... aaaaaaaaand Satan!

(originally posted on myspace here)

It's Monday the 22nd of December and the weather outside is thirty-seven minutes late, so whatever you're doing this morning be sure to leave plenty of time.

Apparently the Dungeons received a memo from "top office" to "tone down" SATAN'S GROTTO this year, and replace the line "I've killed Santa" with "I've kidnapped Santa", which we've done. And the displays team have set him just to the left of Satan's throne. Only he's a bit rotty. And nailed to a cross.

Still could be worse... I honestly don't think the sight of Santa's gnawed, eyeless, crucified carcass is going to be as traumatic as any actual Santa. I really do. "What's he doing in Bentalls?" I seem to remember asking myself as a six-year-old. Surely part of the mythos is you never actually get to see him, like 'Er Indoors or Doctor Claw or Humphrey Lyttelton.

That's a medley of money shots from Benjamin Christensen's enlightening 1922 expose "Haxan", re-released in the sixties as "Witchcraft Through the Ages" with narration by William Burroughs (the Haxan blooper reel's also up on youtube, featuring at 1 minute and 40 seconds in four takes of a nun "trying out a variety of ungodly titters"). And that's the director himself playing the devil, top off and tongue out, which must have made for an interesting set. (Warning: contains bumbums.) Anyway coming up next, as requested by Mr. James McQuillan, a short yuletide run of an old cartoon strip of mine "Persona Non Grata" as soon as I work out how to scan A3. Meantime here's more Santa.

Those books of soap in full

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

Some water damage. A little plastic cup full of soapy water routinely toppled onto this hundred year-old Welsh hymnal. I think the damage suits it though. Mother if you're reading this sorry.



I hit my nose on a beam that first evening and I think I also look better now as a result of the damage. The scar draws one's eye away from the chin. "And and Bee" also got wet (shown above) and I love And and Bee. They're out of print now, I'm pretty sure. The page above makes them look creepy. They're not. They simply met this GIRL on a BOAT bound for ASIA, and later they will meet a fairy in a STAR while standing in a QUEUE by the ROAD who helps them catch a TRAM, gives them each a VEST and sneaks them into someone's back YARD just in time for XMAS. Which reminds me, it snowed this morning, what a kick!

Anyway, here are the rules for the Books of Soap: "Bag checks in operation. Only one visitor allowed in at any time [only the display case is illuminated, the walls covered in mirrors that are cracked but not smashed, and you have a torch]. Certain volumes may be handled [beneath strips of processed chicken - that and the soap were my nods to the Trinum Magicum] Simply ask an attendant. Every visitor must be accompanied by an attendant [so me]. Please do not mark these books. Goggles to be worn at all times ['The place is a bit of a tip.' 'But I can't see anything.' 'That's why we ask you wear them. Because it's a bit of a tip.'] Attendants to be blindfolded [so take my soapy hand and lead me out]." And once out you were asked if you'd like to go back in without the goggles - If you'd kept them on, this treat was your reward and if you hadn't, this not being a treat was your punishment. Only half said yes... And the last book:

"Simon, did you write this?" shouted David R from behind the soapy goggles while I stumbled into the leg of a chair.
"Describe it."
"It looks like it was made by a child, with access to a typewriter."
"What's it say?"
" 'But then Sam Spaghetti, Picky Pear and Quarrelsome Cucumber slid into the whale's tummy because they were swallowed... and I expect you can guess what happened then!'

That's quite an optimistic expectation."

How I write

Yesterday day of writing: Wake eight, eat, hoover, review blog, replace jumpy shoe with dancing soldier, change mind, change back, wash smoke from hair, wash dishes, change, wash sheets, shop, bury remains of canvas chair from bonfire, find three blackberries, eat, watch tim bell on telly, hate tim bell, fall asleep in front morse pederast murder case, go for walk like writer, decide join british library to have somewhere to write, don't, home, find this...

 

 

drown it, hoover bed, change sheets, saw bits off bed make mattress lie flatter, hoover, knock candle off bed-post, replace candle, light candle so dripping wax reinforce join bed-post, watch candle so don't burn bed, eat, get call from mitchell webb look go onset scientist sketch next week, love being writer, eat, fall asleep in front telly juliet stevenson pederast murder case, wake, bathe, dave, dave, dave, sleep.

Today: Happy dungeon morning huge laugh at top office boss bring home proud giant plastic hand trophy with raised middle digit red nail varnish for sticking it to business across road. Me laugh boss go "wot?"

Now: Bathe, read old notebook, see notes exciting scene secret agent film written work at actual bookshop 5 year ago:

 

Tomorrow: join british library, something, something.

The Shout Stays In

"DAHHH-lings!"

