The Dead That Never Lived

From Viv

2010-01-18T12:28:00.000-08:00

*DRAFT PROPS LIST
Darth Vader*

Smart Funeral Attire {c/o All as per stage show plus casual clothes for off camera}
Darth Vader Helmet {c/o Robbie?}
Obi-Wan Kenobe Cloak {c/o Viv} Am currently trying to source....*
Light Sabre {c/o Viv} Am currently trying to source...**
Coffin {assume c/o Go As You Please. Claire to confirm!}
Small Child! Either of my two could do after school Fri/Sat a.m. or Abbie?
White 70's disco suit {c/o Viv £15 to hire or £25 to buy}
Afro Wig {£5 to buy - don't think hiring optional}
Medallion {Have a really cheesy Sports Medal c/o kids/anyone else got one?!}
Black TDTNL Flowers {c/o Viv}

* Obi Shawl - Need to check Dandy costume hire. At worst can get Black Velvet cloak but may as well use Mike's folded
back if that is the case. Are we filming in black and white??
** Light Sabre - have heard Asda do them but at worst everyone to keep an eye out! Will check with Mam's at school.

TDTNL Props box incl: {c/o Claire} I think these would be handy to have as 'cameo' props/on standby whatever
Wreath
JCVD Cap
Cathy Wig
Milk Tray shawl
Red Rose (wooden)
Candle Stick

*Also To Do;*
Locations of Red telephone boxes?
Book restaurant for Speed Dating scene (c/o Claire)
Possible Female 'outfit' for speed date/kiss scene {Claire - are you acting this? Seems good idea}
Lighting - {Neil?}

*Dog Eared Death*
Blue Tea Dress and bow shoes {c/o Viv}
Grey Velvet Jacket {"}
Gold Star Headscarf and clip {"}
2 x teacups and saucers {")
Teapot {")
Tray {"}
Water Bowl {"} Can provide pink one but anyone got a more Doggie one?!
Candle Stick TDTNL box
Lighter {c/o Viv}
{Optional} surgical glove {c/o GAYP?}
Lipstick and Make up

*Ideas for Dog Eared Death Discussed Sat (Claire to add Notes to)

*Lighting Grainy/stylised '70's

Walk in to place as if going into work
Nod curtly to someone leaving as if taking over for shift
Keep the poem as a complete voiceover
Film the scenes separately
Hitchcock-like tension build/suspense
Preparation for a visitor
Innocence/naievety as opposed to sexual
Capture anticipation
Someone coming to visit

Background:
Viv loves this place, it is her comfort zone
She is very relaxed here.
Shots of Viv running hands along luxurious fabrics e.g velvet
and also objects relating to Funeral parlour found in GAYP
Option to wear e.g. surgical rubber glove for some/all shots?
Also place as cameos other eulogy props e.g. Cathy Wig/JCVD Hat
for her to 'covet'. These could look very incongruous with surroundings

Building 'visitor' scene:
Viv arranges black flowers in vase
Sets table for tea for two
Candle Stick {Light candle if allowed and does not affect lighting}
She bustles around, perhaps saying some lines to self
She is very proud of her imminent 'visitor'
Make up - Cut to funeral/body make up if avail from GAYP
Look like Viv is putting it on ( tho I assure you I won't be!!)
Shot of Viv with added make up on/lipstick
Shot with gold scarf/yet to be decided if wear as 'turban' like live show? {What do you all think?}
Viv looking reflective/waiting for visitor
Blow out candle/or candle to sputter as 'visitor' arrives
Capture smoke blowing in draft or noise of door opening
Never actually see visitor

As we ran out of time on Sat this is obviously up for discussion/input and also what feels right on the day given the location.

Tenth Ave recordings

2009-09-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

YES! I finally figured it out.
This is the link to Ghost Town -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imX1AfJbzz4

Here is the link to Darker Shadows -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of0Ofw7UN0c

And lastly here is the link to Death never fucking stops -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcOdxGar7uo

Latin Fucking

2009-09-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

(Posting this for Viv who's having a wee bit 'o difficulty posting to the Dead blog)

Please find attached an attempt at the Latin Motto....it took blinkin' ages as I went down the route of creating a really fiddly template and painting etc as my graphical skills or packages are not up to it! But in the end I am just not sure about it and it may be easier just to print some gothic text....I guess the one good thing is that it looks very old fashioned, as if around for centuries as it's a bit crap.
Lemme know what you think? We can take it or leave it, no harm done!!!

Really looking forward to it!

Vxx

Scrooge Intro

2009-09-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

I just threw this together. It still needs some tweaking but do people like it? Are we still going for the whole voiceover thing for the Death of Scrooge intro? (Could also do some visuals if so desired).
Hope this link works. If not just go to my SiHy page on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrR-YAtnSto

cryo-cart

2009-09-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

a rough image from Nick, re: Dog Eared Death

and then ross said:

2009-09-08T12:39:00.001-07:00

Hi Guys- hope you are all well. Here's my list of comments, responding to Claire's post + the feedback before it.

1. DOG EARED REAPER

Thanks for this, Si.

Viv, your performance of this poem just gets better and better!

I've passed the audio to Nick to see what he'll come up with. He's given me a few rough sketches, which I'll post in a minute. We asked Nick to look at this before we developed Viv into the fortune teller character, so I'm not too sure how (if at all) these two bits could fit together.

My first thought would be that Viv would put the candle on the lectern, then pull out some paper and begin drawing at the lectern. Then we see the pictures emerge above her. Then, when she 'accidentally' draws Death, it is like seeing Death in tea-leaves. She is as shocked as we are. Cue the final..."He...is...ddog...eared...death!" bit.

What do you think?

Let me know here on the blog and then I can feedback to Nick. If we decide not to use visuals at all, its best to inform Nick now. The guy is working ostensibly for free until we make that decision.

2. DEATH NEVER STOPS

a) latin lectern: yes! yes! thats a great subtle ref. I love it.

b) cutting a verse. less sure about this. it does feel long when we roll around to the third verse, but I thought that was the funny bit- the idea that the song 'never fucking stops'. I've been deliberately hamming that boredom up, so maybe its my fault!

I'd like to hear everyone else's opinion on this. I was surprised that our audience members picked up on this. I would also suggest that the song was one of the least rehearsed items, and didn't have the proper backing track, which would have reduced our confidence a bit.

Two verses feels a little too short for me...but I think a straight vote is the fairest way. Guys?

3. CATHY / DARTH VADER

Both were picked up by our audience as perhaps being out of place. I think that this was more a question of them being new and still being learnt. I would like to keep them in and see how they look come our next rehearsal. I'm sure that they'll be awesome.

4. GHOST TOWN

One other things I'd like to suggest before I email you all your scripts- moving Ghost Town to the very very top of the show.

Assume that it takes 10 minutes between opening doors to curtain up. I say we start with the EVP video, then roll straight into Ghost Town, so people are coming in, sitting down, getting adjusted, during that film.

> Then it finishes, going straight into Fisherman's News Bulletin.

> When the lights dip for the anthem, I replace James.

> National anthem cuts out, and before the lights go up, we have the opening 4 bars of Ghost Town again, along with the TDTNL title slide.

> Music stops, lights up and I go straight into the sermon.

This stops the drag time of Ghost Town. Also the EVP stuff is very chilling walk-in music, but it isn't getting the crowd excited. Ghost Town is more fun (but in its current place, people wont talk over it because the show has already begun)

5. SCROOGE

I'm cool for Mike's bit to be done just audio, like a documentary. I think thats a good idea.

6. USHERS

I am SO UP for greeting audience on their way in. "I'm sorry for your loss", etc. I think that's really funny. Maybe all of us should be congregated in the lobby in little groups, with two in the doorway shaking hands with big watery eyes. Dram of whisky/apple juice. A few hankies get whipped out. Once we hear Ghost Town start, we head in and slowly take our seats on the stage (maybe leave the 2 on the door right till the show starts)

7. ???

Have I missed anything else? How about we say that we close the phone-lines on Saturday. At that point, I'll email the final scripts over.

Looking forward to my funeral

Disjecta Membra,

Dog Eared Death audio

2009-09-08T05:11:00.000-07:00

Here's the link for the temprorary Dog Eared Death audio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lXZVqO0ojw&feature=channel_page

The Last Big Push

2009-09-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys

Hope you are all good and great progress was made at the Word Tank TDTNL rehearsal yesterday.

A few points were covered / suggested at the rehearsal:

Ross - could we have the absolute and final script emailed to us so that we are all, pardon the pun, singing from the same hymn sheet?
Speaking of which - are we happy with our original obituatires for the order of service for 30 Sept? Or if anyone wants to post a new one up just post it up on this here blog and I'll use it!!
Dog Eared Death has been recorded - this needs sending on to Ross / Nick - so Si if we send that or post on this blog/ do that asap that would great.

A custom built lecturn is being fashioned together as we speak! - Viv and I talked about using the latin for Death Never Fucking Stops - "Nex nunquam fucking subsisto" somewhere in the show, and I wandered if it might be worth subtley embossing it on the front of the lecturn? An idea?

10 Ave recording Ghost Town and He Who Would Valiant Be on the 21st.

Ross - we also thought about the performance of Scrooge McDuck and wandered how you felt about Mike's part of it being a voice over to go with the visuals to get round some of the comments of 'over-theatricalisation' that Annabel Turpin talked about in her feedback? It would also fit nicely with the cameo of Grim Reaper (i.e.not deflect from it). We've done a recording of Mike doing this section of McDuck anyway just in case you think this is an idea.

Anyway, that's enough for now.

Watch for more posts coming thick n fast.

Claire x x x

Feedback from 24 June 2009

2009-07-20T11:09:00.001-07:00

Hi Guys

Here is the feedback from our esteemed audience at our work in progress performance at ARC last month. Feedback has come from Chirstine Chambers, Literature Officer for Arts Council England, North East and Annabel Turpin, Chief Executive for ARC - who are, or course, our venue partner for this production.

Both gave their feedback completely independetly of each other and directly to me through chat.

Christine's feedback

Bascially loved the show - thought the hour flew past
Has loads of marketing and audience development potential
Loved all of the film and visual aspects to the show, worked really well alongside the live performance.
Adored the Grim Reaper!
Loved Autopsy
Loved the eulogoy strucutre as funeral for dead fictional characters, so felt that the Cathy piece did not fit as well as the other's and detracted a bit. Christine was also not so keen on the Darth Vader piece, as it's possibly a humour that's been a bit too 'done before'
Thought Death Never Fucking Stops was one verse too long, but thought it was great and would benefit from some dodgy church organ music in the background.
A great show that deserves to tour and be seen by many! Could really think about how to go to town in making it even more of a funeral and congregation.

Annabel's feedback:

Bascially loved the show - thought the hour flew past
On the whole thought the show was really well written, and a really eclectic mix of material
Adored the Grim Reaper piece, really strong performance and writing
Beware over-theatricality when working with spoken word. Felt that Scrooge McDuck was a strong enough poem in itself not to have one person start it and then be booted out by another - don't let theatricality over egg the pudding. Likewise with throwing the rose onto the coffin at the end of the Milk Tray piece - Annabel felt this was not needed
Enjoyed the Cathy piece, well performed and written
Could see that Darth Vader piece was a bit 'done before' but thinks it should stay in the show as it will inject a possible familiairity in its humour that could be useful for audiences it will be touring to
Loved the coffin being marked out on the stage
Death Never Fucking Stops great, but one verse too long
Really need to think about the marketing and branding of the show - it should be made more of a funeral from the start - infact, even before the audience file in. Think about lecturn, staging. Flowers? An order of service on all the seats would really benefit the show. Don't be afaid of death as a subject matter - one suggestion is for Ross and another member of the cast the shake hands with people as they come in with the words: "I'm sorry for your loss" This will, yes possibly get people to think about someone they've lost (or not), but it will alson help to establish the funeral journey from the start, which will make the humour all the more impactive later on. And of course the final poignant conclusion from Incredible Shrinking Man.
Annabel suggests we go and interview a funeral director, and find out what happens at funerals. It's a subject matter that can evoke a range of responses which could be incorporated / aired through audience development initiatives planned for discussion on 30 Sept.

That's all fo now.

Claire
x

The Fly 2

2009-07-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

The Fly

“A contamination.”
No further explanation.
You grew twitchy, nails brittle,
Bristles on your back.
It wasn’t all bad.
You’d always been handsome,
Now you were ripped.
Rampant!
Grabbing me at the shoulders,
Hissing Let’s breed.
Then feeding on doughnuts,
Skittles, jelly beans, Sunny D.
Skin started to suffer,
Blistered, seeping puss.
Still you wouldn’t discuss it,
Or see a doctor,
Even when limbs dropped,
And you were pickling things in jars.
Then mood swings,
Trawling bars.
I left.
Took a test (though I knew)
It turned blue.
Friends said get rid, poor genes.
I made a discreet call.
Backstreet.
No questions asked.
Just cash, gown, gas.
Then shattered glass,
Grasped in clammy hands.
Swept up like a damsel, you an ogre,
Scurrying over rooftops back to the lab.
Clutching a gun,
Spitting Our son! How could you?
You swore you weren’t trying to hurt us
You had a plan to return: a merge.
Three becoming one.
Christ you were strong.
Dragging me toward The Pods.
The final crusts of Seth Brundle falling away.
Jaw dropped like an apple core,
Dissolving into acid-bile.
Flaccid fingers giving way to feelers.
Vast microphone-like eyes.
Then in the gleam of the The Pods,
A glimpse of what you’d become.
You emitted, not a scream but a buzz,
Reared up, the vibrations shattered test tubes.
I felt a kick.
I heard a click.

Friends say I look better now I’m bigger.
Shame about your man. His job took him abroad.
I show them the scan.
And they grin Don’t they look weird.
All curled up.
Kind of looks like a big maggot.

Stan Ogden

2009-07-12T05:15:00.001-07:00

Hey Guys

Local poet and writer Sean Kelly has been inspired by what we are doing so I thought I would post this up for our parousal!! Will be posting more Producer notes as we go. Soon. xx Here's Sean's ode to Stan and Hilda Ogden - Legends of Corrie....

