The Caged Sea

Once again here's a blog post about the gestation of a recently published story, this time "The Caged Sea" which appears in #4 of Unspoken Water magazine.

When writing I always need a title before I can begin a story, and in some instances the title itself is the spark for the story. In this case, the title came to me whilst at the coast (unsurprisingly I guess), whilst I was stood by some steps on the sea defences. The platform at the top of the steps implied a cage over the sea, as seen by this photograph. I made a note of the title and filed it in my memory for later.

I knew the title would act as a metaphor rather than to be used literally. After all, what can cage the sea? By it's very nature it cannot be held by bars. But as a concept I knew I could work with it. As with many of my stories I generally need three elements to converge in order to have a workable idea. One of these is always the title, and in this case I became aware of two other ideas which I knew I could work together as one. These were:

1. Everyone knows of the concept of déjà vu, but I had only recently become aware of jamais-vu. Wiki summarises it nicely: Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before. Always obsessed with ideas of the perception of reality I knew this discovery would provide fodder for a story. I just hadn't been sure how to use it.

2. I had also been intrigued by stories of Aokigahara, a forest in Japan which is a popular place for those wishing to commit suicide. I've written several stories set in Japan, and again this concept was floating around my head waiting for something to harness it to. Doing some research on the topic I found that Aokigahara is also known as the Sea of Trees. Often in moments like this I wonder if there is an overseeing force teasing stories out of me, because "The Caged Sea" was obviously the perfect title for this story. It wasn't long before the concept of jamais-vu adhered itself and I realised I could work everything together.

Once these three elements were in place I simply added a seemingly solid yet potentially fractual relationship and the story was born. Of course, you'll have to read it to determine if you think it was effective and how it all came together. Unspoken Water #4 also contains stories and poetry by Mike Chinn, Marion Pitman, Lee Clark Zumpe, Derek Muk, Rebekah Memel Brown, Brian M. Milton, Richard King Perkins ll and Stephen Palmer.

Always Different, Always The Same

I don't normally blog gig reviews, mostly because I find I have little to say. Nowadays I tend to have the time/money only to see bands I know I'm going to like, so gig reviews would probably be restricted to effusive gushings that only diehards would be interested in reading. But then, of course, there will always be exceptions. And the exception here are The Fall.

I've seen them around half a dozen times since the mid-eighties. Most of their gigs begin with myself wondering why I've turned up, then suddenly something twists and I'm caught in a primal whirligig of relentless repetition, the music building on itself layer after layer, with Mark E Smith's barely discernible vocals/rant surfing the sounds whilst he himself resembles a dementia patient wandering around disorientated after escaping from a nursing home. Last night at The Waterfront in Norwich was one such gig.

But it wasn't just The Fall. Opening act Dingus Khan are an 8-piece band with three drummers and three bassists, an astonishingly happy frontman wearing your gran's calf-length purple nightdress, and an impressive set of tunes bordering on madness interspersed with whistling and extremely silly dances. Everything that's wrong with modern day pre-packaged music isn't wrong with Dingus Khan. Their jubilence was catching and I loved them.

Unfortunately there was also a second support act, There's Someone In The Pond. Bassist, guitarist, female drummer (resembling Noel Fielding); all the components were there for a top act, but when the first song started and I thought 'this sounds familiar' it quickly became apparent that all their songs sounded familiar because they had ripped off every riff you could think of and done nothing original with it. Their music was bland and I hated them.

And then we have The Fall. Keyboardist Elena Poulou arrives on stage, takes off her coat and lays it over some luggage she places on a chair beside her Korg. The other band members start playing, and shortly afterwards Smith stumbles and mumbles onto the stage, walking aimlessly fiddling with microphones and amplifiers, stands with his back to the audience, gives an occasional - piercing - direct look, sits at the back of the stage, and oversees proceedings like the bandleader he is. The music grows and is intense. Culled mostly from new album, "Re-Mit", the surprise of "Theme From Sparta FC" is welcomed heartily, and "Bury" from "Your Future Our Clutter" also rocks as does "I've Been Duped" from "Imperial Wax Solvent". Before the end of the set - who knows - Smith walks off, and after several long minutes the band return without him, Poulou mentioning something about him not wanting to work with those microphones.