Where HAVE you been? You simply MUST come in! Look at all my wonderful new twenty-first century stuff! See, I have sorted all my split boxes of juvenilia, I've inherited a pair of shorts, bought a bonsai tree and a boxed set of Steve Reich, trained my feet to face forward by walking with my elbows out and I'm bounding about youtube and iplayer these days like the nimblest of cyber-squirrels. Really I've NO idea how I managed before: Last night I was able to catch "Snog, Marry or Avoid" at three in the morning, which is probably when it would be on anyway but there's all those charming documentaries they're making now about Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse, thank the baby blonde Jesus Derek Jarman's long dead and all his ilk but ANYWAY, you're very lucky to catch me in actually. I was supposed to be in Goodge Street doing a second day of devised work for the RSC with Anthony Neilson.
Only he's, it turns out, a bit shit.

The first day of devising was eye-opening. Shall we rewind? For the purposes of this story it would help if you knew something about Adriano Shaplin. He's a young American playwright. He sounds like this (thanks for teaching me that linking thing, Tom) and he looks like a young Robert Newton and is the writer-in-residence at the RSC. Last Tuesday he got in touch with me out of the blue asking if I'd like to be in this - which I subsequently was - and also if I'd like to be involved in something he and Anthony Neilson had been asked to prepare for the Royal Shakespeare Company's slot at the Latitude Festival. I did. I've always wanted to work with Adriano. He's good. I don't know much about Anthony Neilson but he's supposed to be a famous deviser and if the RSC were asking on board the odder theatricals I wanted in. Also, the pitch that Adriano had put to me sounded awesome: Zombies versus Pilgrims.

Zombies was Anthony's idea (Scratch that! I've just learnt it was Nick the sound czar's idea), Pilgrims was Adriano's - as in the Pilgrim Fathers, with the big buckles on the hats (is it established what those buckles actually tighten?) So I turned up this Monday to the basement of a church on Goodge Street and there was Adriano and actors and a sound designer and producer and all that, but no Anthony Neilson, and we start talking about - well Nick the sound czar talked about how interested he was in rumours at a festival, how news travels, and the producer talked about bringing along the RSC's make-up department to zombify the punters, and Adriano talked about teaching people the rules of being a zombie, the idea being that at midnight we'd put on this play about Pilgrims and at a given signal the recruited zombies would then attack, and we'd play Zombies versus Pilgrims. Of course there were clear and understandable qualms on the part of some of Neilson's invited company concerning the prospect of being physically assaulted by flesh-eating festival-goers, "health and safety" was mentioned (by actors, not producers) but hopefully the ironing out of this structure was what these two days were for. Then Anthony Neilson came in, two hours late, suited, bleary-eyed and with a bead of something that could charitably be indentified as sweat hanging from the scoop of his lower lip. His new idea, which had nothing to do with what Adriano and Nick had been e-mailing each other about all week, was to stick a telly in the tent, bung on a video of Shakespeare and then go and get pissed. This, it transpired as the day wore on, was his favorite idea that anyone had had: "It's basically going to be a Guardian-reading Audience, and this is the last thing people expect of the RSC, which as I understand it is kind of our remit. Also I don't understand what it is that's going to make people want to dress up as zombies. What if no-one turns up? I'm sympathetic to the ethos but I just don't think it will work. And why pilgrims? It doesn't have any significance? Surely the question is, when the zombies attack do the actors stay in character? It doesn't make sense that they would. And what's in it for the audience? (meaning the punters turning up at midnight to sit in the tent and watch, not the festival as a whole... blah blah roll forward five hours)... rather than this kind of gimmicky getting-the-audience-involved trap what if we put on, like, the most boring piece of theatre we can possibly make and then at the end a zombie comes on and kills the actor, or maybe not even a zombie, or we're just all in bed asleep, or it's like some really really bad stand-up. Anyway that as I see it is the third way, and my idea, which is what I propose that we do. So are we all agreed? Hang on I just have to take this call -"

And that's pretty much verbatim. So no, Anthony, not agreed but that's fine. Suddenly it all makes sense, all these long and heated - and as I once thought pointless - debates about a "Crisis in Theatre", because seated here before me, listening attentively and buying me a pint and tired and bored is the Crisis incarnate, the poster boy of maverick theatrical experimentation trussed up as a gormless yuppie. Adriano and I and our fellow actor Cait hung around on Goodge Street while everyone else was in the pub, trying to picture a workable scenario for the following day's "workshop". It was clear to me there wouldn't be one. I mean, if you can't see HOW COOL ZOMBIES VERSUS PILGRIMS ARE HOW CAN YOU PROPERLY CALL YOURSELF AN ARTIST?! HONESTLY, Anthony! My mate Ned's seen some of your stuff. He told me "Neilson spoons out a tosser's bag of ideas after rubbing his anus against the long-shattered remnants of taboos he's claiming to break." I don't know if you can use that, if it fits your remit. It's controversial... Cait's dropped out too now. And Adriano. Cool. I feel great.

So here I lounge today, not sulking but counting my blessings - which is probably why I started this blog in the first place. Because all the work I've done over the past three months, from "Contains Violence" to the Dungeons to the 48-hour film challenge where I talk about glue (oh, here, it's called "Homework") makes so much more sense in the light of my one-night-stand with the RSC. Let's never ever work ever with or for the bored.

Did I really say I'd leave a post every other day? Tt. In this three months' absence my blessings seemed far too obvious to count, and when they stopped there seemed far too much to catch up on. I still hadn't even written about Jonah. Not even that. And it's June... Okay, well, starting from now. And I'm back now. I mean it, darlings. I've got to work on some sketches, but I'm back. I never did write that pilot of course. The more you write the more you write, so you've got to write it all really. Yes! Let us, in the words of the artificially promotable catch-phrase David Mitchell hopes to see shoe-horned into the new series of ThaMitAnWebLook - you just wait - Let us OPEN UP ANOTHER BOTTLE OF WINE AND SEE IF WE CAN GET BACK INTO IT!

Peace (and don't let the wrought-iron panhedron slam you in the ass on your way out):

-Video no longer there again. This definitely isn't it -

The single most simple invention 1: DOOR

 

 Is the above a less attractive proposition than the below?

 

 

 It's Shunt's new door. I like it. The old one was just a flat grey surface, and had to be broken down by the Emergency Services when a reveler got locked in for the night… underground, in the dark, with the rats... imagine. We get a lot of revelers now. "What are they queueing for?" asked Nigel. I know. Closed, the door is the perfect entrance. Opened, everything starts to go a little wrong: a bucket is rattled, names put down if you want to see a show, necks stamped – "Just the write the fucking names down, Simon"... Season at the door "can't stand ditherers" (I had no pen) – But what can we do, ye cannae change the laws of physics... 

  No-one likes lists. But if they hand people a page of Danielle Steele instead, and say that everyone with a page of Danielle Steele will get in to see your show, then you're simply left three minutes before curtain running in and out of four-hundred pouting midriffs looking for the one friend you have to hand a page of Danielle Steele to because you couldn't just put their name down on a list... 

 And you really hope it's worth it... Even though so much fun is clearly being had, you really hope something somewhere in the future is being – well – funded by all this. Because if that thing in the future doesn't exist, then for two seconds, three seconds, all these beautiful people turn in your head into shiny insects swarming round a corpse. And that's loonythink. 

 

 The shed that stands in the corner of Gary's bar was covered in silver foil to mark a week of Andy Warhol, and it lasted a night. Roland's idea. He was curating for that week, the week of "contains violence". And what did Ned Mond say when he turned up? Something cool about this night being an antidote to the National Lottery ("a tax on the barely affluent") where the wealthy pile in to give artists money for booze and have their photos taken in front of a giant can of soup. 

 And then he started to tell me about the Nitrate Mining Ghost-towns of South America he'd been looking up on the internet. He'd found one with a theatre. And a population of one. He was thinking of taking a show over. 

 The audience for our little bit of "contains violence" was limited to the number of headphones. So forty-three, I think. It went well. It's going to be very good when it's finally on at (ie opposite) the Lyric in Hammersmith (there'll be two-hundred headphones by then, and two-hundred sets of opera glasses, and hopefully two-hundred punters standing on the balcony... that's going to look great). In it, I had to lip-synch to a speech about "arsehole-bleaching" originally recorded by David (Rosenberg, who made it). The only way to pull it off was to just do it as him, big eyes and arm-span, and so I found that interesting. I've tried lip-synching before, in shows I've made myself, but never come close to getting it right... or rather "never got it right", because it's lip-synching. It's either right or it's wrong. That's also what's so interesting… 

 

 

 I used to wonder if David always put in these "arsehole" references to weed out the no-fun crowd and stop his work being taken Seriously-For-The-Wrong-Reasons. But then Ned said something about how much easier it is to stage Threat than it is to stage Dread ("because Dread's like… almost the absence of Threat") and how well David pulls it off, and he's right, so now I think it might have something to do with creating that absence of threat, all the bumhole stuff. Like the head-banging to the Dead Kennedys in a neck brace I had to do. Or like the e-mail he sent out, requesting the presence of a bank of naked spectators for a photo-shoot to publicize the show. There's a sample of it up there. Except the Lyric aren't going to use this image now. And they didn't like his original title of "Upskirt". And the Lounge is closed now, and with it, that door.

