orbific weblog – Page 86 – Strange stories and interesting things

Clown town

The photograph below was sent to me by Louise Halvardsson, who saw the shop on her recent holiday. Would you want a tattoo from a place called Clowntown?

On Saturday Lou was reading at the Wedding Present's At the Edge of the Sea Festival. The event was at the Concorde 2, and Lou was the first performer on the main stage. The readings, organised by Short Fuse, were stories based on Wedding Present songs, with Lou writing a piece based on I'm from Further North than you are. Lou has been writing some great stories lately, and it was exciting to see her performing at an unusual event. Lou has blogged about the event here.

It's been a busy weekend: swimming in the sea, revisions on the novel, visiting the tip, and moving my library from storage to my new room. I also visited Metrodeco, where I had Lapsang Souchang and a massive meringue. I'm loving being back in Brighton.

A Tuesday in London

Yesterday I took a day off and wandered up to London with Richard Willis. We left Brighton at the break of dawn, arriving in the capital by breakfast time. We walked from Victoria to Trafalgar Square, which was my daily commute when I last worked in London. Arriving at the square who should we see, but the Mayor of London. It seemed like a good omen for the day.

Prompted by meandmybigmouth's recent visit, we started out with a trip to the National Portrait Gallery where they had the exhibition for the 2010 Portrait Competition. It was as impressive as the previous ones I've seen, but for some reason left me feeling melancholic. I don't know if it was the pictures selected, the early morning, or something else, but all of the images felt like memento mori.

The painters had worked so hard to portray their sitters. Many of the labels discussed the personalities the artists had tried to capture. But as soon as the picture was finished, the sitter would be aging, becoming less like their image. Maybe I should feel the same way from photography, but I guess the difference is that painting takes so much more time. Everything I saw seemed somehow elegaic.

After that we visited the British library for the Magnificent Maps exhibition. It made me want to be a little boy again, scribbling maps of places I loved and places that would never exist. We also visited the permanent exhibition where we saw the first page of JG Ballard's crash, a type written sheet covered in scrawled amendments. We also saw Scott's diary, which never fails to move me – I still find it hard to believe that things could have gone so wrong.

A stroll across town took us to the Tate Modern, but we discovered we had had our fill of culture. Instead we sat on the balcony and watched the clouds pass by. As the sun came out we saw some interesting shapes.

Our final event of the day was the Proms, where we took advantage of the £5 standing tickets. It was a long wait but the queue was friendly. I eavesdropped on our near neighbours, a teenaged boy telling a couple of girls about the wonders of special relativity and what happens as a body approaches light speed. "Best of all," he said, "Your mass increases." "That's a boy thing," one girl said to another.

The concert was fascinating. I've been to the proms before, but never this close to the orchestra. It was amazing to watch the players – the patience of the percussionists as they waited for their moments, the way the double bass players seemed to dance with their instruments. We heard three pieces, diving out during the third; my favourite was Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. A couple of reviews of the night are here and here. I know next to nothing about classical music (other than don't clap between the movements!) but it was a good evening.

After that we had a mad dash back to Victoria for our coach home. We were delayed by an electrical fault, but a visit from Sammy's Garage soon had us underway. It was a long day but a lot of fun.

Brighton and Hove Parkrun

I'd been meaning to attend the Brighton and Hove Parkrun for a while, but I finally made my first visit yesterday. My old friend Mr Spratt was visiting and suggested that we get together for the run then go for coffee.

The Parkrun is a great idea, enabled by modern technology. You register on the website and receive a barcode to print out. Then any Saturday morning, you turn up at one of the Parkrun events and do a 5K race. At the end of the race you receive a positional chip, which this is scanned along with your personal barcode. A few hours late the statistics from the race are put online. Best of all, the event is free.

I was suprised at how slick and organised the event was. The course, two and a half laps of Hove Park, is well marshalled, with a clearly marked finish line, and lap timings. The group is friendly, applauding the volunteers and first timers at the start line. Free T-shirts are given to regular attendees, for 10, 50 and 100 races run.

The run itself feels halfway between training and a full-on race. Sharing the same route with 180 people is a good experience. Even on a drizzly August morning, after being up too late the night before, the Parkrun was great fun.

The results were released a few hours after the race. There are a wealth of information for the Parkrun (Average run time: 00:25:47; Total Distance Run at Brighton and Hove: 95,790 km) as well as race reports, and photos. There are also personal statistics, I managed 25:22 and came 119th, 11th in my age category with an 'age grade' of 51%.

I'm impressed at how simple and well-organised the Parkrun was, and even more that it was free. After yesterday's session I feel more excited about running than I have in a while and, despite the trek to reach Hove Park, I'm looking forward to going again.

Recent Photos 1

Postings from an edge has written a summary of Wednesday's writing event.

