"There's a big question about what to do with all the rubble..."

 "... there have been preliminary talks and various plans about a Gaza seaport..."

 So that's what I needed to get back on the blog, it turns out. Hope.  

 I mean, sure, instagram stories are great and everything (and don't worry, I'll post soundbites below) but this interview is, if anything, even more useful than a bond-dissolving Niagra Falls of screaming trauma: a gripping, followable, and humanely optimistic account of – for want of a better phrase – what the fuck is going on and, more pertinently, what the fuck just happened. I mean, Trump?! Peace?! HIM??? It could easily be played in History classrooms for years to come, unless of course it turns out Israeli peace negotiator and self-confessed peacenik Gershon Baskin is just making it all up, but I don't know... he's been doing this for forty-seven years. He definitely knows things. I know. Someone who actually KNOWS things.

"I brought an agreement from Hamas, to do what we're doing today, back in September 2024. And I got it from Hamas in writing, in Arabic and in English, and in voice message. And no one on the Israeli side would listen. In fact, the head of the negotiations in Israel told me: 'It's a great deal. But the Prime Minister refuses to end the war.' I went to Qatar and presented it to them, it was with the Egyptians, it got to the desk of President Biden. But it got no traction."

 But Biden, unlike Trump, didn't have property interests in Qatar which might get upset by Netanyahu's later attack on Doha. Nor, it seems, did Biden have real estate mogul Steve Witkoff as a United States envoy:

"Since the Arab Spring, the main base of operation is Istanbul... (Turkish Intelligence Chief) İbrahim Kalın, who's a good friend of (Turkish President) Erdogan, who's a good friend of Donald Trump, and of Steve Witkoff, they got him on the phone and said: 'Ibrahim, we need you to lock Hamas into this deal.' and the Turks – together with the Egyptians and the Qataris – strong-armed Hamas. And Sharm El Sheikh happened." 

 Just as that ***** of **** posted on "Truth Social" it had, before Hamas had even agreed – a crucial tactic acording to Baskin (and useful too, of course, if you're planning on getting Jeremy Corbyn to form a political party with you). So... wow... man... Do watch it. 

 And, on Trump's horrific homefront, if you haven't yet checked out Portlanders in inflatable animal costumes standing up to ICE, I of course recommend you do so, but what I really haven't been able to get out of my head immediately previous to this Peace is Josh Johnson on The Daily Show brilliantly noting how much Trump's started talking about not getting into Heaven. Where is it now... Oh yeah! Ghislaine Maxwell! Still, as distractions go, I mean, Peace is definitely an improvement.

 

"I want to try and get into Heaven, if possible. I hear I'm not doing so well." Actual quote.

Hat Hat Bang Bang

 

In which I belatedly honour THE film of 2023...

 

 (A placeholder's good for more than one day, right?)

 The summer evening I saw "Oppenheimer" I remember I raced hime to get to work on a version of this, inspired perhaps by Nolan's ruthless deployment of the formula: Man plus Hat times Cinema equals Importance. But I couldn't find an untreated soundtrack to the trailer I wanted to mix into it, and it wasn't really synching, and so I moved on. For the rest of the year however I continued to ponder just what that script had meant when targets other than Hiroshima were being dismissed by those men sat round the table as "too small". It was just a throwaway line, but how can a civilan target be "too small"? Noone ever explained that. This was well before thousands more non-combatants would be bombed to death with America's blessing in the Autumn. Anyway, cut to the end of year and I had another look at the edit, and decided it didn't really matter that it was shit; no less effort had gone into it than the idea deserved.

 

 

 

Also for your consideration: "There are some things you can't film" Yoshishige Yoshida

 

 And working on the mash-up further wouldn't stop anyone actually thinking that one film was a cinematic milestone and the other a risible vanity project, but I was still bugged I couldn't get an untreated soundtrack. Then, tonight, someone on F*c*b**k – already having gone into some length about how much they loathed the charmless Great Man narrative of "Maestro" – started watching "Oppenheimer" for the first time, so I decided to dust this off and join in, and here it is. Tone is tone, isn't it? Where did Michael Flatley go so wrong? Nowhere.

 

And: "When the horizon is at the top, it's interesting" David Lynch (as John Ford)

Unfinished in '87: SIMON KANE'S HERACLES

 To celebrate the book that actually got me reading again this past fortnight - Natalie Haynes' brilliant Theban novel The Children of Jocasta - here is a classical adaptation of my own from 1987. Consider it an accompaniment to the similarly unfinished super hero comic and bivalve samurai epic from the same year, the year I met my mate Tom in fact. He didn't finish his comic of the Odyssey either. I went for Heracles, the original Greek name of Hercules, and a subject I'd visited before, back when I was eight. Thinking about it, it's surprising I didn't visit him more often; he was big, dumb, super-strong and fought monsters, the perfect subject for a comic book. His newly nobbly nose is proof I was by now healthily into Sergio Aragonés' Groo the Wanderer, a pre-Homer-Simpson comedy barbarian, and I can also spot the influence of airbrush fantasist Rodney Matthews in the thorniness of my monsters. 

