Marc Nash's Blog, page 39
May 21, 2014
Blood Angel - Friday Flash
We followed the book’s prescriptions faithfully. Having done so we feel honour bound to recommend the following corrigenda as a result of our experiences.
The first mistake was ours and ours alone. We decided on an evening enactment. I think the elders were concerned that the villagers remain working during daylight, rather than being drawn like moths to this particular flame while the sun was still high up in the sky to light their labour in the fields. Additionally I think they were also keen on the further benison, or perhaps expedience is more fitting, of keeping them out of the tavern for a single night, though many I’m certain smuggled in their own firkins and flasks of ale. Still, spiting the profits of the taverner could never be a bad thing.
So we convened justice when it was dark. Which only compounded the second erratum, the invocation to punish by fire. In other countries we know they lop off the offender’s head with an axe or dangle them from a gibbet until death. We respectfully feel that there can be no miscues with such straightforward orderliness. Yet in our case, we only fanned the flames of incitement in favour of that which we were seeking to expunge.
She stood there against the stake, arms strapped out either side of her in unwitting simulacrum of our own Messiah’s death, as the flames began to lick around her feet. Yet her flaxen hair, (I ought to remark that this specimen was not possessed of any gnarled, wen-covered crone’s visage), billowed out around her, presumably driven by the flow of the heated air. Now the effect of this was that her locks echoed and mocked the flames still trying to fully catch. It suggested that she was not only embracing the flames, but merrily encouraging them under her control. Was her hair on fire, or was it made of fire, indicative of her whole body being forged from the abyss itself? The red balefire against the darkness only augmented the impression that we were in the realm of those from the infernal place and they were in their element, whereas we in the village were far from home. We had surrendered the night to its denizens rather than brand our purifying mark upon it.
Her eyes too were blazing in the most diabolic fashion, even though we few men of learning present, appreciated that this was just the effect of the flames being reflected in her dead lenses. Their cowering effect still struck home amongst our populace though I could see. Many arms were raised to try and fortify themselves by quaffing on their home-made brews, as they perceived her to be glaring at them each with a most furious evil eye. We had staged this spectacle to demonstrate the power of Christ to defeat his foes, yet it was they who seemed to have inverted every one of our attributes and were demonstrating their own fiendish puissance through them.
Some said they heard her screaming her pain as you would hope, while others reported it as a wicked cackling. Again here was the cozening play of the image of her up on that pile perverting the minds of simple folk. I myself don’t remember any sound emitted from her at all, as if she was drawing demonic strength that even with her final breath she was still performing the devil’s work. That she was to be sacrificed in order to sow demonic diabolic seeds was exactly how Beelzebub always treated his minions, yet the perniciousness of such a fatal contract passed right over the heads of our people slathering near the stake.
Another fallacy was when these people at the front were dancing in what they credited to be blood and other boiled juices pressed out of her body by the heat of the blaze, actually turned out to be leaking pitch from the barrels fashioned with the usual slipshod craft by our village cooper. So that when a stray spark or two landed upon the liquid pool, up they went in a conflagration claiming their lives, which only seemed to offer another possible demonstration of supernatural forces at work.
And when the inferno had finished its ministrations and burned itself out by dawn’s first light, we were left with two further scathing impressions. The first was that when the flames had burned though her rope shackles and allowed her leaden carcass to topple forward to the earth, we had naturally assumed that the spark of life had left her. And yet the imprint on the soil disabused us of such reasoning, since she must have been able to move her arms and tried crawling away even though she had no legs to propel her. Since there in blood were outlines like snow angels, only red. An abomination of the very notion of an angel, here again to taunt us, but also stamping the notion of a fallen angel, one of Hell’s legions marked out for all to see. The second, that despite the fire reducing everything of her to ashes and powder, there in the middle of the blood angel was her perfectly preserved, albeit singed, black heart.
Brazenly presented with such sigils of damnable pre-eminence, the villagers fell under its spell at once. They started fornicating among the ashes hoping to absorb the occult powers. The black heart was borne to the church and placed on the altar, while the crucifixes within were all inverted. And finally I was forced to make the amendments you read in this book, transcribing in her dark angel blood. Before they mean to burn me on a pyre and challenge our lord of mercy to such a display of sovereignty to rival theirs.
May 14, 2014
Breathless - Friday Flash
He removed the cigarette resting behind his ear and held it to the burning tip of the one still perched between his lips until the flame took whereupon he swapped them round and let the dog end pitch to the ground as he moved to stamp out the embers of its life but since his attention was given to ensuring the new smoke was securely in place his stomp missed the butt entirely which he became acquainted with as he looked down and proceeded to pound the feebly pluming fag end which, were his foot a hand and his shoe a knife, could be observed to be a stabbing frenzy which utterly reflected his mood and temper at that moment to his very fibre as his cells cried out to be nourished so that the butt stood for his meet who was late and was being severely punished for it under the tread of his shoe, but his fury was cut off since in his furore his breath was so abated behind lips clamped on the new gasper to prevent it falling out of his mouth, that the fumes backed up into his gullet and caused him to explode in a paroxysm of coughing which sent the cigarette shooting from his mouth like a dart from a blowpipe which doubly enraged him and saw him unwittingly jack-knife his body as his leg continued to try and obliterate every last trace of the first stub, while his outstretched arm strived to salvage his newer coffin nail so that the differing pulls toppled him over on to the pavement and knocked the wind out of him as he lay there on his stomach panting and wheezing his wordless rage even as the tears of frustration and desperate craving unleashed themselves from their ducts like a crack parachute division exiting their jump plane.“You wanna give those up, they’ll kill you” said a man approaching him on the pavement. “Looks like you’re out of puff” as he tossed him a little bag of powder. "That'll put the wind back in your sails".