The Dead That Never Lived - Stan Ogden

(tune: Jerusalem)

And did the Street in Hilda's time

Rule over England's TV screens?

And did those 20 million folk

Watch as the Rovers she did clean?

And did the Woodbine on her lip

Quiver so gently as she sang?

And was her love for her husband Stan

The greatest in all TV land?

(Although he was ignorant, and mildly abusive...)

She'd bring him plates of pie and chips

Bring him his Newton Ridleys mild

And while he drank free daily pints

She bore and rais-ed his four childs

(Tho two were taken into council care)

She ne’er did cease from cleaning work

With curlers always in her hair

'Til she did bury her dear Stan

In England's green and pleasant land

CATHY

2009-06-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

Here it is - the final(ish)

In yer one bloody novel
Yer stuck me up a freezing moor
with ice cold brothers
and a knock about lover:
his swarthy, unknown origins
kept under a caustic tongue
with other Gothic undesirables.

Did yer have to put me in this time?
The outside inside of Victorian woman,
ghost paths and scratched windows
where the wildness of my own skin
finds me an unfashionable
threat
counterpart in the male.
Did you have to make him my rock
in death?
And did I have to end up in that
song by Kate Bush?

These eyes carry two skeletal visions:
both severed from our source before we
locked our breathing.
The shaping of industry
is a mirror
that makes devil's imps of us.
He and I bear an interchangable misery.
But we do not speak of it in the now.
The words are not there to cover the
wind.

So, partriachs,
Heathcliff performs his own exorcism
unidentified and nightly.
If you strain beyond your
alloted era
to hear clues of this ritual
after midnight you might know
a true lunacy
and one with integrity.
Follow my trail of scattered fragments,
torn from a single dress
hanging from branches tipped by rain-bloodied
fingers
along supernature's path
to love without romance.

Lester Burnham (American Beauty) - 1st draft

2009-06-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

Lester festered in his memories of how things once were.
Evey morning, for years, the glare of resentment on his wife's face was like blisters behind the eyes.
Her perseverance of perfection was projected on everything static, except him.
He came to realise that he was still who he was and she had become something else.
A frozen soul with motions that crack in clockwork.

And the weeks that seemed like days that passed between he and his daughter, where words were exchanged, but nothing actually said.
He watched and pondered and wilted into the past where nostalgia embraced him warm, familiar hugs and cuddles

He gained and he lost
Remembered and forgot
Until he was who he wanted to be - who he was
But then all was lost
Perhaps, the ripple rings in coagulating pools on imaculate kitchen tiles tells us a sharp truth
You are who you have become and, one way or another, you can't go backwards

The Dead That Never Lived That Never Die

2009-06-10T15:09:00.001-07:00

Death is a curious thing. An inevitable step into an unknowable territory. The only guarantee in an otherwise unpredictable existence.
But what if death, or more to the point, staying dead was not certain?
What if you were forever forced to return to Earth, reincarnated in the body you died in, never able to reach the ultimate ease of the final relax?
Let us take a moment to remember some of the unhappy souls who have left us time and time again. To name but a few: Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and of course Charles Lee Ray, better known as the “Lakeshore Strangler”, even better known as Chucky the demonic doll.
Through the decades they have been: shot, burned, impaled, drowned, decapitated, blown up and torn apart. On occasion they have even been known to be dragged to the very depths of Hell.
But they always return.
And why?
Some say it’s because evil can never truly be destroyed. Others claim that they must just really love killing people. But I blame the writers, the directors and the producers. How many more times will these poor, defenceless mass murderers be forced to retread old ground? How many more times must they die before they can enjoy the rest that only death delivers? Maybe they will never truely die. Maybe they are cursed to return again and again, each time losing a little more dignity, each time dying for, what always seems like, the final time.
Chucky probably said it best the fifth time he died- “I'll be back, I always come back. But dying is such a bitch.”

music

2009-06-09T01:42:00.000-07:00

liking the stuff going up here. i'll comment on each one today.

re: music

lets see how much we get done on the blog this week, but I'm not sure we will require the band until we've worked out the rest of the show.

i expect day 1 to be ideas and development, day 2 to be constructing the show and rehearsals, day 3 to be technicals and rehearsals.

so, at best, they should come in on the final day of rehearsals and then we can brief them on what we want. then they can rehearse in time for the gig itself.

so, what do we know?......

well, i think the guys should rehearse Ghost Town, but cut it a few minutes shorter. i'll edit down the video based on the new version they provide.

They should rehearse "he who would valient be"

There's the ominous intro for Mike Death

And a song of their choosing to play as the audience leaves

...that's a start!

but, regarding other songs- I think we should discuss it together as a cast when we meet on day1

R

I did it my way: as personally eulogised by 3 heroines of Victorian literature

2009-06-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

Here's the idea. This writing is by no means finished, but it will give you an idea of what I am driving at.

Sound track from brass section: Trumpet? solo of Blake's "Jerusalem"
Spotlight on each ' reader ' at a time. I think 3 guys could potentially do it?
An interesting inconguity?

JANE EYRE:

I was a good girl,
I took slow steps
acquiring friends and privations,
my heart as locked away
as your mad wife.
The friends and foes
make their footsteps through my story.
I come in first person
and you are my last, Rochester,
with your Byronic self-burning.

I plucked your ass to safety
and ran screaming from
torn wedding dresses and
my own conscience.
I should have dumped you,
darling bigamist,
but came back in the end, steadfast, true
to the climbs of my more enduring nature.
But in these times, kid aside,
some say I should have pulled out
yer other eye.

EMMA:

Deliberate,
sugar - coated
anti- heroine
subervise in my world
of drawing room romance
and disliked even by
my own author.
Some say I stuck my
pretty nose too far
up other people's petticoat
biz.
But let me walk Earth again
and I'll write it large for
'Sun's 3am'
So I made mistakes?
Deal with it.
Find my tombstone
you'll find I
hitched my biggest critic.

CATHY: WUTHERING HEIGHTS

In yer one bloody novel
Yer stuck me up a freezing moor
with ice cold brothers
and a knock about lover:
his swarthy, unknown origins
kept under a caustic tongue
with other Gothic undesirables.

Did yer have to put me in this time?
The outside inside of Victorian woman,
ghost paths and scratched windows
where the wildness of my own skin
finds me an unfashionable
threat
couterpart in the male.
Did you have to make him my rock
in death?
And did I have to end up in that
song by Kate Bush?

He Never Brought Me Roses

2009-06-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

Music and visuals:

A montage of The Milk Tray Advert

I want you dressed head to toe in black
on a soundtrack of smooth
Come to me on a gleaming steed.
Fast...but not furious.
Run, ride, swim, dive,
make me feel alive!
The deepest waters,
the roughest rapids
over the rocks
under the ice
from each impaasable cravasse
to satin clad and generous pillows
voile panels swaying in the breeze
I wait each night
centres soft and hard
but they broke the mould
And so I wait....

How did you die? Multi - media suggestions
End paraody: The Flake advert, the traditional telephone leading to Vader's obscene phonecall...?

Viv Wiggins 2009

Working title: Zombie news report

2009-06-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

Good evening.

This is Edward Simmonds. Rpeorting live from outside the White House, where a remarkable new law has just been passed by the US government. The Equal Rights for Zombies Act has been the hot topic in the press in the lead up to this moment.

It all began during the zombie outbreak of 2012, as I'm sure you will remember. When the entire earth was submerged in The Undead. All of those who suvived headed underground. It was these underground havens that determined scientists proved in 2016 that Zombies were capable of learning. And now after 50 years of turmoil and hardship, we see the first US zombie citizen Graham Blaaar cating his vote for the elections. A momentous step forward to both human and zombie alike.

Robbie Hurst 2009

The Fly

2009-06-07T05:53:00.000-07:00

"Something went wrong in the lab today. Contamination."

No further explanation, he grew twitchy, finger nails bitten to the quick. Thick hair on his back.

It wasn't all bad. Christ, he was fit. Rampant. Fun for a while, but I soon needed a break. I heard he was trawling bars, brawling. Ripped some guys wrist off in an arm wrestle. A week later, a rasping phonecall. I gasped when I saw him. Blisters, lesions, spitting up bile. All the time he swore he could fix it. I didn't tell him I was late. The next day, bug eyed pickling things in jars, limbs. He wouldn't see a doctor, not even when his cock dropped off.

I was getting bigger. I pictured it inside curled up like a gub. Friends say get rid. Who wants a kid with wings?

Mike Edwards 2009

Darth Vader: Yoda's Eulogy

2009-06-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

Here to pay our respects to late Darth Vader we are.

Enlisted for training in the ways of the force at an early age he did; against better judgement of mine. Escpecially young Vader not immune to youthful mischief. Judgement this brought him, not helped by certain disabilities. Suspect in string of obscene phone calls his heavy breathing make him. Still only just learning, mind tricks only work on weak minded much to cost of poor woman whose knee aches still.

Hard to convince image is nothing, Vader became as he grew older. Dark helmet hard make one look? Think that what made him I know not. Still chancellor seemed to like it. With that he would now show off size of light saber. Insistent he was on red one.

Darth Vader: fiery in life as in death he be. Fucked he now is. Truly and well.

James Fisher 2009

Afterlife: The Party by James Fisher

2009-06-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

(In the afterlife one of the spirits gently blushes while all the others sing to it Happy Death Day to You. At the end of the song they call for a speech).

Now, this is the spirit talking:

I really don't know what to say to this kind surprise other than Thank You. The wandering, solitary nature of my manisfetation might not make me the easiest soul to spend eternity with, but I truly am lucky to be resting with the souls that I do.

One moment I found myself in the company of you fine spirits and just the moment before I was standing face to face with a speedin 10 ton lorry.

As well as the thanks I already give for this party, I would also like to thank those who made it possible for me to be here. I would like to thank my undertaker, I would like to thank the vicar, I would like to thank my gravedigger...

(Chokes up)

I'm sorry, I always do this when I look back. I would also like to thank Madam Rosa who somewhere back there helps me in my contact with the previous world...

Medium (off): Don't mention it.

...and assures those who unfortunately cannot be with us yet. But when one day they do find their way here I may rest assured that they will be assured that I really have been alright.

Thank you.

Revising the current Dead material - suggestions from Claire, James and Viv

2009-06-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

Hello Ross n all

We are just having a brainstorm in purgatory here - that place where the dead have not quite decided where they are going yet.

Anyway, we would like to make some suggestions about revising the current material for the show.

We think that Scrooge McDuck is a tad too long and could do with some editing - not loads, but could we look at this again to see what could be removed from the piece. This is based on feedback we had from the audience about the night in June last year. We are at risk of losing the audience if we put a piece that is too long after the length of Ghost Town.

Thinking about Ghost Town, we also think this was tiny bit long and could do with some cropping - say 30 secs or so. Also, no Citizen Kane in the footage? e.g. Rosebud - the most famous death scene in cinema? Think this should defo go in!

We think that the Grim Reaper's scythe needs serious 'blinging up' for the 22nd. Claire to sort.

It might be worth thinking about Charles Manson again and not totally removing it. The video of his poem e.g '...the truth is in your slaughter houses...' etc is particularly poignant. All it needs is some kind of intro into establishing Manson as truth twisiting itself into fiction. Also consider placing this after Autopsy, leading the newsreader's poem into news footage i.e. Manson.

Sweet as.
Ross / Panda - wot yer say? You are The Gaffers on this one.
xx Claire, Viv and The Fisher Man (a.k.a The Assassin)

The Nightmare

2009-06-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xrU1fekgOY

Dates With Death

2009-05-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

Hi Fellow Dead-Stars

The Dead do not rest - they stalk the Earth once more.

And the abosulute schedule is thus:

June
(NOT July as it says in the blog below)

We will be working at ARC in Stockton in June on the following dates:
Monday 22 June
Tuesday 23 June
Wednesday 24 June

All of the dates will be similar to last year (a 10am - 5pm run each day). I would like to suggest that we have a showing of work in progress to a small audience (i.e ARC team and a couple of others I'd like to suggest) to kep momentum, not go home feeling a bit bereft and, crucially, get some feedback.

September
We will be working at ARC again on:
Tuesday 29 Sept - full tech run
Wednesday 30 Sept - It's showcase time!! This is when venues and promoters will come to see the show, and we utilise the day to develop a tour plan from this, taking on board concerns from punters from the outset about how we go about marketing and audience development, for which I have some cunning suitably funeric ideas up my shroud sleeve! I will taking the lead on this day and will keep you updated on plans when they are developing.

It is really important all cast members can come to ALL of these dates. I'm really pleased to say that we will be having, as Ross has already mentioned, a brass section with us again (albeit a lot smaller) and Panda will be joining us again for 2 of the days in June is Assistant Director capacity.

As already said, please get your ideas up on this blog!!!!!

In memoriam

Claire
xxxxxxxxxxxx

GET UP so i can kill you again

2009-05-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

Hello again, members of The Dead That Never Lived blogosphere.

As you may know (you’re checking old blogs, so I will assume you do know). The Dead That Never Lived has received a small pot of funding. This money is so we can give the show an overhaul, then do a showcase event in September. Success at this showcase would then lead to a national tour in 2010.

We have three days of rehearsal coming up in June, at the end of which we have to have an all new “Tour Model” TDNL, ready to hit the road.

1. CAST

The first problem is whittling down the cast. We have to produce a tight cast unit that can effectively tour. Our original cast of 13 just wouldn’t be able to work on the road.

Because one of the primary goals of our application is the development of poetry in the North East, I think that some of the work developed by non North-East writers will have to be absorbed by the North East cast.

That would leave the cast as:

Viv
Steve
Simon
Robbie
Claire
Me
Mike Edwards
and
The Fisher Man

You can see I’ve also removed our actors from the cast (Anglea/Amanda/Shirley) as I think that we need to concentrate on developing the acting skills of the poets. Angela, Amanda and Shirley all helped us a great deal with our stagecraft, but I think we need to take the skills they taught us and apply them ourselves.