I spent last weekend at the Blythe Power Ashes with Joh. We saw lots of bands, most of which seemed to feature our friend Deacon. A lovely weekend of camping, old friends, music and water shortages.

I'm also loving being back in Brighton. There are so many things to see walking around the town. I hope the person who lost their trike gets it back.

Not for the faint-hearted workshop no. 3

Last night saw the third of the write club creative writing events. Sadly Ellen was sick with flu, so I ran the session by myself. The format was the same as before: a photograph is displayed on a projector and everyone writes a story or poem inspired by the image. There is a time limit, after which everyone takes turns to read some or all of what they've written. The only rule is that you're not allowed to apologise for your work.

We did a series of rounds -I've linked to the creative commons-licensed photos used in the list below:

I'd picked all of the photographs and it was only later I realised that most of them were images of Brighton seafront. I am going to mix it up a little at the next one.

I love hearing the range of stories produced at Write Club. The time constraints sound imposing, but people seem to thrive on knowing that they'll soon be reading their work in front of the group. Some of the stories were hilarious, and all of them had something exciting in them. It was also interesting to see how many interpretations people can make of the same image.

One of the most exciting things about the event was that I didn't know most of the people attending. I was particularly impressed that one woman had heard about the group at the Playgroup Festival. She'd been talking on a dancefloor with a stranger (another woman I didn't know). After she said she was looking for a writing group, the stranger told her about our event and swapped numbers. Both of them came to the event.

After the two hours was up we retired to the Basketmakers. It was a fantastic evening – thanks to the Skiff for hosting us and to everyone who attended. The next session takes place on September 15th - we're also running our September sessions on weekends in September and October.

A question about audiences

I've recently been thinking a lot about writing, and why I do it. I found myself returning to the columns I wrote in 2009 for the Literature Network. I still agreed with most of the things I had written, but was most interested in the post How many readers do you need?. This argued that people should aim at a small, realistic level of 'fame' rather than all-or-nothing success. As the writer Douglas Coupland put it, "there is a lot to be said for having a small, manageable dream". It's easier to build larger dreams on the foundations of simpler ones.

I drew on an essay by Momus, Pop Stars? Nein Danke, which claimed that in the future "everyone will be famous for fifteen people". Danny O'Brien explored similar issues in How many people do you need to be famous for?

I concluded my piece by saying "There's nothing wrong with being famous for fifteen people. JK Rowling was once less famous that that. Finding those 15 true fans is the first step towards millions of true fans, and is far better than none." Re-reading the essay over a year later, I find the ideas as interesting as I did when I wrote it. But I also find myself wondering: what constitutes a fan? How would this differ from, say, a friend who reads your work?

The Brighton Creative Writing Sessions

On Monday night, Ellen de Vries and I held our first planning session for our upcoming writing workshops. I've run a couple of free flash fiction sessions with Ellen in the past and we have another planned for next week. In these sessions, people are given photographs as prompts and have to write stories on them within a certain amount of time. We have two main rules: everyone has to read something of what they wrote, and nobody is allowed to make any apologies for the work. People seemed to like the previous sessions (Tom Hume has written a post about one session) and we enjoyed hosting them.

The Write Club sessions led Ellen and I to thinking about workshops and what other things we'd like to do. Last month we set up the Brighton Creative Writing Sessions, and we have four events planned in September and October. These sessions will take place in Jake Spicer's art studio, currently home to the Brighton Life Drawing Sessions. We will provide a playful, friendly and experimental environment for people to try new things with their writing.

In the past I've expressed concerns about conventional workshops and creative writing teaching. One thing I dislike is that many conventional creative writing courses focus on publication and 'success'. For me, one of the most exciting things about writing groups is the social aspect.The Sessions want to explore on writing as communication, as an activity that is thrilling and life-enhancing in itself.

On Monday Ellen and I settled down with some food from Pompoko and planned our first few Sessions. I've designed workshops in the past, but these feel like more of an event. Ellen and I are approaching this as we would a performance or a piece of writing. We want to make sure that, as well as producing some great writing, everyone enjoys themselves and has an exciting experience. We want these to be workshops that people will enthuse about afterwards.

The first session we're holding is Writing and Life, which will focus on the visual aspects of writing. We're going to take full advantage of Jake's studio. I don't want to give away too many details, but I think we've come up with something quite special. You can sign up here. We've done our best to keep prices low, and will be charging £20 for a five hour session, or 4 sessions for £60. If you want to try our next free session, there are still a couple of places left. And please do email me if you have any questions.

A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand

My story A Bad Place to Stick Your Hand has been published on Everyday Fiction this morning. It's a piece about a ventriloquist's funeral which I have performed live several times:

"I was supposed to meet my family a couple of hours before the funeral, but I arrived late because of work. Everyone smiled when they saw me and I soon found out why: in my absence they’d decided I would be doing the eulogy."