 

 In keeping with my previous treatment of this material (particularly here) I have not shied away from the more tragic elements of Heracles' story, although I do now take the piss. And profuse apologies for my depiction of Tiresias; my only reference material for gender studies at the time was Mad Magazine.

... and that's as far as I got. (Why have I made all the sexy women look like Garfield?)

Titus: A Final Banging on About

  Contemporary Doodle. 

(Titus' sleevelessness seems a bold costume choice, given what's coming.)

 

 I've not much more to say: Shakespeare never stopped having fun with meta-theatrical villains, but Aarons' successors would concentrate more on the mechanics of a convincing performance, rather than just seeing what they could get away with. As indeed would Shakespeare. 

 Concerning the play's many classical allusions, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics – now on its sixth series – is more than just a great show, it's an education, and here's her episode on Ovid, whose Metamorphoses was such a huge influence on not just this play but every character in it. Natalie doesn't mention the story of Philomel – and who can blame her – but she does talk about Actaeon (whose fate Tamora threatens Bassianus with) thus: "It's a recurring theme in the Metamorphoses that when people lose their power, they lose their voice." 

 In a reading, losing one's voice can mean complete disappearance; but turning the pages, and writing in the sand, Lavinia gains her voice again, and that's why I thought we should hear it. It's why I also wanted us to hear the rustling of Titus' letters, and why I didn't want Chiron and Demetrius to scream, because they too should vanish as soon as their mouths are stopped. Performing a reading, rather than a staging, one notices far more the absences resulting from violence – such as Lavinia's voice, or Titus' hand – rather than the resultant gore. So I got lucky there. 

 When first staged, I think they used real blood, purchased from the butchers, but does anyone knows how what they did for the scene with Titus' cousins firing arrows up to Heaven? Elizabethan theatres had open rooves, of course, so maybe the actors just fired arrows into the air and out into the street. That must have been fun. 

 Finally, while shedding tears over Titus' corpse, and deciding the fates of Aaron and the bodies of Saturninus and Tamora, I don't think anybody in the last scene ever mentions Lavinia, even in passing. 

 Here's the whole thing:

 

 

 

The Six-Second Second Act

 Catching up on the classics, if not on sleep, and still on the subject of sound effects in iMovie, the single cue above is all that came up when I searched for "horns". It is also a peculiarly accurate six-second summary of the entirety of Titus Andronicus' absolutely pitiless Act Two, presented below with some relief but, after unusually little deliberation for me at least, ultimately no comedy horns.

 Trigger Warnings: Rape, Murder, Mutilation, Racism, Hunting and Falling Down Holes.

"And then eventually the whole thing will just end" buh buh buh bum.

 

 At midnight last night there was a cut of Act One of Titus Andronicus all finished and ready to be uploaded to youtube, but it had no "flourishes" – the trumpets and drums repeatedly referenced in the stage directions. It had no sound design at all in fact, and that was fine, obviously, these were just meant to be readings. But I had really begun to enjoy how much scene-setting, even world-building, could be done with the right effect (as I said here) and ideally, I wanted to give something similar to Titus, especially given how different it was to what had come before, and how much the play's version of Rome bordered on Fantasy (like all Horror). The thing is though, I'm very indecisive, and choosing what to add, and whether or not to keep it, takes up at least a third, maybe a half of the total time I'll spend on these videos, and that seems mad. An earlier edit of Act One (about nine in the evening) was plastered in iMovie's "Suspense" cue in place of the flourishes, a simple electronic chord nothing like a flourish, but an abstraction which set a mood and didn't sound too ridiculous, yet ultimately had too little going for it beyond just being tolerable (and even that was questionable, given how often I was using it – there's only so many times you can hear a "Suspense" chord before it goes from foreboding to dithering). So I dropped all the cues, uploaded the act without flourishes, went for a night walk, and began to think more and more about the "Vintage News" march that I'd earlier dismissed as too wacky.

Material is limited on a night walk. 

 

 I did love how un-alien the march had suddenly made Rome, by which I don't mean that it stopped Rome seeming weird, but that it made Rome's weirdness far less easy to write off as alien. It meant I wouldn't be presenting the story as a trip to a faraway, savage time, but as a nightmare just a couple of wrong decisions away, in which duty, tradition, processions, seeking for comfort in precedent, the celebration of war and just the very concept of "victory" were all complicit, and fair targets. And so by the time I'd got back from my walk, sticking an old newsreel march with no inkling of tragedy through a "Cathedral" effect to lose the crackle, and then playing that over a human sacrifice felt like getting a lot off my chest, which seemed a valid feeling to have when presenting Titus Andronicus. So I re-edited the act (there's always tweaks) re-downloaded it in place of the original edit, managed to render only about ten minutes before it crashed my laptop, crashed my laptop trying to fix it, crashed my laptop again, crashed my laptop, went to bed, didn't sleep much, woke, had an idea, thought I'd fixed it, uploaded it onto youtube, found out I'd fixed it but hadn't actually finished the edit before uploading it – huge thanks to @Christelle_C for the head-sup – took it down again and had another tinker, and so that's why it's only going up now. And why it has the tune for Adam and Joe's "Big British Castle" plastered all over it. Sorry. I know I said I'd keep my youtube and blog more separate from now but, guys, really, this is all I have to show right now so Ta – as I say – daaa:

I saw a short show I think you'll like about British guns.