Both Moxy and Tim produced fantastic work and were extremely inspiring writers and performers. It’s gutting to lose them, and I really want to keep their work in the show.

My initial thoughts would be to ask Steve to try out for “The Impossible Deathbed Lament of Scrooge McDuck”

and Claire or Viv for “Dog-Eared Death”. Claire, I don’t know if you’d rather take a more Producer-type role for this production, whatever you feel most comfortable with.

2. MATERIAL

We also need some new material for the show. So far, the show has:

1. "George Aligayah" by Jon Osbourne (performed by James Fisher)
2. "Sermon Intro" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Ross Sutherland)
3. "The Impossible Deathbed Lament Of Scrooge McDuck" by Tim Clare (performed by ?????????)
4. "Snow White finally succumbs" by Moxy (video)
5. "Andy Lippincott" by Jeff price (performed by Viv Wiggins)
6. "Rutger Haur" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Simon Hymes)
7. "Lon Cheney" by Claire Morgan (video)
8. "Grim Reaper" by Mike Edwards (performed by Mike Edwards)
9. "Autopsy" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Robbie Hurst, Viv Wiggins, Steve Urwin & Claire Morgan)
10. "Dog-eared death" by Moxy (performed by ????????)
11. "Death Never Fucking Stops" by Ross Sutherland & Mike Edwards (performed by entire cast)
12. "Sermon close" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Ross Sutherland)

(Simon and Robbie’s "Election" video, I’d like to use as a viral video to promote the show, but not include in the show itself.)

I reckon that the content comes to about 45 minutes. Another 15 minutes should be easy enough to fill. Before we meet in July, I’d like to encourage you guys to submit works here on the blog that you think might be suitable.

Ideally, we’re looking for work that directly engages with the theme:

A SERIES OF EULOGIES FOR DEAD FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.

rather than poems that just deal with Death in the abstract. Scrooge McDuck is the model, really.

However, submit everything. Better to have too much to choose from than not enough.

Similarly, if you hear a poem read at an open mic night that seems on-theme, befriend the poet and ask them for a copy.

One last thing here: consider writing a piece that could include the brass band. It would be great to keep a band in the show, but we need to find a way of incorporating what they do into the core of the performance.

Hopefully, by the time we get to rehearsal, we’ll have those new poems in place.
3. THE IS NO THREE

That’s it! I’m really looking forward to working with you guys again. You can send me a private email at rossgsutherland@yahoo.com, or call me on 07719446025. I don’t have my diary here in front of me, I’ll ask Claire to put up a post with the exact schedule.

Keep checking back here for more info…please submit poems, and please comment on each others poems, and for god sake, don’t die.

Disjecta Membra,
Ross Sutherland

The Dead That Never Lived: The Film

2008-07-10T05:45:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys

So, it's the end of the project. For now at least.
I'm proud of what we managed to achieve over the 3 days of rehearsals.
Thanks again for all your work and support.

I've just finished editing together the recording we made on the night. It's up on Google Video for all to see. (I've put a slightly shorter version up as well for my own publicity purposes.)

Please embed the film into as many websites, etc, as you have access to. It will really help with the hit-rate and allow a much wider audience to enjoy the show. My biggest regret of the project is that after so much thought and preparation, only 50 people got to see the finished product.

There's a chance we might get to do a tour of the show next year. It may not be exactly the same show, but I will keep all participants in the loop. Watch this space.

I'd like to leave this blog up here as an archive of how the show came together. Feel free to keep using it. Make note of any parts of the production that you felt needed to be developed / cut / etc. That way, if we manage to get a touring grant next year, we can already have a plan of action.

Disjecta Membra,

Ross Sutherland

Death Does Indeed Never Fuckin' Stop

2008-06-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

The Dead That Never Lived could live on....

Last week's show was a fantastic event for a number of reasons. Not simply because the final show was an amazing beast in itself, but because the process was really exciting - a really unique
creative practice opportunity for a range of artists to work together on creative practice development with poetry/live literature as the focus.

A number of the artists/writers/performers involved are interested in continuing to meet in Newcastle, forming a kinda multi-media word collective to develop ideas for future events. So if you're up for this keep bloggin.....although I feel like I'm in deep space....now that the show's over.....is there anybody out there....?

The next event will be Word Circus Xmas Finale on the 3 July where we sadly say goodbye to Ross - our fantastic Director, Lead Artist and Performance Poet in Residence.....Sob....!

Well done You Deadstars!!!

2008-06-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Just a brief message to say a huge thank you to all you writers and performers for your contribution to Voodoo Word Circus: The Dead That Never Lived. The show was fantastic following an incredible collective process both here on this blog and over the last 3 days at The Mining Institute in Newcastle.

TDTNL will be online within the next 3 weeks or so, so watch out for the show in full!

I'll be writing a more detailed review of the show and the process next week when I get me brain cells back and have had some sleep.

Claire
xxx

Your Obituaries Wanted

2008-05-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

Hi Deadsters

Love the photos of the new venue, eh?

Well, I have in addition a lil' request from those of you taking part in the production.

We will be putting a little 'In Memoriam' programme for The Dead That Never Lived featuring our cast/crew /writers and we'd like to include a short obituary for each person. Think of how you might like to have shuffled off this mortal coil and what say a short 2 line obit could say about you...

If you could post them onto this blog for inclusion in our programme alongside running order and the lyrics for Death Never Fucking Stops that would be fab. It would be good if you could post them by, say, early next week??

Go easy on the Bizarre Gardening Accidents Mind.....

xx

New venue

2008-05-28T04:55:00.000-07:00

Here is our new venue- approx 100 capacity...it's a masonic lecture hall. Here we're looking down at the 'stage'. I suggest we put the newsdesk at the back and the lectern at the front. There's doors directly to the left and right of the stage which lead off to antechambers, in case we need a backstage.

Here's the space at the back of the room for the band. We leave them out in the lobby until after the audience is seated, then seal 'em in with brass.

Nice big wall to project onto.

Previous presidents of the Masons line the walls. Ooooo.

Dead That Never Lived Residency and Production - the latest!

2008-05-27T10:56:00.001-07:00

Hello Dead That Never Lived but Very Much Alive Artists

Voodoo Word Circus : The Dead That Never Lived main event in Newcastle is not long now!

This is just a quick update on things, especially for all of you that are participating in the event

Where and when?

As many of you will know by now, The Round took a sad and sudden demise earlier this month and has now closed down. The new venue for VWC is The Mining Institute, Westgate Road in Newcastle NE1 1SE Tel. 0191 233 2459 (opposite Revolution Bar for you revellers!) It’s a fantastic old neo-Gothic building and Victorian Lecture Theatre – pictures of it are gonna be available here over the next couple of days.

The dates for the 3 day residency are however the same and are:

Tuesday 10 June from 10am – 5pm
Wednesday 11 June from 10am – 5pm
Thursday 12 June from 9am onwards with the show starting at 8pm

What do I need to do before the residency?

By now most – if not all of you – will have been in contact with Ross to develop your pieces prior to the 3 days. It’s really important that you come to the 3 days with as complete lines / parts learned as you can. There will be the opportunity to develop ideas over the 3 days, but it is important that the basics of what we are doing in place so that we can make it as smooth a process as possible culminating in a fantastic show.

Dress code: As you will have gathered, the show is strongly reminiscent of a funeral congregation. Apart from a couple of you that we are organising specific costume requirements for, come wearing the following: white shirt, black tie, black jacket or blazer and dark trousers. If any of this is going to be difficult for you to source get in touch with Claire now (Claire’s number is 0785 474 8846)

Will I be reimbursed expenses?

If you are performing we will reimburse up to the first £10 per day of travel expenses per participant (£15 if you are coming from outside Tyne and Wear). For this we will need travel tickets or receipts. If you are coming by car we can reimburse you at 40p per mile up to the first £10 of your costs per day. A light lunch and tea/coffee will be provided each day for participants. Early birds will get tea/coffee and biscuit if they get there at 9.30am or 8.30 on the Thursday! We will also provide a light evening meal on Thursday 12th, to keep you going before the big event!

Can I buy tickets for Voodoo Word Circus: The Dead That Never lived?

Tickets are £6 each and will be for sale on the door on the night. If anyone would like to reserve tickets before the event then they can get in touch with Claire and she will put people’s names down on the list. For you folks who have contributed work to this blog which is being included in the show give me a shout and we'll sort you a comp!

If I have any further questions, who can I contact?

Claire Morgan, Artistic Director for Monkfish Productions, at monkfishproductions@hotmail.co.uk or on 0785 474 8846
www.monkfishproductions.org

Charles Manson

2008-05-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

Here are my films for the Charles Manson section of the show.

No visuals up until PIG gets written on the mirror at the end of 'Jay Sebring". Then this happens:

The next poem starts after it goes back to static, then Manson appears onscreen for the first stanza. After that I ended the film because it seemed distracting.

The next film happens mid-way through 'Wipe Out" after Angela says "They wouldn't understand the process / Let's do it for Charlie". Rather than do ambient visuals, I've done a short film with sound (its a poem by Manson)...so the action stops while this happens. When it finishes, Shirley starts speaking at the lectern: "Their bald heads glow under the courtroom lights"

The next film plays silently in the background of the interview scene. It's nothing special- just an unedited program on Manson. This version has sound but I'll mute it.

Finally, as the last poem ends, I made this film to cap it off:

I wanted this final film to show how these murders have become fiction themselves. For me, this footage completes the circuit, creating an endless recycling process. Recycling death, I guess.

Death Never Fucking Stops

2008-05-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

So, here's my stab at the hymn, to be sung at the end of the event. It's written to the tune of 'He Who Would Valiant Be', also known as 'To Be A Pilgrim'. It's now called 'Death Never Fucking Stops'. Full credit to Mike for the title and the idea... this piece started as a list poem that he sent me. I kept a few of the images.

It's not syllable-by-syllable perfect- you have to mash/elongate a couple of the words. This poem is completely public domain so feel free to rewrite and repost.

Death never fucking stops;
He puts the hours in.
Always against the clock
No sleigh to pull him.
Each bullet fo’llowed,
Wrists to open, eyes to close.
Constant parties to throw
Off tops of buildings.

Death never fucking stops
He works and plays hard:
Hanging out in Camden Lock,
Snogging Jodie Marsh.
Masks sold at rock concerts,
Buckcherry tee-shirts,
Gnarly joss stick holders.
Death is well wicked.

Death never fucking stops;
No time for callbacks.
All fire escapes are blocked
On a large enough map.
He’s got a Saab to crash
A crowded lift to shaft
A jam session with Slash
And then he’ll kill him.

OK, so now try singing it along to the hymn:

Good! Now again, with more intensity!

Niagara: Marilyn film

2008-05-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

First draft of the film to be projected behind the 'Niagra' poem from the Marilyn Monroe series...

Running order

2008-05-16T05:42:00.000-07:00

Hello, hello. So this is the current running order I imagine for TDTNL: it's not completely finalised, but its getting there. I don't really want to go over 70mins- after all, it's an intense show. Currently I think we're pretty close to that top limit. Putting something new in means taking something else out, which I don't really want to do.

0. (As audience are entering:) "Electric Voice Phenomenon" (video)
1. "George Aligayah" by Jon Osbourne (performed by James Fisher)
2. "Ghost Town" by The Specials (played by the 10th Street Band, with video montage)
3. "Sermon Intro" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Ross Sutherland)
4. "The Impossible Deathbed Lament Of Scrooge McDuck" by Tim Clare (performed by Tim Clare)
5. "Snow White finally succumbs" by Moxy (video)
6. "Andy Lippincott" by Jeff price (performed by Viv Wiggins)
7. [Song] by Ben Holland
8. "Rutger Haur" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Simon Hymes)
9. "Lon Cheney" by Claire Morgan (video)
10. "Marilyn poems"x3 by Angela Readman (performed by Angela White, Amanda Fearnehough & Shirley Lewis)
11. [song] by the 10th Street Band
12. "Grim Reaper" by Mike Edwards (performed by Mike Edwards)
13. "The 23786th Day" by Emma Hammond (video)
14. "Manson Family poems" by Jo Colley (performed by Angela White, Amanda Fearnehough & Shirley Lewis)
15. "Election" by Simon Hymes and Robbie Hurst (video)
16. "Autopsy" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Robbie Hurst, Viv Wiggins, Steve Urwin & Claire Morgan)
17. "Dog-eared death" by Moxy (performed by Moxy)
18. "Death Never Fucking Stops" by Ross Sutherland & Mike Edwards (performed by entire cast)
19. "Sermon close" by Ross Sutherland (performed by Ross Sutherland)

Jesus, that's one hefty mother-hubbard. My apologies to all those who submitted material that didn't make the cut. More often than not, those decisions were based on which work I could find audio-visual collaborators for. Some great stuff was rejected on the ground that it too far from the original conceit to justify inclusion.

Let me talk though the show thematically, or at least the way I see it: the first half of the show deals explicitly with the deaths of famous fictional characters. At "Rutger Hauer", things shift into the mediation of dying actors. Then, with the arrival of the Grim Reaper himself at no.12, we find ourselves on the other side of the looking glass. Fictional death can no longer be distinguished from reality, as we travel through the Manson poems, towards the surreal dogma of Moxy's 'Dog-eared Death" piece. Now that the logic og the show has disintegrated, the entire cast (along with the audience) sing a song. Namely, "Death Never Fucking Stops", which I'll post up here in a minute. It's written to the tune of the old hymn "To Be a Pilgrim", accompanied by the 10th Street Band. Then I close the show with a quote from The Incredible Shrinking Man. Then we get drunk, go to bed, and the next day is the first day of the rest of our lives.

So, not so much a narrative arc as a slow descent into madness. But I think it works.

The Story of Agnew Bis

2008-05-16T04:02:00.000-07:00

Local dogs are attached to the hook of a 70 metre crane
By their extendable leads.
Agnew Bis, the operator, with a bank of cctv monitors guiding his lever,
Gently draws them along their respective streets.
All the dogs he walks have undergone radical surgery:
Removal of the left side of their brain.
The technical term is 'hemispherectomy.'

