(part one - fiction)
Six days ago
It was a quiet street, up a slight incline from the main road where I'd disembarked from the tram. There was no traffic along this side-street, though the pavement was lined with parked cars as far as the street's end, old cars I'd never seen the like of before landing in the Czech Republic. The buildings were all tall, grey and uniform, presumably a mix of office blocks and apartments, their ground floor windows revealing blinds and darkened rooms behind frosted glass. The doorways I'd passed, those with clear glass panels, peered into short halls that led into dark corridors and stairwells. Much like the one where I stood now. Through the window I could see the narrow corridor stretching towards the back of the building, tucked alongside a flight of stairs leading up to the next level. A few doorways offered alternative exits, though they appeared without exception to be plain and heavy looking wooden doors, without significant defining features.
I checked against the list of names, and finding the name Horáková prepared to ring once more. As I did so, I noticed a woman descending the staircase, middle-aged and wearing a long brown dress and a grey cardigan over the top, her hair braided and tied into a bun behind her head. As she got closer she glanced up, made eye contact, smiled, and crossed the short distance between the bottom step and the front door. As she opened the door a crack, she smiled once more. "Dobré jitro..." she said, wishing me good morning or something like that, the end of the sentence carrying enough inflection to suggest a question, curiosity as to who I might be.
"Hello. Mrs Horáková? I'm Ewan Brook. We spoke..."
She smiled again, nodding and pulling the door wider. "Yes. Come in, please." She stepped aside, holding the door open until I had managed to pull myself and my bag clear of the street. "It's been quite cold this week - can I get you a warm drink? Some tea, perhaps?", she offered, leading me towards the stairs. "Yes," I said, "tea would be lovely."
She led me to her apartment on the first floor, a small arrangements of rooms with windows looking out onto the street. The buildings across the street looked much like every other in the street, cold and grey and with dark windows revealling little else. "Please, please, sit down," Mrs Horáková said, motioning to the nearest chair in her small living room, then changed her mind and motioned instead "Please, your coat. Let me take that for you." Her English was good, I reflected, though basic. From what I'd heard English was not really common with the older generations this far east. I shrugged the bag off of my shoulder, and pulled my coat off, thanking her as she took it and hung it on one of several hooks by the door, alongside two others, a bright red winter coat and what looked like a man's jacket. I sat down, and looked around the flat a while whilst Mrs Horáková stepped into the kitchen.
I'd obviously arrived whilst she was watching TV, the large box in the corner tuned into the news, the co-host chatting with the lady next to him. A white symbol on the screen indicated she'd switched the sound off. On some shelves behind the TV were a number of items, pieces of glassware, small porcelain cats, an array of family photographs. Looking closer I saw that one photo, of a couple smiling at the camera as they sat in a restaurant, seemed slightly dated, then realised it showed Mrs Horáková as a younger woman.
"How has your trip been?" a voice called from the kitchen.
"Fine," I called back, "Yes, a lot quicker than I expected. It really doesn't seem like I've been gone from home that long." I laughed. "I guess I haven't really."
"Have you ever visited Prague before?"
"No," I said, glancing out of the window, my laughter faltering, as I remembered why I was here. "No. I suppose I should have, really. We never really knew, you know... We hadn't heard..."
"He spoke of you, often, you know. Michael seemed very fond of you all."
I smiled. "Yeah. He's like that. He's just, you know, never been very good at letting anyone know where he was. Especially since his parents passed away. I think it was Christmas we last heard anything, a postcard from somewhere I think. India, maybe Sri Lanka."
Mrs Horáková came into the room, carrying a tray with two mugs of tea, a bowl of sugar and a plate of open sandwiches, some sort of ham and egg on top. She smiled as she set it down on the table between us. "I thought you might be hungry after your journey."
I nodded, adding "Yes, thanks." I took a bite, the bread tasting heavy, the meat slightly peppered. Mrs Horáková let me take several more bites, then motioned towards my mug. "Sugar?" I nodded again, my mouth full, then raised one finger. She smiled, as she tipped a spoonful into my tea, then stirred it. "Thanks," I said, once I was able. She sat back in her chair then, as an afterthought, leant forward and turned off the TV.
"So," she said, after a sip of tea, "you are intending to stay here awhile." "In Prague? Maybe" I answered, before taking another bite into my sandwich. "Ah, yes, in Prague, of course. But you mentioned the apartment upstairs when we spoke on the phone." "Oh, yes, sorry. Yes," I said, putting my sandwich down, "How long has it been empty?" Mrs Horáková shrugged. "Maybe a month?" I reached towards my pocket - I'd promised that Michael's unpaid rent would be sorted out, to make up for his absense, but she waved a hand. "Do not worry about that. I have been able to rent out the apartment a couple of weeks. It is empty now, of course, so you may stay as long as you like."
I nodded. "And his belongings?" Mrs Horáková looked at me, as if waiting for me to continue. "Michael's things?" "Ah, yes, they are upstairs now. In the cupboard." She leaned forwards in her chair and pulled herself to her feet. "I'll get you the keys. You can go up now, if you like." "No rush," I said, as she walked into the kitchen once more. I heard a drawer slide open, and the jangle of keys. "No, no rush," she said, "I'll just put these by the door here." She put the keys down on a small stand next to the front door, where a wooden cat sat, curled up, asleep. As I finished the last sandwich, she returned to her seat.
"I'm sorry I can not tell you more," Mrs Horáková said, after a brief silence. "I did not see Michael for some weeks, and then I found the number for your parents when I went upsatairs to see if he had been in at all. I believe he had been learning to speak Czech for a while. Something to do with his studies. He was..." she paused and frowned. "You hadn't heard from him since last Christmas?" she asked. I nodded "That's right. I think. Well, he may have contacted my parents sometime last year but, no, I haven't heard anything." Mrs Horáková nodded. She seemed to have something on her mind, presumably trying to finding the correct words to use. After a moment, she spoke. "He was involved in some sort of art exhibition. I heard him mention something about a play, at one of the small theatres in the centre of town. Have you heard of 'Black Light'?"
I shook my head. "'Black Light'? Is that the name of the play?"
Mrs Horáková shook her head. "No, no, it's..." She struggled to find the right words, then asked "Have you heard of 'Laterna Magika'?"
Again I shook my head.
She frowned, then held her two hands apart, fingers spread, as she tried to explain. "They're both types of... theatre? They're like plays that use films on screens, sometimes puppets, sometimes dance. They're very popular in Prague, with tourists." She looked at me, clasping her hands together, as if hoping that what she had said made sense. I nodded. "I think I understand. I'm sure I'll be able to find out." She nodded, smiling. "Yes. You will find it hard to miss in Prague." Then she seemed to remember what she had begun to say. "Your brother, he had been working on several things. Yes. A painting too, I think, but most of the time he was preparing for the play... the story of the golem, I think. He was..." Mrs Horáková tapped a finger on the side of her mug as she tried to think of something. Then she looked up, and spoke very seriously.
"He always showed a lot of interest in the stories of Prague. Like the legend of the golem, or the tale of Faust. I think he wanted to somehow interpret those stories. To tell them again, perhaps to tell them in a modern way."
I put my empty mug down. "I don't really know the stories."
Mrs Horáková smiled. "Don't worry. He has his books upstairs. Come."
Monday 6 July 2009
Telling stories...
Of the story openers I posted last week, the two that were earmarked by others for thrashing out were the story that asks 'How long have I been here?' and the one that introduces Ewan Brook to an old lady in an apartment somewhere in Prague. Ironically both have their roots in the same place - Prague. I visited the city a couple of times whilst going out with a girl from the Czech Republic, and dug up bits and pieces about the city's history, and one of its more famous sons, Kafka, came up onto my radar. Which implies I was unfamiliar with Kafka. Not true, but I was certainly less familiar with him than I am now.
The following story, of which there is little more written except to rewrite the first few paragraphs, owes much to the monolithic and generic settings of Kafka's stories. Previously I've had it mentioned that the main character has no real personality (although that was pretty much how I wanted the character portrayed, lost on the ebb and flow of his/her own thoughts) but that the other character we hear from promises so much more. I've yet to really explore that, but for your pleasure, here is the intro to the unfinished story in full. At least the first version of it.
The second story intro, which will be posted just after this one, is the first part of a long story that I set in Prague due to the inspiration I got from visiting different parts of it, and seeing things that just inspired me to write about them.
'Citizen K' (for want of a better title)
How long have I been here?
I sit in darkness, the giant screen in front, bright in my face, hissing at me, noise illuminating every inch of glass, dancing around like bees in a monochrome hive. I'm staring at it, have been for countless minutes. There are vague shapes dancing amongst the patterns on the screen, lit up in neon. Is that a woman's face, frozen mid-laugh? I blink, to make some sort of sense of the image, and she's gone, replaced by the chaotic dance of noise. Watching it, trying to tune into the world being projected into this room, I grasp the sudden realisation that the world I'm watching is seperated from my own by a layer of glass. Everything that has consumed my pattern of light, cast out of a screen and bathing me in it's illuminance. I get the sudden sense of being here, being somewhere, and my mind begins to query just where that somewhere is. The edges of the screen sharpen crisply, defining the white noise in a familar rectangular shape, whilst the walls around me slowly lean into view, and the weight of a chair begins to reassert it's presence around me. The light dances across the surface of my skin, and I fold my hands in my lap as I become aware of them, of my legs stretched out before me. Slowly I break my gaze away from the screen, looking to one side of me. I am not alone. Vague figures caught in thin strips of light either side of me, sitting on the same chair, watching me, smiling in the darkness. I'm comfortable, I'm warm, I'm not sure quite what's going on but I'm relaxed.