 I found this old photo of what used to be the Trocadero. There's a Crystal Maze at the top now, and occassionally I work there. Every Maze Master gets to choose their own costume and I chose pyjamas and a dressing gown. These make the wearer look simultaneously completely lost and completely at home, but I have subsequently remembered it's a costume I've chosen a few times before...

  And it's hard to run in slippers. The best of a number of good things about this job is that you get to share a green room with people who are making things. Our boss recently emailed us details of some of those things, currently being shown at the Vaults beneath Waterloo, and attached was a spreadsheet with thirty-three new works on it. I've only seen one of these so far, this evening, and this is a plug for it. Gang, I think you should go and see "Tuna"! It's on at six tomorrow (Sunday, so okay, today) and then that's it, I'm sorry. But Airlock have made a fabulous thing. Rosanna Suppa's teen narrator makes a divine comedy of the hell of not being listened to, populated by merciless physical caricatures drawn from a life growing up in a house full of guns, which burst out of her like something out of Tetsuo. It's a heck of a dance, but it's also just someone talking to you, knowing you're listening, and proudly asking nothing. Rosanna says here, "A recent audience member described it as ‘like the first time I took speed’, which sounds like a good thing, because the way he phrased it, he’s done speed since." She also says in that interview "There was a person's flesh worth of fish on there'' which is just a phrase I like. God, I laughed. Tickets are HERE. It's directed by Robbie Taylor Hunt, lit by Catja Hamilton, nobody seems to have put a foot wrong, and I hope it happens again.

Station to Station with Buster Keaton

He's standing in the wrong place!
Speaking of obvious Mirrorboy influences, seeing this image from The General recently, made me realise how much of Buster Keaton's comedy (and influence) can be derived from that one statement: he's in the wrong place. It's character comedy of a sort, but a classical figure in a non-classical landscape that's modern and breaking down and falling apart and moving differently to what you've braced yourself for is also pleasing just visually. You could say it predicted surrealism if Keaton didn't normally like people so much.
"The Frozen North" is an exception...

A complete break in character: here the Great Stone Face snarls, robs, murders the innocent, and incorporates a giant comedy beard into a rape scene in a way that had me genuinely gasping with laughter. It's alright though because it all turns out to be a dream or a film, or a dream in front of a film. I first watched it with the sound down, bewitched. It was only watching it the second time with the piano accompaniment up that I recoiled: this isn't a story that benefits from being buoyed up by ragtime, it needs music from the abyss, something that could sell a burning rose. Looking for a better accompaniment I went to Ralfe Bande's (the Ralfe Bande's?) fab absurdist-friendly score for Paul King's film "Bunny and the Bull", but reviewing the resultant mash-up I think it turned out a little joyless. Then I saw the photograph below, and went to Bowie. "Station to Station" is nice and long (if not long enough), but it's also fierce and I think it fits. See what you think. I'm going to pretend that this is Keaton's Bowie tribute.

On the subject of thin white dukes, David Cairns' blog introduced me to the film and explains here how the whole thing was actually a satire on a peculiarly gaunt contemporary - the unfortunately named William S. Hart - a star of the silent western who'd kicked Buster's friend and mentor Fatty Arbuckle when he was down. So much surrealism, it turns out, is just spoofs of things I haven't seen. (By the way the other name above the title - Eddie Cline - went on to direct most of W.C, Fields' features. His last, "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break", features Fields chasing a bottle of whiskey off the observation deck of an airplane only to land in a screwball interpretation of The Tempest, a mountain nest occupied by Margaret Dumont, her virgin daughter, and a gorilla. Recommended obvs.)

This Is Why Gerald Should Be Supervised

Here's something else I never got round to plugging: A one-take wonder from Johnny Burns and Pier van Tijn, and my first experience with an armourer.

SPOILER ALERT: This was actually meant to have been a much longer film in which I was just an extra, but when they told me to "have fun with the character" I went and murdered a large number of the leading players in the establishing shot, forcing Pier and Johnny to think on their feet and ultimately to settle upon the solution you see above, which I think turned out beautifully. Watching it again, I wish I'd kept a bit more still administering the coup de grace but, oh well, it's done now.

