once I get started I know how to put a good piece of writing together. And I hope that’s been reflected in some of the work I’ve done for myself and for others in the past 24 months. 

I know I'm drifting close to complacency with this kind of talk, and us Irish are supposed to be self-effacing. Maybe it’s a decade of living in Belgium surrounded by people modest but sure-footed about their abilities, but there was also something I read in a recent edition of Rachel Connolly’s “Who Knows?” newsletter that struck a chord: “It can sound self aggrandising to talk about yourself this way, but if you’re serious about what you do and great at what you do I don’t see the point in pretending you aren’t.” I wouldn’t go as far with the self-love as Connolly, but it did make me think I should lose some of the “aw shucks” false modesty about my own writing. Other people think it’s pretty good, so I should too.

I’ve also found myself wanting to write about subjects or using forms that I feel don’t really fit with Brussels Beer City. And the more I’ve had the opportunity to do this - contributing for example to magazines like Guzzle and Scoop with work completely unrelated to beer - the more I’ve wanted to do this. It’s why I launched a football-themed newsletter last year (RIP), why I enrolled in the Dillon workshop in the first place. And ultimately why I’m resurrecting Brussels Notes, and why you’re getting this email.

Now it won’t quite be the same as before. Instead, what you can expect is weekly 1,000-word (or fewer) essays from me on life in Brussels. Many of the themes I’ll likely cover will be familiar to people who know me or read anything I’ve written - pubs, city living, parenthood, being an immigrant, and just really how strange a place Brussels is. In my more feverish writerly moments I imagine the tone of the thing being half Iain Sinclair, half Samuel Pepys. 

If that doesn’t put you off - how could it! - and you’re not already a subscriber, click the link below.

See you next week for the first proper instalment.

Eoghan

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