The outline of one of my nearest companion's heads molds itself into the contours of the chair beside me, and I wonder just how many people are here in this room. In the darkness I make out further shapes, a doorway, a clock, a strange silhouette shifting across erraticallty patterned walls, words and pictures dancing in and out of focus. I turn my head again, my attention drifting towards the dancing lights in front of me. I think it's the noise that becomes clearer first, the hissing static retreating enough for me to recognise the drumming of heavy rain. After that the clarity begins to spread, the screen momentarily showing me a skyscape of dancing stars before reasserting it's identity as a window, it's pane distorted by the splash of a hundred raindrops, in a constant state of movement but oh-so-solid and real. Solid glass, between the cold wet world outside and the room within. The image of the laughing neon lady has become the vague outline of an illuminated street sign outside my window, whilst within the features of my room begin to map themselves over the figures around me, the smiling faces and silhouettes.
The seat begins to feel firmer around me, no longer a shapeless warm sensation around me. In the dark the lights through the window have caught the edged of items around me, marking out hard lines and soft curves as the sweep of someone's arm, the tilt of someone's head, casting other shadows across the wall. The walls, I recall, are covered in newspaper clippping, stories about reality spilling in through the cracks, about the truth digging it's way up from beneath the streets, stories I've painstakingly collected over days, weeks, months...
How long have I been here?
"How long have you got?" a smiling voice asks from the darkness.
I turn towards the voice, seeing nothing. Rising from my chair I stumble on unsteady feet towards my desk, and switch the lamp on, wrenching it's head to shine it's glaring light across the room. Empty. Nothing. No-one. Just me.
Me. I don't really remember much anymore. That's fair enough - the City doesn't really seem to remember me anymore. The people pass by me on the streets without casting a second glance. I'll admit, I didn't think I was anything special. I was just one faceless cog in the machine. One of a thousand insects. A speck of dirt on a stomping boot. I've forgotten who I was. I've taken to call myself Citizen K, but I'll admit, I can't really remember where that name came from.
And so I was quite happy to fade into the grey backdrop of this miserable rainy city, going through the same stale routine not knowing or expecting anything new. And then I began to see the signs. Things that just didn't add up. Strange alignments of patterns on walls, odd glances from people, half heard whispers. Nothing quite real enough to pin down, but suddenly the world wasn't so black and white anymore. What was once routine no longer seemed so, as if the cog in the machine had become loose, as if reality had been knocked slightly off-track. For a while I thought it must have been me, that I must have somehow been broken. I began to collect newspaper clipping that suggested otherwise, that showed that there was something genuine trying to manifest itself into the world's greater consiousness. Here were articles about figures in modern politics, with radical new messages, or artists with daring new messages to convey. Writers with stories to tell and theories to divulge. What was the connection? What was it I couldn't quite see, behind the hand written pleas, the invitations to share these people's private lives, if only for a split second? And then I found him.
The Sleeper.
There are seven hundred and thirty three individual cuttings on these walls, enough to cover what original wall space there is of this small room, and of those fifty nine concern The Sleeper. Twelve more articles about him are spread over the surface of the desk, freshly collected from magazines and papers this week. No-one knows who The Sleeper is, only that he was involved in a terrible car crash on one of the busier routes out of this grim city. The wweather had been bad, visibility reduced, and a truck had skidded and flipped over onto it's side as it tried to change lanes, crashing into several cars as it did so. The Sleeper was the driver of one of those cars. The impact itself shattered the front windscreen, collapsing the driver's door inwards and crushing much of the chassis. The vehicle was, reports say, dragged along with the momentum of the upturned truck, sheering metal from it's frame as it did so. The man who became known as The Sleeper, though protected by the car's airbag, was concussed by the accident, his face caught by splinters of glass and jagged metal. He has never regained consiousness. Furthermore, he has never been identified. Having carried no identification and despite the attempts of police and media to track down concerned relatives, The Sleeper has remained Unknown.
It has been months now, perhaps weeks... days? However long it has been since The Sleeper was discovered, his comatose body transfered to The Hospital, the news has focussed on him. The signs all point towards a messiah, a dreamer, a shattered soul behind a shattered vissage. And whispers all concern the boy in the car, the unknown traveller, the mysterious and enigmatic Sleeper. These pages in front of me, torn out of glossy magazines and tabloid papers alike, all query the identity of The Sleeper, where he came from, where he was headed, the state of his car. Conspiracy theorists suggest that some of the cars were looted before the emergenct services arrived, based around reports of apparently disturbed wreckage, or of figures seen watching, vulture-like, from the sides of the road. One of the papers shows a badly reproduced image of The Sleepers car, the windscreen almost cleared off glass, shattered and scattered across the rain-soaked road, the flashing orange lights distorted in the water. Inside the car the dark silhouette of the drivers seat is crushed down awkwardly to one side. Although the most popular shot of The Sleeper is a full-colour shot of his face, eyes bruised and partially obscured by the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, a number of cuts marked across the left side of his face, I can't help but look at the photo of the car-wreck. This is where it all happened, I tell myself, peering into the unpenetrable darkness of the car.
"This is where it all happened", a voice smugly echoes behind me, causing me to spin around.
Nothing. No-one. Just me.
The following story, of which there is little more written except to rewrite the first few paragraphs, owes much to the monolithic and generic settings of Kafka's stories. Previously I've had it mentioned that the main character has no real personality (although that was pretty much how I wanted the character portrayed, lost on the ebb and flow of his/her own thoughts) but that the other character we hear from promises so much more. I've yet to really explore that, but for your pleasure, here is the intro to the unfinished story in full. At least the first version of it.
The second story intro, which will be posted just after this one, is the first part of a long story that I set in Prague due to the inspiration I got from visiting different parts of it, and seeing things that just inspired me to write about them.
'Citizen K' (for want of a better title)
How long have I been here?
I sit in darkness, the giant screen in front, bright in my face, hissing at me, noise illuminating every inch of glass, dancing around like bees in a monochrome hive. I'm staring at it, have been for countless minutes. There are vague shapes dancing amongst the patterns on the screen, lit up in neon. Is that a woman's face, frozen mid-laugh? I blink, to make some sort of sense of the image, and she's gone, replaced by the chaotic dance of noise. Watching it, trying to tune into the world being projected into this room, I grasp the sudden realisation that the world I'm watching is seperated from my own by a layer of glass. Everything that has consumed my pattern of light, cast out of a screen and bathing me in it's illuminance. I get the sudden sense of being here, being somewhere, and my mind begins to query just where that somewhere is. The edges of the screen sharpen crisply, defining the white noise in a familar rectangular shape, whilst the walls around me slowly lean into view, and the weight of a chair begins to reassert it's presence around me. The light dances across the surface of my skin, and I fold my hands in my lap as I become aware of them, of my legs stretched out before me. Slowly I break my gaze away from the screen, looking to one side of me. I am not alone. Vague figures caught in thin strips of light either side of me, sitting on the same chair, watching me, smiling in the darkness. I'm comfortable, I'm warm, I'm not sure quite what's going on but I'm relaxed.
The outline of one of my nearest companion's heads molds itself into the contours of the chair beside me, and I wonder just how many people are here in this room. In the darkness I make out further shapes, a doorway, a clock, a strange silhouette shifting across erraticallty patterned walls, words and pictures dancing in and out of focus. I turn my head again, my attention drifting towards the dancing lights in front of me. I think it's the noise that becomes clearer first, the hissing static retreating enough for me to recognise the drumming of heavy rain. After that the clarity begins to spread, the screen momentarily showing me a skyscape of dancing stars before reasserting it's identity as a window, it's pane distorted by the splash of a hundred raindrops, in a constant state of movement but oh-so-solid and real. Solid glass, between the cold wet world outside and the room within. The image of the laughing neon lady has become the vague outline of an illuminated street sign outside my window, whilst within the features of my room begin to map themselves over the figures around me, the smiling faces and silhouettes.
The seat begins to feel firmer around me, no longer a shapeless warm sensation around me. In the dark the lights through the window have caught the edged of items around me, marking out hard lines and soft curves as the sweep of someone's arm, the tilt of someone's head, casting other shadows across the wall. The walls, I recall, are covered in newspaper clippping, stories about reality spilling in through the cracks, about the truth digging it's way up from beneath the streets, stories I've painstakingly collected over days, weeks, months...
How long have I been here?
"How long have you got?" a smiling voice asks from the darkness.
I turn towards the voice, seeing nothing. Rising from my chair I stumble on unsteady feet towards my desk, and switch the lamp on, wrenching it's head to shine it's glaring light across the room. Empty. Nothing. No-one. Just me.
Me. I don't really remember much anymore. That's fair enough - the City doesn't really seem to remember me anymore. The people pass by me on the streets without casting a second glance. I'll admit, I didn't think I was anything special. I was just one faceless cog in the machine. One of a thousand insects. A speck of dirt on a stomping boot. I've forgotten who I was. I've taken to call myself Citizen K, but I'll admit, I can't really remember where that name came from.
And so I was quite happy to fade into the grey backdrop of this miserable rainy city, going through the same stale routine not knowing or expecting anything new. And then I began to see the signs. Things that just didn't add up. Strange alignments of patterns on walls, odd glances from people, half heard whispers. Nothing quite real enough to pin down, but suddenly the world wasn't so black and white anymore. What was once routine no longer seemed so, as if the cog in the machine had become loose, as if reality had been knocked slightly off-track. For a while I thought it must have been me, that I must have somehow been broken. I began to collect newspaper clipping that suggested otherwise, that showed that there was something genuine trying to manifest itself into the world's greater consiousness. Here were articles about figures in modern politics, with radical new messages, or artists with daring new messages to convey. Writers with stories to tell and theories to divulge. What was the connection? What was it I couldn't quite see, behind the hand written pleas, the invitations to share these people's private lives, if only for a split second? And then I found him.
The Sleeper.