G. reat B. ritish H. oliday

With the US release of "Sightseers" today or something, what better time to publish this glowing assessment from resident cineaste Mary Ann Sputnik? (Apart from when they released the DVD, or maybe when the film actually came out over here last year anyway it's here):

You'll have to see the film to understand how great a still this is.

Dark and noisy and lying in wait, movies side naturally with monsters. Road Movies aren't about driving, they're about Sex and Death, Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands and Five Easy Pieces (or, back in my day, Thelma and Louise, True Romance and Wild at Heart) - they're fantasies about turning your back on everything you've ever been given or had to take, following a plus-one into the wilderness, and then trying to hump and kill your way out of feeling like a trespasser. Also of course, they're movies about America. You couldn't set these stories in Britain - good old, naff, uncomplaining Britain with its not-massive cars, gun control, pencil museums and shaming dearth of deserts and peyote. The very idea of a British Road Movie is inherently comic, surely, which may be one reason Sightseers is billed as a comedy (although there are some outstanding jokes). But blow me if Sightseers isn't also the very first Actual British Road Movie.

The only stuff of Ben Wheatley's I'd seen previously was The Wrong Door, so nothing had really prepared me for the intoxicating wilderness he helped to serve up here. Holy cow, can he film! Places and faces. And those faces! Alice Lowe's tiny beams and frowns, Steve Oram's mug like thunder. And those places! When the killing come, as promised, it doesn't sneer as the trailer suggests. These aren't the killings of If... They don't denote a conquest. And they're not a judgment, they're arbitrary as Nature, a psychedelic framing of the question "What are people actually for?" As Chris and Tina conclude, "murder is green". I was reminded oddly of Dredd - another lean, mean exercise in fantasy violence unbound by the yucky dictates of orange and teal. I was also reminded of Four Lions, less oddly. In the end, the rage so happily submitted to comes as a relief. I left on a high.

Forbidden Corner, Tupgill Park Estate, Coverham as recommended in

"More Bollocks to Alton Towers - Far From the Sodding Crowd"

So there you go. You can always post nice words on twitter of course, but really that just looks a bit too much like you're saying "Hey, wow, I know these people". And I do know Alice Lowe, and Richard David Glover who's in it too, and is also brilliant, and I'm surprised I didn't mention him actually. I know them, and I was excited when Alice first spoke about this film, excited because a friend was making a film and that's exciting. But that excitement was nothing to what I feel now that I've seen it.

American English Class Projects based on Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5"...

(originally posted on myspace here)

... are the second best - I suppose because the book's so much better known than Cat's Cradle, and it's been foisted upon so many more students who just couldn't give a monkey's or just plain haven't read it. (Anti-war movies! You might as well make an anti-glacier movie, amirite?) Casting my net wider for school-produced Vonnegut gems has therefore proved a bit of a trawl. I don't know, are these gems?

Well, aging make-up always looks fake. So, excellent work. "And why would he laugh?" - It's interesting seeing which lines each project picks up on. I really love the pan upwards to the abducting craft, a nice simple cheat. Likewise I love the abduction effects on this next film, and the typewriter/Meerschaum combo (it would be easier to "Forget Donnie Darko" though if they hadn't played "Mad World" over most of it. But this is a niggle. You put a pan on a kid in a cart on some rails. You get an A...)

 It had to be a failure since it was written by a pillar of salt". And in what follows I'm pretty sure we see what it actually feels like to get shot at more accurately than anything heretofore managed on the screen. I know. I've been paint-balling.  

The dog joining in! Was that on purpose? The sudden change in aspect ratio before the shot! was that on purpose? Because it WORKS! Yet it's the following film that has to take the prize. (There is no prize). It may boast neither the commitment nor the ingenuity we've seen elsewhere, but it was this film that set me upon the whole kids-do-Vonnegut quest-ette, so enjoy...

"You're going to Dresden! Come on! Now! Get going!" Is it scripted? Isn't it scripted? Too many questions.

In other news, Diary of a Nobody tickets are selling fast. (Looks like I'm keeping the beard.)

And Money closes on November 25th...

Mixed

(originally posted on myspace here)

Bisley, Milligan, Tories, and Guinness in the corner of a pub, it's almost like being young again. Except cigarettes now make me sit funny. Oh hello, sorry I haven't been in touch for a bit. You really haven't missed anything though, my brain's pretty much operating on Snooze right now... still baffled by the light on its straw cast by the open door, and the posters asking "Have you seen this Black Dog?" tacked to trees outside its cell. Look, I made my first gif last week - I'd rather just link to it but that doesn't seem to be working so here it is - Now really, is this the work of a pithy thinker?



Why did I do that? I don't want to be having to write about that. I wish that I usefully COULD, but I... I mean is this it? Do I have to DO something about this? Wasn't I put in charge of shits and giggles? No, the internet election is over! Put the gun down, Derrick. Let's not be the News. Look at the News, who'd want to be that?