I hope you enjoy it.

Recent reading

I've read a lot of books since my last reading post so this is a quick catch-up of the most interesting ones:

Die Hard Mod by Charlie McQuaker is a short book but it's great fun. The story is set in Brighton and mentions lots of well-known places. I loved the fast and effective style, which led to a great set-piece at the end. If you live in Brighton, you should definitely read this. There's a review by Paolo Hewitt here.
Jaws was a good quick read, described by Peter Benchley as "a first novel about a fish". I can't see myself reading much more Peter Brenchley, although if a copy of 1994's White Shark falls into my lap then I won't be able to resist "the story of a Nazi-created genetically engineered shark/human hybrid".
What was Lost was recommended by Scott Pack and was good enough that I read it by torchlight in my tent at a festival. It's about a shopping centre, and really captures the horror of lunch-breaks and days off. One thing that annoyed me was that the back of the book gave away the structure of the book – it would have been lovely to read this not knowing where it was going. My favourite line, from a girl who wants to be a detective: "Although Sam Spade is not seen at any point in The Maltese Falcon shopping for stationery, Kate knew how important premium office supplies were to an effective investigator"
I read Einstein's Dreams because it was compared to Sum,
which I read in April. The similarities are notable. However, I think
Einstein's dreams is the better book, since it asks more relevant questions about our lives – which of the worlds it describes are we living in? My copy of the book was
augmented by notes from a previous owner. She seemed to be studying the stories in college and had, I felt, had missed the point at times. I thought it better not to email her and point this out.
I was initially inspired to explore the Bizarro genre by a post from Damien G. Walter. My appetite was further whetted by Bluejoh, who'd read Baby Jesus Butt Plug and said "It's still with me, in a way that a lot of books aren't". I bought one of the Bizarro starter kits and was mostly unimpressed, but House of Houses is one of the most interesting fantasy novels I've read. It's not Tolkien by any means but it is a truly weird novel, which asks the deep philosophical question: what is a house? While the text sometimes seems immature, it's also one of the strangest and most
inventive novels I've read. True fantasy.

The Secret State was a fascinating but bleak book by Peter Hennessey.
Now that the world has survived the Cold War, it seems less insane than
it did (In August 1991, the head of the JIC, Sir Percy Cradock,
produced champagne, "toasting the intelligence community as a whole
on the demise of the Cold War with the words "We didn't have a
war. We did win"). Despite this, some of the memos from the time remain chilling.

Looking back, the Cold War seems like a very strange period of history. As historian Michael Howard pointed out, "War is now seen as being a matter for governments and not for
peoples; an affair of mutual destruction inflicted at remote distances
by technological specialists operating according to the arcane
calculations of strategic analysts. Popular participation is considered
neither necessary nor desirable" – and this despite, as Hennessey
points out, the certainty of massive civilian casualties.

The book was fascinating. One of the
strangest moments was the discussion of how a nuclear submarine checks
whether Britain has been destroyed – one test was whether the Today programme was still broadcasting.

The Bret Easton Ellis Live Experience

One of the things I was most excited about at Latitude was seeing a talk with Bret Easton Ellis. While I was underwhelmed by his last book (Imperial Bedrooms), American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction and Lunar Park are among my very favourite novels.

It was certainly an interesting experience. The crowd was in a good mood, cheering the titles of their favourite novels as Miranda Sawyer introduced Ellis. He seemed surprised to see so many people present ("we thought we'd be hearing a song" someone shouted) and took photos of the crowd.

Ellis started by saying "I want to talk about hangovers… because that is more important to me than that book now." He was apparently suffering the second day of a hangover from partying earlier in the tour. Throughout, Ellis seemed to resent discussing Imperial Bedrooms, which he dismissed as an idea he had seven years ago, even though many of the audience had only recently bought and read it.

In fact, Ellis seemed reluctant to talk about most things. Miranda Sawyer was very patient and did a great job of drawing him out a little before asking for audience questions. In part, Ellis seemed to be trying to demystify what he did, but it also felt as if he didn't really want to be there.

One audience member asked about Clay, saying that he felt bad for not having as exciting a life. Ellis said he shouldn't worry: "he's a fictional character in a book". Ellis said that he works office hours so he can socialise with his friends in the
evening, and that his novels were reflections of his feelings at the
time he wrote them.

I enjoyed seeing Ellis – it was certainly an entertaining session – but looking back I feel a little uncomfortable with it too. His unwillingness to answer some of Miranda Sawyer's questions verged on rudeness. Obviously I have no expectations of a writer whose book I am reading. But if they're making a public appearance, then a certain amount of openness is expected.