There are seven hundred and thirty three individual cuttings on these walls, enough to cover what original wall space there is of this small room, and of those fifty nine concern The Sleeper. Twelve more articles about him are spread over the surface of the desk, freshly collected from magazines and papers this week. No-one knows who The Sleeper is, only that he was involved in a terrible car crash on one of the busier routes out of this grim city. The wweather had been bad, visibility reduced, and a truck had skidded and flipped over onto it's side as it tried to change lanes, crashing into several cars as it did so. The Sleeper was the driver of one of those cars. The impact itself shattered the front windscreen, collapsing the driver's door inwards and crushing much of the chassis. The vehicle was, reports say, dragged along with the momentum of the upturned truck, sheering metal from it's frame as it did so. The man who became known as The Sleeper, though protected by the car's airbag, was concussed by the accident, his face caught by splinters of glass and jagged metal. He has never regained consiousness. Furthermore, he has never been identified. Having carried no identification and despite the attempts of police and media to track down concerned relatives, The Sleeper has remained Unknown.
It has been months now, perhaps weeks... days? However long it has been since The Sleeper was discovered, his comatose body transfered to The Hospital, the news has focussed on him. The signs all point towards a messiah, a dreamer, a shattered soul behind a shattered vissage. And whispers all concern the boy in the car, the unknown traveller, the mysterious and enigmatic Sleeper. These pages in front of me, torn out of glossy magazines and tabloid papers alike, all query the identity of The Sleeper, where he came from, where he was headed, the state of his car. Conspiracy theorists suggest that some of the cars were looted before the emergenct services arrived, based around reports of apparently disturbed wreckage, or of figures seen watching, vulture-like, from the sides of the road. One of the papers shows a badly reproduced image of The Sleepers car, the windscreen almost cleared off glass, shattered and scattered across the rain-soaked road, the flashing orange lights distorted in the water. Inside the car the dark silhouette of the drivers seat is crushed down awkwardly to one side. Although the most popular shot of The Sleeper is a full-colour shot of his face, eyes bruised and partially obscured by the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, a number of cuts marked across the left side of his face, I can't help but look at the photo of the car-wreck. This is where it all happened, I tell myself, peering into the unpenetrable darkness of the car.
"This is where it all happened", a voice smugly echoes behind me, causing me to spin around.
Nothing. No-one. Just me.
Friday 3 July 2009
The Follow Friday Blog
Today's Twitter #followfriday is promoting those who have good blogs worth taking a peek at. Here's a quick list, with a quick quote lifted from each. This list may be amended later.
@camiknickers “Hey buddy. Thanks for your advances. I’m afraid I want your friendship more than I want your cock. If that’s going to be a problem, fuck off. Sincerely etc. camiknickers”
@crazehkitteh “i'm sorry if today's post has not stimulated you intellectually, but gimme a break! I'm a Gemini remember, so I can assure you there are further rants in progress.I JUST WANT TO BE NICE TODAY, is that ok???”
@davesusetty “So, much to everyone's amazement, Susan Boyle didn't win Britain's Got Talent. And other sad news, the last survivor of the Titanic disaster, Millvina Dean, died at the age of 97. However, BBC News got their wires crossed somewhere along the line....”
@ElleSergi “One part writer, one part historian, one part loon. I am three! I am a magic number. I also hate marmite, and really should sleep more.”
@EmApocalyptic “You know, I think writers might be a bit weird. Please don’t be offended, but I think we are rather strange and obsessive. We make up worlds, make up people, spend hours and hours and hours writing about them…”
@ememess “When I was a kid, bin men had an aura, a mystique, something of the night about them: fierce, semi-mythical beings who came with the dawn and hefted sacks of household trash into the grinding back-ends of their trucks, before rumbling ominously away.”
@Eyglo “As an aspiring writer I am constantly looking at other people’s works. Interested in how they came up with their ideas, how they write and why. Twitter is a great platform to know a little bit more about these things, so for the past few months I’ve been semi-obsessed with Twitter too.”
@hatmandu “Maybe it’s time to start killing things off, and having ideas for new stories, instead of keeping the same ones going at the expense of all the sense.”
@Herring1967 “I smiled back at him for a second, confused at what had amused him, but then realised it was probably my moustache. It had come at him by surprise and everything had happened so quick that he couldn't stop himself laughing in my face. Which isn't great customer service, but I can't really blame him. After all it's a funny moustache and I am trying to reclaim it for comedy.”
@Itxi_Itx “Never feel guilty about stuff that's pleasurable. Unless its something freaky that you really shouldn't be doing, of course.“
@jamiesmart “For me, any comic that has the phrase ‘bum rush’ in it should be automatically approved.”
@JaneyGodley “My life is officially over, gone are the days when I could sleep till 3 o’clock like a right good comedian. I am going to be like one of those old ladies who wake up at 6am, put on a housedress and then fall asleep on the sofa listening to The Archers.”
@JhonenV “Friendship is a wonderful and restorative thing when it is in its good and proper form, a life-affirming and sometimes simply life-sustaining state that few people or cartoon animals can do without..”
@juliansimpson “What the… Who the… Where the fuck am I?”
@Julirose “On one occasion, I ventured into dalnet to find my usual chatroom empty, so I randomly clicked on another (#bdsm-uk). Well, there went a very preconceived notion about sex in the UK!”
@mandoran “Today was a brilliant example of what the Norwegians call ‘agurk’ news. Literally it means cucumber news”
@nashg “There have been odd exceptions, but in general, I find that people just irritate me. They either want something, or they are dull but insistent, or scary, or arrogant, or just out on day-release.”
@necol66 “COMING SOON: my strange and weird story about killer gnomes. YES THATS RIGHT, I SAID KILLER GNOMES...”
@purplesime "Okay, I admit there have been some inconsistencies. But it's nothing major, get over it!"
@rebeccawoodhead “I’m beating Cheryl Cole!”
@sarahjpin “If you rely on people loving you for your face, then you're fucked. They've got to love you for your smile and what's behind it. Because when the pretty fades, the smile shouldn't.”
@waitingword “The hurts of our yesterdays all too often have a profound affect on how we love and are loved (or do not love, and are not loved) tenderly today.”
@warrenellis “Off To The Pub!”
The following don't really have Blogs, but their Twitter accounts work just as well enough...
Representing the guys we have...
@demonchild6
@doodlewhale
@MatBlackmore
@tankyknight
@AndrewsBit
@parrais
...and the girls...
@ladylaura77
@cherrymorello
@ebeth
@gibbzer
@abiblackmore
@TrinaWright
That's it for now, but feel free to check in later. I'm sure I'll be digging up a last few names before the end of the day!
@camiknickers “Hey buddy. Thanks for your advances. I’m afraid I want your friendship more than I want your cock. If that’s going to be a problem, fuck off. Sincerely etc. camiknickers”
@crazehkitteh “i'm sorry if today's post has not stimulated you intellectually, but gimme a break! I'm a Gemini remember, so I can assure you there are further rants in progress.I JUST WANT TO BE NICE TODAY, is that ok???”
@davesusetty “So, much to everyone's amazement, Susan Boyle didn't win Britain's Got Talent. And other sad news, the last survivor of the Titanic disaster, Millvina Dean, died at the age of 97. However, BBC News got their wires crossed somewhere along the line....”
@ElleSergi “One part writer, one part historian, one part loon. I am three! I am a magic number. I also hate marmite, and really should sleep more.”
@EmApocalyptic “You know, I think writers might be a bit weird. Please don’t be offended, but I think we are rather strange and obsessive. We make up worlds, make up people, spend hours and hours and hours writing about them…”
@ememess “When I was a kid, bin men had an aura, a mystique, something of the night about them: fierce, semi-mythical beings who came with the dawn and hefted sacks of household trash into the grinding back-ends of their trucks, before rumbling ominously away.”
@Eyglo “As an aspiring writer I am constantly looking at other people’s works. Interested in how they came up with their ideas, how they write and why. Twitter is a great platform to know a little bit more about these things, so for the past few months I’ve been semi-obsessed with Twitter too.”
@hatmandu “Maybe it’s time to start killing things off, and having ideas for new stories, instead of keeping the same ones going at the expense of all the sense.”
@Herring1967 “I smiled back at him for a second, confused at what had amused him, but then realised it was probably my moustache. It had come at him by surprise and everything had happened so quick that he couldn't stop himself laughing in my face. Which isn't great customer service, but I can't really blame him. After all it's a funny moustache and I am trying to reclaim it for comedy.”
@Itxi_Itx “Never feel guilty about stuff that's pleasurable. Unless its something freaky that you really shouldn't be doing, of course.“
@jamiesmart “For me, any comic that has the phrase ‘bum rush’ in it should be automatically approved.”
@JaneyGodley “My life is officially over, gone are the days when I could sleep till 3 o’clock like a right good comedian. I am going to be like one of those old ladies who wake up at 6am, put on a housedress and then fall asleep on the sofa listening to The Archers.”
@JhonenV “Friendship is a wonderful and restorative thing when it is in its good and proper form, a life-affirming and sometimes simply life-sustaining state that few people or cartoon animals can do without..”
@juliansimpson “What the… Who the… Where the fuck am I?”
@Julirose “On one occasion, I ventured into dalnet to find my usual chatroom empty, so I randomly clicked on another (#bdsm-uk). Well, there went a very preconceived notion about sex in the UK!”
@mandoran “Today was a brilliant example of what the Norwegians call ‘agurk’ news. Literally it means cucumber news”
@nashg “There have been odd exceptions, but in general, I find that people just irritate me. They either want something, or they are dull but insistent, or scary, or arrogant, or just out on day-release.”
@necol66 “COMING SOON: my strange and weird story about killer gnomes. YES THATS RIGHT, I SAID KILLER GNOMES...”
@purplesime "Okay, I admit there have been some inconsistencies. But it's nothing major, get over it!"