May 8, 2014
Boustrophedon - Friday Flash
Turn.Turn.Turn. The sun in the sky did it as day turned into night turned into day. The plants in
,fields the ploughed they as it did tractors farmers' The .light the chased they as it did earth the
the plume of smoke rising from their vertical exhausts swatted away on the air when the heavy
The .tails their with flies away batting oxen forerunner their echoing ,hump a over went tyres
street panhandlers did it periodically, emptying their Styrofoam cups of donated change, toting
taking before ,they were begrimed so gloved be not may or may that palms their in up it
themselves off to the liquor store. Thus did the day turn lazily. The mad woman who was
turning ,sported still she shoes the of because ballerina professional a been have to rumoured
on the same spot for hours on end, wearing a hole in the carpet, only it could never be deemed
one first reeled it although for ,trend the bucked top spinning child's the Only .pirouette a be to
way then another as it collided with the skirting board or a leg of the table, it was spinning
top the on idly finger his had writer The .down wound finally too it until ,spindle own its around
of his pen, letting it propel the nib where it would, as his other free hand tugged the notepad
,today flowing weren't just ideas The .paper lined the of surface the to on ink the jogged and
as he gazed out the window.
May 7, 2014
140 Character Assassination - Twitter & the need for precision of language
On Tuesday someone I follow on twitter announced they were leaving having been driven off through tweets received. This blew up really quickly and so I was able to glean very little in the limited time I had access to their timeline before the account was deleted. Being a timeline only of their tweets, I couldn't see what abuse or menace they were on the receiving end, so I could very well have the wrong reason they found their back to the wall. But I think it was over the use of a single word.
The word 'banter' in its original meaning has the sense of light-hearted verbal exchange. Certainly nothing aimed at wounding. But the word has I think developed a bit more edge as it is used as an excuse to defend hurtful barbs. This is particularly true of team sports dressing rooms, where the cut and thrust of banter is perceived as both a team bonding instrument but also a tool for toughening up. The logic running something like if you can't take the competitive asperity of a dressing room, you probably won't be able to survive in professional sports. It's a proving ground of sorts. A verbal assault course that has to be bested. It's a completely non-sensical argument, since a team dressing room is absolutely the place to retain grudges, because you are forced together with people you probably don't like every day with no escape. As to team building, how many soccer clubs banned card schools that were supposed to help bonding, only for the playboy millionaires to have huge gambling debts with team mates that only ruptured any sense of unity? So much is excused as being 'just a bit of banter' and players often claim they love 'a bit of banter' with the crowd, until they lose it and respond with a gesture that lands them in trouble with the governing body, or worse. I don't think Eric Cantona saw it as just a 'bit of banter' when he leapt into the crowd with a karate kick at an opposition fan who had been baiting him.
So the word itself has perhaps become degraded from its original sense. The ex-twitterer didn't even use the word 'banter', but the slang foreshortening of it to 'bants'. I think the tweet was something like "just bants". I was completely unaware of this idiom and had no idea that's what they were referring to. So I went online to look it up in that gospel of idiomatic usage "Urban Dictionary". I saw that 'bants' was just a shortened slangy version of 'banter', perfect for the cramped language use encouraged by 140 characters on twitter. You shave all of a single character by such usage.
But I'm an old hand at referencing "Urban Dictionary". I know full well that there is likely to be more than one interpretation of any slang or idiomatic term or phrase listed there, and indeed validation and veracity are, as is the prescription of our age, voted on as to confirm or reject. Indeed 'bants' has another meaning and I suspect it was this that brought down the opprobrium on the tweeter's head. (As is often the case, there are actually a couple of minor variations on this second meaning, as UD always manages to convey a sense that any verbal explanation has had its vowels and consonants mangled in the telling as is the wont of the generations who speak without moving their upper lip and that the transcription on UD reflects this local and regional variation).
I'm not going to reproduce the alternative meanings, you can look them up yourself if you're so minded, but it seemed apparent to me that here was a difference between a UK English interpretation of the word 'bants' from an American English one, where the words is actually an acronym and its letter 'N' is highly charged as reiterated once again only this very week in the UK by Jeremy Clarkson's grovelling apology for using it and in the US, by a professional sports team owner stirring up the whole race issue with his own players and abdicating his right to own just such a sports team.
I knew neither meaning of the word as indeed I'd never heard the word before. I think it highly likely the tweeter only knew of the UK English one and thus fell foul of an unintended reverberation in its use. Is that a defence? I have absolutely no idea to be honest, in such a fast changing world of slang and idiom it simply isn't possible to stay on top of every single new word and phrase. "Urban Dictionary" being a crowdsourced compendium of such usage only encourages faster coinage of new idioms and all are of course completely unsubstantiated.
But and this is a big but, you put yourself and your opinions out in public on platforms like Twitter, you better be prepared to stand by and back up every word you post. Because if you put stuff out there that you are not in full comprehension of its meanings, shades, imputations, undertones and overtones, then you expose yourself to all manner of challenges. Should those challenges be vicious, insulting and cruel? Of course not, but they will be and possibly more since the current state of both legislation and law enforcement seems totally overwhelmed by the virtual phenomenon. Which brings me back to the dressing room. It's not how I would choose to forge a bonded, united team environment, but at present that is the state of affairs. You stand up and back yourself with a rhinoceros-plated hide, or you go under. It is the same in social media. And getting your language right is a crucial part.
The word 'banter' in its original meaning has the sense of light-hearted verbal exchange. Certainly nothing aimed at wounding. But the word has I think developed a bit more edge as it is used as an excuse to defend hurtful barbs. This is particularly true of team sports dressing rooms, where the cut and thrust of banter is perceived as both a team bonding instrument but also a tool for toughening up. The logic running something like if you can't take the competitive asperity of a dressing room, you probably won't be able to survive in professional sports. It's a proving ground of sorts. A verbal assault course that has to be bested. It's a completely non-sensical argument, since a team dressing room is absolutely the place to retain grudges, because you are forced together with people you probably don't like every day with no escape. As to team building, how many soccer clubs banned card schools that were supposed to help bonding, only for the playboy millionaires to have huge gambling debts with team mates that only ruptured any sense of unity? So much is excused as being 'just a bit of banter' and players often claim they love 'a bit of banter' with the crowd, until they lose it and respond with a gesture that lands them in trouble with the governing body, or worse. I don't think Eric Cantona saw it as just a 'bit of banter' when he leapt into the crowd with a karate kick at an opposition fan who had been baiting him.
