Saturday, 29 August 2009
Oh Happy- 4
Black Books- Dylan Moran being tremendously witty. Always brings a smile to my boat race.
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Oh, Happy-2
I love this song and this is a rare clip of it being played live and being played well!
John Cale- Paris 1919.
John Cale- Paris 1919.
Sunday, 9 August 2009
Oh, Happy Day.
In the next couple of weeks , while redrafting "27" , I'll be posting up clips , web sites and music, that alter my mood for the better. This is as much for my own sanity as your enjoyment, dear reader.
When I'm sick of looking at my own words I go to FFFFound! and view the eclectic collection of bizarre and beautiful images they have. Enjoy.
When I'm sick of looking at my own words I go to FFFFound! and view the eclectic collection of bizarre and beautiful images they have. Enjoy.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Thanks, Old Sport!
I watched the sports results the other day. Big deal huh? It is if you've never seen them in your life.
On that particular day I was barely watching the news, it was just a wash of pictures and sound- names and events that lead to horrendous outcomes. This is what happens when you have ingested too many toxic ideas. They infect your mind and turn it into one big seething single minded organism . This organism is too greedy to let any other information in - it wants you for it s self.
The voices of the newscasters , the rhythm of their speech and the downwardly inflected words had a slow , deep, swing. Concerned, authoritative, and seemingly without bias. All the tools needed to bring you stories of tragedy and ramped up pandemic paranoia. Gradually the plangent sway left my ears. Now they were full off chirpy high tones , quick and reassuring. the name of the football clubs , players with Russia, Brazilian , and Spanish names. Tennis players from Sweden and the Czech Republic, all sounded curlicued and complex, flat constants and accented vowels all running into each other.
Like a surreal poetry- musical and diverting, I was in the room again. It had some how acted as a kind of aural antibiotic.
Saturday afternoons maybe spent a aittle differently from now on.
On that particular day I was barely watching the news, it was just a wash of pictures and sound- names and events that lead to horrendous outcomes. This is what happens when you have ingested too many toxic ideas. They infect your mind and turn it into one big seething single minded organism . This organism is too greedy to let any other information in - it wants you for it s self.
The voices of the newscasters , the rhythm of their speech and the downwardly inflected words had a slow , deep, swing. Concerned, authoritative, and seemingly without bias. All the tools needed to bring you stories of tragedy and ramped up pandemic paranoia. Gradually the plangent sway left my ears. Now they were full off chirpy high tones , quick and reassuring. the name of the football clubs , players with Russia, Brazilian , and Spanish names. Tennis players from Sweden and the Czech Republic, all sounded curlicued and complex, flat constants and accented vowels all running into each other.
Like a surreal poetry- musical and diverting, I was in the room again. It had some how acted as a kind of aural antibiotic.
Saturday afternoons maybe spent a aittle differently from now on.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Feelin' just like Dylan...Thomas that is.
Got my first paid job as a writer last week. I'm scripting four information films for the Department of Health at Birmingham Uni. They're having a drive on recruiting people to some of the less well known areas of the National Health Service. Fancy becoming an O.D.P anyone?
I worked from recordings of people that have roles in each of the departments and tried to construct the ideal candidate for the ad. Listening to The Mental Health nurses, the Learning Disability nurses, they all do amazing jobs helping people coming to terms with their mental and physical problems. Hearing what they do on a daily basis made me feel like a selfish good for nothing waste of enzymes.
It got me thinking about other writers who were in similar situations and made me wonder how they felt. Dylan Thomas and Laurie Lee both worked for the Ministry of Information during the war, scripting films on getting people to join the home guard or becoming balloon operators.
Both contributing to the war effort, fighting the biggest most horrendous problems of their day the only way they could. If I were Dylan or Laurie , that's how I would justify my role...because that's how I'm justifying my role.
Let's think about it. Working in a hospital these days would seem to most people as good as jumping into a dustbin and licking the inside clean. The largest threat to the world is a trillionth of a millimetre in size and lurks on every surface that you can touch. Swine flu, MRSA, Avian flu... according to "those in the know" these are considered the new threats to humanity.
