Month: March 2010

I got a little bored of the design of the blog, so I’ve tinkered a little. Hopefully I haven’t broken anything. I’m also going to try to change what I post about, as I struggle to entertain myself, let alone anyone reading this, some days. The endless angst of an unpublished writer is hardly edifying stuff. And I’ve changed the background to remind me of what I aspire to be – an artist – and the reason why I want to write – to entertain, amuse, and one day hopefully, inspire.

The picture in the background is a black and white copy of a painting my uncle gave me in 1991. You can’t see all of it, but it’s a snake wrapped round a frame. I was going through a tough time at university, emotionally, physically and financially. He was living with my dad at the time, having finished one adventure and sqaubbling with my dad while he scrimped the money and energy together to embark on his next craziness (he was working as a forest ranger for half of the year, and artist-cum-cigarmaker for the other half).

He also gave me a tape of Polynesian music, and the two weeks I spent observing my dad and his brother squabbling furnish several anecdotes that feature in Tom’s Universe – both in Monk Quixote and the forthcoming Tamaduste.

The snake is actually fire red, the frame is a golden yellow, and the picture within the frame is an unpenetrable royal blue. Is it the sea? The mind? Is the snake benign, or evil? Is the frame saying something about life? Or is it simply a brightly coloured doodle to amuse a depressed nephew? It is without a doubt the most posession I treasure most. And that’s because as well as being beautiful, he wrote a little dedication, which I’ll translate from the Spanish:

To Iván with the hope that he finds an answer to his troubles, now and in the future – and balance, harmony and happiness.

Which is a lovely thing to receive – even more so in the winter of my 19th year. The Polynesian music, taped over an old C&W compilation, I was less enamoured of. Although he’d drawn a parody of Lucky Luke on the cover, so it was still pretty amazing. Sadly, I threw all my tapes away at the end of one house move too many in the middle of the last decade.

He’s an interesting and talented man, who should have made a lot more of his gifts, but like most of the Salcedo family, his duende got the better of him on many occasions – seeming to prefer a life of conflict, passion and isolation over conforming. He’d paint the most amazing things, on all sorts of surfaces – driftwood, cardboard boxes, rocks. His style ranged from fauvist to miro, usually with a strong political bent.

I haven’t spoken to him for years, but thanks to the internet I can see that he’s made some tentative steps online. Here’s a portfolio of some of his digital work (vastly inferior to his paintings):

Lolitas.

Anyway, for me, this change is a signal of intent. More art, less internal noise. I hope you like the change.

I’ve been watching, reading and listening to a lot of craftsmen and women recently, in a – so far successful – attempt to remind myself what it is I want to achieve with my writing, why it matters to me, and why it might potentially matter to others.

I’ve finished reading both DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little and David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten. Both, as far as I know are first novels, and both have a lot of personal history in them – although it’s far more hidden away in the latter. Pierre creates a wonderfully evocative place inside the hero’s head, and you can ‘hear’ the care and love that he’s put into every paragraph. Some of the lyrical and stylistic tics are simply brilliant, and there’s a real sense of an author having fun with what they’re doing – the important lesson for me is that it rarely spills over into self-indulgence, and while the plot is more than a little far-fetched, I think you’d have to be a pretty soulless reader not to want to find out what happens.

Mitchell’s work is very different, effectively a series of short stories with common threads and echoes running through them. I loved the differences in the voices (something I’m not very good at – I tend to write ‘me’ or sociopaths), although I felt a little let down by the ending. It felt like a ‘clever’ book, rather than an enjoyable book. But again, it gives me something to aspire to.

PS Is it just me or are those Google Books links just plain scary for anyone who wants to earn a living from copyright material?

Musically, I’ve taken advantage of Dada’s (the shop that took over Fopp in Chiswick) absurd pricing policies (double albums by jazz greats for £3) and I now have over a day’s worth of Brubeck, Basie, Coltrane, Ellington, Art Blakey, Compay Segundo and all manner of other compilations. It makes a pleasant change from the white noise or madrigals that I usually listen to while writing or working. And the craft in there, the joy in performance, the bloody-mindedness of the time signatures, riffs, fills and breaks – all of it is deeply inspiring. The only problem with the music is divorcing the experience from the only context I’ve ever really experienced this form of jazz in before – black and white film noir or screwball comedies. Although the idea of screwball noir is quite appealling.

BBC4 recently screened ‘Kings of Pastry (website is a bit poor, but never mind)’, which is a superb exploration of obsession, desire and craft – in this case, French patisserie chefs aiming to be recognised by their peers as the best in France in a competition that only runs every four years. The level of dedication, preparation and skill displayed is extraordinary… I like to think of myself as a good cook, but the things that these chefs create out of flour, eggs, sugar and chocolate is just astonishing. And the moment that one of the chefs breaks his six-foot sugar sculpture after three days of competition is just heartbreaking. The only downsides of the film is that most of this lovely calorie-fest gets thrown away at the end, and that smell-o-vision still hasn’t been invented.