So the word itself has perhaps become degraded from its original sense. The ex-twitterer didn't even use the word 'banter', but the slang foreshortening of it to 'bants'. I think the tweet was something like "just bants". I was completely unaware of this idiom and had no idea that's what they were referring to. So I went online to look it up in that gospel of idiomatic usage "Urban Dictionary". I saw that 'bants' was just a shortened slangy version of 'banter', perfect for the cramped language use encouraged by 140 characters on twitter. You shave all of a single character by such usage.
But I'm an old hand at referencing "Urban Dictionary". I know full well that there is likely to be more than one interpretation of any slang or idiomatic term or phrase listed there, and indeed validation and veracity are, as is the prescription of our age, voted on as to confirm or reject. Indeed 'bants' has another meaning and I suspect it was this that brought down the opprobrium on the tweeter's head. (As is often the case, there are actually a couple of minor variations on this second meaning, as UD always manages to convey a sense that any verbal explanation has had its vowels and consonants mangled in the telling as is the wont of the generations who speak without moving their upper lip and that the transcription on UD reflects this local and regional variation).
I'm not going to reproduce the alternative meanings, you can look them up yourself if you're so minded, but it seemed apparent to me that here was a difference between a UK English interpretation of the word 'bants' from an American English one, where the words is actually an acronym and its letter 'N' is highly charged as reiterated once again only this very week in the UK by Jeremy Clarkson's grovelling apology for using it and in the US, by a professional sports team owner stirring up the whole race issue with his own players and abdicating his right to own just such a sports team.
I knew neither meaning of the word as indeed I'd never heard the word before. I think it highly likely the tweeter only knew of the UK English one and thus fell foul of an unintended reverberation in its use. Is that a defence? I have absolutely no idea to be honest, in such a fast changing world of slang and idiom it simply isn't possible to stay on top of every single new word and phrase. "Urban Dictionary" being a crowdsourced compendium of such usage only encourages faster coinage of new idioms and all are of course completely unsubstantiated.
But and this is a big but, you put yourself and your opinions out in public on platforms like Twitter, you better be prepared to stand by and back up every word you post. Because if you put stuff out there that you are not in full comprehension of its meanings, shades, imputations, undertones and overtones, then you expose yourself to all manner of challenges. Should those challenges be vicious, insulting and cruel? Of course not, but they will be and possibly more since the current state of both legislation and law enforcement seems totally overwhelmed by the virtual phenomenon. Which brings me back to the dressing room. It's not how I would choose to forge a bonded, united team environment, but at present that is the state of affairs. You stand up and back yourself with a rhinoceros-plated hide, or you go under. It is the same in social media. And getting your language right is a crucial part.
Unamerican Activities - 10 songs about America from the rest of the world
Britain and America have always been culturally linked and especially in the fertile exchange of pop and rock music. There was a sort of inverted snobbery about home and a yearning for our brethren on the other side of the pond. Hence a US band could call themselves "Pavement" because it's a British word not an American one, while UK band Jesus And Mary Chain produced a feedback-laden version of Californian surf music with a track called "Sidewalking" as part of their homage.
But as America became the only super-power in town with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US got a really bad press from overseas particularly about its all conquering culture. Here's 10 songs sung by non-Americans about our Stateside cousins.
1) Au Pairs - "America"
Sort of paranoia about just how paranoid Reaganite America was. Go figure
2) The Clash - "I'm So Bored With the USA"
they sang on their debut album and yet ended up living and working there... On the same album they sang about how boring London was that it ought to be burned to the ground. There's just no pleasing some folks.
3) DOA - "America The Beautiful"
Just so you don't get the impression that it's only us Brits who are mealy mouthed about America, here are their northern cousins the Canadians getting all clichéd about America's Moral majority.
4) The Skids - "Working For The Yankee Dollar"
Who wouldn't right? Ever since the Beatles, the Brits have been obsessed with breaking the American market. Few succeed, although One Direction depressingly seem to be more successful than most in the task.
5) David Bowie - "This Is Not America"
Bowie was a man with more experience of the US than most, having spent time working there in film as well as music. He made the "Man Who Fell To Earth" about an alien struggling to comprehend life in the US. He hasn't really put his experience to use in this song, not necessarily due to the lyrics, but because this is one hell of a mess musically as a song. Dreck as the Yanks might say.
6) The Pogues - "Body Of An American"
Well Shane Magowan went about mythologising Irish culture from his London base, so why not do the same for American Irish culture?
7) The Proclaimers - "Letter From America"
Well it took the seventh song to find something vaguely sympathetic to the USA, albeit from the point of view of looking back longingly to Scotland.
8) The Guess Who - "American Woman"
Those canadians at it again, although the strength of this song is such you can only but forgive their prejudice against their daughters to the South.
9) U2 - "The Hands That Built America"
If there would be one band to stick up for the Yankee Doodle Dandies it would be Bono's we don't dislike anyone bunch of god botherers. I'm ashamed to have to include them in this post, but what ya gonna do?
10) Test Department - "51st State Of America"
Remember when we all really believed this, with the assault of US culture of TV and films and the proliferation of nuclear arms in US air bases sited on British soil? No? Then you were problem born after the 1980s.
Bonus Track:
Just to prove we're not all foaming at the mouth with hatred for everything American
Noel Coward - "I Like America"
But as America became the only super-power in town with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US got a really bad press from overseas particularly about its all conquering culture. Here's 10 songs sung by non-Americans about our Stateside cousins.
1) Au Pairs - "America"
Sort of paranoia about just how paranoid Reaganite America was. Go figure
2) The Clash - "I'm So Bored With the USA"
they sang on their debut album and yet ended up living and working there... On the same album they sang about how boring London was that it ought to be burned to the ground. There's just no pleasing some folks.
3) DOA - "America The Beautiful"
Just so you don't get the impression that it's only us Brits who are mealy mouthed about America, here are their northern cousins the Canadians getting all clichéd about America's Moral majority.
4) The Skids - "Working For The Yankee Dollar"
Who wouldn't right? Ever since the Beatles, the Brits have been obsessed with breaking the American market. Few succeed, although One Direction depressingly seem to be more successful than most in the task.
5) David Bowie - "This Is Not America"
Bowie was a man with more experience of the US than most, having spent time working there in film as well as music. He made the "Man Who Fell To Earth" about an alien struggling to comprehend life in the US. He hasn't really put his experience to use in this song, not necessarily due to the lyrics, but because this is one hell of a mess musically as a song. Dreck as the Yanks might say.
