Rogers and Heart

 I love this so much:

 "Well, I'm grateful. Not only for your goosebumps, but for your interest."

 

 Last week Dad sent me an email detailing the "Cherokee parable"* about the two wolves of hope and despair battling inside each of us. He'd seen it mentioned on Death in Paradise, and admitted both to being very affected by it and to knowing how this made him sound. I sent him back footage of Fred Rogers securing public funding for children's television in 1969, which I'd just rewatched, and also found affecting. These exchanges were, as Mr. Rogers puts it, "expressions of care", above and beyond the routine. Dad signed off his thanks with "Goodness will prevail" which again was new, and nice to read.

 

 

I've put those paintings up too.

 

* (I've put "Cherokee parable" in inverted commas because it turns out the story's actually the invention of Billy Graham. The sloppy evangelist originally tried to pass it off as an Inuit fable - Inuit wolves? No idea - before a savaging in the Canadian press provoked the change in attribution. I've only just found this out though, and have no idea whether to bother telling Dad.)

Still Life with Chicken. Landscape with Milk. (Issues with 1992.)

  On Tuesday I had my first dirty chicken since lockdown. I was in Wandsworth stalking my past, and talking like this because I was reading M. John Harrison. Even that attributes too much motivation though. I was just eating food and walking it off, a toy without an owner, and I wanted some of the elements of this cute process to be new, and the riverside did not disappoint.

 The flashiness north of Clapham has spread west since I was last here, sinuous new flats and fountains I thought would take me all the way to Putney but not quite it turned out. I hit a gate around Wandsworth, and a strong smell of milk, and then five large white patches on the ground which explained the smell but raised more questions. M. John would have approved.

  Whether I approve of M. John is another matter. Like that matters. But The Course of the Heart is not a complete fantasy, and its extrapolations from reality are, itchily, far more identifiably othering. Bullshit old tropes of white men, shadows and prizes. Was 1992 really that long ago? Maybe. And that's the thing about Horror, the unfettered imagination can be a bit careless of its targets. Every description that isn't of a human is extraordinary however, and it's nice to see familiar places written about: Camden, Peckham, Museum Street. Subjects of an earlier walk, Monday's I think.

 I'm sure there used to be an esoteric bookshop on this street. The wizard in Harrison's book lived just above it before moving to the flats in Putney, opposite where I used to get my hair cut. The book reminded me more than anything of Ken Campbell's Furtive Nudist, also published in 1992 - a bumper year for tragicomic, homunculus-themed meta-fiction it turns out... I think this is where Harrison's narrator lived: 

 Oh, and as with Parks and Recreation and Orange Is The New Black, I encountered theme-bleed between this and what I would read next:

'Their faces were drawn into snarls of concentration; they were grunting and sobbing frustratingly. Suddenly I saw my mistake. I put my hands up to my face and laughed. Not murder, then. They were fumbling and ripping at each other's clothes...' The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison

'"Neato," Kristy said, stopping short. "Those trees look like they're hugging."
"What?" Penn said. "No way, they look like they're fighting each other."' The Legends of Greemulax, by Kimmy Schmidt (with Sarah Mylnowski)

I'm trying to alternate between male and female authors.

Lon, Ron, Noble and Con - The Make-Up Round!

 Another fortnight, another Zoom Quiz, so here's my round for the guys...

(source)

 There is a long and enchanting tradition of actors wearing extensive prosthetics in order to transform themselves into the STRANGE and FANTASTICAL in the service of MOVIE MAGIC - and also a less noble and arguably embarrassing tradition of actors wearing extensive prosthetics just to play someone outside of tehir normal casting even though that character will now look VERY WEIRD AND STRANGE. So - and this is a harder round to explain than to play - below are thirty images of ten actors playing three roles each. Just arrange them images into ten groups of three, according to the actor. Does that make senes? Bonus points if you can name them - I know! Bonus points! Imagine what you could do those, maybe set up a cartel in the After Times! - and I'll post the answers, as ever, in comments.