@rebeccawoodhead “I’m beating Cheryl Cole!”
@sarahjpin “If you rely on people loving you for your face, then you're fucked. They've got to love you for your smile and what's behind it. Because when the pretty fades, the smile shouldn't.”
@waitingword “The hurts of our yesterdays all too often have a profound affect on how we love and are loved (or do not love, and are not loved) tenderly today.”
@warrenellis “Off To The Pub!”
The following don't really have Blogs, but their Twitter accounts work just as well enough...
Representing the guys we have...
@demonchild6
@doodlewhale
@MatBlackmore
@tankyknight
@AndrewsBit
@parrais
...and the girls...
@ladylaura77
@cherrymorello
@ebeth
@gibbzer
@abiblackmore
@TrinaWright
That's it for now, but feel free to check in later. I'm sure I'll be digging up a last few names before the end of the day!
Thursday 2 July 2009
Old Beginnings...
...the hope is, that with my increased confidence in my own abilities, I might actually finish one of the twenty or so stories I've begun...
Here's a series of opening paragraphs. If you see one unfinished story that grabs your attention, feel free to grab mine and prompt me to do something with it. Really, I need much prompting. With sharp sticks or sharp tongues.
Here's a series of opening paragraphs. If you see one unfinished story that grabs your attention, feel free to grab mine and prompt me to do something with it. Really, I need much prompting. With sharp sticks or sharp tongues.
******It was a quiet street, up a slight incline from the main road where I'd disembarked from the tram. There was no traffic along this side-street, though the pavement was lined with parked cars as far as the street's end, old cars I'd never seen the like of before landing in the Czech Republic. The buildings were all tall, grey and uniform, presumably a mix of office blocks and apartments, their ground floor windows revealing blinds and darkened rooms behind frosted glass. The doorways I'd passed, those with clear glass panels, peered into short halls that led into dark corridors and stairwells. Much like the one where I stood now. Through the window I could see the narrow corridor stretching towards the back of the building, tucked alongside a flight of stairs leading up to the next level. A few doorways offered alternative exits, though they appeared without exception to be plain and heavy looking wooden doors, without significant defining features.
I checked against the list of names, and finding the name Horáková prepared to ring once more. As I did so, I noticed a woman descending the staircase, middle-aged and wearing a long brown dress and a grey cardigan over the top, her hair braided and tied into a bun behind her head. As she got closer she glanced up, made eye contact, smiled, and crossed the short distance between the bottom step and the front door. As she opened the door a crack, she smiled once more. "Dobré jitro..." she said, wishing me good morning or something like that, the end of the sentence carrying enough inflection to suggest a question, curiosity as to who I might be.
"Hello. Mrs Horáková? I'm Ewan Brook. We spoke..."
She smiled again, nodding and pulling the door wider. "Yes. Come in, please." She stepped aside, holding the door open until I had managed to pull myself and my bag clear of the street. "It's been quite cold this week - can I get you a warm drink? Some tea, perhaps?", she offered, leading me towards the stairs. "Yes," I said, "tea would be lovely."
******
How long have I been here?
I sit in darkness, the giant screen in front, bright in my face, hissing at me, noise illuminating every inch of glass, dancing around like bees in a monochrome hive. I'm staring at it, have been for countless minutes. There are vague shapes dancing amongst the patterns on the screen, lit up in neon. Is that a woman's face, frozen mid-laugh? I blink, to make some sort of sense of the image, and she's gone, replaced by the chaotic dance of noise. Watching it, trying to tune into the world being projected into this room, I grasp the sudden realisation that the world I'm watching is seperated from my own by a layer of glass. Everything that has consumed my pattern of light, cast out of a screen and bathing me in it's illuminance. I get the sudden sense of being here, being somewhere, and my mind begins to query just where that somewhere is. The edges of the screen sharpen crisply, defining the white noise in a familar rectangular shape, whilst the walls around me slowly lean into view, and the weight of a chair begins to reassert it's presence around me. The light dances across the surface of my skin, and I fold my hands in my lap as I become aware of them, of my legs stretched out before me. Slowly I break my gaze away from the screen, looking to one side of me. I am not alone. Vague figures caught in thin strips of light either side of me, sitting on the same chair, watching me, smiling in the darkness. I'm comfortable, I'm warm, I'm not sure quite what's going on but I'm relaxed.
The outline of one of my nearest companion's heads molds itself into the contours of the chair beside me, and I wonder just how many people are here in this room. In the darkness I make out further shapes, a doorway, a clock, a strange silhouette shifting across erraticallty patterned walls, words and pictures dancing in and out of focus. I turn my head again, my attention drifting towards the dancing lights in front of me. I think it's the noise that becomes clearer first, the hissing static retreating enough for me to recognise the drumming of heavy rain. After that the clarity begins to spread, the screen momentarily showing me a skyscape of dancing stars before reasserting it's identity as a window, it's pane distorted by the splash of a hundred raindrops, in a constant state of movement but oh-so-solid and real. Solid glass, between the cold wet world outside and the room within. The image of the laughing neon lady has become the vague outline of an illuminated street sign outside my window, whilst within the features of my room begin to map themselves over the figures around me, the smiling faces and silhouettes.
The seat begins to feel firmer around me, no longer a shapeless warm sensation around me. In the dark the lights through the window have caught the edged of items around me, marking out hard lines and soft curves as the sweep of someone's arm, the tilt of someone's head, casting other shadows across the wall. The walls, I recall, are covered in newspaper clippping, stories about reality spilling in through the cracks, about the truth digging it's way up from beneath the streets, stories I've painstakingly collected over days, weeks, months...
How long have I been here?
"How long have you got?" a smiling voice asks from the darkness.
******
"Resolute is not the end of the world, but you can see it from here..."
It's cold. Whatever else the great, magnificient and terrible wilderness at the top of the world is, it's cold. Believe me, I know. There aren't that many places on God's earth that man hasn't conquered, but up here, up in the Arctic, where the sun sometimes disappears for months at a time, this is one of them. Man has, simply through plain common sense, left most of the Arctic circle to the few animals born to live in such a climate. Aside from maybe a handful of Inuit settlements, and the ocassional weather station or military outpost dotted across the icy landscape, man is a rare sight . The human race, it seems, would rather be somewhere a little more hospitable. Who could blame it?
There's an Inuit settlement in Canada, one of the most northernmost settlements in the country, that goes by the name of 'Resolute'. You might be forgiven for putting the name down to the people's resolute attempts to dig in deep and brave the freezing winds and bleak landscape but, no, it's named after a ship. The HMS Resolute was a Royal Navy Arctic discovery vessel that got trapped in the ice, as part of an expedition of four ships in the 1850s. They'd been sent to discover the fate of a previous Arctic explorer, who'd gone missing with his own expedition of two ships. If history has told us one thing, it's not to sail your boats in Arctic waters. The Resolute was lucky, and was freed from the ice the following summer, after all it's crews had found safe passage away on other vessels. The fate of the original expedition, well, that was never discovered.
At times like these I wonder how much easier things might be if we'd come up here to go searching for missing expeditions and boats. As it is it's about all I can do to distract myself from the icey burning sensation spreading through my limbs. I have to keep going.
Resolute may well have the most northern commercial airport in the world. I don't know. My research didn't cover airport details - I didn't even book the tickets, right? But I'm guessing Resolute Bay Airport is the most northern commercial airport in Canada. Hell, yeah, it must be. There are only a few inhabited places this far up the map. As far as big settlements go, and we're not even talking that big, there's only Resolute and Grise Fiord further north, on Ellesmere Island. Still, Resolute has a little of the tourist haven mentality. Not much, but a little. Let's face it, beautiful though the region is Resolute is essentially a series of gravelly roads, maybe a hundred houses, and a whole heap of ice and snow. And yet they've got their gift shop, with their Inuit carvings and 'not the end of the world' t-shirts. No five-star hotel complexes just yet, but they've got running water, they've got heat, they've got internet in case you don't want to wait a fortnight for mail. In this climate it's a slice of heaven.
We stayed just a couple of nights in Resolute before flying further north. Flying further north requires flight by HC-6 Twin Otter, the small sort of plane that you tend to see people jumping out of in the movies. A small plane that could fit maybe twenty people, wings spread wide, with propellors close by either side of the cabin, and balanced upon three wheels, it looked relatively delicate. Fragile, even, compared to the commercial jets the average city-dweller is used to. And, well, guess what? That's me.
There were too many of us to fit aboard the one plane. At least with all the equipment. Logistically the only way to transport all seventeen of us and our supplies, we'd need to charter two planes. Back then we'd only had a rough idea of how things were going to pan out, of how we'd be working. Of course, if we'd known exactly how it was going to pan out, none of us would've got on the damn plane. None of us would be dead. And those of us still alive wouldn't be battling to stay alive.
I'm pulling the coat closer, tighter. It doesn't really do much good, but it makes me feel better. I think that if you keep your body - what is it they call it? - your 'core' warm, then the extremities take care of themselves. Or at least you tend to stay alive longer. Something. Something I read somewhere, or someone advised.
David. It was David.
Poor old David.
******
Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. I want you to feel relaxed before I begin. It's not so much a story I have to tell as a collection of stories held together by a common theme. Are you ready?
Good.
I guess, at heart, I'm a collector. I like to pick things up, turn them over in my hand, appreciate the details in a piece of jewellery or artefact or, conversely, it's simplicity. I travel a lot, so I get the opportunity to pick up bits and pieces from all over the world. My collection really pools together some amazingly beautiful pieces from all over the world, invaluable and rare and an amazing insight into the cultures and personalities of far flung civilisations.