*My* news? Oh well since you ask, I'm very excited to be making my radio acting debut in Thursday's afternoon play "Six Impossible Things" on Radio 4 thank you. It was recorded on location in Brixton back in March. And overheard. The police were called in twice. It's based on a real event that took place in 1951 in Copenhagen, that much I know. However since the event in question involves accusations of mind control and "guardian angels", further research online conducted by myself into the actual facts of the case has simply turned up lot of sites that, well, that look like this, so I'm afraid I can't enlighten you much further. Unless it was aliens. Okay, turns out it was aliens. And oddly, every time I read in these accounts the name "Palle Hardrup", the man on whom my character is based, I immediately picture Phil Wright the actor who played my cellmate, not me. ("Mm, it's funny they cast you," my baby also said once she'd met him.)

(Excellent words inexplicably left for six months on the white-board at the car-wash round the corner. Can you read it alright?)

Oh yes and of course ALSO, since the event on which this play's based was a quiet man suddenly going mad with a gun... and since yesterday a quiet man suddenly went mad with a gun, I'm no longer sure this play will air tomorrow at all... (yeah I know, why are these things always happening to ME?!) The play had already been put back one day when someone at Radio 4 apparently clocked that "there was already too much murder on Wednesday", and that was *before* the murders on Wednesday. So I'm rather hoping it is postponed now. It would be horrible to give offence. My feelings are mixed. The link's below.

And meanwhile, come on, let's watch this instead. Happy! It's Winnie the Pooh in Russian. It contains a definite insinuation that Pooh's famed simple-mindedness was simply an anxious front. It's called Vinnie Pukh. It is incredibly good. You will love it. If all American novels begin with Tom Sawyer then all British situation comedy begins here:

 

 Wasn't that fab? (I forgot Piglet owned a gun.)
And here, maybe is the link to Six Impossible Things by Glen Neath.
And here, definitely is the link to the company that made it, Holy Mountain, plus teaser.
And here is the link to a Russian who really, really liked drawing both guns and himself.
And here is the link to where I found these drawings for all the good it will do you, they've moved to Torino.

Where the Wild Things Are

(originally posted on myspace here)

Statement:

The voice of Garnier boarded the 23:53 from London Bridge bearing Sauvignon Blanc and a bucket of popcorn in a 5p plastic bag from Marks and Spencers and having made his way through those standing to a spare aisle seat across from two still-sobre women in what it is perfectly acceptable these days to refer to as fake tan, perched his purchases. A punnet of two drumsticks was then brought out and as he fumbled around for a corner to open, the voice of Garnier felt a sudden pang about the boldness of eating chicken in quarters these confined, but calculating that were it not polished off on the journey he would only have to share it at the other end the voice of Garnier persevered, elbows tight by his side, managing finally to break into the packaging with the sharpest of a bunch of keys. Avoiding eye contact, still dandling the bag on his knee and doing his best to keep his beard clear of the meat while he ate he now began to notice traces of blood appear on his finger tips. It was on the chicken too, which didn't taste raw, and on further inspection the voice of Garnier discovered the source of the blood was in fact his own split mouth. Meanwhile on a pin-board in Brockley his beloved beamed beside two new housemates in a polaroid taken the night before by Police Constable Wolf.

Give her a place to stand and she'll move the Earth.

Random Acts of C***ness

(originally posted on myspace here)

The scene of the crime

BLOOD AND GUTS UPDATE: Well Hywel's go on the laurels was pretty short lived because Friday night (Banker night) saw ME become the hero when - you remember! - your boyfriend Belmondo'd me in the face halfway through a show (Cliveowened me, Danielcraiged me, Neesoned, Mitchumed, "nutted" - what you will,) then ran off and abandoned you while the show went on, as it must, with blue roll up its nose. Good thing there was a doctor in the house, our own esteemed Dr. David Rosenberg who having been denied entry to South Africa because there was literally not enough room in his passport for another stamp (true true!) found himself freed up now to give Hywel the crash-course on Thursday, and on Friday witness your boyfriend hit and run mid-show leaving behind only you, mumbling and panicked, and of course all his booking details at the box office.

Nice men. Do not hurt them.

Crikey you were drunk, weren't you, whoever you were, and terribly annoying. You must have known that. And I guess I sort of know where your boyfriend was coming from because even I felt a bit bad about singling you out when you were so clearly barely able to even stand. Then again though, it could be argued you actually singled yourself out by wibbling on about carbon in the corner of the auditorium, I don't know... but I mean why didn't your boyfriend make any attempt to try and keep you quiet, that's what I don't get, or to even acknowledge your presence until you wanted to be escorted out of the show? Why did he try and take it out on that volunteer in the riot gear? Did your boyfriend not get that it was pretend? Did your boyfriend just have a bad day? Was your boyfriend actually, secretly mad at you? Well this is all academic I guess... Man I just can't believe your boyfriend ran out and left you like that, that's all. 