The crane operator, Agnew Bis, occupies a cab slotted
65 metres into the sky. He says, 'Let me refresh your glass,'
Before applying a chamois to the inside of his four identical windows.
Latex coated wipers sluice the outside
Leaving a thickening cuticle of ash and particulate
Puffed from the nearby fluted steel chimney.

Following a period of post-operative convalescence,
All the dogs routinely stockpile detritus,
Storing it between gum and cheek.
By the end of their walk, their jaws are swollen beyond recognition.
Some owners have fitted the dogs with wicker panniers
And taught them to distribute their finds first to the right,
Then to the left.
The council is now considering payment of a small fee
In recognition of the dogs' assistance in the fight against fouling --
If a dog dungs, the succeeding post-operative dog
Will always gather it up.
This is a fully realised urban ecological cycle.

The hollow in their canine skulls is quickly filled
With an expanded right hemisphere.
The new brain tissue is smooth
With the grey matter like the flush of growth following a razor.

For the past month, Agnew Bis has watched the dogs
Calibrating lamp posts and post boxes with their urine,
Organising a pissing rota that has the tallest breeds visiting first
And then allowing an interval of time to pass
So a visible residue is established,
Before the next dogs piss.
Each successive dog is smaller than his predecessor

Bitches have created a rota that spirals outwards
From a hub.

Exactly why the dogs and bitches require
A means of measurement is unclear.
However, Agnew Bis has observed a physiological change
In their hind paws. The pads have fused, the digits have elongated.
They more and more resemble human feet.
Agnew Bis recalls having read that Julius Caesar's favourite horse
Had feet identical to its rider.

A bird, possibly a hoopoe, regularly visits the derrick
And inches down the gantry,
Liming it with the precision of a groundsman or groundswoman
Defining a pitch.

Following the removal of a tumour,
Inside the skull of Agnew Bis
Is the surgically transplanted left hemisphere
Of a German Shepherd Dog.
After his operation, he was sent to puppy school.

The crane is also a Foucault’s pendulum
The dependant chain registers the earth's rotation
And swings in a broad figure of eight
Which Agnew Bis has to correct before the dogs he walks
Are coerced into unfamiliar routes by physics.

Occasionally, he is buzzed by hang gliding graffiti artists.
They have tagged the fluted steel chimney opposite.
Agnew Bis fights them off with a high power water gun
Filled with bacterially ravaged eye drops.
Despite their protective goggles,
The hang gliding graffiti artists plunge to earth
With severe conjunctivitis.

Agnew Bis sleeps in the cab of his crane
Wrapped in 5 layers of medical examination-table paper.
His vitrine is the waning moon.

20 metres below him
His lover is frozen with vertigo inside the hooped access ladder.
Her increasingly skeletonized form feeds the ideal of industrial beauty.

At night Agnew Bis uses the crane's hook
To ease the factories and houses
From their foundations, lifting one edge,
cont

Letting the hoopoe in.

Then he listens to what remains of his lover's heartbeat
Crawling slowly through the metal.

Death of fictitious characters

2008-05-14T11:17:00.000-07:00

Was thinking about the death of fictitious characters and remembered about this, so I thought that I'd post it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfHlA3fmJG0

Garden of Remembrance of The Serious Consequences Of Road Accidents, with Restaurant

2008-05-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

The forecourt has a border of cracked prosthetic limbs
They intertwine by grip or lateral crossing
Their proximity
Dense enough to keep out dogs
And creeping infants

Each rejected transplant organ buried here
Retains the name of donor and recipient
On embossed plaques mimicking get well and condolence cards

In the Book of Memory
Boxed to resemble a pay and park vending machine
Visitors scribble anecdotes from the point
When time slowed down
Some pages are left blank
Others are blotched red when sufficient pressure was applied
To staunch bleeding from a major artery
And drive a pen through paper

There is a restaurant for those affected in any way
Where all meat is roasted after being opened, pinned
And prepped
And the cause of death recorded

Sauces simmer and evaporate
Like petrol when the engine’s gunning

Cotton wadding is suggested
By bread rolls peeled of crust

Soup of the day is borsch
Or cream of tomato

A calibrated, green light beam generated by the table decoration
Leans against every face
Pinpointing surgical reconstruction and automatically
Generating a 10% discount

Orders are taken via two-way radio
One notch beneath the emergency services’ protected bandwidth

Patrons are respectfully reminded that
Reservations will not be taken in advance

This Happened

2008-05-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

A woman was executed and her body duly delivered to an institute
Where it was cleansed, shaved, bled, arranged, plattered
On an industrial stainless steel bed
And cut into transverse slices one millimetre thick
Each sliver lit scanned photographed processed logged
The whole reassembled digitally
And released on licensed software, as a download or CD Rom
For educative purposes

And a copy sent to her parents by recorded delivery
With a hand-penned message
From their daughter
And a compliment slip

And her father, attempting to configure which
Among the assorted protocols of bereavement
Would be the appropriate response
Whether to regard the CD Rom as remains
Ashes
Or something he should pack into a coffin
And have the priest deliberate over
And classify and consign
And relinquish
And walk away from
Or whether he should feed the CD into the drive
And watch

He pressed play

At night in secret the mother printed off sufficient to produce
A face

She found
When the sheets were flicked like a children’s basic animation
The faint distortion of perspective created by the falling angle
Made something recognisable
An expression
Held then forsaken
For absolute passivity

Or maybe that was peace

Ghost Town

2008-05-08T08:43:00.001-07:00

Opening the show is a live rendition of Ghost Town by the 10th Street Band. Here are some visuals to go with it:

That Ol’ Fuddy Duddy Killer

2008-05-08T05:38:00.000-07:00

That Ol’ Fuddy Duddy Killer

“Bald head
and fuzzy logic,
he always gave up
that inanimate
chance
when burrowing
his head in the hole;
but only,
really,
when the Brothers let him….”

In a ladies dress
the hunter shot him dead.
Lipstick smeared
with blood.
(Or was it the other way round?)
Teeth crooked
with
no carrot gold fillings
to steal
or pawn
or use as a souvenir.
Crocodile tears from a mammal?
Was he despicable?
Or just afraid that five minutes
were truly over.

Opening to show

2008-05-08T03:42:00.000-07:00

Hi guys- just finished the first draft of my opening to The Dead That Never Lived. I'm keen to hear peoples thoughts. So, you have to imagine everyone in black tie, me at a lectern in full evangelical swing:

Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to give thanks. To pay our respects. To make tribute. To give hope and comfort to those left behind. And by “those left behind” I mean of course, “those brutally cheated out of any sense of reconciliation or justice.”

[Congregation: Amen!]

Yes, surprise, [pic of death] Death is unfair, no matter how much we pretend otherwise. If Death was a charming Edwardian jester that arrived at a predetermined date and vanished you away with a playful nod, he wouldn’t be called Death, he would be called Mr Claypole from Rentaghost. [Picture of Mr Claypole.] And we would have great fun watching him nonny about on a haunted pantomine horse, saying words like ‘gadzooks’ and ‘methinks’. But meanwhile, [pic of death] Death would still be out there, being Death, going about his business of indiscriminately killing people.

[Congregation: Amen!]

If only Mr Claypole was the fourth horseman, what a cripplingly wonderful world that would be. But it is a fiction, friends.

We have always looked to Fiction for a painless death. And verily, it gives it to us: hour after hour, night after night, beamed right into the comfort of our living rooms. A massacre in our own homes. Fiction, our great educator.

And so, we supplement the real with the virtual. We give death its soundtrack. We exchange rotting flesh for Michael Douglas. We hack open the skull and call it “Horror”. Horror! Who now knows what that means… ?

What is this New Death we have created? Brothers and sisters, we are trapped in the reflection of the silver screen, endlessly rehearsing our own demise. Displaced, anesthetised... Death: the end-of-series special.

No. No longer.

[Congregation: No longer!]

Let us not trivialize these deaths. Let us not reduce them to vapid allegory, plot devices and cancelled contracts. Let the dead be counted. Let us mourn! Let us reach out and touch them, as we have been touched by so many: [pictures for each] Catherine Earnshaw, Dr Zhivago, Arthur Fowler, Bonnie and Clyde, Bambi, Spock.

[Congregation: Amen!]

In death, each of these names has become more. Amongst the thousands of characters we have met throughout a lifetime of fiction. Of all the souls we have encountered on our travels, theirs are the most... [cf. Shatner at start of Search for Spock]….human.

If the cancellation of a programme is tantamount to its death, then the re-run is its resurrection. Death becomes a constant cycle, an unbroken circle…

[Ring of light appears around the lectern.]

…a never-ending circus of death and rebirth.

But tonight we break the chain. For one hour only: long enough to bury our past, once and for all. The television set, like the sun, has bathed us since birth in its lethal glow. And now that the sun has set and the cool of the evening has come, some of the warmth that we have absorbed is flowing back in the other direction.

Just long enough to give thanks. To pay respects. To make tribute. To give hope and comfort to those left behind. And by “those left behind” I mean of course, Us: The audience, the lost protagonists. Those of us who must go on beyond the end. Once the credits have rolled and the lights go up, we must leave the auditorium and face the horrors that lurk beyond the plot arc, our fates uncertain.

The reels of tape are boxed and stacked. The doors are locked. And the rest, as they say, is silence.

Cosmology Dud

2008-05-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

Oh no, it’s the Entirely Hairless
Disreputable Philatelist
He predates chronology
He’s from Wayback When

Moonlight spattered motor-parts
And the missing pre-oiled Erwartung
Skydived a trajectory
Like a dandruff knocked from god

Meanwhile next door there’s the ill behaviour of a libidinal wraith
Famous for unsnapping brassieres
ping
So the male ghost hunters attempting to communicate slip brassieres OVER their tee-shirts.
Nothing.
So the male ghost hunters attempting to communicate slip the brassieres UNDER their tee-shirts.
Ping. Result.
‘Unsnap two brassieres for ‘yes’ and one for ‘no,’ they repeat.
Ping ping
‘Thank you.’

Meanwhile, next door to them,
It’s the old quadratic formula
Isopods are uniting under a recipe that involves
Resuscitation of ingredients killed
In the usual transaction between
Nature and Cuisine

So soup’s off
And the cook serves bog in a deep tureen.
‘Dish it up yourselves,’ she smirks.
Everyone tucks in, except her.
Five minutes into the meal,
The swallowed bog is swallowing them,
Tipping them into itself intestines-first
So they’re still on their chairs but flipped inside out
And disappearing into a gurgle.

How do I know all this?
Well, I am the bee responsible for pocketing the decimal point.
My domicile’s a small resort
Where lightning’s fused the shoreline into glass.
I can categorically confirm that the numbers
1,2,3,4,5 are dead.
They shared the same ambition and it killed them –
They dreamed of being visually unchanged by distance
And were mauled by the horizon at Motherwell

Now when you think of the numbers
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5
You will experience these visions:
A buttock heaved into a goldfish bowl
A triangle orbiting an ambulance

No Parental Care/ Full Circle

2008-05-05T04:31:00.000-07:00

He froze time with one bullet

(“my eyes burn”)

Fired

To miss me

But struck my future

Taking the city’s past

(“all I could be”)

for a spin

Now knee deep in love

As vengeance

(“And like the child down

a well”)

continuing to fall

(“heavy”)

in tarnished Armour

but feeling forever

just.

But I now fear

I have

become

the dark

that I was lost in right

(“left turn,

Out of the city limits”)

at the beginning

of all this.

THE DEATH OF REACTIVE DIFFERENCE

2008-05-03T05:33:00.000-07:00

Think butterfly

Spin the bottle is banned
Because of the
Ramifications
On the weather elsewhere
The reiterative vector of air disturbance
Which
Certain Eastern nations may well interpret as
Acts of Aggression aimed at regimes remaining
Non-complicit with assorted Western Alliances

Spin the bottle means
Currents coiled into
The air blast differential of a bomb
A self-assembling bomb
Energetically stuffing momentum into its thump
Timed to explode half-a-world-away

However
Ethnicity is now a reversible butterfly
a proportionate volume
Like body mass index
Below you'll find
Specific regimes designed
To bulk
Or trim it
Order your plan now

Neither blandishment nor
Impersonation
But sensational overhaul

It
Means the death of bigotry

Opponents liken the exercises to
Coercive yoga
A series of sustained postures
But testimonials categorically proclaim
They trip a surge of
Platforms from which lightweight champions
Doodle on plywood scoreboards
Uniting the masses

Hate & dissonance
Require categories

Says who?

The louvered eyelids of the glimpsed-at-speed face
The fluffy blue tedium &
Atonal hum of custodial friendship
Says so

George Aligayah (visuals)

2008-05-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

Waiting For Deathot

2008-05-01T04:09:00.000-07:00

He’s got
Genetically tampered necktie with primate speech capacity
He’s got
Facemask of bioluminescent algae
Working his skin into twinkles
He’s got
Disease that sounds like heavy metal
So doctors rig up stereo stethoscopes
His hospitalization resembles an air guitar convention
He’s got
Cadillacs in a pump dispenser
One press, out they leak clear of the kerb
Droopy and moist till sunlight acts as car assembly line
He’s got
‘60s disco go-go cage hooked to a brass propeller fan
He’s got
Golf course with the sand trap converted to mosh pit
And the Von Trapps converted to maggots
He’s got
Jesus swimming with dolphins in yob spit harvested from bus stops
He’s got
Astronauts with safari shorts pulled up over their spacesuits
He’s got
Concubines carved out of yak butter and he seats them
On the glacier incubating in his own chest freezer
He's got
Folk musicians in cast-iron diving helmets
So their lyrics sound like this, ‘mmmyeh mfgher mmyeh un’
He's got
Emotion resembling a split yellow pepper
Each seed encapsulating a harsh authoritarian stance
He's got
A knife that he offers hilt-first so you can
De-pith the gesture-lexicon of a potential dictator
He has
Wine corked with nightsticks
He has
All stained glass which is his tattooed arms
The biceps pumped by air hose clamped to his optic nerves
He has
Human species clustered on a pinhead
Like a dandelion clock
He has
Lips pursed ready to puff
Soon as he can control
His giggling

The Catastrophic Distinction Boundary Begins Anew

2008-04-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

He stepped out of his trousers!
He planted a sapling in the crumpled round of each leg --
They were Cenozoic stressed denims
Bleached to suggest his Holocene credentials:
Femur, tibia, fibula and phallus

Anyhow
The sky’s slithering down
Its blue colloidal slick
Succumbing to gravity
In a decade the sky will coat the earth
To a depth of no more than three hundred hands
No less than a thumb
It will be a new Geological Era

The Dead will be slotted into the jet stream
They will become veined with igneous lightning
Grave goods will include
Swallow and snow-goose migratory paths

And the Earth will issue a set
Of lapis glazed
Commemorative tectonic plates

Vinyl-billed crow
Observing from an Inselberg
Has hair bunched under her wing joints
Which she crisps with deodorant
She's chain chewing gobbets
And calling in a gruff oracular monotone,
‘More, more!’
Her feet fusing to the requisite shape
For kitten heels

2008-04-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

Pet Name Cemetery

'What did you just call me?' she asks
'What's that?', I stage-murmur, eyes like vices, 'huh?'
'What did you just call me?' repeated. The wrong kind of helpful.
My skull is a farmyard, there

a horse called 'problem' breaks into a trot
There's some sort of scraping downstairs.
I giggle a sob. I know what is scraping.
In a chalky second, I realise: it's here.

