orbific weblog – Page 106 – Strange stories and interesting things

Odds, ends and a dead santa

I loved reading Coding Horror's discussion of Swoopo. I can't see why the scheme should be made illegal though – it's an ingenious idea.
I visited Jake Spicer's studio yesterday. I saw some fascinating work-in-progress from his project with Megan Cooke, including a piece that did delightful things with perspective. Jake's studio is in New England House. I'd not seen inside the building but have long loved the exterior. I'd love to have a space here, just for the views.

Via extoplasmosis: photographs of Scott's hut on Antarctica. I researched Scott's mission for my Masters dissertation and was fascinated by Antarctica. Nothing rots there, and traces of all the missions remain.
Walking home at the end of the night. Lying at the side of the Hove seafront road was a Santa skin. A passer-by might know of the Santa army's bravery that morning, charging headlong into the wind. They might only see these remains and think this Santa suffered alone.

The weather at last year’s Santa Dash was poor, but this year it was significantly worse. The strong wind on the return portion made it very hard work. I’m significantly fitter than I was for last year’s race but, to give you an idea how tough running into the wind was, I was 1¼ minutes slower than in 2007. In the last kilometer or so I came very close to giving up and walking. But I didn’t.

Still, it’s the only opportunity I get to dress up as Santa Claus and run about; it’s fun to see that many bedraggled people in costumes; and there’s the one great satisfaction of a race like this: nothing I do in the next week is likely to be as tough. I’m definitely going to be there for the 2009 dash.

I’m reading at Tight Lip on December 19th

The poster for the next Tight Lip has appeared on Sam Collin's flickr account. I'm going to be reading with Lee Rourke and Heli Clarke, with music from Birdengine. I'll be putting the finishing touches to my story over the weekend. There's still some more to do, but it's going to be about moving house, buying books in Borders and getting lost in forests. The night starts at 7:45om, entry £4 and should be very interesting.

Shakespeare in the bush

I'm currently working on a story to read at Tight Lip on the 19th. As background I flicked through Pierre Bayard's fantastic text How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. It's as good as I remember, and this time I decided to follow-up one its references, Shakespeare in the Bush. This essay describes Laura Bohannan's disastrous attempt to tell the story of Hamlet to a tribe she was studying.

Bohannon starts out convinced that human nature is similar enough around the world that the great tragedies should be possible for anyone to follow. This doesn't turn out to be the case:

"The old man made soothing noises and himself poured me some more beer.
"You tell the story well, and we are listening. But it is clear that
the elders of your country have never told you what the story really
means. No, don't interrupt! We believe you when you say your marriage
customs are different, or your clothes and weapons. but people are the
same everywhere; therefore, there are always witches and it is we, the
elders, who know how witches work."

The essay, with it's improvised retelling of Hamlet, is very funny while raising some fascinating questions.

Sparks Night 2

Last night was the second Sparks night at Brighton's 3 and 10. Brighton has a good range of literary nights, and both Sparks and Short Fuse feel like short anthologies. Last night's stories were an interesting range. They started with my story about a ventriloquist's funeral, 'A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand', and ended with Vanessa Gebbie's polemic about World War 1; in between were stories about gym trial memberships, ice-cubes of rainwater, school reunions and gold-fish. It was a fascinating mix.

What makes Sparks unique is that each story is illustrated by a specially-commissioned photograph. The image below is the one provided by John Biggs to illustrate my story – thanks, John.

After the stories everyone milled around in the bar – it was one of the
friendliest night's I've been to. Thanks to Jo for organising
everything. I'm looking forward to the next one.

PS – Sparks now has a new blog.

Continuing the clear-out

After eliminating several thousand lines of notes I'm now sorting out my almost-finished and barely-started short stories. A week or so back I had about 70 fragments and I've been working through these, either finishing or deleting them. So far I've eliminated about 15 stories but I've also turned up some lovely pieces. Some of these fragments are over 5 years old and the need to make decisions has forced me to rethink them.

One of the downsides of cheap electronic storage is that everything can be kept rather than what is most useful. Over time this can become overwhelming. Any idea that's truly good will be memorable whether or not it's stored on a disk.

In between this, I've been practising reading 'A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand' in preparation for tonight's performance at Sparks. I'm very excited to see how this works out, and can't wait to see the photograph that's been commissioned to illustrate the story.

The Tight Lip photoshoot

I recently had a photo-shoot at the Hotel Pelirocco with the Tight Lip team. The photographs were taken by Sam Collins and will be used to illustrate a magazine project I participated in (details to follow). The image chosen to go with my bio was this one:

But my favourite was the one below. There's something magical about the shadows in black-and-white photographs. Thanks, Sam!

Mortality and Consumer Choice

I've recently been reading the Runner's Handbook. It's a good source of background information and I'm learning a lot from it. One thing I've learned is that through running I reduce my risk of dying from heart disease. I'm pleased about this – I doubt heart attacks are much fun. What the book doesn't seem to focus on is the implication of reducing my risk of heart disease.

Thing is, I'm almost certainly still going to die; which means I'm now more likely to die of something other than heart disease. I had a look on wikipedia and found their List of Causes of Death by Rate. To summarise:

29.34% die of cardiovascular diseases
19.12% die of infectious and parasitic diseases
12.49% die of cancer
6.49% die of pulmonary diseases
6.23% die of "unintentional injuries"
The remainder are mopped up by digestive diseases, intentional injuries, and so on.

So, to alter the advice in the runner's handbook, I've not decreased my chance of dying of heart disease so much as significantly improved my chances of dying from disease or cancer. Thanks, healthy lifestyle!

Rosy and Jake

I've been meaning to post this photo for a while (I took it back on the 16th). It's from an event where Jake Spicer did a live painting of Rosy Carrick at Art@TaylorMade. I've seen lots of paintings but not much painting. I arrived in time to see Jake make his first marks and loved watching how Jake picked out which lines from the real world he was would use. Jake said that he can't look at a person without mapping out their face for a portrait or planning the shading.

A long strange Thursday

I had a strange day on Thursday, not helped by having very little sleep the night before. In the evening I had a photo shoot by Sam Collins at Brighton's Hotel Pelirocco. Sam was shooting various people for a Tight Lip project. While my involvement in the project was minor being photographed was fun. Apparently the final images are good.

After the photographs I headed to the Victory Inn to see Glue Gun '91. It's their third show but I missed the other two as I was performing elsewhere. It was awesome: the first half was fun, with two poets reading, but things became very strange after the interval. An appearance from 'Jerry Springer' was followed by a man doing a striptease while riding a unicycle; he then sang songs about things like headless chickens and hagfish. I'm looking forward to next month's event, which will include an appearance from famous poet Philip Larkin.