6) The Pogues - "Body Of An American"
Well Shane Magowan went about mythologising Irish culture from his London base, so why not do the same for American Irish culture?
7) The Proclaimers - "Letter From America"
Well it took the seventh song to find something vaguely sympathetic to the USA, albeit from the point of view of looking back longingly to Scotland.
8) The Guess Who - "American Woman"
Those canadians at it again, although the strength of this song is such you can only but forgive their prejudice against their daughters to the South.
9) U2 - "The Hands That Built America"
If there would be one band to stick up for the Yankee Doodle Dandies it would be Bono's we don't dislike anyone bunch of god botherers. I'm ashamed to have to include them in this post, but what ya gonna do?
10) Test Department - "51st State Of America"
Remember when we all really believed this, with the assault of US culture of TV and films and the proliferation of nuclear arms in US air bases sited on British soil? No? Then you were problem born after the 1980s.
Bonus Track:
Just to prove we're not all foaming at the mouth with hatred for everything American
Noel Coward - "I Like America"
May 5, 2014
A Writer's Craft
The word craft deliciously has three shades of meaning that work against and undercut one another.
1) A skill or ability, especially when applied to a creative art involves an attention to the detail of aspects of the work
2) A skill or ability used for deceit, acting with guile
3) An occupation, trade or guild of a group of workers with special, defined skills. Often such membership is exclusive and used to keep others out
All writers and all artists pursue their craft. Honed by long practise and learning from experience, sometimes augmented by formal teaching of elements of the craft. Books and other sources of advice abound on the craft of writing. The craft is deconstructed and laid bare and the student can take which elements they will and forge them into their own individualised method of writing.
When you try and encapsulate the elements that make up the craft of writing, you are normally offered the axions of plot, character, conflict, arcs, setting, relationship. story development, transitions, point of view, dialogue, themes, metaphors, language, endings and so on.
Now these are all worthwhile elements to consider, but what the writer must remember is that they are only organising principles. They form the armatures around which their material moulds and shapes itself to form the whole. As soon as one regards these elements as a hierarchy, that say character or plot is at the apex of the pyramid and everything else issues from there, I think a great deal is lost to the work. Privileging any one aspect over any other risks exposing the craft's mechanics instead of the work emerging organically and all of a piece.
For example, if you the author is sat there contemplating the nature of the conflict at the heart of the book, or what the conflict is at the heart of every significant relationship the book deals with, then the book veers towards a central axis of conflict. Of course conflict in relationship is both important and an every day reality, but it does not define all relationship. The peril of ensuring that there is conflict in every relationship is that is becomes a device, it reads artificial and formulaic.
Or what could be more fundamental to a novel than its story? The story it's telling and how that unfurls over the pages to the reader. Well nothing of course and yet... Any novel plunges its reader into a world that is initially unknown and the opening pages help orient the reader in this strange new world, or maybe locate them within the familiarity of a world they do in fact recognise from their own knowledge and experiences. Beginnings are important, because they help hook the reader, but they are all in a sense random, until the reader finds their feet. The reader is pitched into one specific environment out of an almost infinite array of possibilities. As the reader progresses through the chapters, we have the bulk of the novel lumpishly described as 'the middle'. Even if there are lots of swooping changes of direction and wild arcs for the reader to follow, this is still just the meat of the book as a largely undifferentiated block. Why? because it all is leading up the the end. The payoff, the twist, the redemption, the tragedy, the denouement, or whatever the author has in store for the reader. Now there are books that eschew beginning, middle and ends for their story structure, but these are few and far between.
Ah but you may cavil, it's plot that allows the gradations of story structure. Character development, themes and metaphors all break up the monolithic blocks of print. And indeed they do, but one mustn't just regard them as spacers dividing up elements of the story in the same way as the human skeleton acts as armatures and spacers for our muscle and tissue. Each is a rich facet of fiction that brings much to the reading table in its own right. Additionally this is perhaps the point where you begin to see how some of theses elements overlap with one another so that it is not possible to say where say character ends and language, metaphor, dialogue begin, since each of these does more than merely feed in to how the character expresses themselves, they ARE character.
I don't privilege any aspect over any other in my writing. By doing so I think I avoid formulaic writing. Rather the novel emerges more organically. Do my novels tell stories? Of course they do, but it isn't necessarily their primary purpose. Do they contain characters? Well save for a couple of my flash fictions which contain no characters at all, yes my books have characters. Well actually I'd say they have Voices, for character is beset with predetermined theories of how we are constructed (to wit the psychology canon) and Voice embodies the elements of speech, metaphor, point of view, language, value system and the like, all through the words provided by the author for how the voice expresses itself. Do my characters embody conflict? Probably, though it's never anything I consciously think about while I write and certainly it's not something I ever use to drive a scene. If the character organically is beset with some conflict, be it with others, or with themselves, then that is a situation I have arrived at, not one I have set up from the beginning as a destination point I have to reach within the writing.
Perhaps all this is merely a slightly different emphasis and shade. A variant position on amy spectrum that contains all of these fundamental building blocks of the craft. But that I think is my divergence, I don't see them as fundamental. Yes they are all or mostly all present, but not highlighted, not in the foreground of my thinking when I sit down to write. I think ultimately craft is whatever the individual artist has arrived at for what works for them. For me, approaching writing with these elements as a hierarchy is both exclusive and also artificial in the sense of guile or archness in the craft.
1) A skill or ability, especially when applied to a creative art involves an attention to the detail of aspects of the work
2) A skill or ability used for deceit, acting with guile
3) An occupation, trade or guild of a group of workers with special, defined skills. Often such membership is exclusive and used to keep others out
All writers and all artists pursue their craft. Honed by long practise and learning from experience, sometimes augmented by formal teaching of elements of the craft. Books and other sources of advice abound on the craft of writing. The craft is deconstructed and laid bare and the student can take which elements they will and forge them into their own individualised method of writing.
When you try and encapsulate the elements that make up the craft of writing, you are normally offered the axions of plot, character, conflict, arcs, setting, relationship. story development, transitions, point of view, dialogue, themes, metaphors, language, endings and so on.
