Absence…
More than a month has passed since my last blog. I have no excuse. Other, that is, from the tired old one that simply won’t do – I’m busy. As they say on twitter, #amwriting. Or, rather, rewriting. I’m just keeping my head down and getting on with it. Like a proper job. Which it is. Feel free to send me a food parcel and several cases of beer. And can someone re-tax my car before the end of the month, as I don’t think I’ll have time to do that either. Think I’ve left it too late to do it online. If you’ve stuck with this post up to its tired old, substandard conclusion, I bet you’re wishing I’d kept away.
“When people buy the published text of a new play, they mostly want to recall the experience they received in the theatre. That experience is composed, of course, not merely of the words they heard, but the gestures they saw, and the lighting, and the look of the thing … Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.”
Peter Shaffer – a note on the text of Equus
Suddenly we’re not short of crime writers round these parts and, what’s more, the city of Hull is serving as a backdrop for the stylings of Dave Mark, Nick Quantrill and Nick Triplow. Looking forward to getting stuck into this trio of books, which I collected from Nick Q today, and reporting back once I’m in full possession of the evidence.
Had the pleasure of witnessing the second reunion evening of the original Hull Truck company tonight. The original Truckers rolled back the years, with iconoclastic founder Mike Bradwell compering the night like only he can. Bradwell was joined by David Ambrose, Rachel Bell, Thurstan Binns (complete with Binns* sticker on his drum kit), Mary East, Dave Greaves, Steve Halliwell, David Hatton, John Lee, Steve Marshall, Pete Nicholson, Cas Patton and Alan Williams. Here was a brilliantly insane evening of imaginative entertainment infused with a rebellious spirit, performed by a bunch of people who clearly couldn’t give a fuck about what people thought of them back in the day and still know how to have a lot of fun. Every day in this city should start with a rendition of The Onion Song. At the close Bradwell promised to be back in ten years. Hope it’s sooner.
Now, go buy yourself a copy of Bradwell’s autobiography The Reluctant Escapologist
*defunct Hull department store.
Not much time left to see the Gypsy & Traveller exhibition at Hull’s Central Library. Get yourself down there for a close-up view of the following, plus you’ll be able to read the text and see what’s in the display cases. Until March 16 only.
“To sustain imaginative engagement, especially for the months or years required for a novel, craft must be a reflex, and that only comes with years of dedicated practice, practice, practice; and dedication is meaningless without discipline, and discipline without honest desire becomes empty drill, which will eventually collapse on the weight of its own emptiness.”
“Over the years, I’ve found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.”
Norman Mailer in The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing, Random House, 2003
Last night’s late night headphone cable tangle involved revisiting Lewis Black’s End of the Universe. Recommended if you like genuinely funny, satirical Americans. But if you like that brand of American you will already be aware of Mr Black’s comedy stylings. If not, try this for size:
“There sits a Starbucks and directly across the street from that exact same building as that Starbucks there is another Starbucks. There is a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks. And ladies and gentleman that, is the end of the universe. People have asked me “How do you know this?” Well go there. Stand between those two Starbucks, and when you look at your watch, time stands still. And what’s truly amazing, if you turn and look just at one Starbucks immediately you think “You know when I turn around, there can’t possibly be a Starbucks behind me.” If there’s a just and loving god how could he allow that to happen? So you turn slowly think maybe there’s a McDonald’s there or possibly an Exxon station or maybe a Gap but there’s another Starbucks! many people have asked are there too many Starbucks? Well now we know. YES. When you build a Starbucks across the road from another Starbucks, the game is over. You can build no more.”
Lewis Black
“I have unlimited vices—laziness, wastefulness, being too emotional. I mean to fix these things, but I have feeling that my novels would then die, so I leave them be.
“I love the details of a novel. For research, I like to go to the location of the places in the novels. The first thing that I do is involve my senses: I notice the smells; I open the trash cans and look at what people have thrown away.”
Natsuo Kirino
“You just can’t second-guess yourself and you can’t let anything get in the way of letting what wants to happen, happen, on its own terms. If I started saying to myself, ‘oh, this is going to be too difficult for an audience,’ I’d be destroying my talent.”
