Ode to a storyteller

I was listening to this reading of a Keats poem by F. Scott Fitzgerald (it's an edited version, so it says) and it took me to a memory i'd stowed away in a distant, dusty mental filing cabinet. 

It's not related to the poem itself. I do like bits of the poem. I like that beneath all the dressed up words it's about darkness and transience. Beauty and dreams mixed up with doom (can you tell I don't know quite what i'm talking about?) I often feel poems are grasping somewhere beyond my understanding. Some bigger, intellectual picture that my eyes are too shortsighted to see, and too restless to go study the interpretations.

But it's his voice. I like his voice. It reminds me of this old guy called Dai who ran a camp I went on every summer as a kid. We'd sit around a campfire in the middle of the woods and shout out songs and sup gritty hot chocolate. Then the circle would hush and Dai would tell his fables. We'd be gripped by his voice, lulled into a sort of meditative awe. And we'd believe so wholly in the characters in his stories, we'd go away determined to be as kind and thoughtful and brave as them. 

Then we'd go to sleep in our tents or a treehouse, and dream of the eggy bread in the morning. 

And the massive tactical waterfights in the woods, with bottles and tubs and buckets.

And the giant stilts, and rope swings, and woodcraft, and the zip wire. 

And at the end of the week we'd float candles down the river. Oh it was so lovely.

 

  

"And purple-stainèd mouth;
  That I might drink,
  And with thee fade away into the forest dim:  

Fade far away, dissolve, and fast forget
  What thou on Earth hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret"

Flying in the train yard

Bikes and dereliction. Two of my favourite things.

I wish I could ride like this guy. 

People of Peckham

I watch a woman with a grey beehive towering unsteadily on her head. It bobs with every movement. She stands swamped in a beige anorak that might as well be a duvet, and wide jogging bottoms that flap in nervous spasms around her swollen ankles.  She sways in the wind and sucks slowly on a cigarette. Her eyes narrow and she scans the traffic with suspicion, her eyebrows slicked into a villainous frown -two black slugs that shape her face into an arrow. The arrow points towards a distant flash of red that might just be a bus. But it's not a bus. She sucks back on the cigarette and squints some more. She picks at her purple claws.

A few metres away, leaning against a billboard, is a lycra-suited body. A yellow and turqoise geometric pattern stretches and swells over disproportionately tiny legs and hulking shoulders and breasts. The unbalanced figure balances solidly on pinprick heels, her skin dripping with gold jewellery and false eyelashes. She smiles privately at her phone, it's a dazzling smile.

Traffic grunts.
Shopfronts are dusted with dirt.
Racks of vegetable lie wilting in the wake of car fumes.

And suddenly a giant of a man is bearing down on me. He ploughs along the pavement with a clumsily attached backpack. He lurches sideways with each step and makes ear-splitting, inhuman noises. Half shout, half growl. Like a malfunctioning robot. I step out of his way and squeeze between the path of two speeding prams.

I slip down a sidestreet and breathe. In a few steps the street unfurls into leafy, bird-chirping quiet. Two worlds, so close.

The books

Are so wonderful.
And they have some of the best videos. Official ones, fan-made ones.. Oh they are brilliant and relaxing. Why not while away an afternoon watching them?

 

  Who knew golf could be this entertaining

PS. Read eat sleep. 

Be not so nervous

Thanks Bill for your songs.

Monsters, retreat

I don't think London will be sleeping well tonight. Or Liverpool. Or Birmingham. Not while there is looting and burning still spreading.
Stop breeding, moron people, there are too many of you. You are not owed any of these nice things. No-one is owed expensive trainers or TVs.

Sure, it's a tough time to be young. But in the midst of other world riots, our one seems sorta dumb, it doesn't quite add up.. Kids partying amidst violence, grown up sucked into consumerism, wanting new goods, wanting them immediately, thinking they're invincible, that they've nothing to lose. And now everyone's trying to work out who's failed these kids -the government, their families, gang culture, themselves, the whole city? It's all gone a bit awry.

I've been listening to some music that might be soothing enough to send the city to sleep, although it sounds fitting for a war / apocalyptic scene.. Here's a piece by Israeli composer Oded Zehavi: A pirate love song
Tis astoundingly beautiful.

Moth-eaten hopes and dreams

I would like to make a play with this humming through the speakers, so loud that the floor hums and your knees rattle.

The audience would duck and crawl and climb through a blacked-out labyrinth of ramps and ladders, trapdoors and shrouded, cave-like rooms. Lights will glow and pulse and seep stealthy shadows through the maze. There will be apprehension and curiosity hanging about the dark corners.

Outside, beyond thick walls, is a futuristic, authoritarian state. We are treading through an illicit drinking den, sniffing at the cloying, sweaty stench of desperation and disease. The characters are mad with fear and rebellion. The play will spin above and below and all about you. It will be sordid, tumultuous, grotesque.

The actors brush past people, pin them against the walls, curse and rant and whisper. They will drag them into the story, get them lost and bewildered in the burrows and attempt to knock them senseless with whiskey.

I will never make this. I'm just pondering and stealing ideas. Seeing an inane show five times in a day leaves you itching for some imagination, and boy am I glad there are a few passionate people actually following up their daydreams and making some frighteningly different plays.

Treadmill theatre wants your money, not your heart. Don't feed it your coins. Ignore the big bucks marketing. Seek out the stuff that cares enough to want to rip your heart out.