The End...

So, it's been a while since I blogged. That's because I've been putting the finishing touches to my debut novel "27". And what a journey it's been. I got lost a few times along the way. I was hit by huge tides of self doubt and thrown onto some uninhabitable and barren shores that I had to find my way off as quickly as I could.

But it's done now and the sensation on completing it , like many things in this song of a life that we all sing , was not the one expected.

You envisage a fire works display of wonder and awe enveloping your mind when you type the words "The End". But I didn't even get a sparkler.

Now, don't get me wrong, when I thought up the ending of the novel ( something that had eluded me for months) and knew how the whole story would tie up- one Saturday morning, early and hungover, I crawled to my laptop and wrote the final scene - that's when I felt godlike. That's when the belief that I was capable of writing the greatest novel that a man could write filled me to bursting. That's when I became light headed and shivered as if receiving a message from a higher plain. But that feeling, like anything worth experiencing, go's , and goes really quickly. It is then that you realise the real work is just about to start. It's time to go back and fill those gaps , strengthen those sentences and flesh out the characters. This process took the longest and was the most work-man like, the most pains taking ,the most laborious but... it was also the most rewarding. This is no knee trembler around the back of the bike sheds feeling, or a hit of cheap whiz, this is like standing on the brow of the yacht that you have be building, sweating over , and blowing your savings on for the last three years. The thing that drew you to it when you were tired and thought you had nothing left in you. You realise, when it's completed that you have to let it go, let it sail off without you, and ,this is where it gets scary, hope to God that it floats.

Sweet Harmony

Watching Bon Iver do an A cappella version of For Emma (forever) on the brilliant La Blogotheque site recently, got me thinking about the human voice and that the most elevating and transcendent sounds in the world happen when a group of humans wail in various forms of harmony.
I searched Youtube and found a few life affirming examples.









OK, this one below isn't 100% a cappella but I had to put it on just for the guy who is leading them...the spirit has truly taken him.

So anyways, like, er, you hearda this guy Richard Price?

In the seventies Richard Price was considered the poster boy for new, hip American writing. With his rapid -fire New Yoike dialogue Price was seen as the obvious heir to Hubert Selby Jr's crown as writer of New York's working classes . His first book, "The Wanderers" was a loud and youthful rap about teenage gang life in 1960's South Bronx. It exhibited for the first time his swift photographic eye, his pitch perfect ear for dialogue and his ability to drag you along by the scruff of the neck and show you the dark corners of a hectic city in a different light.

His next three books (Bloodbrothers, Ladies' man, The Breaks) again all drew on aspects of his own life but never really lived up to the street-fast prose and the one- inch -literary punch of "The Wanderers".

So he changed tack.

He started to write screenplays. Even though it wasn't his best work he brought the quick tongue of the chancer and the cynicism of the duped to Scorsese's - "The Colour of Money" and Pacino's " Sea of Love". It seems that the exercise worked and he came back with the novel "Clockers" a story about lower level drug pushers in North Jersey. The style was filmy - quick , in and out , no-messing and showed everyone (as well as, one suspects, Price himself ) that he was back on form. The book was filmed by Spike Lee and it set Price off in a new direction- crime. But as with all great writers his crime books aren't just about the vile act, they are about the people involved in it. "Samaritan" and "Lush Life" (possibly his masterpiece), both set in his beloved New York, show how communities or a big city can alter a person for good or for bad. The words Zola and Naturalism have been banded around and it is justified. But one could also draw parallels to Dickens and Saul Bellow in they way he uses a city as a character and Dostoevsky for his psychological insight . Crime is but the mirror to reflect the society that his characters are altered by. Price's influence has most recently been seen on TV in "The Wire" where cop talk, street talk, morally compromised policemen and sympathetic criminals abound. David Simon was such a fan he asked Price to write a few episodes.

Price has certainly influenced my idea of what crime fiction is and how a crime can be used as a powerful literary device . His books reveal how people in jeopardy can be easily seduced by a life of crime and how quickly it can change a person for the worst. More importantly he shows us how close that criminal world is to all our lives.

Winter's Bone - The Movie

I'm a great admirer of the American writer Daniel Woodrell and his books about rednecks and criminals in the Ozark mountains. His best book by far and my personal fav is Winter's Bone. It's the story of Ree Dolly, a tough teenager who has to find her missing father, a crystal meth cook, before her family house is repossessed. The language is gnarly poetry and old testament in that American tradition of Faulkner and Cormac McCarty. The characters are vivid and menacing (Uncle Teardrop, is a particularly scary creation) and Ree herself is a perfectly drawn amalgamation of teenage fury and headstrong responsibility. It holds you firmly, like an evangelical preacher's gaze and makes you listen till the sermons through.
I read recently that it has been made into a film , and that the girl playing Ree, ( Jennifer Lawrence) has been getting rave reviews and the film itself won the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film festival last month.
Let's hope that the filmakers win a decent distribution deal over here and we actually get to see it . These US Indies tend to vanish somewhere over the Atlantic before hitting out screens... And hopefully it's as good as they say, so that more people buy the books and appreciate this underrated writer of poetic and gripping modern fiction. Winter's Bone is a great place to start and if you feel like you want more, then go back to Tomato Red, Give Us a Kiss and Woe To Live On ( which was also made in to a great film called Ride With The Devil, hence the different title on Amazon)
Come on, what you waiting for?