Tonight has been coming for weeks.
I hosed down the spade just Saturday gone
chasing crumbs of loam down through the gravel
breath-fogged, pristine backdrop, my flawless denial

In this town there's a place nobody talks about
As we shop for supplies and try to forget old loves
It's why nobody questions a disappearance
It makes us our monsters and makes monsters of us

Each night cars wait in the rain at the gate
Their boots gaping open; toothless and drooling
while figures shuttle in the dark for spades
for evergreen wreathes, for a cigarette's calm.

Each returns one last time for a stiff little bundle
and, glugging grief, carries it down into gloom
They can barely dig the tiny graves for crying
I know because I've have watched them.

I've seen what it takes to bury a Baby
I can tell you where Darling was laid when it died
I know where to dig if you want to find Sweetcheeks
I know what they done
with Sexybum

This is the secret of the Pet Name Cemetery
What you bury there never stays buried
Each cutesy word cooed claws its way through
and dappled with rot crawls back

we've all heard the stories
but scoff or solemnly promise that we won't ever
get so desperate. 'Better' we say 'to learn to forget,
to treat each pet name as the last' but still
-but still the plots get filled

on one night of weakness I was one of them
Found a spot in the rows of half decomposed nick-names
Where Boos and Honeys and Love-Pies are maggoted
Where sugars and shnuggles and pookums bleed mulch
I told her I was going to the shop
It took less than twenty minutes
I told her I'd got stuck in a conversation that went on and on.
'It was boring'
I told her this.

It's crawled a mile to where I'm standing
in my hallway ignoring the questions shouted from the bedroom
leaning towards the source of the scratching
Legs wet, fists locked
Crashed
Mouthing
Tonight it's back
Rheumy red eyes, open throat snarling
Tonight it's back
A compost crusted rug, claws deep in the wood
Tonight it's back
A pattern of vowels always lodged in the throat
Tonight it's back
A word that can petrify
Tonight it is back
Woojum is back
Woojum is here
Woojum is here
Woojum

If you stay here you have to accept the damp climate
You have to avoid naming your car
You have to address everyone by their full name
You cannot celebrate Valentines

you must do these things because too many failed to
We know not to go there. All of us do.
And who could doubt that you're done with that pet-name?
But the pet-name is not done with you.

snow white...

2008-04-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

For Moxy- a rough idea of the Snow White video. To be cut to-length:

Ideas?

Euthanased Fuel

2008-04-26T03:29:00.000-07:00

Rare footage of an ultrasonic dehumidifier
In a woodland glade
Controls ratcheted to max
Shows vapour trails torn from the trees
Past shrivel to compression
Abetted by the barometric vice
Of a low weather front
Until there is a colonnade of coal

Miners step from isobars
Holographic reflectors on their hardhats
Factor 15 on their faces

the sharon tate murders

2008-04-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this up, re: the 'Charlies Angels' poems....

Chopsocky Death of Sun

2008-04-25T04:18:00.001-07:00

The Sun has a fungal infection, an
Opportunistic pathogen bloating it
Hydrolytic enzymes are syruping the lunar silverware
Turning the Northern Lights into a downy batting cage

Fox, the urban decaffeinated kind
His face designed to manhole
--Teeth connecting like rungs –
Snacks at a nest turned tapas
Filled with brooded olives

And the Constant Dieter has a campfire roaring in her lap
Last week mini-refrigerator components were introduced
Into her digestive tract
By colonoscopy
Freezing her stomach contents
One meal will last 3 months

Each sunbeam turns into a creamy lignin mast
Its edge billowing a little
Touching Fox touching Nest touching Dieter

Touching

Two-Way Rodeo

2008-04-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Imagine! Ancient mosaics that bobbed like a keyboard
Letting you alphabet into the past

Imagine
Forensic Pathologists who are also Minotaurs
Tuckered up this-a-way

Rhinestoned disposable overalls --
Albino night sky shod in puckered paper boots --
Facemasks like the helms of doves
Nose rings with the sip
Of champagne flutes and
Voltage cranking between horns
Chacun a son gout
Mounted on swabbed steers
Recording their yippee-yi-yays into
Adjustable overhead mics doubling as space stations
Legs streaming Cyrillic trajectories
Spectators attendant as reachable octaves

While petrol moon slips from zippered white silk nunchaku case
Small as a pocketful
Kick-starting the psychotic stuff
The eventuality of
Stadium gooey with rampage and
Yeee-hah @
Flyswatter.Mortality

SOMETHING UNRELATED

2008-04-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

I wrote this around a year ago and I know that it doesn't really relate to 'The Dead That Never Lived' but, you know......just putting it out there.

ENDLESSNESS

Concrete towers of hope and condemnation surrounding a hungry rat.
Automatic scrambling for survival against artificial monkeys swinging on branches of their own concrete breath, gusts of dust and wind blowing through their heads.
When will it end?
Flaming tongues of giants blazing promises of lies and lies of promises to a gathering cloud of smog. Microchip brains gathering in circles and gather nothing. Life preservers are thrown to the sense of logic of those who feel but the lines are cut by hot banana scissors.
When will it end?
Hollowed capsules of life lie piled up, spent and used, sucked dry for all their worth and worth nothing in abundance. This crystallized, sparkling age of darkness where remote controlled lives are the only ones that thrive and remain alive for a price.
When will it end?
Cold hot face packs peel back their skin, replaced with programmed expression and judgment, eager to gaze at their new image reflected in a scalpel.
Apparent incisions into the public membrane with a cubed edge
When will it end?
Square-eyed fork tongues feel safe in the race behind locks and chains and weapons of death. Consumptions shrouding mass perspectives of importance and necessity.
Fat back paper pockets squeal in triumph.

When will it end?

Rapture Related

2008-04-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was reading through the past blogs and you said that you were still looking for something in relation to Rapture.
I done some reading and had a think about the big question of WHEN The Rapture is supposed to occur. I imagined myself to be one of those people in the world that are waiting for the rapture and thought about some of the questions they might be asking and how they might be feeling.
One of the questions was, 'Why hasn't the rapture happened yet?'
Me being me, I immediately thought logically as to why and came up with quite a funny image.
So I put it into poetry form.

God sits, irate, at the Gate's of Heaven.
It's the 28th Heaven-day, and it still hasn't arrived.
The component for his transportation device.
"The repair man lied when he said it would be here by the tenth" he thought.
God had sat there through sunshine, snow and mist.
"They're going to start to think it doesn't exist" he grumbled
And every rumble of a Heaven-car that passes, produces a twinkle in his eye.
He smiles and listens.....to the sound disappearing in the distance.
His smile fades.
He struggles to suppress his rage.
He flops back down onto his seat.
Jesus brings him a cup of tea and says,
"Don't worry Dad. You'll be glad when the repair man arrives with the component you need and we transport those lives"
God pouts and grunts,
"I don't think it will ever come"
Jesus shrugs and goes back in the house.

Lon Chaney

2008-04-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

Lon Chaney Snr. Horror film actor and Man of A Thousand Faces. Son of profoundly deaf parents, he entered silent film as a result of re-enacting characters and scenes to his family and bed-ridden Mother. Known for his exceptional make-up skills as well as his acting, especially for Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera. Father of Lon Chaney Jr, who went on to become "Wolf Man"

Anyway this is only my second draft - constructive criticism welcome. There are a number of karmic threads here that could be explored. But I' m thinking aloud.

Lon Chaney

At the light bulb adorned mirror
His sits where the Beautiful People have gone:
The seat still warm with the backside of
Patsy Ruth Miller.
He unpacks his palette with care:
Wire for pig-turned nose, black paint for skeletal eye,
Shoulder pulling weight to pound his back
Into hunched immortality.
Tools to make him a starlet of heinous
disproportion.

Like tender kisses
He applies the layers of Horror
Each one containing its own misery and
Comedy equally honoured.
He bends cheekbone, nose and wire into position:
Salutations to a hundred cavernous nights and silences
Each illness and broken throat
Memorised by the absence of speech.

Smear by smear he moulds each of his dreadful
Broken children.
Each old new infant blinks under light
Born into its role of death as love’s dialogue:
Tendering the currency of bastards
Tied away to sickness, bed and shadow.

Poised, the creature is ready
to break out into celluloid like a putrid rash
And wear for the Beautiful People their lonely
inner visions.
His trade: to unmask by masking.
The phantom and the hunchback stand,
lurch, stare and groan back at painful features.
Ready to go forward and make shadow flesh:
Ready to drag the grotesque to love.

xxxx

A Work in Progress

2008-04-17T16:58:00.000-07:00

The bombs and bullets whiz past my ears on my way to school.

I step over pools of blood of my dead friends, severed arms and legs and heads of men, still gripping their guns so tight.

Every day and night they fight, and I go to school.

Explosions boom and rock the classroom, sending us all to the floor.

We used to scream and shout, but not any more.

I’m not afraid of death. I’m afraid of surviving, getting old and realizing that I am stupid because I was too afraid to go to school

Graham Chapman

2008-04-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post a few famous funerals up on here. I've always liked this footage, in particular.

Its strange to hear ALOTBSOL in this context: a song that has accompanied Chapman's death before. Not everyone in the audience is coping well with that irony.

Funeral poem

2008-04-15T15:38:00.001-07:00

We look fit at funerals, you and I,
as we file past the casket, bow and turn,
your black veil flares, my gothic perm
caught in the reflection of a platinum urn
lit by candles, while lily-clad damsels scatter platitudes
over colleagues and cousins and cumbersome shoulder pads.
All the dads too strong to cry on our shoulder, as
monochrome chic can’t be soiled by grief.
Our contrast immaculate, our edges too accurate.

Exhume the funeral: the final resting place of style.
The death of colour. Man Ray would get it—
Just take a cursory glance at the history of aesthetics:
Rauschenberg painted coffins, Brigit Riley made us cry.
Still, it took Chanel to give death its eyes.
A mathematics of line, curve and shade
that would imbue the most pitiful holiday snap
with the jouissance of the French New Wave.

We’re back in Kansas, in the town where we began.
Just ink and canvas and a middle-distance stare.
The last strut of the Rat Pack, coffin aloft,
with the best dressed member sealed into the box,
We’re ready for the close-up, we’ve never been so ironed.
Our lives, a film noir, classily made,
and nothing is more classically designed than a grave.

Black and white is a durable idiom.
Immortality a blessing as well as a curse.
Some things never go out of fashion:
the camera, the pupil, the ink-well, the hearse.

ATTEMPTED RAPTURE

2008-04-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

‘’Apocalypse means
‘Drive-in jewelery’

Amen means
’Your death-rattle will be indistinguishable
From drum and bass’
Sayeth the lord”

God’s coming back and this time
He is issue oriented
And already wearing protective goggles

You have defiled yourselves with exercise --
What happens when you do yoga is
Your soul does a really spiteful impression of you

When I was a sinner I was so flexible
After two-hours in the tree position
My eyes would slip down inside my nostrils

Now I am sedentary and do miracles
Eg
I perform surgery on moonlight that’s got MRSA
I teach Tai Kwon to box jellyfish
Then there is the miracle of The Puppy
Ten years soaking up formaldehyde
And it starts doggy-paddling in its jar

‘Your hairstyle is actually my shadow
So your hair grows when I move away
I can give you bad hair days by darting to and fro
But if you are bald I am right on top of you’
Sayeth the lord

‘I am the eco-system Santa
As prophesied repeatedly
Yet I am so small
Two acrylic nails
Stuck to the front and the back of me
Concave inwards
Are sufficient for full body armour’
Sayeth the lord

Autopsy

2008-04-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

Cut-up obituaries from Yassir Arafat, John Peel, Old Dirty Bastard & Emlyn Hughes (all November, 2004)

Balding, paunchy and badly dressed, he had the air of
a Philadelphia McDonald's parking lot,
wearing a cheeky grin
and a pistol, born for so long on his hip, that
rap music evolved around him.
He could claim to have broken The Fall and
the White House lawn.

Determined to restore Palestine to the roadmap
he became a DJ in Dallas
and played songs that sounded like people fighting—
A style that earned him the nickname Crazy Horse.
But despite the hallucinogenic overtones, he refrained from indulging in
corruption, misrule and human rights abuses,
as he led his wolves directly into
the hearts of suspicious teenage listeners

He was later arrested for failure to pay child support
and announced that he enjoyed "vigorously grand-parenting"
with a "face of terror".
His nasal pronunciation and short vowel sounds were powerfully
derailed by persistent violence

With the onslaught of Beatlemania
he was shot in the back and arm
by Liverpool boss Bill Shankly
but the wounds were superficial.