Nothing really shows that more than my collection of masks. Each mask indicates a story common to a particular society. Here there are masks of gods worshiped by isolated tribes, gods unknown beyond their small and simple world, there we have contemporary mask, complex hybrids of metaphor and symbolism built shrewdly by educated theatre set designer. Black masks, white masks, every colour under the sun masks, and plenty coloured by moonlight too. Gods, heroes, villians, man and beast, comedy and tragedy. Every player from every stage.
Understandably, that's a concise introduction to what is an extensive collection. I think I'll probably do the collection more justice to tell you the story attached to some of these masks. As a collection themselves they are simply an array of different faces, but by stepping behind each one and looking out into the world through their eyes, you'll begin to understand a little of the various people of the world and where their stories fit into their communities. And with that in mind I can't think of a better mask to begin with than this one.
******
When Roger Charles Bell woke up, he instinctively knew that there was someone else in the room. He had awoken suddenly, perhaps in response to a bad dream, his heart beating a little too rapidly, his eyes and ears alert. Glancing around the room he quickly dismissed the idea, seeing nothing but the gloomy room around him, clothes hung up over a chair, his few possessions neatly standing in their usual locations. The familiarity of the darkened room brought a sense of relief, and he lay down again, pulling his covers back over himself.
He lay down in his bed, his racing mind trying to calm itself as he stared at the blank ceiling above, his eyes picking out vague patterns in the grainy darkness. He still couldn't recall quite what he had imagined in his sleep that have awoken him, but as he tried to reflect on it, taking apart the possibilities with a rational mind, he felt the lulling sensation of sleep creeping back over him. He welcomed it, closing his eyes and letting his thoughts drift.
"Hello, Roger."
His eyed flickered opened again, painfully aware that he was not alone.
******
A white sun hangs low in a golden sky, it's glow warming the otherwise cool mountain air. Far below me amongst the trees of the forest I hear the morning chorus of birds. By my side my companion, a small dog, stirs, resting his head in my lap and rolling his eyes in my direction. Smiling down at him I gather my belongings, and we both climb to our feet.
I frown as I notice a white rose growing from the rock-face. I bend down, and pluck it free, as my friend yaps at my side. I hold the flower up in the sun-light, some distant memory trying to surface.
The petals fold around my face like a mask, and through the eye holes I see a dark void before me, swimming with faces. With a sudden rush of noise and a flicker of light I find myself falling...
Awake...
Please. Poke me. Pick a story and prompt me to finish it. And maybe I'll start sticking some completed ones up.
Under the Sun
Well, I won a competition. I wrote a haiku that lots of people saw and that brightened up their day and that the judges voted the best. Except, of course, it didn't scan like a 'traditional' haiku.
Of course, as others have pointed out, it's not in Japanese either. If you're going to be a fascist for traditionalism, you might as well go the whole hog.
I sent a few entries in, as did many others, I suppose. forgot about it for a few weeks, then got a phone call for a quick interview. It seems I was a high contender, for the following piece:
The interview can be found here.
There are a few points worth noting here. One is that I had gone for the feel rather than mechanics of a haiku in this case. Second was that they'd decided to waive that rule anyway. Third was that bees don't actually, as a rule, move through honey. Still, nearly everyone seemed to have overlooked that, and it had worked as a metaphor for me, with busy bees commuters moving through hazy morning sunshine in a half asleep but happy daze.
But, yes, it wasn't a REAL haiku because, as far as I could tell, it didn't scan correctly. I'd gone for the mood of a haiku, familiar as I am with their musings on simple natural phenomenom, and usuallyone line that balances against another description split over two lines. Something like this haiku I've just stolen from online:
By this token I haven't got a traditional haiku in terms of mechanics, but have in terms of feel. But look, here's a 'Bashō classic' haiku:
...which, somewhere between Japanese and English, has gained way too many syllables in the translation. And yet it's a classic.
In any case, I thought ti'd be unlikely that I'd win, seeing as it wasn't a proper haiku. And the whole bee/honey thing - people were bound to notice that sooner or later, weren't they? Yeah, of course.
So it was a bit of a surprise on Monday to get a call to tell me I'd won, and then a second call for an interview with the papers. This can be found here.
You can see, if you check it, that some of those die-hard haiku fans weren't happy, and so I offered some vague hint at an apology. It seems that people took part in the challenge from several points of view. I was chasing my own muse, others found themselves wanting to stick rigidly to the mechanics, and then felt grumpy when the winning entry didn't adhere to 'the rules', even though those rules had been waived.
I felt a little bit sad for the poor bastards, but not so sad that I'd give up my prize, a free pass for the rest of the year to 'Words on Monday' at the Kingsplace auditorium. At best it'll help me learn creative techniques that will actually push me in a direction I want to push myself, at worst it'll vaguely put me in a creative headspace and help me feign creativity.
Anyhow, thought it might be worth fleshing out the details with the opening lines to an unfinished story that I began to write several years back. It's thanks to this, and the earlier 'vignette' below it, that I had the image of a golden sun rising over the city in my head in the first place...
You know what? On reflection I still prefer my original.
Of course, as others have pointed out, it's not in Japanese either. If you're going to be a fascist for traditionalism, you might as well go the whole hog.
I sent a few entries in, as did many others, I suppose. forgot about it for a few weeks, then got a phone call for a quick interview. It seems I was a high contender, for the following piece:
Beneath the morning sun
The city is painted gold
People move like bees through honey
The interview can be found here.
There are a few points worth noting here. One is that I had gone for the feel rather than mechanics of a haiku in this case. Second was that they'd decided to waive that rule anyway. Third was that bees don't actually, as a rule, move through honey. Still, nearly everyone seemed to have overlooked that, and it had worked as a metaphor for me, with busy bees commuters moving through hazy morning sunshine in a half asleep but happy daze.
But, yes, it wasn't a REAL haiku because, as far as I could tell, it didn't scan correctly. I'd gone for the mood of a haiku, familiar as I am with their musings on simple natural phenomenom, and usuallyone line that balances against another description split over two lines. Something like this haiku I've just stolen from online:
The wind of Mt. Fuji
I've brought on my fan!
A gift from Edo
By this token I haven't got a traditional haiku in terms of mechanics, but have in terms of feel. But look, here's a 'Bashō classic' haiku:
The first cold shower
Even the monkey seems to want
A little coat of straw
...which, somewhere between Japanese and English, has gained way too many syllables in the translation. And yet it's a classic.
In any case, I thought ti'd be unlikely that I'd win, seeing as it wasn't a proper haiku. And the whole bee/honey thing - people were bound to notice that sooner or later, weren't they? Yeah, of course.
So it was a bit of a surprise on Monday to get a call to tell me I'd won, and then a second call for an interview with the papers. This can be found here.
You can see, if you check it, that some of those die-hard haiku fans weren't happy, and so I offered some vague hint at an apology. It seems that people took part in the challenge from several points of view. I was chasing my own muse, others found themselves wanting to stick rigidly to the mechanics, and then felt grumpy when the winning entry didn't adhere to 'the rules', even though those rules had been waived.
I felt a little bit sad for the poor bastards, but not so sad that I'd give up my prize, a free pass for the rest of the year to 'Words on Monday' at the Kingsplace auditorium. At best it'll help me learn creative techniques that will actually push me in a direction I want to push myself, at worst it'll vaguely put me in a creative headspace and help me feign creativity.
Anyhow, thought it might be worth fleshing out the details with the opening lines to an unfinished story that I began to write several years back. It's thanks to this, and the earlier 'vignette' below it, that I had the image of a golden sun rising over the city in my head in the first place...
I stare out across my city in the mid-morning sun, the buildings below basking in the warm golden glow. Through the window of this office, looking down at the world many storeys below, I cannot help but smile down on this, my city, so peaceful, so beautiful. The summer sun slowly rides higher in the sky, cool blue shadows disappearing in the cracks between buildings, the roofs of the buildings tinted bright yellow. Far away the river glitters through the spaces between the grand buildings along the north bank. My city, so peaceful, so beautiful, and yet still so distant. Up here, where I can see the whole city stretched out beneath as if I flew out on wings, I imagine myself somehow a king over this thriving wilderness, this golden world.
"Mr Martin?"
I stop in my thoughts for a second, my eyes resting somewhere on the horizon. It's several minutes past eleven. I'm wanted elsewhere, back in the real world. But out there, beyond the glass, beyond this tower block, I feel myself drifting, floating, flying, watching the world beneath me bussling with life, yet so far away. The air buffeting me up carries the distant sounds of traffic from the streets below to my ears. I close my eyes, press my forehead against the cool glass, and smile, imaging myself suspended in space, wrapped in the warmth of the sun above, the subtlest echoes of the city whispering to me, reaching for me, praising me...
"Mr Martin?"
In my mind the golden landscape beyond the glass turns a little colder, a little darker. A smile flickers across my lips, but my teeth grit a little tighter, my hands find themselves folding into fists as I ready myself to turn around and face the young man at the door. I hold the position for a few seconds, concentrating on the air being drawn into my lungs, and being forced out...
"Mr Martin!"
And THIS is the original inspiration, which might help explain what the story was about - a little more horror than initial impressions of the above might've suggested, and it actually works as a conclusion to the above snippet of fiction too:
The only other thing to consider is, can my winning haiku actually work as a 'traditional' haiku, consisting of 17 on (syllables), in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on respectively.The voice stops...
Hands clapsed snugly behind your back, you turn to face him...
Beyond him the City spreads out like a cloak...
From up here, in this tower, you can see for miles...
Far away the river winds like a snake through the twinkling cityscape...
He’s angry... what are you looking at...?
“What are you looking at?”
You wonder what it would be like to fly out from up here...
To launch yourself from this high tower and soar...
But he’s not interested...
He cannot see...
His head all full of figures, of facts...
Words, abstracts rules, the bars of a cage......
You take him to the window, show him the world stretched out before you...
This, the City, the Kingdom, bathed in sunlight...