If this is true or not the jobs are there and need to be filled. So, it seems like we'll have to look back to those bad old days of the war and take a piece of their advice..."Keep Calm and Carry on".
I worked from recordings of people that have roles in each of the departments and tried to construct the ideal candidate for the ad. Listening to The Mental Health nurses, the Learning Disability nurses, they all do amazing jobs helping people coming to terms with their mental and physical problems. Hearing what they do on a daily basis made me feel like a selfish good for nothing waste of enzymes.
It got me thinking about other writers who were in similar situations and made me wonder how they felt. Dylan Thomas and Laurie Lee both worked for the Ministry of Information during the war, scripting films on getting people to join the home guard or becoming balloon operators.
Both contributing to the war effort, fighting the biggest most horrendous problems of their day the only way they could. If I were Dylan or Laurie , that's how I would justify my role...because that's how I'm justifying my role.
Let's think about it. Working in a hospital these days would seem to most people as good as jumping into a dustbin and licking the inside clean. The largest threat to the world is a trillionth of a millimetre in size and lurks on every surface that you can touch. Swine flu, MRSA, Avian flu... according to "those in the know" these are considered the new threats to humanity.
If this is true or not the jobs are there and need to be filled. So, it seems like we'll have to look back to those bad old days of the war and take a piece of their advice..."Keep Calm and Carry on".
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Twister
There is something that writers, writers creating a novel, that is, can do that scientists have been trying to achieve for years. Lean closer and I'll tell you...ready?
When a writer starts out on an idea for a novel, gets down the bare bones, the frame work , the scaffold of words, and throws them down on a page in some semblance of order, they inadvertently create , or you could say summon, a tornado
"Eh? What bollocks. "I hear you shout.
Nah, hear me out - that twister you brought into the world sucks in every bit of emotion , tiny passing thought, big ,sticky, tenacious thoughts, quirks of personality , random observations, perversion... anything in its path, up into a strange , chaotic blur of matter.
And it's not just confined to the page. It follows you- standing at the bus stop it will appear whipping up a frenzy down the road. At work gurgling and big in front of Jane from accounts desk. It flies around , following your every move sucking up what it can from your immediate surroundings.
It's bloody scary, not to say exhausting dancing about the mouth of one of those things every day, holding back from being slurped into oblivion. Over a matter of time maybe a year, maybe two, it starts to shrink , then one unquantifiable day, it vanishes. And what your left with is a mesh of broken words, and ideas picked up from the places you've been. Sentences strewn, dazed ,lolling across the page, needing urgently to be rearranged and tended to.
The tornado I created has left me now . I no longer fear oblivion and the unknown. Now the hard work starts . Now I'm cleaning up and trying to make some sense of the mess.
When a writer starts out on an idea for a novel, gets down the bare bones, the frame work , the scaffold of words, and throws them down on a page in some semblance of order, they inadvertently create , or you could say summon, a tornado
"Eh? What bollocks. "I hear you shout.
Nah, hear me out - that twister you brought into the world sucks in every bit of emotion , tiny passing thought, big ,sticky, tenacious thoughts, quirks of personality , random observations, perversion... anything in its path, up into a strange , chaotic blur of matter.
And it's not just confined to the page. It follows you- standing at the bus stop it will appear whipping up a frenzy down the road. At work gurgling and big in front of Jane from accounts desk. It flies around , following your every move sucking up what it can from your immediate surroundings.
It's bloody scary, not to say exhausting dancing about the mouth of one of those things every day, holding back from being slurped into oblivion. Over a matter of time maybe a year, maybe two, it starts to shrink , then one unquantifiable day, it vanishes. And what your left with is a mesh of broken words, and ideas picked up from the places you've been. Sentences strewn, dazed ,lolling across the page, needing urgently to be rearranged and tended to.
The tornado I created has left me now . I no longer fear oblivion and the unknown. Now the hard work starts . Now I'm cleaning up and trying to make some sense of the mess.
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