I’ve also enjoyed watching the ‘Mastercrafts‘ series on BBC2 (well, actually, on iPlayer), where various enthusiasts are trained for six weeks in traditional crafts such as green-wood turning, stonecarving, thatching, smithing etc,. While not all of the skills are as telegenic, or appealling, as each other, the format, and voyage of discovery that the participants went through was similar for all the programmes. I guess part of this is down to presentation, and editing, but it was a joy to see the masters at work, and a genuine pleasure to see people – particularly those who struggled at the beginning of the training – producing a beautiful object – and most importantly, a functional object too.

Again, this has resonance for my writing. And it’s probably no coincidence that after a few weeks of feeling thoroughly miserable about my prospects, and contemplating going back to full-time employment, the creative juices have started flowing again. Which unfortunately manifested themselves in the usual way (awake at 2am as reams of dialogue are enacted in my head) so I am now far too tired to think.

I’ve also watched a shedload of good films recently – Alice in Wonderland, 21 Grams, in the Loop, The Changeling, Hurt Locker, Wendy and Lucy (ok, ok, not Wendy and Lucy) and also seen Ghost Stories at the Lyric – which is thoroughly recommended, although it is a horror show more than a play about ghosts, I’d argue.

So. A veritable smorgasbord of influences. Let’s see if I can turn all this ‘art’ and ‘craft’ into something productive. And yes, I’m late on a short story submission. Because I haven’t crafted it enough, why did you ask…

Scene 1: The 237 bus on the way back from Westfield-bloody-Westfield.

The speaker is younger than he sounds – a weary edge to his voice that his face doesn’t match. His skin is clear and smooth, his beard the right kind of straggly. He wears a plain black rasta hat that covers his dreads and ‘smart casual’ clothes – they’re smarter than what I’m wearing, at any rate. He is wearing a tan leather bomber jacket and smart jeans. An orange plastic bag dangles from his wrist with the word ‘Dazed’ printed on it in black. I try not to assume it’s a vinyl record. In truth, I have no idea, but it looks like it might be a shirt. He clumps up and down and then up the stairwell again. He groans at the number of the people on the bus and and peers over the top of people’s heads into the traffic outside. The overstuffed bus caterpillars forward in a roadwork-choreographed slow dance. He phones his friend – gender unclear – and proceeds to have a fifteen minute conversation that repeats on a loop:
‘Ya mon. Ima ona two tree sebben. The two tree sebben to Ounslow Eat. Issa totally serious mon. I never seen nuttin like it. The bus issa totally full of peepul. And the driver is doing crazy ting. It done gone right where it no spose to. T’traffic is something fierce mon.’

I try not to think of the Lilt advert, and remind myself that it’s ok to laugh at people sometimes, as long as it’s for the right reasons. Part of me wonders whether his performance is part of an elaborate wind-up.

He wanders around the same few phrases and I try to tune him out. And then he says:
‘Ya babe. I got a red one and a green one already. Leave the pink ones to the battyboys.’

Or at least that’s what I think I heard. I experience a familiar feeling of paranoia, as I debate the rights and wrongs of listening in to someone in public, and whether or not I’m judging him by what he wears, or the colour of his skin. But ultimately, I’m judging him by what he says. Or rather, repeats. When the person on the other end of the call says something, he sucks his teeth and clicks his tongue. Perhaps this is a reinforcement ritual – some kind of aural language mirroring. Involuntarily, I find myself mumbling something and making an ‘un huh’ noise of my own. Am I reminding myself of who I am? What my cultural noise is?

He shouts at the driver when someone makes a break for it – abandoning the top deck with little or no hope of making it to the exit before the bus should pull out. The rest of us ignore this display of civic-mindedness, and resume our attempts to ignore the inch by inch report of the progress of the bus we’re all on together. Eventually he repeats himself to a standstill, and he brings his call to a close. He scans the night traffic for clues as to the driver’s right or wrongness, but he doesn’t seem any more at ease.

A space opens up and he walks past me. He is wearing camel-coloured work boots – Timberlands, I think. They look nice. I’d like boots like those. For some reason, the cleanliness of his boots matters to me. My stop arrives and I inch down the stairs. As I reach the bottom of the stair well, three words ring out again… ‘two tree sebben…’

Scene 2: an afternoon screening of The Hurt Locker at Brentford Watermans, cashing in on its success at the Oscars. Although ‘cashing in’ is somewhat moot, as there are only five other people in the screening.

I am confused by a table full of cups and biscuits and coffee jugs as I enter the arts complex. It feels like a meeting. But I am not invited. I admire the dedication of the man on the box office who asks me to pick my seat from an empty cinema. He mishears me, and gives me the seat he wants to give me anyway. I feel vaguely unhappy I do not have a seat-selection system for situations like this. Perhaps he senses this.

Downstairs there is the familiar smell of curry and an appalling blend of bhangra house or something blaring over the PA. Three men, who look like refugees from the Irish bar down the road, drink tea and make themselves scarce when I arrive. Perhaps they ran out of free wifi. Perhaps they don’t like company.