And then, when he laughs, you show him...
You show him how to fly...
The morning sun shines
Painting golden streets below
Bees move through honey
You know what? On reflection I still prefer my original.
Michael Jackson - Off The Record
Once upon a time, in a fairy tale world called childhood, a tape fell into my open kiddie hands that had two albums on it. This was my introduction to Michael Jackson, and I loved him.
Fast forward to the present day, and I see magazines with his image in black and white across the cover, with the words '50 Years of Genius' and I find myself thinking "Really? They got to him early. And he wasn't really particularly genius by the end either..."
So, ah... why the change of heart?
My first actual memory of Michael Jackson was when Good Morning Britain made a big thing of showing the Thriller video one morning. I must have known who he was, dimly, to have felt the need to watch it and to know who this Jackson character was, but the video was the first time I ever remember seeing the all singing, all dancing (and all shuffling) Michael Jackson.
Just as everyone has their own Doctor, their own James Bond, their own cultural touch-stones that grabbed their attention depending on when they popped into the world, or were popped in front of a TV screen, Thriller era Jackson was MY Jackson. He of the brown face, the cheeky boyish looks, the clothes that were just slightly out there but not yet creeping into eccentric. He did lots of smiling, he was softly spoken, he charmed the ladies. The tape I had collected together Off The Wall and Thriller, and he seemed a thoroughly nice guy, even if I didn't know what he was saying half the time. And, you know, he was a lover, not a fighter. The cheeky scamp.
He had not, at this point, reached the stage where he felt he needed to recapture his lost childhood by surrounding himself with kids, nor had he reached the stage where he thought ladies might somehow find the idea of a grown man grabbing and rubbing his crotch and making odd howling noises attractive. For one thing, these are two very distinct images you don't really want to have in the same headspace. They make, if you'll pardon the image, uneasy bedfellows.
Furthermore the whole grabbing of the crotch and making howling noises just doesn't work. Trust me on this one. I know someone who tried it. Yeah, someone else. Not me. Shut up.
As he grew up and started to adopt more of a cool swagger and wear bizarre costumes and bits of tape around his fingers (and always the white socks with black shoes - what's with that?) and began to look all moody I kind of lost interest. Or, well, turned away for a moment. But Michael Jackson had a way of making you take notice, even if you ended up rolling your eyes.
The Moonwalker film I remember looked quite cool. Having watched it earlier this week I can say that, actually, it's quite rubbish. I still love that one video, the surreal one where he's flying around in a fairground plane, in a fairground world, through nashing teeth and past altars to Elizabeth Taylor and dancing Elephant Man bones. THAT'S still cool. The rest is all a bit shit, especially the whole Smooth Criminal / evil mastermind Joe Pesci planning to get kids hooked to drugs so they become loyal in their adulthood storyline.
Michael, you should've taken note at this point. Drugs bad.
Black and White, a video I always thought quite cool apart from that bloody Culkin kid, who Michael Jackson had inexplicably become best friends with, takes a turn for the very wrong when it ends with Jackson smashing up graffiti'd windows with messages like 'Niggers Out' and 'KKK Rule' and then grabbing his crotch, rubbing his hands over himself and generally making a big and quite terrifyingly grim tit of himself. Now, if this even remotely turns you on, ladies, please go and slam your head in a door. No, better yet, find a lift door to do the work for you. If these are the actions of a sane and charismatic figure of fun, I'm the Pope.
If any of you are in any doubt as to whether I am the Pope, I refer you once more to that door head slamming thing. It may not help, but it'd make me feel better, for one.
Do you think Jackson and Culkin sat down to watch that video with the crew after it had been spliced together? "Good job, gang, good job. Right, let's take these kids to therapy."
A lot of jokes have hung in the air since Michael Jackson died, but to be fair they'd been buzzing around him like flies for years. I personally was never very comfortably making jokes about the whole paedophile accusations, because I consider Michael Jackson a unique case. Plucked from normality at a young age, growing up surrounded by media types and yes men, I doubt that he had any sort of reality gauge. Where as the rest of us can turn around to our peers when we go a little crazy, and they can help reign us in, Michael Jackson has never really had any peers. He's had no blue-print for a solid family life, and in trying to distance himself from the behaviour his dad had towards him, pushing him into the lime-light, he fucked up his kids by putting them into shadows and masks instead.
Ultimately Jackson's death was tragic. But so was much of his life. Perhaps, most tragic of all, was that he was railroaded onto this path from an early age, and later attempts to reconnect with the childhood he never had conflicted with his attempts to retain his King of Pop crown, to live the extravagent lifestyle, because that's all he knew. Poor bastard.
I'll miss him, I guess. But then I've been missing MY Jackson for a while.
He's been gone a long time.
Fast forward to the present day, and I see magazines with his image in black and white across the cover, with the words '50 Years of Genius' and I find myself thinking "Really? They got to him early. And he wasn't really particularly genius by the end either..."
So, ah... why the change of heart?
My first actual memory of Michael Jackson was when Good Morning Britain made a big thing of showing the Thriller video one morning. I must have known who he was, dimly, to have felt the need to watch it and to know who this Jackson character was, but the video was the first time I ever remember seeing the all singing, all dancing (and all shuffling) Michael Jackson.
Just as everyone has their own Doctor, their own James Bond, their own cultural touch-stones that grabbed their attention depending on when they popped into the world, or were popped in front of a TV screen, Thriller era Jackson was MY Jackson. He of the brown face, the cheeky boyish looks, the clothes that were just slightly out there but not yet creeping into eccentric. He did lots of smiling, he was softly spoken, he charmed the ladies. The tape I had collected together Off The Wall and Thriller, and he seemed a thoroughly nice guy, even if I didn't know what he was saying half the time. And, you know, he was a lover, not a fighter. The cheeky scamp.
He had not, at this point, reached the stage where he felt he needed to recapture his lost childhood by surrounding himself with kids, nor had he reached the stage where he thought ladies might somehow find the idea of a grown man grabbing and rubbing his crotch and making odd howling noises attractive. For one thing, these are two very distinct images you don't really want to have in the same headspace. They make, if you'll pardon the image, uneasy bedfellows.
Furthermore the whole grabbing of the crotch and making howling noises just doesn't work. Trust me on this one. I know someone who tried it. Yeah, someone else. Not me. Shut up.
As he grew up and started to adopt more of a cool swagger and wear bizarre costumes and bits of tape around his fingers (and always the white socks with black shoes - what's with that?) and began to look all moody I kind of lost interest. Or, well, turned away for a moment. But Michael Jackson had a way of making you take notice, even if you ended up rolling your eyes.
The Moonwalker film I remember looked quite cool. Having watched it earlier this week I can say that, actually, it's quite rubbish. I still love that one video, the surreal one where he's flying around in a fairground plane, in a fairground world, through nashing teeth and past altars to Elizabeth Taylor and dancing Elephant Man bones. THAT'S still cool. The rest is all a bit shit, especially the whole Smooth Criminal / evil mastermind Joe Pesci planning to get kids hooked to drugs so they become loyal in their adulthood storyline.
Michael, you should've taken note at this point. Drugs bad.
Black and White, a video I always thought quite cool apart from that bloody Culkin kid, who Michael Jackson had inexplicably become best friends with, takes a turn for the very wrong when it ends with Jackson smashing up graffiti'd windows with messages like 'Niggers Out' and 'KKK Rule' and then grabbing his crotch, rubbing his hands over himself and generally making a big and quite terrifyingly grim tit of himself. Now, if this even remotely turns you on, ladies, please go and slam your head in a door. No, better yet, find a lift door to do the work for you. If these are the actions of a sane and charismatic figure of fun, I'm the Pope.
If any of you are in any doubt as to whether I am the Pope, I refer you once more to that door head slamming thing. It may not help, but it'd make me feel better, for one.
Do you think Jackson and Culkin sat down to watch that video with the crew after it had been spliced together? "Good job, gang, good job. Right, let's take these kids to therapy."
A lot of jokes have hung in the air since Michael Jackson died, but to be fair they'd been buzzing around him like flies for years. I personally was never very comfortably making jokes about the whole paedophile accusations, because I consider Michael Jackson a unique case. Plucked from normality at a young age, growing up surrounded by media types and yes men, I doubt that he had any sort of reality gauge. Where as the rest of us can turn around to our peers when we go a little crazy, and they can help reign us in, Michael Jackson has never really had any peers. He's had no blue-print for a solid family life, and in trying to distance himself from the behaviour his dad had towards him, pushing him into the lime-light, he fucked up his kids by putting them into shadows and masks instead.
Ultimately Jackson's death was tragic. But so was much of his life. Perhaps, most tragic of all, was that he was railroaded onto this path from an early age, and later attempts to reconnect with the childhood he never had conflicted with his attempts to retain his King of Pop crown, to live the extravagent lifestyle, because that's all he knew. Poor bastard.
I'll miss him, I guess. But then I've been missing MY Jackson for a while.
He's been gone a long time.
Sometimes It's Not All Sunshine
"So, do you have any history of depression?"
"Does being a goth count?"
So, it's official. It's semi official, at least. I went to the doctors last week, answered some questions on a multiple choice test, and the end result is that I've been diagnosed as the proud owner of Mild Depression. This means that doctors now get to ask me whether I ever consider harming myself, or chucking myself under a train, at which case I will be deemed to have something a little more serious.
I didn't really want to go to the doctor, but was convinced to by Laura, as much to put her mind at rest as my own. There's a whole catalogue of reasons why I might have depression - debts, driving lessons, young baby, girlfriend with post natal depression, four year old who still needs attention, every day work stress, and having had a bump on the head two years ago which makes me burn out a little earlier (maybe - there's a chance it's just all the other stresses getting on top of me). They all sort of compact on each other, meaning the driving lessons start to go a bit rubbish, certain debts get overlooked, you know. It's a vicious circle.