And poor old Hywel! A second baptism of fire for day two. (Oh yeah, fire. Did I mention the pyrotechnics? Yeah he's great, Hywel.) And Nigel's had his appendectomy now I hear. They eschewed keyhole surgery in favour of the full Jack the Ripper, that's all I know. Dr. David only works on electro-shock therapy cases these days, says he misses the smell of an operating theatre, the smell of cauterised meat. And me? Well I almost look TOO gorgeous but on the down side every face pressed towards mine on the tube now makes me just that bit more bristly. Like I said, I don't know. Things fall apart, mistakes are made, the Machine begins to warp and split but the run continues, and Friday Night will always be Banker Night. Applying Goode's Pertinent Binary (see Feb 18) we deal with it... Honestly though, your boyfriend! It almost makes me wish now that I'd listened to your Dad! 

(Thank you videogum.)

The devastating effects of a Belmondoing 

"The 2010 Question" (Spit on your grave, sir?)

"To accuse a serving Prime Minister of lying to Parliament is an incredibly serious allegation." So who better to dispel the gimcrack frivolity surrounding the Chilcot enquiry than TV's Richard "Books" Madeley? Who better? Nobody. Everything about this piece is perfect... Okay Richard, ENTER!

YEAH. Cut through that crap, Madeley, it smells of fish. The parellels with Churchill? Uncanny. For did Churchill not also believe or not believe in weapons that weren't or were in the possession of a country with whom we were at war or were not or actually, Richard, what? But anyway NOBODY HAULED CHURCHILL up before an enquiry in 1946. Or '47. OR '48. I could go on. And "you know what?" I ALSO have not heard a single one of Tony Blair's critics employ a spuriously hypothesized parallel universe in their arguments either. WHAT ARE THEY RUNNING FROM? Oh, so the so-called 2010 question doesn't fit your exclusively fact-based narrative eh, The Critics? Have you forgotten the atmosphere? THE ATMOSPHERE! WE HAVE TO REMEMBER THE ATMOSPHERE! How could we have forgotten the atmosphere? 

Perhaps though, if Britain hadn't gone to War in 2003... as I walked through an unlit St. James Park arm in arm with my baby on the evening of January 29th, 2010, we wouldn't have had to shout over the helicopters as we checked out the swans, we wouldn't have had to make our way silently and joylessly past the blockade of empty vans and mounted police all stationed to guard Blair's sorry ass from the human resources that had once been his, as this ass now passed through the most recently erected of barriers. Perhaps there might have been more people about. And Brian Haw might go to sleep in his own little room again.

 (originally posted on myspace here)

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK TO CHANGE WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?

Internet still down, but I finally got round to transcribing the notes I took in hospital and see now that nearly all of them were made during the one 24-hour, steroid-enduced, psychotic episode of February 17th, very far from the "natural high" I took it to be. Throughout this episode, I took my own stats with the box that had been left by my bed, and saw my blood pressure sink finally to an acceptable level. And I slept on my back for the first time in eleven days, and was Thor. So these are the notes from that day and that night. Not all them: I also embarked upon the first chapter of a children's book roundabout the time of the words Epiphany for Everyone, my first concentrated stream of thought since I'd been in hospital. And, as I think I've already recorded, I also euphorically lost it with a visiting pyschiatric nurse called Anthony Tang who refused to turn off his reading light at roundabout one in the morning. 

Some of this still stands.

 

 

17th Tuesday Feb

Been given a whole Manga face of pills this morning. I take the mouth, the eyes, the Japanese tear

Shaky because of the NEURALIZOR (sp?) no nebulizer

SKELETOR (sp?)

I’ve been taken off 15cc Oxygen and put on 4. My coughing’s RUBBISH now. It brings up no smoke pups, NOTHING.

MOOMIN Page 38

TELL US ALL THAT’S HAPPENING IN THE WORLD!

FUSS AND MISERY…

Two of last night's dreams:

The freighter that picks me up from the Ice Flow is manned by tall silent men with long waterproofs, square heads but aquiline profiles, smooth black dishes for ears and receding chrome spirals on their head. Maybe the cube inverts to accommodate the face. Anyway a nice kind image.

 THE GOOMB MEN

There was wrestling in the street at the crossroads at the bottom of the hill, now I think of it, like Brixton Hill, only windier and more seventies ish. The two wrestlers are huge, twice the height to normal.

They kind of looked like that but in a way that made sense, & each had a tiny cox on their head, like their trainer. The two wrestlers never actually fought they collapsed, knackered, but like they were playing a joke. A lot of controversy in the news after about how much more genetic tampering to allow these coxes. None about the genetic modification made to the wrestlers although it later struck me that they must have had some work done.

I WANT A MONTAGE!

  

AN EPIPHANY FOR EVERYONE

(in which everything suddenly makes sense)

 

Brilliantly I ended the evening wheeling around a cylinder of oxygen that I’d forgot to turn on. 