Now these are all worthwhile elements to consider, but what the writer must remember is that they are only organising principles. They form the armatures around which their material moulds and shapes itself to form the whole. As soon as one regards these elements as a hierarchy, that say character or plot is at the apex of the pyramid and everything else issues from there, I think a great deal is lost to the work. Privileging any one aspect over any other risks exposing the craft's mechanics instead of the work emerging organically and all of a piece.
For example, if you the author is sat there contemplating the nature of the conflict at the heart of the book, or what the conflict is at the heart of every significant relationship the book deals with, then the book veers towards a central axis of conflict. Of course conflict in relationship is both important and an every day reality, but it does not define all relationship. The peril of ensuring that there is conflict in every relationship is that is becomes a device, it reads artificial and formulaic.
Or what could be more fundamental to a novel than its story? The story it's telling and how that unfurls over the pages to the reader. Well nothing of course and yet... Any novel plunges its reader into a world that is initially unknown and the opening pages help orient the reader in this strange new world, or maybe locate them within the familiarity of a world they do in fact recognise from their own knowledge and experiences. Beginnings are important, because they help hook the reader, but they are all in a sense random, until the reader finds their feet. The reader is pitched into one specific environment out of an almost infinite array of possibilities. As the reader progresses through the chapters, we have the bulk of the novel lumpishly described as 'the middle'. Even if there are lots of swooping changes of direction and wild arcs for the reader to follow, this is still just the meat of the book as a largely undifferentiated block. Why? because it all is leading up the the end. The payoff, the twist, the redemption, the tragedy, the denouement, or whatever the author has in store for the reader. Now there are books that eschew beginning, middle and ends for their story structure, but these are few and far between.
Ah but you may cavil, it's plot that allows the gradations of story structure. Character development, themes and metaphors all break up the monolithic blocks of print. And indeed they do, but one mustn't just regard them as spacers dividing up elements of the story in the same way as the human skeleton acts as armatures and spacers for our muscle and tissue. Each is a rich facet of fiction that brings much to the reading table in its own right. Additionally this is perhaps the point where you begin to see how some of theses elements overlap with one another so that it is not possible to say where say character ends and language, metaphor, dialogue begin, since each of these does more than merely feed in to how the character expresses themselves, they ARE character.
I don't privilege any aspect over any other in my writing. By doing so I think I avoid formulaic writing. Rather the novel emerges more organically. Do my novels tell stories? Of course they do, but it isn't necessarily their primary purpose. Do they contain characters? Well save for a couple of my flash fictions which contain no characters at all, yes my books have characters. Well actually I'd say they have Voices, for character is beset with predetermined theories of how we are constructed (to wit the psychology canon) and Voice embodies the elements of speech, metaphor, point of view, language, value system and the like, all through the words provided by the author for how the voice expresses itself. Do my characters embody conflict? Probably, though it's never anything I consciously think about while I write and certainly it's not something I ever use to drive a scene. If the character organically is beset with some conflict, be it with others, or with themselves, then that is a situation I have arrived at, not one I have set up from the beginning as a destination point I have to reach within the writing.
Perhaps all this is merely a slightly different emphasis and shade. A variant position on amy spectrum that contains all of these fundamental building blocks of the craft. But that I think is my divergence, I don't see them as fundamental. Yes they are all or mostly all present, but not highlighted, not in the foreground of my thinking when I sit down to write. I think ultimately craft is whatever the individual artist has arrived at for what works for them. For me, approaching writing with these elements as a hierarchy is both exclusive and also artificial in the sense of guile or archness in the craft.
April 24, 2014
Performance Anxiety
I scrolled through the Palm Pilot of my mind. Something lurking in the buried recesses there was Paging me, trying to Laser Disk recollection into my Dot Matrix printer of a brain. I had always credited myself with a Betamax eidetic recorder of events and experience; that I simply had to dial-up any prompt and the cursor of recall would locate the exact file in my personal RAM. Then seamlessly download to the soft palate of my glossal floppy disc, having sieved through a developing tray of emotional chemicals and through the formal organisation of word processing, I would be presented with that retrospection I was seeking after accessing. But not today, despite having played it over backward and forwards on my reel to reel of an analytical mind. No flashing of an incandescent lightbulb going off in my head. Rather the grey matter seemed misty and fogged behind smeared carbon papered facsimiles, with Tippexed redactions and gouges of key bytes of data. Eight-tracked white noise seemed to be clogging my synapses, a thumping migraine boomboxed my ears the harder I tried to focus my thoughts. Nope, the reason she had walked out on me was not recoverable. I hoped it wasn't the age difference. I hadn't meant to be so dismissive of her love letter on scented paper. It was the technology I was objecting to, not the content.
April 21, 2014
Stellar Songs - Music of the spheres
Gustav Holst's "Planets Suite", the music of the spheres, the harmony of the cosmos, music has always had an association with the stars. We even call our heroes 'rock stars', that is something out of this world. So here are ten songs about the solar system. Rock(et) on!
1) The Rezillos - "Destination Venus"
The Rezillos were a touch under-appreciated punk/art school band from Scotland. With great song titles such as "My Baby Does Good Sculptures" and "Someone's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight". Perhaps they never made it because they were so bad at miming for 'live' TV pop shows
2) The Cure - "Jupiter Crash"
I'd totally lost interest in The Cure once they turned from indie new wavers into silly Goths chasing invisible rabbits down unseen holes. So I was totally unaware of this song from their ouevre. It's odd to think how different a persona guitarist Robert Smith presented when he played in Siouxie And the Banshees when he was no longer the main man and didn't have to adopt all the teased hair and smudged make-up as he did with the Cure.
3) Jimi Hendrix - "South Saturn Delta"
From the man who invented the out of this world "Acid Rock" this song shows just how much Hendrix drew on Southern Delta Blues for his style. Since there are no words to this, not sure what Saturn has to do with it exactly, but any excuse to include Jimi is alright by me to be honest.
4) David Bowie - "Life On Mars"
Considering the whole Ziggy Stardust album could have made this list, it's perhaps surprising that this song actually appeared on the Hunky Dory album. Bowie was best when he was obsessed with spacemen and he and guitarist Mick Ronson wore shiny space age clothes on stage. Just my two cents.
5) B52s - "Planet Claire"
From a band who took their name from the stratospheric carpet bomber the B-52, they made some really knock-about music such as "Rock Lobster" and "Strobelight". Here the professed love object is utterly out of this world.
6) Rush - "Cygnus X-1"
A song about one of the earliest discovered black holes, taken from an album "A Farewell To Kings" that also flirted with the radical ideas of author Ayn Rand, while the album "Hemispheres" contained a track "Trouble With The Trees" which saw the band accused of having fascist leanings. My jury's out on that one, but I just fixate on the bloated size of that drumkit, it resembles a solar system in its own right.
7) The Carpenters - "Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft"
And breathe.... Calming it all back down, here we have Karen sending out a beauteous plaint into space. I'd answer if I were an extra-terrestrial wouldn't you? Imagine the heartbreak of landing to meet this siren's call, only to discover she'd died from the very sustenance that is supposed to keep her species alive...
8) Husker Du - "Books About UFOs"
And cranking it back up again, the finest 3-piece power trio introduce some plinky-plonk piano against their wall of noise. Delicious stuff.
9) Pink Floyd - "Astronomy Dominé"
It could have been "Interstellar Overdrive" or "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", but this track from the Syd Barrett days namechecks more planetary bodies and besides, shows just how heavy and dissonant sounding a band they were in those days. Also some rare archival footage of Roger Waters being quite polite.
10) Grinderman - "Honey Bee Let's Fly To Mars"
Glorious inchoate noise that was Grinderman's debut LP. Then they cut their second one and all that was lost... Also note to Nick, excessive facial hair is not rock 'n roll unless you're ZZ Top.
11) Only Ones - "Another Girl Another Planet"
Shame frontman Peter Perrett was lost on another planet most of the time with his heroin addiction, cos they were a great pop-punk band who could have produced so much more.
1) The Rezillos - "Destination Venus"
The Rezillos were a touch under-appreciated punk/art school band from Scotland. With great song titles such as "My Baby Does Good Sculptures" and "Someone's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight". Perhaps they never made it because they were so bad at miming for 'live' TV pop shows
2) The Cure - "Jupiter Crash"
I'd totally lost interest in The Cure once they turned from indie new wavers into silly Goths chasing invisible rabbits down unseen holes. So I was totally unaware of this song from their ouevre. It's odd to think how different a persona guitarist Robert Smith presented when he played in Siouxie And the Banshees when he was no longer the main man and didn't have to adopt all the teased hair and smudged make-up as he did with the Cure.
3) Jimi Hendrix - "South Saturn Delta"
From the man who invented the out of this world "Acid Rock" this song shows just how much Hendrix drew on Southern Delta Blues for his style. Since there are no words to this, not sure what Saturn has to do with it exactly, but any excuse to include Jimi is alright by me to be honest.
4) David Bowie - "Life On Mars"
Considering the whole Ziggy Stardust album could have made this list, it's perhaps surprising that this song actually appeared on the Hunky Dory album. Bowie was best when he was obsessed with spacemen and he and guitarist Mick Ronson wore shiny space age clothes on stage. Just my two cents.
5) B52s - "Planet Claire"
From a band who took their name from the stratospheric carpet bomber the B-52, they made some really knock-about music such as "Rock Lobster" and "Strobelight". Here the professed love object is utterly out of this world.
6) Rush - "Cygnus X-1"
A song about one of the earliest discovered black holes, taken from an album "A Farewell To Kings" that also flirted with the radical ideas of author Ayn Rand, while the album "Hemispheres" contained a track "Trouble With The Trees" which saw the band accused of having fascist leanings. My jury's out on that one, but I just fixate on the bloated size of that drumkit, it resembles a solar system in its own right.
7) The Carpenters - "Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft"
And breathe.... Calming it all back down, here we have Karen sending out a beauteous plaint into space. I'd answer if I were an extra-terrestrial wouldn't you? Imagine the heartbreak of landing to meet this siren's call, only to discover she'd died from the very sustenance that is supposed to keep her species alive...
8) Husker Du - "Books About UFOs"
And cranking it back up again, the finest 3-piece power trio introduce some plinky-plonk piano against their wall of noise. Delicious stuff.
9) Pink Floyd - "Astronomy Dominé"
It could have been "Interstellar Overdrive" or "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", but this track from the Syd Barrett days namechecks more planetary bodies and besides, shows just how heavy and dissonant sounding a band they were in those days. Also some rare archival footage of Roger Waters being quite polite.
10) Grinderman - "Honey Bee Let's Fly To Mars"
Glorious inchoate noise that was Grinderman's debut LP. Then they cut their second one and all that was lost... Also note to Nick, excessive facial hair is not rock 'n roll unless you're ZZ Top.
11) Only Ones - "Another Girl Another Planet"
Shame frontman Peter Perrett was lost on another planet most of the time with his heroin addiction, cos they were a great pop-punk band who could have produced so much more.
April 16, 2014
A Round, A Bout - Friday Flash
As she approached the rope, she realised she hadn’t had a run-through. How was she supposed to make her entrance? Torso first and slide her legs round, or posterior backing into the ring? Either way she suddenly cottoned on that her flesh was to be exposed. Ass cheeks from the frontal approach, cleavage amplified by gravity with the rear-first method.
A large dinner suited man with flattened nose and spread ears had stretched the lower and middle rope apart for her. She briefly thought back to when she was a child and two friends would do similar with their skipping ropes for her to hop through. The adult her chased this fleeting image away with the notion that the ropes depicted an interference wave pattern. What the hell was she a Physics Graduate doing here scantily clad in front of thousands of men baying for blood and a glimpse of distant female flesh? She needed the money, perhaps as much as the boxers all things being relative. Her looks had always meant folk dismissed the abilities of her scientific brain at college.
Her somewhat ungainly scrambling through the ropes was still accompanied by the excited chatter dissecting the previous round of pugilism the crowd had just witnessed. A low throb of testosterone-driven descriptions of punches and bodies reeling from the impact. Yet the instant she erected herself, that statuesque moment before she started her circuit and held the rectangular board bearing the round number above her head, the tonality of the crowd rose a couple of octaves and the wolf-whistling began.