Dans Paris

First of all, I have to say that you can now leave comments on all of my posts now, even if you aren't a fellow Blogger. Thank you Fiona!

Over Christmas BBC 4 showed a film called "Dans Paris" I caught it on the I-Player in January and I was really bowled over by it

It's the story of a love lorn photographer who has split up with his girlfriend and comes back to his Parisian family apartment to live with his dad and brother. It's clearly a homage to the Nouvelle Vague and it works brilliantly-owing a huge dept to films like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", with hints of Truffaut's playfullness and Godard's surrealism. It is unashamedly and wonderfully French. All the characters smoke, they discuss their sexual and romantic problems with fierce clarity and fervor and they aren't afraid to dance around to dark indie tunes like their lives depend on it.

We Brits could never make a film that is this serious, that has moments of slapstick and has the main characters sing to their ex on the phone ( one of the most moving parts of the film actually) . I think it would be a pretty embarrassing thing if we did. Like the French trying to make a comedy...

It appealed to the teenage francophile in me, the one that watched a Channel Four season of New Wave films one summer in the nineties. The film looks like it was made by someone who, like me was captivated by the freedom and exuberance of those movies, something that just wasn't around in films back then or even now. You can't imagine Godard being asked what his demographic was or if he thought a Chinese granny who lived in London , who then moved to Wigan , would like Weekend? They showed you that you can dream, be pretentious , silly and serious all at once -break rules , anything to get your story across. And smoke alot. Naked.

Watch it. Free your mind, and your derriere will follow.

Has anybody here seen my old friend...genius?

If I could sing, (I can kinda get by, in an indie white boy way, but...) and sing well ,I always thought I would want to be able to sing like Marvin Gaye. He had a voice that rippled, roared and purred with emotion. It was an instrument of pure expression that floors me every time I hear it.

Scanning YouTube for live footage of him recently I came across this clip of Marvin playing piano in a empty auditorium in the late seventies for a Belgian documentary about his days living and working in Europe.

What strikes you instantly is the ease with which he can perform. The crew roll in a piano and Marvin can't wait to play it, riffing on jazzy trills and bluesy chords. Someone slides on a chair and Marv is away, starting with a bluesy version of "Come get to this " soft on the verse and driving it home on the refrain with a gravely croon that is leaking want and desire - crying out for his lover to fulfill his need. Then seamlessly, the mood changes, the chords switch from major to embellished minors, and we are lowered gently into a softer plea, Marvin , still not satisfied, yearns for his distant lover.

After many broken relationships, alimony, problems with the record company and a crippling heroin habit, Marvin was broke. He also owed the tax man a fair bit too and the only way he could claw his way back was to go to Europe and tour. What we are seeing is a broken man. His eyes closed , the voice true and the embodiment of Marvin's soul flows out.

Then it became clear - Marvin is singing this for himself. Quite literally , in the footage, actually.

We are watching a man who's life has crashed down around his ears. But. What he still does possess, and what no one can take away is his genius. At this point it was all he had. You could say that he was lucky - to have a voice, a talent to express all of those strained emotions and manipulate them so that, in some way, they became manageable .

To be an outstanding singer it seems that you need a couple of things - the first is to have a good set of lungs. Second- make sure those vocal cords are gilded in gold. Third- great ears- know ya notes and maybe part of that is having good taste, too. This is all the obvious stuff. But , if you want to be the best, -like Piaf, Gaye, Cobain, Buckley, Etta James, the list is endless, you can't just have a good voice, make sure you have a dreadful personal life- an absent father usually and overbearing mother who thinks that you are the best thing to happen to the world since, her. And preferably be an only child. These ingredients, when mixed together, help create someone that looks like they have all the confidence in the world , but at their centre is a quivering mass of indecision and neuroses, burning and fuelling that need to be understood and loved.

I realised, frankly , that the misery is available to everyone, but you have to start with those essentials (the right set vocal chords etc) and I'll never have them. You could say, that the greater the misery, the greater the need for the the singer to want people to like them, honing their voice to perfection . It's not God given, its evolution. This was Marvin's way of surviving, although not for much longer...he was shot dead by his alcoholic , cross dressing Dad a few years later.
What a voice though...

Happy New Year Amigos!

Hello!
Sorry, its been a while. I apologise to those of you who have been e-mailing to see if I'm still alive. Well, just about, after the Bacchanalia that was Christmas and New Years 2009. I'm drinking nothing but Evian and eating only fruit from now until...well probably next week, but you have to at least start the year with good intentions.
2009 was a funny old year and one that I probably won't forget too quickly. A few horrible things happened that I've written about in previous posts, but also one large and very significant thing-
I wrote a novel. A messy, first time , dyslexic, crime-y, rock and roll ramble of a novel, that made my head hurt. And that has since changed into a well ordered , crime-y, rock and roll story of doomed youth and thwarted ambition, that was, I realise now, my baptism of fire into the world of novel writing. It was a thrilling, frustrating , enlightening, scary and rewarding experience and one that I want to encounter again, sooner rather than later with a new group of characters and a new set of questions. Although , I suppose I do have to finish this one first...

Ooh, and what terrible weather we're having...thought I better mention that. Here's a nice poem about it by Robert Frost , called "Dust of Snow".

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.