 

FROM THE GUARDIAN 17.02.09

Paul Garner co-organizer of the Creationist conference: Many people have the mistaken impression that it’s Genesis, chapter one that drives young creationism – a rigid understanding of the word “day” in the creation. But that isn’t it at all. It’s Genesis three, it’s the introduction of death and suffering and what you might call natural evil into the creation. If those things pre-date Adam there’s a big theological problem for me, because it undermines the foundation of the gospel. The young-earth position is the only one that has a coherent understanding of the history that doesn’t have suffering, death and bloodshed before Adam’s fall.

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK TO CHANGE WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?

I HOLD REALITY SACRED

DON’T TELL ME ABOUT SOMEBODY SOMEONE MADE UP FOR WHICH THERE’S NO EVIDENCE AND ASK ME TO PROVE HE DOESN’T EXIST.

I’M IN A BREAKING TARDIS

CLOSER – NOT NARRATIVELY – BUT PHYSICALLY – TO DEATH – IE NOT EXISTING AND OF COURSE ALL THE IDEAS ARE COMING. THIS IS INTERESTING. AND OFTEN OBSERVED. IDEAS COME FROM NOT BEING

BUT 17^th/18 it’s only NOW – 10 days in that I’m feeling weak enough to get it.

Man, if Jesus really was just one guy this is how he must have felt EVERY **ING DAY!

There are no italics you can put on “If that is what you want, that’s what I’ll have to do.” to make it sound polite ANTHONY TANG

IN MY MIND – IN MY MIND! – there is nothing sweeter than the idea of an elderly man who must be at all hours attended by a tiny, sleeping Maori. The reality, however, is a lot more unwise.

RELIGION IS THE PARENT OF ART AND SCIENCE THERE IS NOTHING RELIGION CAN TEACH US THAT ART AND SCIENCE CANNOT TEACH US MORE CLEARLY. BUT WE HAVEN’T HAD ALL THE ART WE’RE EVER GOING TO HAVE YET. OR THE SCIENCE.

(WE MAY NOT HAVE HAD ALL THE RELIGION. BUT IT’S TELLING THAT THE “BEST” WAY TO DO THIS NOW, AS L. RON HUBBARD WORKED OUT, IS JUST MAKE UP SOME VERY BAD ART AND THEN HIRE YOUR OWN POLICE FORCE.)

SO YES THIS MUST BE A NATURAL HIGH – AND I’M LOOKING FOR THE WORD FOR THIS TRIP AND IT’S AHH! “SPIRITUAL” BECAUSE THAT HAS TO STOP. THIS IS REAL. That’s the point of “epiphany” it’s real – and SPIRITS DON’T EXIST. So don’t succumb and go I’M SPIRITUAL. I’M SPIRITUAL

–        NO: I’M REAL.

IT WAS REAL

FUCK ME I’M BREATHING

New Big Spaces

I'm well, thank you for asking.

 

 

In fact, I think I'm all well. I would go for walks on Hampstead Heath and check on my hand to see how my body was doing, like I used to in hospital, then see that it was glowing and have to find a bench, but that was back in February...

 

And, well, now, how to get from there to here? Am I just going to write everything? Maybe I should start by making my excuses: 

1. The lease ran out on my photoshop, which is half the fun of these posts for me (so these images are bigger and duller than I'd like).

2. I *was* of course going to write about my steroid-induced psychotic episode next (so very Christian Bale, so very topical back in February), but thought better of that until I'd found somewhere to live... which, now I set it down in print, strikes me as incredibly paranoid. Or is it? I don't know. Ah. No, but if I were vetting potential flat-mates I'd probably google them to see if they'd, say, started any fights in hospital with a club-footed Maori. Then again, to paraphrase Lenny Bruce, I'd google mud. 

 

 

Hmm. These paragraphs are more widely spaced than I remember, Yup, big spaces... Anyway, I moved out of Susy's at the end of March, into a long, uncarpeted, white-washed room in a large, airy, joss-sticky flat in Gipsy Hill, and I lasted there a month. The land-lady didn't like my hours, and who can blame her? The floor-boards creaked, her room was right outside the bathroom, she slept with her door open so actually yes I for one can blame her, but a home's a home, and that was hers, and I'm not even sure I want one right now.

 

Time passes, shut up! as Dylan Thomas once wrote, and I've found a room now, with a carpet and a coffee table, three storeys up a tower-block in Clapham Junction, with gardens, pool, sauna, jacuzzi, and loudly wuthering heights. I'm holed up across from the busiest station in Europe, I've found a "Complete Works of Shakespeare" for a pound, and Dr. Thompson's incomparable "Great Shark Hunt" for three, I'm pretending I'm on tour, or a scatty writer assigned to LA, while my stuff – the charred and the saved – stays in storage until I can face it, and the big money's been coming in fine from Shunt whose new show's more physical aspects can be seen here under construction.