Anyhow, last week I was told my choice was drugs or going to see someone to talk to. Drugs were immediately appealling, coming from the persepctive of some 50% of the population who don't like to get touchy feelly, who like to drown their sorrows in drink, who like to bite the bullet and hold it in and deal with it their way. Plus all the tales of celebrities bowing shuffling into counselling sessions and disappearing into a nice big house somewhere to emerge into the sunlight some time later, cured, didn't really appeal to me. It all sounded so miserably tabloid.
But, well, drugs fuck you up to, as recent news stories will tell you. And I can maybe look at the whole 'talking to someone' thing and used it for writing fodder. Rather than sticking my chin out and saying "Fuck it, I'm okay, I don't need anyone else's help," I'm sort of saying "Fuck it, I'm not okay, but neither do I need to hide this and pretend I'm too cool for school."
To be honest I'm not going to be using my Blog as a dumping ground for all the rubbish that gets dug up. I don't think I have that much to dig up. So don't worry about that. If it still bothers you, well, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Oh, and I've discovered that they're making redundancies at the company. Although we've been told the Marketing Department (and thus the Design Studio) have not been earmarked for ANY losses, the fear of scoring a hat-trick and joining the unemployed masses for the third time in just over 12 months is an ugly scenario that doesn't quite skirt my imagination. Pah!
Sometimes it's not all sunshine. But sometimes it is. That's life. Take the lows with the highs. And go enjoy the sunshine. Now.
That's an order. Doctor's orders.
"Does being a goth count?"
So, it's official. It's semi official, at least. I went to the doctors last week, answered some questions on a multiple choice test, and the end result is that I've been diagnosed as the proud owner of Mild Depression. This means that doctors now get to ask me whether I ever consider harming myself, or chucking myself under a train, at which case I will be deemed to have something a little more serious.
I didn't really want to go to the doctor, but was convinced to by Laura, as much to put her mind at rest as my own. There's a whole catalogue of reasons why I might have depression - debts, driving lessons, young baby, girlfriend with post natal depression, four year old who still needs attention, every day work stress, and having had a bump on the head two years ago which makes me burn out a little earlier (maybe - there's a chance it's just all the other stresses getting on top of me). They all sort of compact on each other, meaning the driving lessons start to go a bit rubbish, certain debts get overlooked, you know. It's a vicious circle.
Anyhow, last week I was told my choice was drugs or going to see someone to talk to. Drugs were immediately appealling, coming from the persepctive of some 50% of the population who don't like to get touchy feelly, who like to drown their sorrows in drink, who like to bite the bullet and hold it in and deal with it their way. Plus all the tales of celebrities bowing shuffling into counselling sessions and disappearing into a nice big house somewhere to emerge into the sunlight some time later, cured, didn't really appeal to me. It all sounded so miserably tabloid.
But, well, drugs fuck you up to, as recent news stories will tell you. And I can maybe look at the whole 'talking to someone' thing and used it for writing fodder. Rather than sticking my chin out and saying "Fuck it, I'm okay, I don't need anyone else's help," I'm sort of saying "Fuck it, I'm not okay, but neither do I need to hide this and pretend I'm too cool for school."
To be honest I'm not going to be using my Blog as a dumping ground for all the rubbish that gets dug up. I don't think I have that much to dig up. So don't worry about that. If it still bothers you, well, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Oh, and I've discovered that they're making redundancies at the company. Although we've been told the Marketing Department (and thus the Design Studio) have not been earmarked for ANY losses, the fear of scoring a hat-trick and joining the unemployed masses for the third time in just over 12 months is an ugly scenario that doesn't quite skirt my imagination. Pah!
Sometimes it's not all sunshine. But sometimes it is. That's life. Take the lows with the highs. And go enjoy the sunshine. Now.
That's an order. Doctor's orders.
Wednesday 1 July 2009
Cages
"...we are all prawns in God's great chess game of existence..."
We interupt this Blog for a quick commercial break. I will now try to sell you something. Do not be alarmed. Please.
Recently the question cropped up about what people's favourite books were. Lots of good suggestions came up, from those I'd heard of to those I hadn't, to the completely unexpected but appreciated ('Tintin In Tibet' was a childhood favourite!) Still, I was able to answer quickly, with possibly no hesitation, that I'd pick Cages, by Dave McKean.
Cages is a big book. It's not the sort of thing you could put into a jacket pocket, or a handbag. It's near enough impossible to carry with one hand. This means that not only is it a perfect book for putting on your coffee table, should you have such a table, but you could also use it as a coffee table. Or as an improvised weapon. This will, I'd imagine, decrease the value of a really beautiful book so barring a zombie apocalypse or alien invasion you might want to keep it somewhere nice and safe. Away from young children, I might add, as they seem to be able to strip pages from the spines of any valuable book they get their hands on in minutes.
Okay, so I've established that it's a big book. A beautiful book. One that might be used to smash the brains of any zombies wandering into your neighbourhood. Is that enough to entice you to buy this book? Probably not. If these are your requirements you might like to look at some other big coffee table book. Perhaps that old sex book by Madonna, or an illuminated copy of the Bible lifted from a church. Either of these things will serve your purposes. But, well, if it's a good book with a good story and good pictures, then Cages might be just the thing for you.
In particular, if you're interested in contemporary mythologies - stories told by characters throughout the book to illustrate certain points - or the creative process, then this book will tap into those. And, of course, there's the beautiful artwork too, mainly black and white inks, but occasionally dipping into pencils or brightly coloured paints.
That's the look and feel of the book. But the story and the characters? The book is concerened, for the most part, with an artist who has moved into a new apartment and is struggling to find his muse. This artist, Leo Sabarsky, encounters two other 'artists': Angel, a nightclub musician who seems oblivious to the adulation of his fans; and Jonathan Rush, a writer turned reclusive book critic. But for the most part these people, and the other members of the apartment block and local neighbourhood, live lives that are separate from each other. Sabarsky finds his muse in the form of a woman who lives across the road, Rush lives with his wife as they struggle to understand what has happened to their lives, and Angel is... Angel is visionary, seemingly able to tap into the resonance that runs through everything. If he has any every day concerns we are not witness to them.
What really makes this book work though is the amount of time spent on character dialogue, people just talking as people do, often mundane and trivial and feeling strangely voyeuristic to overhear, and sometimes taking a turn for the odd. The grouchy landlady. The bitter old bar man. Two men in the bar bickering about music. An old woman talking to herself as she waits for her husband to return. Leo Sabarsky meeting his neighbour Jonathan Rush, who seems oddly agitated. His later conversations with the lady across the street. The gallery owner who seems only to be able to communicate via a series of cards with individuals words on. The man on the street wearing a contraption on his head representing the various planets. The surgeon who takes things apart to discern what it is within them that gives them value. Even God speaking with his cat. Above all this is a graphic novel that pays a great deal of attention to the individual worlds of the characters, and what happens when some of those worlds meet. There's very little conflict and, as such, the scenes where there are acts of aggression really stand out as stark and disturbing amongst the rest of the book, largely engaging, entertaining and enlightening.
It's also worth pointing out that there's a happy ending to the story. Or, well, there's a lot of ambiguity about what exactly has been going on, like sitting through to the end of Twin Peaks (although not quite so taxing), but ultimately you feel that people have ended up less lost than they started off, and a great deal happier.
Cages. A book about the cages we find ourselves in, the cages we build for ourselves, and how to escape from them. Or a book about creativity, and uncaging that. Or... well... it could be about a lot of things. There's a lot going on between the covers.
There will be some that consider the book pretentious. But, you know, I think it's got enough safeguards in it to not take itself too seriously, despite the philosophical tangents it wanders off at. And also, quite frankly, I don't care. It's a damn impressive book from a guy known mainly for his artwork, and I continue to find it a brilliant read. You don't have to read it - particularly if you've read thus far and feel you know the book well enough now. But, trust me, if you ever have a large amount of cash sitting around that you're willing to invest in a massive tome of a graphic novel, GET IT!
That is all. You may now continue your normally scheduled life.
Tuesday 30 June 2009
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
This might've been a poem once, or a fragment of song, but it never really evolved beyond these six lines - in any case, it's the source of the name of my blog(s):
Between the devil and the deep blue sea,
Between heaven and hell (and between you and me),
There's so much left unsaid, there's so much left to see,
There's so much we can do, there's so much we can be,
With our hearts pumping round all this blood inside
We're just walking wounds waiting to happen.
Between the devil and the deep blue sea,
Between heaven and hell (and between you and me),
There's so much left unsaid, there's so much left to see,
There's so much we can do, there's so much we can be,
With our hearts pumping round all this blood inside
We're just walking wounds waiting to happen.
Getting to know me...
Where did this all begin? And where will it end? I can't speak for anyone else but my online experience, in particular my online 'citizenship', evolved like this...
About ten years ago, my online experience was limited. My life revolved mainly around working the weeks, clubbing the weekends, and minor distractions to fill the gaps. My main interests were - in increasing levels of cool and decreasing levels of geekiness - horror roleplaying games, comic books, tarot cards and music. Girls too, of course, but given three of those four core interests I was lacking in certain social capabilities that ensured they played a major role in my real life. I wrote and drew cartoons to entertain and express myself to others, and stylish looking diaries to entertain and express myself to myself. It was before the world had embraced Blogging, and it was how I really got a handle on who I was, and found 'my voice'.
Online I only really devoted any time to a mailing list where we were all writing fictional accounts of hunting vampires and other things that stalked the night. I was developing my love of writing, but not persuing it with any real zeal, because I was young, in my 20s, had started earning money and was enjoying pissing it back up against a wall by going out clubbing, and buying obscure music and books from America. I suppose I did most of my reading around this time, tapping into some rich seams of counterculture writing.