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Sepia Footage of Yellow Longhair

 Here's me as "Morningstar", a psychedelic re-imagining of General Custer, from Tim Plester's play Yellow Longhair, which played at the Oval House pretty much exactly twenty years ago. It was the first London play I'd performed in after finally leaving home, in 2000, at the age twenty-five, and as you can see from the photo below, I was made pretty comfortable. I thought, at first, I should play the General as Klaus Kinski in Aguirre: Wrath of God, bursting with boggle-eyed territorial ambition, but after the dress rehearsal, director Anthony Fletcher approached me in the café, and explained that he'd hated every single aspect of what he'd just seen me do, and that, as far as my character was concerned, I was actually helping people, showing them the way. We were all very into Alan Moore.

 Too... Much... Neck... (and Cristina Corrazza)

 So we fixed it. It was good advice, and I often think about it. Anthony also said the poetry would play itself, and I think about that too. Tim put some snippets up on youtube years later, and here's one of them, in which I monologue to a journalist played by Sam Rumbelow, after a particularly meticulous killing-spree. Back then I was "Simon Kain", waiting for another Kane to leave Equity, and not all the hair was mine, but it is now. I got to keep the extensions. I might even still have them, twenty years later. They might even turn up in my introduction to Act One of Henry the Fourth, when I finally finish editing that, hopefully tomorrow. Someone's hair turns up anway... I was really fond of this. It was bloody lovely writing. Happy twentieth birthday, it.

"It Was Good While It Lasted"

 Ah! Here's where I got "statue lovers" from: this great post-Charlottesville piece from John Oliver back in 2017. Following the tearing down of the (very nicely sculpted) statue of human trafficker Edward Colston, it's funny to see these "pro-history" arguments rolled out again, but not funny ha ha.

 Bristol Police's own response to the toppling, however, had me absolutely beaming, and feeling even, I don't know, pride?

Good man. https://t.co/VmYvlsGRoW

— Peter Davis (@TweeterDavis) June 7, 2020

... Probably, if I'm honest, more pride than I felt hearing the response of my local MP. I mean, I get it, softly softly and everything, but either the statue should have been taken down, or it shouldn't. Show a little gratitude, hon. And that's all from White Guys Talk About Statues for tonight. Hope you're all doing tremendously.

The Geezer, the Caesar, and the Pigeon-Pleaser

SPOILERS! DON'T LOOK!

 Has this whole "play every single character in Shakespeare" project just been a cover for me wanting to play Aaron the Moor? It feels a bit like that at the moment. Act Four contains one my favourite scenes in drama and I've always loved how un-Machiavellian a villain Aaron is, but the Emperor, Aaron's opposite in many ways, is an interesting villain too, and this play really nails how many appalling human traits and weaknesses can become frustrating strengths if you're already at the top. Not positives. Strengths. Like acid blood. Saturninus' paranoia certainly seems a more useful superpower than Tamora's cunning. I did toy with providing a voice for the tongueless Lavinia but it just sounded like Chewbacca, or even worse, when I tried dialling down the distress, like Sammy the Crab. Anyway I'm off now to sleep and perform extensive checks on my privilege but in the meantime here's the fourth act of Titus Andronicus, containing racism, rape, and murder, so be warned, and also me trying to do Jim from Friday Night Dinner - actually maybe this whole project has been so I could do that.

Features two deaths, a birth, and many people's favourite Shakespearean comeback.

Unfinished in '87: I drew a lot of clams when I was thirteen.

Taking a break from clearing out the abandoned posts of  2013 (a bit too heavy for the weekend), here's yet more stuff I didn't finish back in 1987. In Faber-Castell ink and Games Workshop acrylic, and borrowing heavily from Aragones' Groo the Warrior, Druillet's Urm, the dress Halo Jones wore to Lux Roth Chop's, and some Usagi Yojimbo I glimpsed over my mate Tom's shoulder, it's all seven pages of my racist epic "Jing-Klam the Jobless".

Aw, the City looks great. One day I'll draw a city.