I console myself with a bag of stale popcorn and some alcohol free lager, although it takes three attempts to make my words ‘salted popcorn please’ produce the desired result. I am early, and I eat most of the bag in the foyer. I try to make a joke with the usher as I say I’ll hold back the crowds as I gave him my ticket. He ignores me.

Unacknowledged, I feel rebellion stir within me, and I do not sit in my dedicated seat. I try not to compare the tiny size of the screen and comfortable hearing level with the behemoth that had presented itself as ‘Westfield Vue 7 Extreme Screen’ the other day. I muse that there are probably the same number of staff on duty. It’s just the two thousand other patrons and smell of hotdogs that’s missing.

They arrive after me and sit about four rows behind me. An old couple, I can’t make them out in the gloom, but one is male and the other female. I’d like to think that they’re on a date. Or making the most of publicly funded art venues while there still are some for them to enjoy. Little bit of politics. Well, it is The Hurt Locker. I can only hear her – his responses get lost in the carpet and the chairs and the ‘ta da da da dadadududas’ in front of me.

‘Oh. I thought some of those people having lunch would be coming in,’ she says, in a ‘my brain freezes if I do not speak’ kind of voice that describes the weather, the behaviour of cats, the state of the neighbours garden, the timeliness of buses and the occupancy rate of local civic amenities.

Mumble.

‘Well, there’s not a lot of us in, that’s all I’m saying. And you’d have thought with it winning those Oscars and everything…’

She has a London twang and my shoulders will tense up over the next two hours as various plot-related stage whispers bounce back and forth between them. There is particular confusion over the mis-identification of a boy (a booby trap sewn into the body of a dead young Iraqi – as grim as it sounds). They do not appear to understand that the mis-identification is part of the you know, ‘thing’.

Despite the annoyances, I’m glad they’re here. I hope to think I’ll still be going to the cinema, or whatever takes its place, in forty years time. And I hope I’m annoying young’uns. Or aliens. Or young aliens.

I do not see their shoes.

Scene 3: recycling lorry screeching down our road this morning.

I swear I hear the distant sounds of girls screaming at a pop concert. And then I hear the breaking of glass and slamming of bins and boxes on pavements. A mechanical, melodramatic sigh is followed by the guttural throb of a diesel engine rumbling forward a few yards, followed by more girls screaming.

It’s a recycling truck. Its brakes sound exactly like a pop concert. Or, more likely, I have rather odd hearing. I imagine a throng of screaming girls following the truck around and throwing knickers and other non-recyclable items at the workmen as they dig their way down suburbia, reliving endless dinner parties, Saturday morning paperfests and kid’s own choice cereal boxes. I absent-mindedly wonder what other irritating noises could be improved by similar mis-direction, until most everyday noises I can think of are replaced either by clown car klaxons and the gentle phut of a smoke machine. And then I remind myself that if the truck’s brakes were properly maintained there wouldnt’t be a noise at all – so this pop concert aural hallucination is in fact a sign of the decline of Western civilisation as we all know it. Which brings out the clown car klaxons again.

Clowns wear big shoes. I’ve not met a real clown since 1976. He scared the bejaysus out of me.

What did you hear today that spoke to you in some way?

I’ve been swimming in a sea of numbers for the last few days – which makes a pleasant change from staring at words and willing them to coalesce into something interesting. The upside is I get to make graphs, and I’m experimenting with new forms of data visualisation (I blame the Grauniad, myself) although for the most part I am sat in my uncomfortable ‘exectutive’ chair, scratching my head Laurel-style and squeaking ‘yes, but what does it all mean?’.

I know I was enjoying myself because I lost track of time (and *polite cough* I started talking to myself, compared myself to a maths-nut-eating squirrel, and took on the voice of Dr Staticon – the infamous serial graphulator of Olde Numbers Towne, Des Moines (Alabama). You haven’t heard of him? You should have – he left a square root sign on all his victims and only ever ate Pi. Ok, that last bit was a little predictable, but what do you expect? Matrices and catalytic converters, I mean quadratic… hydramatic…systematic equations?

In other news, the sun’s been out. No, it hasn’t gone to my head. It’s been covered in numbers. It’s well known that numbers are better than hats. Especially the number three. I also had a dream that I was in a meeting with Boris Johnson, current Mayor of BoTown and quite possibly the only Tory I wouldn’t mind having a chat with, mainly because I’d imagine he’d stand a round. Although on that basis, I should probably focus my drink-with-a-tory musings to 15 pint Hague.

In non-sun, three or Dr Staticon news, I have still to hear from my #1 preference agent. But I have booked a trip to the location of novel number three (sorry, I didn’t realise the numbers would repeat like that), which I’m quite looking forward to. But not as much as I’m looking forward to Friday, when I hope to finally get a new short story down (called ‘Geordie’ for now).

Anyhoo. Wibbled on about nothing, and cleared my head of graphs, bubbles, columns and all thoughts of consultancy, suntan-seas, squirrels, nuts and square roots, square balls and square pegs. It’s like a carriage return for my brain. And apologies if anyone actually reads any of this. But you can make the noise now, if you like – if you remember manual typewriters that is.

And so to bed.