Ah, those were the days. Young, foolish, happy. But so wrapped up in myself because I was very much the outsider.
Okay, jump forward to about seven or six year ago. I'd been exposed to handful of really good, inspiring websites. I'd had a stab at creating my own version of TV Go Home, putting together a Time Out parody called Torn Out ('the heart and soul of a jaded London'). It probably still exists out there, in bits and pieces. In doing a bit of research, trying to find out about creating an online cult around a larger than life fictional character ('Dr Celery Jones'), I stumbled across a book by a guy who asked people to join him, and inadvertently started a cult of his own. I then inadvertently joined his 'cult', joined an online community, and began Blogging properly. And found I could write and write and write.
That community still exists - www.joinme.co.uk
I started to go out and socialise with a massive group of strangers, and within about a year had met my girlfriend, discovered I was going to be a father, and moved away from London to start a family.
Okay, so five or four years I'd developed the Virgoan need to catalogue various things on various Wikis I'd created, but I didn't really have an online 'presence' of my own until I got a MySpace account. I'd drifted away from the online community I'd been with in London, and MySpace allowed me to get back in touch, to make a profile that immediately allowed me to show my true individual colours, and sell that packaged personality to a greater audience. As someone involved in design (and a s a wannabe writer) it offered great potential. It was here I made an online friend called ThisBlackHole, who wrote incredibly dark but articulate fiction, and HIAB-X ('Head in a Box'), someone with whom I shared a lot of interest. It was also where I first became fully aware of Warren Ellis's online empire, being familiar with him previously through my largely UK-centric comic collection.
At about this time I began to indulge my writing a little more. Submitted something for a small press publication, got it published, had an accident, went into recovery mode for a while and let writing sit on the back-burner a bit. By now, of course, I was also a full-time dad. I had less time to pursue writing, so MySpace was largely a place to indulge in finding new music and other writings. I also indulged in a little online gamery, but it's near impossible to do with a young family.
About two years ago I stumbled across Facebook, found it less 'packaged' and more user-friendly than MySpace. Last.fm had neatly taken over most of my online music needs (I'm there as both 'Psibreaker' and 'LokiSK') And as I said to HIAB-X at the time, MySpace is like trying to advertise yourself to a greater audience and for making and maintaining web contacts. Facebook is for maintaing contact with friends you already have.
Which I still do, via the medium of pictures. Most importantly it gave someone with no Flickr account a way of showing off photos, and of keeping in better contact with rarely seen friends and family. And get roped into 101 applications to eat away my free-time. Until...
Until Twitter.
With Twitter I don't bother updating my Facebook account. Facebook, with it's 101 pointless but pretty distractions stopped me Blogging or writing for ages. Possibly also because we're back in London, and I can see many of my Facebook Friends in the flesh again I've not had to indulge so much. But, importantly, Twitter allows me to Blog again, because I don't get distracted by all the questionaires, gifts, games and rubbish associated with Facebook. Micro-Blogging, as they say. But it's more than that. It's current. Normal Blogs feel like I've sat down, composed an exciting monologue, and pinned it on a notice board for all to see and consider. I find it a little self-indulent, but then I'll happily do it anyway. For fuck sake, I want to be a proper writer. It's what you have to do!
But Micro-Blogging, it's spontaneous. It's quick witted observations. It's often mundane observations, true (I'm sure my 'Ham and mustard. Scrummy.' comment yesterday won't win any awards), but at other times it's spot on. It's hard to be ingenuine and keep up with everyone else.
I have this image of Twitter being a little like the human consiousness, a stream of thought somewhere between pure polished personality and subconsious. It's vital, it's fresh, it's almost fucking alive. Most of all, I feel connected to like-minded people in a way I've not been able to before. Blipping music too, so that people appreciate exactly what mood someone's in. It's 140 characters at a time, sure, but I haven't seen much misunderstanding between Tweeters (then again, I don't Follow the sort of person likely to flame or have hissy fits). It's great for haiku, quick one-liners, blathering banter, rants about pressing issues, news. The death of David Karradine spread like wild-fire - I'd never have found out til much later had not the news slowly trickled in, then flooded! I swear, I'm the source of news in my office simply by having my ear to the ground and my eye to the Twitter.
I also know I don't need to waste my life watching the Apprentice or Big Brother, because it will be relayed to me almost immediately. Which is good, because we have no TV.
If you're not already on Twitter, I encourage you to join, find a whole bunch of people to Follow, and just plug into the hive mind. We'll be waiting for you.
About ten years ago, my online experience was limited. My life revolved mainly around working the weeks, clubbing the weekends, and minor distractions to fill the gaps. My main interests were - in increasing levels of cool and decreasing levels of geekiness - horror roleplaying games, comic books, tarot cards and music. Girls too, of course, but given three of those four core interests I was lacking in certain social capabilities that ensured they played a major role in my real life. I wrote and drew cartoons to entertain and express myself to others, and stylish looking diaries to entertain and express myself to myself. It was before the world had embraced Blogging, and it was how I really got a handle on who I was, and found 'my voice'.
Online I only really devoted any time to a mailing list where we were all writing fictional accounts of hunting vampires and other things that stalked the night. I was developing my love of writing, but not persuing it with any real zeal, because I was young, in my 20s, had started earning money and was enjoying pissing it back up against a wall by going out clubbing, and buying obscure music and books from America. I suppose I did most of my reading around this time, tapping into some rich seams of counterculture writing.
Ah, those were the days. Young, foolish, happy. But so wrapped up in myself because I was very much the outsider.
Okay, jump forward to about seven or six year ago. I'd been exposed to handful of really good, inspiring websites. I'd had a stab at creating my own version of TV Go Home, putting together a Time Out parody called Torn Out ('the heart and soul of a jaded London'). It probably still exists out there, in bits and pieces. In doing a bit of research, trying to find out about creating an online cult around a larger than life fictional character ('Dr Celery Jones'), I stumbled across a book by a guy who asked people to join him, and inadvertently started a cult of his own. I then inadvertently joined his 'cult', joined an online community, and began Blogging properly. And found I could write and write and write.
That community still exists - www.joinme.co.uk
I started to go out and socialise with a massive group of strangers, and within about a year had met my girlfriend, discovered I was going to be a father, and moved away from London to start a family.
Okay, so five or four years I'd developed the Virgoan need to catalogue various things on various Wikis I'd created, but I didn't really have an online 'presence' of my own until I got a MySpace account. I'd drifted away from the online community I'd been with in London, and MySpace allowed me to get back in touch, to make a profile that immediately allowed me to show my true individual colours, and sell that packaged personality to a greater audience. As someone involved in design (and a s a wannabe writer) it offered great potential. It was here I made an online friend called ThisBlackHole, who wrote incredibly dark but articulate fiction, and HIAB-X ('Head in a Box'), someone with whom I shared a lot of interest. It was also where I first became fully aware of Warren Ellis's online empire, being familiar with him previously through my largely UK-centric comic collection.
At about this time I began to indulge my writing a little more. Submitted something for a small press publication, got it published, had an accident, went into recovery mode for a while and let writing sit on the back-burner a bit. By now, of course, I was also a full-time dad. I had less time to pursue writing, so MySpace was largely a place to indulge in finding new music and other writings. I also indulged in a little online gamery, but it's near impossible to do with a young family.
About two years ago I stumbled across Facebook, found it less 'packaged' and more user-friendly than MySpace. Last.fm had neatly taken over most of my online music needs (I'm there as both 'Psibreaker' and 'LokiSK') And as I said to HIAB-X at the time, MySpace is like trying to advertise yourself to a greater audience and for making and maintaining web contacts. Facebook is for maintaing contact with friends you already have.
Which I still do, via the medium of pictures. Most importantly it gave someone with no Flickr account a way of showing off photos, and of keeping in better contact with rarely seen friends and family. And get roped into 101 applications to eat away my free-time. Until...
Until Twitter.
With Twitter I don't bother updating my Facebook account. Facebook, with it's 101 pointless but pretty distractions stopped me Blogging or writing for ages. Possibly also because we're back in London, and I can see many of my Facebook Friends in the flesh again I've not had to indulge so much. But, importantly, Twitter allows me to Blog again, because I don't get distracted by all the questionaires, gifts, games and rubbish associated with Facebook. Micro-Blogging, as they say. But it's more than that. It's current. Normal Blogs feel like I've sat down, composed an exciting monologue, and pinned it on a notice board for all to see and consider. I find it a little self-indulent, but then I'll happily do it anyway. For fuck sake, I want to be a proper writer. It's what you have to do!
But Micro-Blogging, it's spontaneous. It's quick witted observations. It's often mundane observations, true (I'm sure my 'Ham and mustard. Scrummy.' comment yesterday won't win any awards), but at other times it's spot on. It's hard to be ingenuine and keep up with everyone else.
I have this image of Twitter being a little like the human consiousness, a stream of thought somewhere between pure polished personality and subconsious. It's vital, it's fresh, it's almost fucking alive. Most of all, I feel connected to like-minded people in a way I've not been able to before. Blipping music too, so that people appreciate exactly what mood someone's in. It's 140 characters at a time, sure, but I haven't seen much misunderstanding between Tweeters (then again, I don't Follow the sort of person likely to flame or have hissy fits). It's great for haiku, quick one-liners, blathering banter, rants about pressing issues, news. The death of David Karradine spread like wild-fire - I'd never have found out til much later had not the news slowly trickled in, then flooded! I swear, I'm the source of news in my office simply by having my ear to the ground and my eye to the Twitter.
I also know I don't need to waste my life watching the Apprentice or Big Brother, because it will be relayed to me almost immediately. Which is good, because we have no TV.
If you're not already on Twitter, I encourage you to join, find a whole bunch of people to Follow, and just plug into the hive mind. We'll be waiting for you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)