 

   Nigel, who you can just make out backstage, he's going to be curating for three weeks when it re-opens in late January. And yesterday I said: sure, I'll do something. I'm going to resurrect something of mine called "Jonah Non Grata". The thing Roland didn't want to do.

 The original plan was, well, not to. But before I called Nigel up to say "No" I popped into Christ's Church in Spitalfields for the first time yesterday (I'd just finished milking money's last money at a corporate voice-over in Moorgate, and the door was open) and it was really disappointing. It looked like an enormous, well-lit writing desk. And I thought "Shunt's much better than this rubbish. I should do something there." I looked up the word "liminal" today (Chris Goode's blog very helpfully has a link) and Christ's Church certainly wasn't liminal. 

 So I might do a late show, close an area off, by the locked front door if I'm allowed. Right down the other end from the shinier revelers. If and when they return. The idea of doing a show about Jonah actually came to me first seven years ago, when I was at an audition, playing with a door and thinking about flight, and doing something funny. And "Liminal" refers to "the second stage of a ritual". It comes from "limen", which means threshold. So it is the state of not yet passing through a door. So yes, I said "Yes", and we'll see.

Brief (catching the light)

.. And when I stumbled home from the party there on the kitchen table was a commission for 12 minutes of material for Laurence and Gus: Hearts and Minds - my first commission! - recording in December. So yes an excellent birthday, but I should probably not be blogging now but focusing instead on that brief: the eternal verities, hopes and fears, an intimate history of humanity, heartfelt knobgags (nobgags? the spelling of "nob", that was also brought up at the brief).

 

The Dungeon's nice and quiet now. (Perhaps too quiet: our senior actor emerged from his office with a shirt and forehead covered in pink dye just in time for a visit from York, which it turns out is what happens if you squeeze too hard on a stress reliever). I took five year's worth of notebooks onto the floor and, trying to catch the light in Whitechapel, panned for one-liners.

Meanwhile Shunt had got its hand on the Blackpool illuminations. I spoke to a designer called Phillip who had accrued more than a thousand pieces before being let go. A designer - Blackpool had finally decided - was surplus to requirements, and Phillip spoke darkly of the flashing mess left in his wake as a giant fibreglass tulip very conspicuously bloomed above the bar.

"The only animals filthier than people..."

said Ian, our rat wrangler, as the flies on the filled bins and bagel papers presumably did everything in their power to lead good lives and 'pfutt' their sorry souls up the Karmic ziggurat... "The only animals filthier than people," said Ian, "are actors."

Here's some dust:

 

 

What possible values - you may ask - must a fly live by to ensure that it doesn't come back as, say, another fly? Likewise a rat? Let us take as our model the Core Values birthed by Top Brass over a weekend cocooned in workshops and playpens as illustrated by this printout accidentally circulated around the staff-room for feedback:

That's just the one page, but it gives you a taste. So... Chrome jigsaw bridges... "Fairness to our each other"... "Green". Dislikes? Likes? A number of us put on our feedback forms "The Aids Joke" (under either). There wasn't one of course, but the thought of some nit having to pore over this poop again in a cold sweat seemed a lot more entertaining to us than another round of Mutoid Hypothetifucks on the mortuary steps ("What if she had ears instead of breasts? And she had an ear on her elbow? What if she had a newsagent's growing out of her back?" Ideas are clearly running thin...) For we are working Halloween hours now. Getting too busy to see the Bigger Picture. Entertaining the kids - Hello kids -

 

Apparently if you try to cull the rats that make their home here, as opposed to those Ian brings in, their Queen simply waives her spawning monopoly and the numbers swell instead of going down. The only solution is sonic cannon, says Ian... 

 How is the bigger picture though, guys? I hear it's getting mighty cold. Me? After work I just pop next-door to the Shunt Lounge with a copy of Manga or Jarry and fall asleep on the couch. Last week Nigel was asked to lope around naked, mute and covered in shopping - again - but this time he would be driven off by a fleet of diesel-powered leaf-blowers. 

 Nigel is an actor. 

 I missed this scheduled intervention unfortunately, but before my nap I managed to catch the old school up-stream torsoes projected across the long corridor, and had a go on the vibrating arse belt (I'm not sure what that machine's actually called. You see them in Bugs Bunny cartoons, clattering in gyms by the steam boxes, lazy people use them to lose weight, you know. And "upstream" is a word I've just been introduced to as a palatable alternative to "experimental". Or, indeed, "alternative". Use it in a sentence today.) I tried to photograph some of this, but the flash just picked up dust. See? Filthy:

 

 But pretty.