What follows is structured anarchy. The band launch into "Reformation!" with the microphones handed out to members of Dingus Khan who have been in the audience for the gig. They enthusiastically shout "Reformation!" at the required intervals whilst the band ploughs on. Then they stage invade, Poulou leaves, security arrives, and a struggle ensues as they are wrestled to the ground against the beating drum bass guitar soundtrack. One is ejected but not before handing the microphone to another audience member. It wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that the microphone baton could be taken up by everyone in the audience until each were forced to leave the building leaving the band continuing "Reformation!" until the end before an empty auditorium. In any event, the song must have been extended by a good five minutes.

This is what gigs are supposed to be like. It crossed my mind that The Fall would have been buzzed off within ten seconds by the general public and their hideous facades on something like Britain's Got Talent. But Britain does have talent. And that talent is lead by Mark E Smith of The Fall.

So this is why I don't blog gig reviews because it's turned out to be sycophantically effusive anyway and still hasn't managed to capture the joy of being there. Oh well, as a counterbalance I should mention my tinnitus seems to have worsened. That's the pay off. And I had earplugs in too.

Three Wishes

We've all wondered what we might do if we had three wishes. For those amongst us who are sensible, the first wish must be to have an unlimited supply of wishes. Or maybe that should be the third wish, in order to gain an unlimited supply plus those first two wishes. Immortality would also be useful, although it's essential to be careful and specific as to how you wish for it - it would probably be best to throw in a preferred age and status of health with some 'not getting older' stuff into the mix. And we've all read books or seen movies where those granted wishes inadvertently use the term "I wish..." without actually thinking they're making a wish. The whole business is a bit fraught, which is why author Emma Newman's idea of making wishes come true seems down to earth and quite possibly achievable.

You'll have to read the exact guidelines on her Split Worlds website to see why the wishes I've chosen don't include immortality, great wealth, or a everlasting parade of long-snouted animals, but for the moment here are my three wishes:

1. my partner's put a lot of work into editing Fur-Lined Ghettos magazine. We'd like to sell more copies!

2. my novella, "And God Created Zombies", published in 2009 by NewCon Press was at one point being considered for adaptation as a graphic novel. That fell through. I'm hoping there might be someone out there to take it up again

3. I once sent a copy of my comic novella, "Ponthe Oldenguine", to Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh suggesting he make it into a movie. It would be nice to receive a reply

So, there we have it. Make my wishes come true!

And here's the housekeeping bit:

"These three wishes are part of a wish-making community organised by author Emma Newman to celebrate the release of the second Split Worlds novel "Any Other Name". Can you make any of them come true? Come and see what other people are wishing for and find out how to join in at www.splitworlds.com/split-worlds-extra/three-wishes – who knows, perhaps someone could make one of your wishes come true."

Check out Emma's novels as well, if you are intrigued by the idea of Downton Abbey crossed with the Fae.

Proboscis Monkey

It's been a while since I made a post about my favourite kind of animal - those with particularly elongated snouts - so what better way to celebrate the 1st May than by showcasing an animal whose very name is derived from a word for snout?

Of course, it has to be the proboscis monkey:

I remember my first encounter with the probsocis monkey as a stuffed animal in the natural history collection at Norwich Castle Museum. This exhibit might even have initiated my love for long-snouted animals - who could fail to be enchanted by such a being.

From wiki: "The proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) or long-nosed monkey, known as the bekantan in Malay, is a reddish-brown arboreal Old World monkey that is endemic to the south-east Asian island of Borneo. The monkey also goes by the Malay name monyet belanda ("Dutch monkey"), or even orang belanda ("Dutchman"), as Indonesians remarked that the Dutch colonisers often had similarly large bellies and noses."

I love that wiki also goes on to explain: "This species of monkey is easily identifiable because of its unusually large nose." Although I do prefer the word snout.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the proboscis monkey:

Just gasp at the size of that snout!

Irrealism Is Deafening

Labels can be useful tools. Certain consumers like them because they need to be told what it is they should be buying, just in case they end up with something different. Certain consumers have a fear of buying something different, particularly if that something might be other than mainstream. Other consumers are more eclectic, but even those who like art that might be considered 'underground' still have very definite parameters for what it is they should be buying. Our consumer culture is restricted by compartmentalisation, and if - like me - you tend to work in the underground that's beneath the underground, then actually selling product to the right people can be quite difficult. Particularly when they don't know what they're looking for.