 

In fact, they're still under construction. And with nowhere to work, and the director up in Scotland, we have this week off. It's okay though, it's all fine, I'm just in it for the company and the money, that's what I've got to keep telling myself. I mean, it's great! I'm better! I can do winch-work and wrestling, and I've got a pool and a sofa! And I've got work, biggish commissions for both LaurenceandGus' and MitchellandWebb's new radio shows, and it's work I can actually do (new stuff got laughed at)! AND the insults  Charlotte Hesketh and I have been throwing back and forth across f*c*b**k for the past month now number a hundred, so I can finally leave that! And here we are rehearsing: Hey Spacey, copy THIS!

 

 

 

 

Whatsamadda, Kevin Spacey, you chicken?! Oh yeh, you all: "I'm going to get a railway arch and put art in and shit" and we all: "Let's drop this flowerpot on the director's head a number of times before he leaves" and you all: "Good luck with that then" and we all "Ow, uh...." Yes well lots to catch up on then. Hello again, thanks for sticking around. A post every other day as promised, once. Join me tomorrow for those hundred insults then. I'm better. This is easy. 

 

(Oh yeah, 3:10 AM. I remember. Hmm... still big spaces.)

George W. Byeeeee!

  

Uncanny.

Or how about this?

"It is a durable, ubiquitous, specious metaphor, that one about "the veneer of civilization" hiding the nobler reality beneath. It can conceal a dozen fallacies at once. One of the most dangerous is the implication that civilization, being artificial, is unnatural: that it is the opposite of primitiveness... Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things you have either one or the other. Not both. It seemed to me as I listened to Tibe's dull fierce speeches that what he sought to do by fear and persuasion was to force his people to change a choice they had made before their history began, the choice between those opposites." 

 (From "The Left hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin, which I'm reading in the Dungeon as the fifth child this month glancing up at the flickering mortuary photograph of Ripper victim Annie Chapman turns excitedly to his mother and whispers "Look, it's Harry Redknapp!") 

 

 Anyway can somebody please arrest everyone involved now? Cheers! (: ?@

Moon Alert!

(originally posted on myspace here)

Yes, moon alert: Tonight's full mooon will loom larger in the sky than it has since 1993, although peering through the blinds tonight all I see is cloud. Actually I should put some curtains up. Venetian blinds are all very well for a two-fisted man of letters keeping faith with Ridley Scott's vision of 21st century living, but it's getting quite cold now, and the bonsai tree by my brass bed's beginning to smell ill. Seriously it took me ages to locate the garlic odour.

On the subject of the moon, here's a short animation made by Paul Barritt accompanying a story by Suzanne Andrade; she stands in front of it, looking eerily like Jean Charles Deburau but with sexier hair, in their show "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" which I saw last night at the BAC:

They don't do cabaret any more. That's a shame because an hour of this on its own can look a bit phoney, whereas a fifteen-minute invasion of the stage of the Battersea Barge, say, is awesome… That's a terribly ungracious judgment for me to make however because I was sitting right at the front on my own, with a bad neck, and hadn't even paid and paying always gets you in the mood. But this was a Big Christmas Treat from the Battersea Arts Centre, you see, who'd invited me along to a "Brainstorming Session". I felt like a real player. After the show there were probably about two-hundred of us sat around tables with crackers and lasagne, two-hundred who had all, we were told, been "put on a list". Lewis was there (of "Alf and…" fame) and personal favourite Julian Fox. Crackers were pulled and tiny pairs of nail-clippers sent flying across the hall. And then the time came to "round table" some subjects, and I joined the round table that read:

ONE ON ONES

… firstly because of The Books of Soap and Interview Room H, but also because I found the name very pleasing to the eye and couldn't quite work out why. At this table the BAC's joint artistic director tabled the notion of a "one-on-one theatre festival" which sounded great. Then he suggested this festival might answer a demand from a public finding themselves in a "post-capitalist, post-Blairite, post-spin" era, hungry for honesty and "energized by Obama" etc. and I thought "Who? What? Oh no..." But it prompted Lewis to make what I thought was the most interesting and important point of the evening, namely that this demand for "one on one" theatre wasn't in fact coming from the public at all, but from us artists. It's us who want "the house-lights turned up" as he put it, far more than our paying or non-paying house. I love Lewis. And it seems to me a very important distinction for an artistic venue to make when deciding on its focus, and indeed for commentators in general. Art doesn't change direction because the public want it to but because the artists do; but artists are also of course the public - they're seeing stuff as well as making it, and chances are they're making the stuff they want to see. In other words, you don't necessarily need all these feedback forms. And the idea that the Battersea Arts Centre is somehow a barometer of national public interest is, when you think about it for a second, bonkers; what the BAC can I think genuinely take pride in is the interest they generate from the large number of artists wanting to produce work there. Dedum.

So anyway I walked home well-fed, clearly knowing everything there ever was to know about my chosen medium, found a DVD of "Planet Terror" in the living room, bunged it on and was immediately reminded how much I clearly wanted to DO THIS! THIS! MOVIES NOT THEATRE! THIS!!! Gah: