I Could Use Your Help….

IS SHE AVAILABLE? AN HONEST REVIEW I Could Use Your Help….

I Could Use Your Help….

THERE IS NO SUCCESS LIKE FAILURE AND FAILURE IS NO SUCCESS AT ALL.

The American Poet Bob Dylan had a terse style of delivering phrases that could sting like a yellow jacket. His vagabond words penetrated the skin, past blood and sinew all the way to the bone, scraping the deepest sentiments. Dylan woke me up to the breath of this cold morning’s truth when I was 14. I didn’t Look Back.

Now his words return to frame my present.

And I’m thinking to myself, there are so many things that can be done in this world; most of them bad but some of them good.

Apart from my daughter, the one accomplishment that I’m proudest of, that I believe brings real value into this increasingly commodified existence, is my book IS SHE AVAILABLE? a fusion of Poetry, Comics, Art, Jazz and animation. There’s even two short stores, 3 full comic strips and two original sculptures. All extraordinary media interpretations of 52 original works of poetry and fiction by me.

The book formation follows the story of Stone Soup, the Grimms fairy tale of the traveling vagabond who knocked on a door in times of scarcity, carrying nothing but a stone wrapped in a kerchief at the end of a stick he bore across his shoulder. The vagabond asked for hospice from the cold and upon being told directly that there was no nourishment to be found within, the hobo replied that he had brought his own: a stone for making stone soup. His benefactor was intrigued by the idea that a meal could be made from no more than a cauldron of boiling water and the stone the traveller carried.

IS SHE AVAILABLE? is a book of Stone Soup

But she let him in and once the water in cauldron began to boil, it made perfect sense to add a few carrots, a couple of onions, some turnips and leeks to what was already going to be a nourishing feast. The additions enriched the broth and their collaboration is what made the meal. This is no cautionary tale of distrusting travellers but instead point out the real value of any meal, of any endeavour between anyone, not just artists. Which is how we can enrich our lives by bringing what we have to the same pot that others bring their best to.

Nature is cruelly competitive; but as humans our forte is cooperation and collaboration. That is how we have survived.

So I am asking you to join our collaboration in bringing the substance of art and literature to the screen.

Come to the IS SHE AVAILABLE? website and have a look at the contents of this unusual work. 160 fully illustrated pages intensely designed by Rian Hughes. 15 original jazz compositions, musical interpretations of poetry by the jazz composer Gilad Atzmon. Feast your senses on a unique, deeply personal but also universal, work of both print and electronic arts.

You can see the inside as well as the outside.

And yes, please support our project by purchasing a download of the eBook for only $9.99 and/or a copy of the sumptuous hardcover for $24.95.

I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like IS SHE AVAILABLE? before, in print or on screen.

“Is She Available? has the feel of an artifact from the near future – a seminal work of a new genre fusing poetry, graphic art, music, and animation.” Paul Mirick for Broken Frontiers

Thankyou for keeping a poet from roaming the streets, knocking on doors with a stone book tied to the end of a stick.