He became the instantly recognisable face of
the inexplicable “Big Baby Jesus”
but failed in both war and peace to achieve his dream of
being driven by limousine from
his West Bank headquarters
to a New York State welfare office to pick up his cheque

He signed interim peace accords with Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres,
appearing together on a Mariah Carey remix.
Clearly not on the payroll of any record company, his words carried weight.

His first marriage to a 15-year-old Texan girl was dissolved
into 20 vials of crack— like
a plane crash,
pre-recorded, and broadcast every night
for the last ten years.

Living at his mother's home under house arrest,
he was somehow enduringly adolescent and old before his time,
a modern day
television quiz show
phoenix,
who installed a one-party system
but could play in three different positions,
a spirit of the all-conquering Liverpool side
with boundless reserves of drive, enthusiasm and battling qualities,
who vowed to
play The Sex Pistols' "Anarchy In The UK"
until his country was united

Death
has been widely reported in the mainstream media
a global phenomenon
rife with cronyism, run so single-handedly that only
tears of countless
millions
can make the
cold blooded
newsprint
sing.

Moomintroll Buys It

2008-04-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

Meringue Pupa, Tranquilized Bomb,
Eleventh-Hour Udder,
He went by many names
But today
Moomintroll is shrink-wrapped on the gammon carousel
At Waitrose
His fat in circles round him like a hoopla rod

His veranda made of scrapped electric kettles and their flexes
Has been upended, propped against a public statue
As a weekend lean-to pissoire

Poor Moomintroll went swimming in the harbour
Where Ancient Regimes
Had dumped their million guillotines
Waves merely rolled their million silted mechanisms
Dice dice dice

Rumour, though, suggests dementia
After ten years as a full-time semen donor
His sex identical to windscreen wipers
Though renegade and
Twice as squeaky

Whatever
Death the Chiropractor culled
His valley calcium
Manipulated his cranial sac
And turned his plush into a single-seater

Also:

2008-04-03T04:42:00.000-07:00

Just to say that the books are NOT now closed for new submissions. Please keep sending stuff through!

I think the 30th of May will be the provisional submission deadline. That saying, the earlier the work comes in, the more time we have to develop it for the stage.

In particular, there are several things I am looking for

>2 more 'testimonials', written in the same style as Jeff Price's piece on Andy Lippincott.

> A piece of fanfiction, written by a 10-13yr old child, where the kid decides to kill off the main character (eg Harry Potter, Spongebob) - see the blog entry called 'Killed by Your Own Non-canon' for more details.

> A piece on the Rapture, or TV evangelism, or some other mediated fantasy concerning the apocalypse. (i recommend anyone interested to listen to this episode of This American Life: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=125)

> Some sort of hymn to finish on (thematically, this can be quite broad strokes) to be played with a live mariachi band. Possibly to the tune of God Save the Queen. Maybe to be also sung by the audience.

Holler back at me,
Rossx

Event update

2008-04-02T03:16:00.000-07:00

Hi there- just a note to say that I've been really enjoying all the stuff thats been posted up on this site so far.

Over the next few days I'm going to go back and comment on everything that I'd like to use for the event. One of the remits of this project is that we get writers collaborating with artists in different mediums. So I'm going to try to tentatively suggest ways that each piece can be staged/filmed/sung/etc. The last event we did had about 4 basic 'types' of performance:

>poems turned into songs, sung with a live band
>poems turned into short films
>poems turned into short short plays
>poems read straight to audience, using a series of lighting states

Obviously thats by no means definitive, but its roughly the sort of range i mean when I talk about 'developing' or 'staging' poems.

I'll be really keen to hear your ideas as well. First we need to come to some sort of conclusion on the best way to present these poems to a live audience, then I'll try to find the right collaborator for you, and pass you on their details.

Obviously, you guys are scattered all over Europe, so I'm going to be looking to have a resource of local actors to perform alot of the work. If you are keen to travel up to Newcastle to perform yourself, make sure you let me know.

In the meantime, any questions, drop me a message here or at my email RossGSutherland@Yahoo.com / 0771 944 6025

Ross x

Mock Turtle (Lewis Carroll's)

2008-04-01T05:20:00.000-07:00

An hydrocephalic Victorian bathing machine
Boo hoo is a crypt
For this marine chelonian who choked on excess nasal hair
Caused by oestrogen flooding his transgressive tea-table tableaux habitat
Boo hoo
Roll-on deodorant is applied to the pits of his limbs
By optional senators
Like mustard to provolone
Boo hoo
Then he is beheaded onto a spreadsheet
By a scimitar-wielding welder, visor down,
And the neck’s rim flesh tin tacked onto a fully inflated whoopee cushion
Finished with yacht varnish
Boo hoo
Boo hoo abstruse
Boo hoo hoo hoo
And a small clock gummed under his sloped chin
With its alarm function disabled by some soup

Snow White Finally Succumbs

2008-03-31T05:11:00.000-07:00

Time’s feral or on the fritz
It gives the incremental strobe effect of batted lashes
Or god’s exaggerated gat-toothed overbite
Suddenly descending

Snow White, real name ‘Sondra’
Made all the children of the kingdom, line up, hold hands
Then she wound them oh so tightly onto an industrial cable spool
And laid them on the sea bed between nations
To fetch oil

Oh her capsule-shaped face
Oh her homogenous nostalgia
Oh her cheeks sucked in for definition
Oh her teeth replaced by the bells they hang from cats
Silver and spherical a ting-a-ling accompaniment
To pretty rants

Oh her plectrum or guitar pick
That was a tiny freeze-dried human placenta
Oh her carbon hair that popped like pressured bubble wrap

Through the glass partition witness
Snow White strapped to a road-kill covered gurney
Press the star key twice if you wish to
Administer the lethal injection
Now
* *
There may be silences
Whilst we process your request

Her crimes were also these: she was a goombah
Selling poisoned mascara on the internet
And mirrors you could spread like butter

Her breasts end like bacon
In a rind

Even the prince failed to escape her delicate malevolence
His bladder is the featured centrefold
In the European Journal of Urology
And his buttocks knock like gavels
On the saddle he's been padlocked to for twenty years

The Prisoner in E.A. Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum

2008-03-30T13:41:00.001-07:00

The gowned NHS patient thinks he is pinioned
Not anaesthetized
He believes he is about to receive the names of his crimes
Sutured into his mene

Not so
He has a
Strangulated hernia shaped like a daffodil
‘Oh!’ says the excising surgeon
Slickering its stem with glitter-peppered lip gloss
Slotting it into his lapel

Later sliding it out with aplomb
Da-da!
And presenting it to a behavioural scientist
He believes to be a monster

Then at lunch poised over breath-pimpled dim sum
He texts a djinn on his Blackberry

Carrying out the surgeon’s command
Djinn possesses the body of a career Commando
Making him loose several salvos of dumdums at a storecupboard packed with dumbbells
In a nondescript gym
Dimpling them considerably without altering their weight
Action without consequence
Other than a police caution

not sure if this counts but

2008-03-19T03:59:00.000-07:00

A year or so back I became fascinated by Sharon Tate and the people who killed her - not so much Charlie Manson as the women from The Family. It all happened when I was young and I didn't really get it then - don't think I particularly get it now. Writing some poems about it helped. They are in Weeping for the Lovely Phantoms, my most recent book from Salt. I am working on some little poetry films about them, just i-movie style. The girls are all still in prison - that's nearly forty years. So I guess they are the dead that never lived.
Here are two poems from this section of the book:

Make it a real nice murder

Charlie checks them over
the girls and Tex, sends them
over the hill on their first mission
over the edge of the helter skelter
no going back.
They are his barefoot soldiers
his Vietcong spiked with methedrine
a distant twister coming up fast
through the peachy Californian dusk.

It’s a fine August night
ripe for pig killing.
The air is soft as velvet.
On Cielo Drive the fairy lights sparkle
around the homes of the rich
their unassailable lives.

“Leave a sign,” Charlie tells them
as the old yellow Ford
winds its way to the top of the hill.
“You know. Something witchy.”

Charlie’s Angel 1: Susan Atkins

She didn’t want to die, said Susan, laughing.
You should have heard her beg.
She thought because she was pregnant
she was safe.

No way. I told her straight.
Listen bitch, I said. You’re gonna die.
I don’t care about you.
I don’t feel anything at all.

After we killed her, I licked the blood from my hands.
I would have cut out the baby as a present for Charlie
but there wasn’t time.
He would have liked that.
What a trip that would have been.

Jo Colley

Depression

2008-03-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

Well someone was bound to mention it, so it might as well be me.

When I heard the title of VWC2 I have to say it was my immediate thought, but that's probably because I'm a sufferer and we can tend to get a bit self-absorbed. (ok so I can only really speak for myself...)

To me the idea of 'the dead that never lived' made me automatically think of zombies, which then took me directly to depression without passing go or collecting £200 (yes technically I know zombies lived once, but that's a mere detail...)

So my meagre offering to proceedings (taking a different random direction) and an avenue to explore - that of those people who aren't really living but merely existing...

(Jeff i'm thinking of this as part of my 10x10 offering next month??)

(it's meant to be read out with humour and irony - not woe is me style..)
-----
Fantasies

Like anyone, I have ‘Down’ days
Tell me, do you fantasize during your ‘Down’ days?
I do.
And when I say fantasize, I mean it.
As in Fantasy – Fantastic – Fantastic!
I also have hot tears streaming down my face,
When I fantasize

Because however much I want it,
It won’t become reality.
I haven’t the courage.

Tonight, my fantasy was taking a hot bath.
Taking a sharp blade to my wrists,
While taking a hot bath.

And I want to.
I fantasize on the oblivion it will bring.
The fantasies stop me sleeping.
I so desperately want to sleep.
If only for the (somewhat shorter) oblivion it will bring.

But I cry hot tears,
Because I can’t run that bath
I can’t bloody that blade
I can’t hurt the people I love
I can’t leave them to clear up the mess,
That was my life.

Apparently, I have low self-worth.
So if I loved myself as I love them,
Would it make my fantasies sweeter?

Where is my life-coach to tell me how to think?
And what should I think when she’s not here? –
…And how should I think it?

And so until she returns, I want to stop thinking…

To stop thinking…
…would be an oblivion of the mind.
Mmmmm …oblivion
Total …oblivion
Now that’s a fantasy I could go for.
---

cheers all,

see you soon

hannahx

The Queen is Dead

2008-03-06T05:05:00.000-08:00

I've always been really interested in newsflashes, programmes being interupted and suddenly we're in the newsroom with a stern newsreader, saying 'Something Has Happened.' It used to be the main way we found out about big events, but I guess the internet has changed this. Here's a clip of Martyn Lewis announcing the death of Diana, and then my poem about newsflashes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNsdvhh8_X0&feature=related

George Aligayah
Every day George practices
his well rehearsed line.
he looks into the bathroom mirror as he is shaving,
he sings it in the shower
enunciates every word whenever he is alone,
"The Queen is Dead."
He rehearses scenarios,
she died peacefully in her sleep,
a bullet went through her forehead,

she was killed in a car crash in Paris.
Mrs Aligayah has not been on holiday for years,
she cannot understand why her husband always ignores
suggestions of a French chateaux,
brochures of villas in Tuscany
all talk of staying with her brother in Tobago.
George knows the value of full attendance.
He does not want to give anyone else the chance,
Huw Edwards, Fiona Bruce

Dermot Murnaghan.
When they are in the same room
the atmosphere is always frosty.
He knows they all want to be the one breaking the news.
George Aligayah has a bag packed especially
he keeps it by the front door.
In it is a black tie, a comb,
a notebook with a carefully worded eulogy
and his lucky pants
because at any time the phone could ring
and it will be his producer saying
"George,
the Queen is Dead,
we need you."

Roll back the stone

2008-03-05T05:03:00.000-08:00

Hi peeps,
when Ross asked us to think about the death of fictional characters, my mind jumped straight away to Jesus. The below is what I came up with, (so far). I see it as a guy or gal in a confession booth talking to a holy dude.
If you remember my VWC 1 piece, their was a lot of looping, rhyme repetition, work juggling etc. I wanted to be simpler here, because the church (for me) does all the word juggling. I wanted to write some questions that maybe the pope can't answer without contradicitng himself. Anyway, all thughts and complaints welcome.

Father, according to your rules I have sinned. I have never confessed before and I ask for no forgiveness. I’ve never burnt witches or turned a plane into a flying bomb. I did kill a fly once but it was self defence. I come only with questions. Got any answers, God knows.
Well its Easter day, roll back the stone, and like my own personal faith reservoir the tomb was empty. I suspect my departure from the crucifix cult began at the age of seven when I was banned from my own Sunday school for asking how the son of a Carpenter could also be of the line of David. If you can answer that question I’d love to hear it. No joke I really would, and if you can’t, ask yourself why. And to quote Bill Hicks, why does the Pope need bullet proof glass if he has so much faith?

Religions don’t fascinate me but the power of belief does. For example, I love the way that people who don’t believe in evolution always neglect to mention the stages of development that a human foetus goes through. It begins as a single cell right, then will change to roughly resemble a newt like creature. At another point it will resemble an ape like being covered in a downy fur and finally a modern human. Also I don’t understand why if God designed the human body alterations to a mans private bits would be needed after birth. If it’s more hygienic after the chop then why didn’t God design it that way? I would have to assume that either God made a mistake or that the human body simply isn’t finished. Which brings me to one of my own personal beliefs, evolution doesn’t disprove God but quite the opposite. The question to be asked is not did we evolve from monkeys, but what are we evolving into? Gods’ maybe. And if the Roman Empire can have a vote that was only carried by three votes to pronounce Christianity as its new religion. If the pantheon was dropped and Christ won on the campaign trail then God must be a politician. He’s all powerful after all; it couldn’t have happened without his permission. And of course politicians aren’t to be trusted, they never keep those promises and in the end we always vote for someone else. I guess Apollo twigged that too late. And you could argue that some Roman behaviour was barbaric and that they were ‘saved’. But they would have said that they were advanced, civilised people. I wonder if we extend that logic how long will it be before people view us as little better than cavemen. Eating meat and putting mercury in our teeth.

Moves in mysterious ways, is just not good enough.