She cranked her lips into a smile and began her swaying walk. The board wasn’t heavy, but it affected her centre of gravity and dragged enough air resistance to impart a natural wobble to her gait, which she supposed was the point. The crowd didn’t need informing what the next round was, the giant stadium board over the centre of the ring told them that. Her task was a gratuitous one, to turn the minds of the throng from the bloodlust to the well, just lustful. To prick any crescendo of belligerence aroused by the sight of two men beating the merry hell out of each other. A similar reliving role that comedy played in the original Greek tragic dramas.
As she walked she realised she was not as cold as she feared she might be. Beneath the lights, her raised arms and upper body were clammily hot. However from the waist down she was shivering, with goosebumps populating her legs, exacerbating the tilt of her stride. She identified with the boxers who formally demarcated the two halves of their bodies with a belt. No hitting below its stamp; a gathered target presented above. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a water bottle being squirted towards a boxer's groin by one of the cornermen, while the other was yanking the elasticated band of the boxer’s trunks away from his sculpted abdomen. She averted her head, confused by the strange inverted directionality from the usual fluid flows from such male nether regions.
How tight a circuit was she supposed to transcribe? Too tight to the middle and she would be done in twenty seconds. It might also appear she was soliciting the referee stood there in the middle of the ring. Too wide an arc and she risked getting snarled up with the feverish activities in both corners. There were pools of water, possibly with blood mixed in, radiating slowly out from underneath the boxers’ stools. She didn’t want to be getting her shoes tagged in that, even though she had been provided them by the event promoters. God her arms were heavy under the weight of the board.
She imagined that some of the noise from the masses bore a particular pique, because round six, that number she was toting, signalled the death of their bets on a definite result in round five. These punters were now thrown back on a diffuse partisanship for one or other of the fighters, now that their main investment in the outcome had gone by the wayside (ringside?). Her board symbolically represented the guillotine, the knockout blow that ended their hopes. The boxers may have cuts and gashes on their faces, but she had the transposed blood of some of the defeated audience on her board. She shuddered and tried to focus her hearing even tighter for any hostility towards herself.
She had reached the other corner now. Even though she consciously steeled herself to give the men busying themselves there a wide berth, she found her path naturally veered towards them. Like two planetary masses coming into alignment and warping the space between them, she was drawn into their gravitational pull. The boxer was sat low on his stool, his legs splayed out long in front of him to the canvas. She couldn’t tell if he was slumped or nonchalant. The raised welts and crusted blood ridges around the cuts on his nose reminded her of the slightly worn or frayed fibres of the rugs her Grandma used to hand weave. The boxer raised his eyes and winked at her. Either that or he was trying to purge some water or sweat that had dropped into his eye from his teeming crown. She speeded up her step to get her past the black hole of the corner.
She had completed her circuit. She wasn’t sure if she should keep going. Was there time to complete another lap? How long was the break between rounds supposed to last? She had lost track of time during her perambulation and assault by all these jabbing thoughts. Goodness alone knows how boxers adjudged the duration of a round when they were being assailed by punches, yet she couldn’t even do it merely holding a board aloft. She widened her smile to no particular purpose, as both boxers distended their on mouths in order to reinsert their gumshields. The same man pincered open the ropes and beckoned to her with his flattened nose and flapping ears also seemingly directing her to between the ropes.
Ding-ging, saved by the bell.
A large dinner suited man with flattened nose and spread ears had stretched the lower and middle rope apart for her. She briefly thought back to when she was a child and two friends would do similar with their skipping ropes for her to hop through. The adult her chased this fleeting image away with the notion that the ropes depicted an interference wave pattern. What the hell was she a Physics Graduate doing here scantily clad in front of thousands of men baying for blood and a glimpse of distant female flesh? She needed the money, perhaps as much as the boxers all things being relative. Her looks had always meant folk dismissed the abilities of her scientific brain at college.
Her somewhat ungainly scrambling through the ropes was still accompanied by the excited chatter dissecting the previous round of pugilism the crowd had just witnessed. A low throb of testosterone-driven descriptions of punches and bodies reeling from the impact. Yet the instant she erected herself, that statuesque moment before she started her circuit and held the rectangular board bearing the round number above her head, the tonality of the crowd rose a couple of octaves and the wolf-whistling began.
She cranked her lips into a smile and began her swaying walk. The board wasn’t heavy, but it affected her centre of gravity and dragged enough air resistance to impart a natural wobble to her gait, which she supposed was the point. The crowd didn’t need informing what the next round was, the giant stadium board over the centre of the ring told them that. Her task was a gratuitous one, to turn the minds of the throng from the bloodlust to the well, just lustful. To prick any crescendo of belligerence aroused by the sight of two men beating the merry hell out of each other. A similar reliving role that comedy played in the original Greek tragic dramas.
As she walked she realised she was not as cold as she feared she might be. Beneath the lights, her raised arms and upper body were clammily hot. However from the waist down she was shivering, with goosebumps populating her legs, exacerbating the tilt of her stride. She identified with the boxers who formally demarcated the two halves of their bodies with a belt. No hitting below its stamp; a gathered target presented above. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a water bottle being squirted towards a boxer's groin by one of the cornermen, while the other was yanking the elasticated band of the boxer’s trunks away from his sculpted abdomen. She averted her head, confused by the strange inverted directionality from the usual fluid flows from such male nether regions.
How tight a circuit was she supposed to transcribe? Too tight to the middle and she would be done in twenty seconds. It might also appear she was soliciting the referee stood there in the middle of the ring. Too wide an arc and she risked getting snarled up with the feverish activities in both corners. There were pools of water, possibly with blood mixed in, radiating slowly out from underneath the boxers’ stools. She didn’t want to be getting her shoes tagged in that, even though she had been provided them by the event promoters. God her arms were heavy under the weight of the board.
She imagined that some of the noise from the masses bore a particular pique, because round six, that number she was toting, signalled the death of their bets on a definite result in round five. These punters were now thrown back on a diffuse partisanship for one or other of the fighters, now that their main investment in the outcome had gone by the wayside (ringside?). Her board symbolically represented the guillotine, the knockout blow that ended their hopes. The boxers may have cuts and gashes on their faces, but she had the transposed blood of some of the defeated audience on her board. She shuddered and tried to focus her hearing even tighter for any hostility towards herself.