As a writer, most of my short stories fall into 'slipstream'. I didn't set out to write slipstream. I simply wrote, and it turned out later that around the same time I started to write there were quite a few writers writing similar stories which they were classing as slipstream. This is an important point. I didn't set out to write slipstream or become defined by it - it just happened to be similar to what I was already writing. And because it's such a catch-all definition, I'm happy to call myself a slipstream writer for those readers who are underground the underground and who might just pick up a book of mine because of it.

This brings us onto Irrealism. When my partner, Sophie, wanted to start a magazine she knew what kind of material she didn't want, but it was harder to define what she did want. Some writers need to be told what to write in order that they can submit something to a magazine, and not having a definite guideline makes it hard for them. I'm sure she would prefer writers who didn't try and write for the magazine, but those who might write something and then find the magazine and realise that it was perfect for them, but in any event she attempted to define some guidelines and found a certain percent of writers understood them and others didn't (and several who wouldn't have done, however specific they might have been, because they don't really read them).

She's good with words, in my opinion. With a view to promoting Fur-Lined Ghettos at an event in Norwich recently she came up with the phrase: "irreality is deafening".

Now, as it turns out, whilst she had no idea what irrealism might be - or even that it actually existed because she had plucked the word from the air - there was suddenly a 'slipstream' moment when she googled the term and realised it was exactly the kind of thing she was looking to publish in the magazine.

From wiki: 'an estrangement from our generally accepted sense of reality' and also forms of writing which can only 'offer particular versions of reality rather than actual descriptions of it'. My understanding of this tends to be a little nebulous. But in art, for example, I would suggest that a painting of a house isn't actually a house. Just as a description of a house isn't a house. This difference, to me, represents irreality. This dichotomy between what is and what isn't tends to be what she is looking to put in the magazine. Wiki suggests this includes writers such as Kafka, Borges and Donald Barthelme, and painters such as Rene Magritte. Again, these authors might well have written material which she would have taken for Fur-Lined Ghettos. Assuming they read our submission guidelines.

But not exclusively of course. Because whilst Fur-Lined Ghettos might now embrace irrealism, it doesn't seek to be defined by it.

For the moment, however, irrealism is our new catchword. Buy a copy of Fur-Lined Ghettos or submit a piece of writing to us, now that you - as a consumer - know what it is she is publishing.

Incidentally, I have peppered this blog post with images found by putting 'irrealism' in a google image search. No admissions are made as to their validity.

Rain From A Clear Blue Sky

I've got into the habit of blogging about how various short stories have been written following their publication. Continuing this theme, here is the background to my story, "Rain From A Clear Blue Sky", which was published this month in Black Static #33. Please note there are spoilers in this blog which might affect your enjoyment of the story if you haven't already read it. (Incidentally, following on from an earlier blog post about writing to music, I wrote "Rain From A Clear Blue Sky" whilst listening to "Takk" by Sigur Rós).

Sometimes having a day job can be beneficial. One of my co-workers, Neil, pointed out an article he had seen on the Dyatlov Pass incident. Immediately I was intrigued by this true story where the deaths of nine skiers in Russia had been officially investigated and attributed to a compelling unknown force. To summarise from Wikipedia - and without giving too much of my story away - "Investigators at the time determined that the hikers tore open their tent from within, departing barefoot into heavy snow and a temperature of −30 °C. Although the corpses showed no signs of struggle, two victims had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs, and one was missing her tongue."

Artwork by David Gentry

Naturally this mystery appealed to me, but I was loathe to write about it directly. For starters, real people had lost their lives. I didn't want to fictionalise them purely for entertainment - and as I wanted this to be a horror story (albeit, a slight one) any 'explanation' of what might have happened would inevitably be horrific. Whilst it would be unlikely any relatives would read the story, I wanted to avoid such directness with those involved. The idea then came to me that I would write the story from the point of view of a new group of travellers also journeying in the region, with the idea that knowledge of what had happened before would prey on their minds and would be implicit in their own reactions to the circumstances they found themselves in.

I usually need several ideas to mesh together before getting a full plot for a story. One of these is the title. I already had "Rain From A Clear Blue Sky". The title came to me quite naturally, during a rain shower from a blue sky. Sometimes the natural world can throw up surprises, but also metaphors. Something unusual which might be naturally explained appealed to me within this story.

