orbific weblog – Page 88 – Strange stories and interesting things

Where does the weirdness go?

The price of second-hand books seems to have fallen in Brighton. On my last trip I picked up some good books including The Secret State, The Manual of Detection and a volume of Eldridge Cleaver speeches, all for two pounds each.

I also picked up a copy of Toby Litt's i play the drums in a band called Okay. I'd read a couple of the chapters as short stories so thought I would give the book a try, although books about rock bands are generally disappointing. This turned out to be a lovely novel. It's written as a rockstar's autobiography and makes an episodic sweep across his life. The book's origin as disconnected short stories works well. In fact, it's arguable that the book is actually a short stort collection – but, if it is, then it's one of those rare collections where the selection and sequencing make the stories far stronger.

Another cheap book I picked up recently was Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein. I'd expected this to be entertaining but I've been surprised at how much it's made me think. The book explodes with ideas like godzilla bukkake / macroherpetophiles, Aaron Sorkin as a CIA plant, saline infusion, the ethics of human/canine relationships and the meaning of America. But the book also has some interesting things to say about what the Internet means for fringe culture:

"Consider this, though. If I've seen it on the Internet, is it still underground? 'Underground' always connoted something hidden, something difficult to see and find. Something underneath the surface of things, yes? But if it's on the Internet – and I do praise the Lord that I lived long enough to see such a thing – it cannot possibly be underground."

We live in a time when anything interesting is quickly propagated on twitter. Jokes can be stale within hours. Hype cycles can be so fast that they never recover from the 'trough of disillusionment'. There is less time for things to brew in secret before being brought to light – it's ridiculously to throw up a website for a minor project. And that may be a bad thing, it may not, but things have definitely changed. Crooked Little Vein might look like be an extended gross-out at points, but it's also a very clever little book and well worth reading.

New story at Are You Sitting Comfortably in Brighton, June 19th

A new short story of mine, The First Time is being read at Are You Sitting Comfortably, a Brighton short fiction night where the stories are read by actors. It sounds like an interesting event:

White Rabbit presents: Are You Sitting Comfortably?- Pyjama Party!
Saturday 19th June 2010, from 9pm, The Basement, Kensington Street,
Brighton.

Slip on your slippers, bring blankets and bed rolls ready to camp out
at the White Rabbit’s storytelling sleepover inspired by the summer
solstice. Midnight feast available from our kitchen, and fairytale films
to send you off to sleep… you‘re welcome to toddle off home, or stay
the night and have breakfast with us…
Dress code: glamorous PJs /nightwear
Bring: something to snuggle down with: sleeping bags etc
Extras: pass the parcel, musical chairs, prizes for best dressed…
Follow the bunny….down…down…down

Doors open 9pm, stories start at 10pm, followed by midnight feast,
films, more stories, then lights out! breakfast available for those who
sleepover. £4/£6

Full details here. Also reading is Louise Halvardsson, who has been writing some fantastic stories lately.

"When I was fourteen, a
girl on the estate disappeared and I was the last person to see her.
I was asked a lot of questions afterwards. Some of them were
friendly, others were impatient, and there were some implying that
I’d done something wrong. I never told the full story, not to any
adult, but I did tell the other kids on the estate. They were the
only ones who would have believed me."

New story available online: The Dirty Bits

I have a new story available online, in the latest issue of Streetcake Magazine. The story is called The Dirty Bits and was read at Short Fuse's erotic fiction night last year. As the continuity announcers like to say, it contains strong language from the beginning.

It's a fairly experimental story, featuring 'samples' from Anais Nin and Georges Bataille and was an interesting piece to read in public. Issue 11 of streetcake magazine is available from here.

Flash fiction in Black Static Magazine

A story of mine, In the Night Supermarket… is one of ten short horror stories that will be appearing in the next issue of Black Static Magazine:

"Ellen always comes to the
supermarket after two, when it’s quiet. She used to have terrible
nightmares but late night shopping keeps them away."

The story was entered as part of the Campaign for Real Fear run by Christopher Fowler and Maura McHugh. I can't wait to see the magazine – firstly, because it's so exciting to be appearing in a magazine that I've been subscribing to for a couple of years. Also, as I said in my last post, I can't wait to read the other stories the Campaign has produced. Hopefully it should arrive in the next couple of weeks.

Ever worry that signs are talking to you?

Do you ever worry that signs are talking to you?

The photo above was taken in the village post office on Friday. They put up a message of the day – a little like one of those Unix login messages, but without the need for a keyboard.

Summer is definitely here. I spent Sunday on my first bike ride in years, dashing around the Derbyshire countryside between Calke Abbey and Staunton Harald reservoir. The weather was incredible and I am currently in love with the England and the summer.

The Bearded Theory Festival

I forgot to post this last week – the other weekend I went to the Bearded Theory festival. It's a small, relaxed event, held about thirty miles from where I'm staying. Joh spotted the festival and demanded I go with her. She'd been attracted by an eclectic line-up, which ranged from New Model Army to the Cheeky Girls via Senser.

A lot of the bands were heritage acts, some of whom did better than
others (Musicians! write songs you can still sing in your
forties!) The Wonder Stuff were as good as I'd hoped, but the biggest surprise of the weekend was Senser. I missed seeing them around the time of Stacked Up
and had low expectations fifteen years later. They performed an amazing
gig, which included a couple of bars from Milkshake finding their way
into Switch, and a great cover of Mama Said Knock You Out, LL Cool J's comeback song. (There's a recording of them doing the cover here).