You see father, Easter’s a bizarre time for me. Happy Easter, he died for your sins, have a chocolate rabbit. What? I think most people, even you, know that it is in fact the Spring solstice and has nothing to do with Christ, but the truth is irrelevant. Our country is founded on tradition and that won’t change. I just hate the fact that were forced into this, especially at inflated prices because we all have to buy cards, none of which have the man himself on. You have to admire the Medici bank but I still want to believe that the holiest man is humblest. Never trust a religion where the leader sleeps on silk father. When did faith become a business?

danse macabre

2008-02-25T09:11:00.001-08:00

someone shouted 'oi! jonathan creek' at me in the pub only last night. uncanny.

Whatever Happened to Ruby Kipper?

2008-02-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

Quite excited to be invited to this project and hope to offer some useful contributions. My contribution is a monologue and I gladly welcome any feedback on this piece. Apologies for the length, but when read out loud it flies by.

Whatever Happened to Ruby Kipper?

Epitaph:
RUBY KIPPER – TRULY KIPPERED

ANGELICA, PET LAMB – LAID TO PASTURES NEW

Ruby's refrain:
“I held my heart within my hand
to give to my true love, but
he declined 'neath April skies
for fear of staining his cream shirt"

“Ere I'm arf kippered I am, I won't tell you why, but I will introduce me self; Ruby Kipper (pause) and Angelica, pet lamb side kick and conductor extraordinaire. Used to tread the old boards did me and her, sing and zing for our suppers - which usually turned out to be sprats on bread. Gawd, awful little devils, they'd lie on the bread looking like tin-soldiers in a grave and the smell didn't arf stick to Angelica's fur – lucky for me she liked them, would proper wolf them down. But, times being 'ard and all that, we had to take what we was given.

Now, I'll tell you about me and Angelica and the uvver acts we became acquainted wif. We was the electric act, see. I'd get on stage, do a little tap dance; but it was bleedin' 'ard sometimes to hear anyfing never mind me taps what wif all the hullabaloo going on. So anyway, I'd be tapping away, singing me song, sweet as a nut and then Angelica would trot on...and then...

Oh, listen - never mind that, I've just remembered sumfing, sumfing that's going round the 'alls at the moment that I want to tell you about and that I fink would tickle your fancy, that's if I'm not being too previous. It seems Dora the Dummy isn't the only one missing her partner in the world of entertainment. Dora's uvver 'arf Elsie, did a runner, leaving Dora to carry on the act just as a dummy on the stage; quite 'eart wrenching really to see her propped up on a chair donated from the local Sunday school; they took pity on her see, fort of 'er as like an orphan. Apparently what had happened was Dora had nipped to the ladies after a show only to come back and find a powder puff squew-whiff on Elsie's seat and the message: You can handle yourself without me – I'm sorry poppet! Written in lipstick on the dresser mirror! Rumour has it that she did off with Charlie, Mr Shandy's dummy. Charlie, the little teaser, was spotted the night of the trouble hanging round the stage door, fort he was hidden behind all the leavin's from the restaurant opposite on the other side of the alley. As a consequence, Mr Shandy has had to change his act now: Handy Mr Shandy. He makes his hand talk to the audience, makes 'im look like a proper little gentlemen wif his Tux on and drawn on face and little toupee, I fink it was made from Griselda's fur after she passed away (Quietly: She was Mr Shandy's 'amster). Mind you, I fink Mr Shandy takes a bit of lip from 'im, started getting above his station the uvver night. The gent started to back chat Mr Shandy, saying he'd be nuffing without him and that he was a better class act than him. Well the punters didn't like the gent givin' Shandy the old what for, they started getting rowdy and challenged him to a Paper,Scissors, Stone contest – the loser being frown out with the dregs from the barrels. Don't fink it's gonna last, Mr Shandy and his gentleman, could be anuvver split for poor Mr Shandy. But I don't fink the gent will have a leg to stand on, if you get me meaning.

But anyway, I was telling you about me and Angelica. There I'd be on the stage, I would tap and sing, as you do in this business, just to get the audience in the mood for a bit of light enter-tain-ment. You'll see what I mean. So, Angelica would trot on to the stage, being careful not to get her little 'ooves caught between the boards or slip on sumfing that had been chucked on earlier, and then I would sing:

Ruby had a little lamb its fleece was soft as ash;
And everywhere that Ruby went, the lamb went like a flash.
It followed her to work one day, which was a stroke of luck;
It made the punters laugh and play, to see a lamb of pluck.
And so did Ruby do a dance, and still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about till Ruby said “Cum'ere”.
"Why does the lamb love Ruby so?" the eager punters cry;
"Why, Ruby loves her lamb, you know cos she lights up the sky”.

So, at this point I would stroke Angelica quite vigorous like, showing my happiness at seeing 'er and then the sparks would start flying the more I stroked her. The crowd would go all of an-hush as Angelica lit up the atmosphere, looking like one of those accumulator fings I'd read about that would crackle and spark and make your hair stand on end.

Well, we made quite a name for our selves, bright lights of the big smoke. Nowhere to go but up in lights, living the high life for a time. But, of course, you soon learn that you can't keep going on up, because how would you know you were going up if you didn't go down? But we knew we were going up because how could you go down from where we was? And we knew we was going down when we didn't go up any more because we went up from being where we was which was down from the up we went to and then the coming down except it was quite a different sort of down...more like a stop than a down, so perhaps you could say we didn't go down but stayed up, but then how could we say we went up if we never came down? But it doesn't really matter now.

The last show we did was a real cracker. I came on, did all me lah-di-dah stuff, got to the point of stroking and cooing over Angelica which I did, when POOF! We went up in flames, quick as you like, a crackle and a bang before smouldering on stage rather like those fire-crackers that maime first before paffetically fizzling out, and all before a stunned audience. I knew I shouldn't have had that cheap gin off of Miss Parkin of Miss Parkin and her Perks, before the performance. The rest as they say is history, a story, herstory...erm, well, after that final curtain, we became post-humourously known as Kippered and Chops.

A voice interrupts: Excuse me...'scuse me...You've dropped your Coco Pops.

I beg your pardon? I'm recounting my contribution to the cultural life of London, and don't take too kindly to insolence and ...

The voice again: But you're in Tesco's.

I think you're quite misguided in your observation and should kindly refrain from interrupting Ruby Kipper, that's...who I am, who am I? Don't cha know, now look hear, see, chappie, (Ruby's voice fades out) have a banana, maybe it's because I'm a Londoner...

Grim Reaper

2008-02-24T11:37:00.001-08:00

Here's a site with horrible design, embedded music, and over 400 classical images of Death. I guess the Grim Reaper is the ultimate 'dead person who never lived'... if you consider Death to be dead, that is. I suppose by most standards of Death, he's actually very much alive.

The Grim Reaper's like the AntiSanta - we've never seen him, and we know one person could never logically serve so many people... and yet part of us sees the evidence of his work and longs to believe. There's something comforting about making Death a chap. I guess that the Reaper has been so appropriated and commercialised and parodied that he actually feels safe and familiar. When you cheapen something, it doesn't hurt so much.

The Dance of Death
trans. Peter Low

Zigger-zigger-zig tapping on a coffin
Death has got a beat and a toothy grin.
At the stroke of twelve plays a crazy polka
zigger-zigger-zag on his violin.

The night is dark, the winter winds blow
the tree-branches creak in the stormy clouds
and off the whitened skeletons go
they skip and they leap in their flowing shrouds.

Zigger-zigger-zig how they frisk and toss
dancing to the beat rattling every bone.
Now a lustful pair sit down on the moss
hoping to repeat pleasures they had known.

Zigger-zigger-zag Death is keeping at it
scraping out the tune on his violin.
Two have lost their veils they are dancing naked
he gives her a squeeze like a carnal sin.

The lady they say is of noble race
her partner a lad from the market town
but oh! she welcomes his embrace
as if the young boor had a royal crown.

Zigger-zigger-zig hand in hand a-dancing
what a host of dead risen from the turf
zigger-zigger-zag in that ghostly party
is the king himself romping with a serf.

But hush! all at once their hands let go.
They jostle, they flee they've heard the cock crow.
How lovely that night when poor folk are free!
So all praise to Death and equality!

Hitchhikers Wiki to The Universe

2008-02-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

Carrying on from earlier notes about wikipedia, anyone else find it really interesting that so much of wiki myth becomes wiki truth? Not only tabloid tales but actual biographies...

Technically you can kill someone with a wiki; details can be updated by any computer literate information junkie. You can even hit that all important delete button and kapow instant annhilation. You could even raise someone from the dead...

Wiki is supposedly a self correcting growing living document of the world; imagine it in the wrong hands, the censorship and revision of history? China already blocks wikipedia from most of the mainland isps. What does this do to supposed free speech: we are given the option to write our own history but ultimately could it be edited to serve a very different purpose?

Isn't it tempting to see what one very bored teenager could do and the consequence on a thousand poorly researched gcse papers?

Wikipedia itself purports to be the 'free online encylopedia' but I'm always amazed by how much trust is put into it. When we click on a blog, we generally know not to take everything as verbatim but when the word 'encyclopedia' is invoked; well I've even fallen into the trap of 'hmm could go to the library...could wiki it...oh that was easy...' It's easy to believe something right in front of your face.

Since Wiki is written by real life people, emotions are going to be present and considering the blogtastic role of people like perezhilton we're in for trouble. When the death of Kenneth Lays (endron dude) was reported last year on wiki he was instantly reported as commiting suicide due to intense guilt over the scandal and couldn't face court... he actually died of a heart attack but in those few hours millions of people wiki-ing to find out the who the hell Kenneth Lays was made an instant decision based on inefficient research and hot-headed reaction.

Wikipedia has also spawned a million bastard wiki's; all devoted to seperate genres, sub-genres and even a Second Life companion....it almost makes me shudder. Wiki's for tv shows or games, well fair play; fansites have existed for ages and it's actually good to see what happens in the next episode of heroes or whatever. It's harmless.

So I don't think I have a point but thought I'd flag up the option of character death by wiki as a subject (possibly with a candlestick but definitely not in the library)

Gathering Place of The souls

2008-02-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

The Bible's psalms are named after consonants from the Hebrew alphabet. The first is 'Apleph.'
Imagine the names of the consonants eg; 'Aleph,' Tzaddi,' 'Koph,' 'Teth,' as the names of souls . They are between incarnations, waiting in the 'Gathereing Place of The Souls,' a place where the souls in the psalms go to wait for their next life. Some souls have clear momories of their past life and and a clear idea of what they want to choose to be in the next life. some are hazy, or have no memory of a past life at all. If you take a name and write from its point of view as if it were in the 'Gathering Place of the Souls', reflecting on past or pondering future life, it can sometimes spark some interesting ideas.

LEGEND

My Nan is a professional footballer.
She dribbled her way to the Premiership
and is a legend called Dwight Mitchell.
She doesn’t know she’s my Nan.
She lost track when she dribbled
into a twilight she no longer remembers
where a dancing man lurked behind
netted windows, winking at her under
a peaked cap that shone in the rain.
I laughed when she told me about him;
swanlike and starched in his uniform
and the doll as her baby
warm and plastic in her bed.
‘It’s only a doll,’ the care worker said.
‘You know - I know - but does she know?’ My Nan said.
When the priest as tall as a steeple sent her off,
she knew she wanted to be Dwight Mitchell;
a roaring rich success.
Not like the last time,
when she thought it would never end
each time she fell,
stumbled or bruised.
An ancient child.
The real girl sometimes clear
in the blue of her favourite sister’s eyes.
The one who would not come to hear her
life cut short by the tall priest.
Now she bruises her way to other sending offs
and can’t remember fifty years of
stagnant talk with mouthfuls of porridge
to a man like a breath of stale air.
Or the son who trampled her
to throw fists at his father
or the daughter creeping into wall paper
like a cautious cat.
Now she’s linked romantically to Chelsy Davy
(Prince Harry’s ex), according to ‘Hello’ magazine,
which she used to read at the hairdressers
and now reads when she’s having her back waxed.
I met her in a night club and said; ‘Hello Nan.’
Her eyes were shot with vodka and she punched me in the head.

(Copyright Tess Hudson 2008)

Dead Man Trekking

2008-02-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I’m just going to ignore it and it might just go away, I have had these messages before. They sit there like a spitting cobra waiting to strike and I am not stupid enough to open it.

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

“Assigned to landing party...Contact the bridge immediately.” It says, I mean how dumb is that? It should have said something like “Free holidays” or “You have won the lottery” then someone dumb idiot on the cargo decks might have opened it but “Assigned to landing party” it’s a death sentence.

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I have worked on the USS Enterprise for three years and in all that time I have never seen an Ensign who went down on a Landing Party come back, sometimes they don’t even make it out of the Transporter before some alien brain sucking mutant gets them. Captain Kirk, Mr Spock even that dumb chief engineer Mr Scott comes back but the rest of us are burnt up on re-entry, blasted in the subatomic particles or eaten alive by a predatory space mammal. I tell you its murder and no one seems to care.

Beep... Beep... You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I am just going to ignore it. I know the Space Core directives tell you that you have to do these things but it’s the modern equivalent of going over the top in the First World War, in fact it’s worse than that because at least some of those guys came back.

Mind you, there is something worse than being “volunteered for a landing party”

Beep... Beep.. You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

I am just really glad that Captain Kirk isn’t gay because if he was I for one wouldn’t make any sort of eye contact with him. If you are a woman and he gets the hots for you then its curtains, not only is your career over but you have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. It’s the talk of the canteen, some little hotty from computing with a heaving chest and a sassy arse walks past him and gives him the eye, then its Goodnight Vienna.

Beep... Beep.. You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

We take bets on how long they will last and even when you warn them about what is going to happen they tell you “This time it will be different”. Bollocks, this time it will be the same as the last time. At some point he will have to choose between his sex life and his ship and he can get another woman anytime but there is only one USS Enterprise and he isn’t going to get another one of them. He could of course just dump them but it never seems to work out like that.

Beep... Beep.. You Have Mail... Beep Beep... You have mail...