Finally, upon thinking of wilderness scenarios, I remembered stories of the third man. I was aware there have been instances where lost explorers have felt there was an addition to their party during times of trouble, and who they felt might have guided them out of difficult situations. The third man is usually described as helpful, but it crossed my mind what would happen if they were malignant. Or maybe if the third man had an identity crisis. It didn't take long for me to realise my party of explorers would have a third man with them. And also that the third man should be the narrator of the story.

So, there we have it: the Dyatlov Pass incident, the title, the third man. All these elements came together in this story. If you've read it, please comment below. If you haven't, then please consider buying the magazine which also contains fine stories by James Cooper, Carole Johnstone, Michael Kelly, Tim Casson and Gary McMahon, with DVD and book reviews and comment columns. Black Static is the UK's finest magazine and further information about this issue is here.
 

From Book to Film

I recently read "Rosemary's Baby" by Ira Levin and thoroughly enjoyed it. Having already seen the movie adaptation directed by Roman Polanski several times I was struck by how exactly Polanksi had followed the book. In fact, it felt more that I was remembering the book rather than reading it. The adherence to the story, dialogue, indeed every element, was incredible. A perfect adaptation, some might feel. Indeed, Polanski was such a stickler for detail that Ira Levin later claimed he had been telephoned by the director to ask which issue of the New Yorker a character had been reading which featured an advert for a shirt as Polanksi wanted to ensure he could use the same edition in the film!

It got me to thinking about other books I had read which have been adapted into movies. Which of those I thought were successful, and which less so. And why this might be the case. So, here's a few examples that came to mind.

I love the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, whose blending of fantasy and reality strikes me as very slipstream (the core of my own fiction). "Norwegian Wood" is one of my favourite books that I've read, and I feel the movie adaptation directed by Tran Anh Hung captures the mood of the novel exceptionally well. It's not a scene by scene 're-make' as was "Rosemary's Baby", but the essence of the novel is translated finely to the screen. Both book and film are highly recommended.

Less successful is the adaptation of "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger. The book is sublime. I picked it up without any expectation of thinking I would enjoy it, and was swept away. The ending is perfect - a logical summation of everything the book was leading up to and manages to be honest, terrifying, and beautiful simultaneously. The movie, however, compacts the story into confusion; and totally trashes the ending of the novel to the extent that I couldn't help but loudly declaim it as I left the cinema. I realise a movie doesn't have to religiously follow a novel's plot for it to be successful or for it to work on it's own terms, but a blatant disregard for the source material smacks of commercialism over artistry. If you've read the book, avoid the movie at all costs. If you've seen the movie, please read the book.

Unlike the above movie, where the thickness of the book might have required a restricted storyline for the length of the movie, "Where The Wild Things Are" takes its source material from the thin children's picture book by Maurice Sendak. The movie, however, whilst inevitably adding to the story, doesn't detract from the overall feeling of the book - it expands on it in such a way which doesn't trash the source material and also manages to avoid seemingly unnecessary material that might be the norm for such a 'padding'. Instead, we have a delightful, fantastical, at times sinister adaptation of a delightful, fantastical, and sinister story. Each succeed in their own right.

Adapting short children's books to film is fraught with pitfalls. I can barely type due to anger at the train wrecks of Dr Seuss adaptations: especially "The Grinch" (with it's totally unnecessary back story depicting the 'reason' for the Grinch's behaviour), and the even more intolerable "Cat In The Hat". Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" has also had a couple of mixed attempts to translate to the big screen. The 1971 version featuring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka is by far my favourite, even though the squirrels were replaced by geese (presumably geese being easier to direct in the years before CGI), and whilst the Johnny Depp Wonka is in some ways more faithful to the book, again, an unnecessary 'explanation' for his eccentricity serves only to annoy rather than compliment the novel.

Definitely not a children's book, I'm going to conclude with "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis. Whereas the film adaptation stuns with explicitness and bravery (and to my surprise, and perhaps shame, I found it unusual to be directed by a woman - not given the subject material, but the treatment. Although noting that Mary Harron was the first journalist to interview the Sex Pistols in the US I realise I shouldn't make these misogynistic statements!), the novel is much more detailed and graphic than would have been acceptable on celluloid. I guess another blog post might be worthwhile to consider the difference between the visual and the written word in terms of explicitly violent or sexual material, whether it's best for images to be contained within the head of the reader or emblazoned on the silver screen, but in relation to this specific post I feel the adaptation of "American Psycho" doesn't detract from the material left within the book, but stands as a great movie in its own right.