There were the usual festival shenanigans, although elf ears and silly hats were refreshingly rare. We saw some frightening toilets. We lazed around in the afternoon listening to music in the distance. We heard political ska music – I've never seen the point of that. Has there been any recorded case of a fascist changing their mind after seeing a ska band in the afternoon?

I tried to explain to Joh that bad hats are a valid reason for disliking a band. I had a minor festival disaster, in that I only packed two books, and had pretty much finished them both on the Saturday. A tour of the event's stalls produced nothing to read.

At a festival you can never be sure who your next door neighbours will be. Camping behind us, for instance, was a man from the North-East, whose only tone of voice was an aggressive shout, whatever he said. But even more unnerving was the neighbour in the van next door. While Joh was preparing a supper of super-noodle sandwiches, I looked up to see:

I know clowns are people too, and need time off like the rest of us, but it's still disturbing when you find one living next door.

Why bother writing

My latest article, Why Bother Writing? is now up on the Literature Network site. It was written in January, when I was preparing to leave for India:

"I carry a book everywhere I go but it’s only when lugging whole boxes of them that you become aware of how heavy text is. I’ve slimmed my library down massively and it’s still too heavy. I think back to the rumours that my university library is sinking under the weight of the text inside. The story wasn’t true, but it sounds like it could be."

The article is about Twitter, phatic communication, and what the point is in writing in a world that already contains so many books.

The first festival of the Summer

It's been freezing cold for the last week, but this morning I'm heading off to my first festival of the summer, Bearded Theory. Whoever chose the bands is obviously a big fan of '90s crusty, since Back to the Planet, Dreadzone, Senser, Banco de Gaia and Tragic Roundabout are playing. Also appearing are New Model Army, The Wonder Stuff and Blyth Power (whose festival I'm attending later in the year). But the most inspired bookings have to be Doctor and the Medics and the Cheeky Girls. The line-up is odd to say the least.

It will be strange to see so many bands I missed first time round. I can only hope they do better than Suede, who I finally saw in 2003, at least five years too late. Will the Wonderstuff hold up to their early 90's heights? And how will Dodgy compare to the first time I saw them, in 1994?

I'm looking forward to being away from the laptop for a few days. It should be a fun weekend, although the "world record attempt for the most amount of people wearing fancy dress beards in one place!!! sounds ominous.

Brighton Festival: The Cinderella Project

I'm missing some fantastic shows in this year's Brighton festival, but I'm most sad about missing The Cinderella Project. This is part of a "a year long series of Art/Theatre collaborative events… discussing the nature of art, love and mortality." Lucien, the project's first major output, is "a combination of gripping audio drama, an interactive, site specific experience and the opportunity to witness live painting in an intimate and engaging setting".

The play is performed in Jake Spicer 's studio in New England House (which recently hosted Alice in Wonderland themed life drawing). The story creates a fantastical version of Brighton, where an alchemist painter is imprisoned in the depths of New England House. The New England map below was part of a flyer and includes some great details, like a squid attacking the West Pier.

Jake is collaborating with Zoe Hinks, of Sabotage Theatre. Last year Sabotage performed the play Ravens at the Marlborough, a story of witchcraft set in Romney Marshes in the 1650s. The Cinderella Project is free, but tickets are starting to run out. There are three daily performances between the 15th and 22nd and tickets can be booked by emailing info@jakespicerart.co.uk

Having heard so much about the project it's a shame not to be seeing its first show. Hopefully someone will see this post, go along, and tell me all about it.

Poetry and Espionage

Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote an essay on spies, looking at Operation Mincement and whether secret intelligence can be trusted. Gladwell discusses the British spy agencies and their logical minds, comparing them to James Jesus Angleton, head of the CIA's counter-intelligence division during the cold war:

"His nickname was the Poet. He corresponded with the likes of Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot, Archibald MacLeish, and William Carlos Williams, and he championed William Empson’s “Seven Types of Ambiguity.” He co-founded a literary journal at Yale called Furioso. What he brought to spycraft was the intellectual model of the New Criticism… To him, the spy game was not a story that marched to a predetermined conclusion. It was, in a phrase of Eliot’s that he loved to use, “a wilderness of mirrors."

Gladwell describes intelligence information as a poem, with 'multiple interpretations'. I love the idea of applying literary theory to spycraft. It reminds me of a section in Don DeLillo's White Noise (a book I recently quoted when posting about the Taj Mahal):

"My first and fourth marriages were to Dana Breedlove … She told me very little about her intelligence work. I knew she reviewed fiction for the CIA, mainly long serious novels with coded structures. The work left her tired and irritable, rarely able to enjoy food, sex or conversation. … The long novels kept arriving in the mail."

I found a Telegraph blog post which notes that the CIA did in fact review Norman Mailer's book 'Miami and the Siege of Chicago' as part of their file on him. The New Yorker writes that "agents filed classified reports about Mailer’s appearances, talks, and lectures" and described his Miami book as "written in his usual obscene and bitter style".

If I could pick any job in the world, it would have to be reviewing literature for intelligence agencies. I suspect, though, it's not a job you can just apply for.