She had reached the other corner now. Even though she consciously steeled herself to give the men busying themselves there a wide berth, she found her path naturally veered towards them. Like two planetary masses coming into alignment and warping the space between them, she was drawn into their gravitational pull. The boxer was sat low on his stool, his legs splayed out long in front of him to the canvas. She couldn’t tell if he was slumped or nonchalant. The raised welts and crusted blood ridges around the cuts on his nose reminded her of the slightly worn or frayed fibres of the rugs her Grandma used to hand weave. The boxer raised his eyes and winked at her. Either that or he was trying to purge some water or sweat that had dropped into his eye from his teeming crown. She speeded up her step to get her past the black hole of the corner.
She had completed her circuit. She wasn’t sure if she should keep going. Was there time to complete another lap? How long was the break between rounds supposed to last? She had lost track of time during her perambulation and assault by all these jabbing thoughts. Goodness alone knows how boxers adjudged the duration of a round when they were being assailed by punches, yet she couldn’t even do it merely holding a board aloft. She widened her smile to no particular purpose, as both boxers distended their on mouths in order to reinsert their gumshields. The same man pincered open the ropes and beckoned to her with his flattened nose and flapping ears also seemingly directing her to between the ropes.
Ding-ging, saved by the bell.
April 10, 2014
Compound Fracture - Friday Flash
The Engineer studied the Entrance to the London Underground Station. It was dark and foreboding as Soot picked out the outlines of Commuters whilom impressed against the Tiles. A Wind squeezed up from below ground and buffeted his Face, its force impelling him backwards. A concatenation of displacement he mused. Basic design fault. The gust stilled as quickly as it arose. Next was a thunderousdrummingcadence drawing towards him, but to his Earattunedthroughexpertlongprescription it was a nonmechanicalgenerativesound. Suddenly a human host swarmed over the Stairs and out through the Exit, knocking him this way and that like a Bagatelle, as they did to each other. When they had finally dispersed into London’s Thoroughfares and Alleyways, he took out his Notebook:
Traindisgorgementpedestrianflowpinchpointfrictionalchaos.
He resumed his ownPerambulationwithpurposethoughwithoutspecifieddestination. He noticed how the Denizens of London all had their Heads bowed as they walked. Was this because of the reputed Rats that supposedly possessed the filth laden Streets? London as one giant Rat-run he smirked to himself. His countryfolk had a word for it Umweltverschmutzung. It was only ever applied to other races.
Or perhaps was it prompted by eyecontactaversionthroughfearofprovokingviolenceinonemotivatedbyperceiveddisrespect? For he’d heard how dangerous this particular Capital City had become, the polar opposite of the order that was tightly maintained in that of his own Country’s Capital.
In thrall to Rats and Thugs, he pitied the Citizens of this formerimperialpowerprostratedrunningitscoloniesandbankruptedoncewealthofitsdominionsnolongerbeingsequestrated. It’s grandiose Edifices and Statues now merely bombastic as they sat smeared in grime and bird droppings, the masonry crumbling and eroded. Military heroes from long-forgotten wars. Buildings that used to house retired Governor-Generals and High Commissioners, now converted into flats for divorced spouses with spare bedrooms for their weekend-lodging Kinder. Even the verdancy of London’s central Parks had withered and become eclipsed by traffic fumes and degraded by the volume of footfalls. Certainly hadn’t been browned by the Sun!
To him this was a decadent City. A City in decline. That’s why its citizens had their Heads down, they lacked the confidence to look the World in its Eye. Unlike his own proud Nation. A sudden bolt of that Painwhichstartsoffstupefyinguntilneuralmessaginghitsbrainwholebodybecomingwrackedwithmountingagonyhit him. Also his vision was filled with the prospect of people’s Shoes about to boot him in the Face until they veered away at the last moment. His processing Mind elicited that he was prone on the Pavement. His Knee was radiating excruciating sheets of pain, as if it were Metal being beaten white hot in a Forge. He gazed down and was confronted with an unsettling, unaesthetic disparity. Something awry from the anatomical blueprint. His Leg was twisted at an ugly angle, the Kneecap clearly being unable to pinion it naturally. None of the passersby offered to help him, but sniggered as they pivoted and swerved around him. Schadenfreude he thought miserably to himself until a bolt of pain blotted out any further possibility of coherent cogitation.
Lying in a hospital Bed with a compound fracture of his Patella, the tidal waves of pain and the tsunami clotting of his chemically sedated brain meant he was strikingly unable to string his thoughts together. But he did at least appreciate now why the English kept their Eyes pinned to the ground. To avoid all the cracks and pitfalls of subsidence in their Pavements that had caused him to trip and fall as portentously as Lucifer’s tumble from Heaven. Subsidence, another marker of venerability. His thoughts were too fragmented to compound into a precise analysis of this event. Welt Schmerz.
*
I wish English had the facility German does, that when a word doesn't exist, in German you can formulate it by compounding words together to create it. So 'Weltschmerz' is 'world sorrow' or 'Umweltverschmutzung' is 'environmental dirt' or what we call 'pollution'.
The advantage this allows is that it can contribute to tightening up the precision of our meaning, when the existing words just won't cut the mustard. Such compound words more often than not infuse the concept with a philosophical tinge, the nuance coming from the joining of separate words together that tinge and shade their partners in the compound.
However the downside of this being that the high-minded philosophical bent can be at the expense of any metaphorical or imagistic tenor of the concept. 'Weltschmerz' sounds great, but the high-minded concept of world sorrow is somehow divorced from a poetic idea of a world sorrow and the two scarcely can coexist because the philosophical tenor comes over so strongly. This is odd given german's direct descendence from Anglo-Saxon which contained the beautifully poetic Kennings which absolutely embodied the metaphorical and the figurative through the compounding of two separate words.
So I wanted to write a story that played up the differences of the compounded words and the metaphorical phrases. I also wanted to write a story about how the facility of compounding in a language could perhaps also determine character, personality and how one expresses oneself. And then I wanted to assert the triumph of the metaphorical over the philosophical and fracture the compound!
Hope this helps in explaining the madness that precedes it!