They have to go off and marry some three headed, six legged bug creature from another dimension in order that we can get new Dilithium crystals for the warp drives or so the Federation can bring about a new alliance with the Romulans. Either way you never hear or see them again, they’re just another notch on the Captain’s tricorder.

A door glides open and a security officer enters.

“Ensign Smith the Bridge has been trying to contact you for the last hour, report to the Transporter now and prepare to beam down with the Landing Party.”

Fuck...

Andy Lippincott 1945-1990

2008-02-18T06:49:00.001-08:00

Andy Lippincott 1945 –1990

Eighteen years ago your death filled me full of sadness and on the morning I opened the Guardian and read about the last moments of your life, I cried. I had followed the last tragic weeks of your life as AIDS overwhelmed your ability to resist the inevitable. Every time you fought back it just got stronger and still you faced it all with a stoicism I couldn’t understand. If I had been you I would have been so angry. I would have spat out my frustration and railed against the world. Instead you checked out listening to the Beach Boys playing “Wouldn’t it be Nice”.

A lot of people, real people that I actually knew have died since that day in 1990, some I expected to lose like my Mum and Dad and others got ill and died. One got a lift from a guy, travelled a few hundred yards and hit a tree. Death is like that, it comes to all of us but when it does we seem surprised. We know when we drink too much we will get drunk or if we eat too much we will get fat but we never seem to come to terms with the fact that if we live too much then we die. I remember your death because it was the first that actually meant something to me and although you were a character in a cartoon strip that didn’t seem to make much difference. Today AIDs is still a killer and science is no nearer finding a cure. If you live in the developed world, drugs will keep you alive for a lot longer than in your day but for the rest of humanity it still rampages mercilessly onwards devouring the poor, uneducated and the unfortunate.

You also might like to know you are the only fictional character with a panel on the AIDS quilt. Your citation reads "In Loving Memory: Andy Lippincott 1945-1990. Community leader, conservationist, author, olympic medalist, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize!"

Killed By Your Own Non-Canon

2008-02-17T14:10:00.000-08:00

Looking at the Don Rosa drawing of Scrooge's grave and the cosplayers staging Aeris' death got me to thinking about canonical and non-canonical deaths within fictional worlds. It seems to me that the primary motivations behind writers of fan fiction are sex and death - either they want to get two characters together who never got it on in the 'official' universe, or they want to kill someone off. Killing off a character is the ultimate act of authorial control - it gives you the last word on who they were, in a way that resonates back through everything that came before.
Don Rosa went through a lot of pay disputes as a cartoonist. I think the Scrooge's grave picture was his way of asserting his ownership over Scrooge, a kind of two fingered salute at Disney and their greedily litigious licensing arm. A lot of FFVII fan fiction centres on the return of Aeris - indeed, for all the creators' insistence that she's actually dead, the movie, Advent Children, brings her back as a ghost, with American Beauty's Mena Suvari providing her voice.
Oh, and as a slightly weird coda to this whole digression, Aeris and Scrooge McDuck appear together in the hugely popular Disney-SquareEnix collaboration, Kingdom Hearts II.

I include here for your perusal a piece of particularly moving piece of fan fiction based on the death-heavy first-person shooter Doom, entitled: Doom - Repercussions of Evil. Watch out for the twist at the end.

John Stalvern waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were demons in the base. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to Cernel Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
John was a space marine for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad "I want to be on the ships daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY DEMONS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the space station base of the UAC he knew there were demons.
"This is Joson" the radio crackered. "You must fight the demons!"
So John gotted his palsma rifle and blew up the wall.
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the demons
"I will shoot at him" said the cyberdemon and he fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the demons" he shouted
The radio said "No, John. You are the demons"
And then John was a zombie.

The Daily Express: A year of Diana headlines

2008-02-17T06:43:00.000-08:00

• WHY DIANA WOULD HAVE LOVED KATE by her most trusted aide (29 December)

• DIANA: Princess predicted her own 'murder' Time and time again in the two years before her death, says the official report (18 December) [In other news: ROSEHIPS: THE NEW FOOD TO BEAT AGEING]

• DIANA SENSATION: US Spies confess to bugging her calls hours before she died (11 December) [In other news: SACKED BECAUSE WE ARE BRITISH]

• DIANA: Police tried to make me change my evidence, says key witness (6 December)

• WHO IS THE BRAINIEST OF THE ROYALS? [Picture options: Zara, Wills, Diana] (16 October) [In other news: While you'll have to mow your lawn all year round]

• DIANA: SCANDAL OF BODY MIX-UP (25 September)

• The day Diana helped bury a baby's body in the palace garden (12 September) [In other news: House prices hit new high]

• DIANA WAS SO MUCH IN LOVE (11 September) [In other news: How you can wish yourself a better life]

• He called himself Diana's rock, but look how the rock in Paul Burrell's ear has grown¿ by selling her out (6 September) [In other news: THE AMAZING PROTEIN DIET]

• HOW THE BUTLER HAS BETRAYED DIANA'S MEMORY (5 September) [In other news: THE NEW LOOK FOR BRITAIN'S HOSPITALS - They call this the 'inter-faith' gown]

• DIANA: We reveal the truth about her wedding plans in the days before her crash (4 September)

• THE DIANA DOSSIER- The witnesses they tried to discredit (1 September) - [In other news; CAR INSURANCE UP 40%]

• THE DIANA DOSSIER: Her summer of love that ended in tragedy (31 August):

• THE DIANA DOSSIER: Chaos, mystery and cover-up (30 August) [In other news: DIET THAT KEEPS THE BRAIN YOUNG]

• DIANA BLOOD TEST RESULTS FIDDLED (29 August)

• DIANA DEATH 'WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT' (21 August)

• Heather calls in Diana lawyer (9 August) [In other news: KNIFE CRIME SOARS BY 73%]

• DIANA: A mountain of new evidence but they can't find a judge who will hear it (4 August) [In other news: HOW CAN BLAIR JET OFF ON A JOLLY HOLIDAY?]

• The truth about Diana's amazing wedding dress (3 August) [In other news: BANNED: THE SECRET KILLER IN OUR FOOD]

• DIANA DEATH: NEW COVER UP FEARS (24 July)

• DIANA DEATH: BODYGUARDS FACE QUIZ (17 July) [In other news: Win a new Campervan!]

• OUTRAGE AT PICTURE OF DYING DIANA IN MAGAZINE (14 July)

• LOOKALIKE WIFE OF DIANA AFFAIR CAD (13 July) [In other news: Government can steal YOUR property but Tony Blair's property is exempt]

The inquest into Diana and Dodi Fayed's 1997 death is due in May
• DIANA ARREST DRAMA (3 July)

• DIANA: A NEW MURDER MYSTERY (19 July)

• DIANA DEATH: CRUCIAL NEW EVIDENCE (5 June)

• DIANA'S DEATH: 'I'M CLOSE TO TRUTH' (2 June)

• DIANA DEATH: NEW EVIDENCE (31 May)

• DIANA DEATH: TRUTH AT LAST (8 May)

• DIANA DEATH DOCTOR MADE TO TELL TRUTH (17 April) [In other news: The robot that can cut out cancer]

• QUEEN'S GRIEF OVER DIANA DEATH (16 April)

• DIANA: MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH (9 April)

• One year after wedding Duchess still can't replace Diana (6 April)

• DEATH OF DIANA: THE DOCTOR WHO KNOWS THE TRUTH (27 March)

• QUEEN'S ANGER AT INSULT TO DIANA (17 March)

• DIANA DEATH: INQUEST A SHAM (13 March)

• DIANA'S DEATH: 'DIRTY TRICKS BY MI6' (9 March) [In other news: Chocolate milk is the secret of longer life]

• DIANA'S DEATH: YET ANOTHER LIE IS EXPOSED (6 March)

• SPIES BUGGED DIANA'S LAST CALLS (27 February)

• DIANA: HOW SPY STARTED CAR CHASE DEATH (23 February)

• DIANA'S DEATH: PANIC AS TRUTH IS REVEALED (20 February)

• DIANA INQUIRY CHIEF'S LAPTOP SECRETS STOLEN (7 February) [In other news: Why we're too lazy to chop a lettuce]

• DIANA DEATH: Spies flashed laser beam at crash driver (6 February)

• CRUEL ATTACK ON DIANA (3 February) [In other news: Why our food is NOT as good as it used to be]

• DIANA: WHY DID SPIES VISIT THE MORGUE (30 January)

• DIANA 'DEATH SQUAD' RIDDLE (9 January)

Hamlet's Final Fantasy

2008-02-16T10:09:00.001-08:00

After watching Ross's youtube link to the death of Aeris in Final Fantasy VII (as someone who has at least 120 hours on the FFXII game clock, currently - and certainly well over 500 on the series in total, I consider myself something of a fan) I was struck, first by the rather obvious similarity between Aeris' watery cadaver and Ophelia's (particularly the fetishisation of the slain angel), but then, by the actual manner of her death, which recalled another part of Hamlet - the scene where Claudius is praying, and Hamlet sneaks up behind him, ready to do him in. Then Hamlet (I call him MC Hamlet) decides not to, because Claudius has just confessed his sins and therefore will go straight to Heaven if he's killed straight away. Of course, Sephiroth, the superpowerful super-soldier, is a bit more decisive, but the way the two scenes are classically portrayed in our culture seems really, really similar. Here's some pics from stagings of Hamlet and from nerdy cosplay recreations of FFVII.

Scrooge McReDux

2008-02-16T07:25:00.001-08:00

Sorry for taking up another blog post with this, but I couldn't work out how to embed pictures into the comments. Here's the closest-to-canonical evidence we've got of what happens after Scrooge McDuck's death:Huey, Dewey and Louie are made sole heirs to the McDuck fortune. It's not clear if, split three ways, his fortune would make them the three richest ducks in the world - fellow Scotsduck Flintheart Gloomgold was the world's second richest duck, but he was so miserly it's not clear if he'd bequeath his money to anyone or simply be buried with it like a pharaoh. The triplets seem pretty tight, but I wonder whether so much filthy lucre would strain their relationships. I'm actually not so cynical that I think they'd spend most of their adult lives in tortuous legal battles... actually, I am. That'd be a classic plot device, á la getting three wishes. (which they actually received in the Ducktales movie) We flash forward to see what happens to the triplets when they're rich beyond their wildest dreams - they begin to squabble over what the money should be spent on. Wily lawyers pour poison in their ears (do ducks have ears?) about each other. Litigation starts. Rapidly they squander the massive fortune and their relationship falls apart. Eventually, on the roof of the courthouse, almost broke, they fall into a massive three-way brawl. It intensifies, they struggle this way and that, then a punch sends Dewey reeling, almost over the edge of the building. The shock snaps them out of their rage. Panting, dirty, the triplets look ruefully at each other.
Huey: 'What are we doing?'
Louie: 'We nearly killed each other!'
Dewey: 'All because we wanted our own way!'
All: 'I wish we never had the stupid money!'
The boys pull off their torn suit jackets and battered top hats and red, green and blue bowties and hurl them over the side of the building. Then they take their remaining money, which they each keep in a carpetbag in bundles of dollar bills, and they begin flinging it over the side of the courthouse. 'Take it!' We don't want it anymore!' Their lawyers burst onto the roof, and see, with horror, what's going on. They try to stop the triplets, but are rebuffed. Rushing to the edge of the roof, they look down to see people in the street jostling, grabbing handfuls of cash. At this point, it is revealed that the lawyers' real concern is not for their clients, but their clients' money - they dash down to the street and join in the melee.
At last, Huey, Dewey and Louie grab their respective carpetbags and shake the last of the money out off the roof. A gust of wind catches the huge flurry of bills and send it riffling back into their faces. 'Ugh!' 'Agh!' 'Get off! We don't want you anymore!' 'We don't want your money!'
Transition to the triplets snoozing in a heap of cushions at Scrooge's Duckburg mansion. Scrooge's loyal butler, Duckworth, (who, despite his name, is an anthropomorphised dog) is trying to wake them by gently brushing their faces. They are kids again. Duckworth has a silver platter of milk and cookies. Louie lashes out: 'I said: "We don't want your money!"' The tray is knocked flying, Duckworth is soaked, hilariously.
He says something mordant and long-suffering like: 'I'll come back later then, young masters.'
The triplets rouse.
Huey: 'What?'
Dewey: 'So we're not rich?'
Louie: 'Then the whole thing was...'
All: 'A dream!'
They start leaping round and cheering, then they embrace. Then Dewey looks confused.
'Hey wait. We all had the same d-' [CUT TO END CREDITS]
Okay, this was drawn by Don Rosa. (the other major Scrooge cartoonist was Carl Barks, but it's Don Rosa who wrote the epic The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck) It's Scrooge's grave. The inscription says 'Fortuna Favet Fortibus' - fortune favours the brave. Those old timers are Donald and Daisy (apparently married), and at the back their are obviously Huey, Dewey and Louie. So, at least Rosa's aged them. Also, it's quite a humble grave, which is either sweet or sad, depending on how you look at it, and what you think old Unca Scrooge would've thought.
I know I'm overthinking this, and clearly overinvesting in thinly-sketched characters owned by a gigantic media conglomerate accused of questionable business practices, but, for me, it's a kind of deliberate trick. I really resent it when a poet or artist tries to manipulate me through their choice of subject matter, especially since the quality of the art is often in inverse proportion to the perceived weightiness of its message.
With something patently idiotic like Scrooge McDuck, I know that neither I nor my audience have any investment in him, aside from perhaps a weak chuckling recognition at the fact that he liked to swim through money. Ho ho. How unlikely. So that provides a weird kind of blank slate to talk about mortality and vulnerability and acquisition and regret, without ascribing any spurious import or cultural value to them. I'm not saying: This is a piece about my granddad, who I loved and was close to me. I'm not saying: This is a piece about historical figure a, who was culturally significant.
And of course, you can write superb, moving, important poems about real people or big events, and that kind of poetry is important and vital and can help us think and feel. But I like the challenge of trying to make people care, just a little, not just about someone who didn't exist, but about a character who did exist, but is firmly ensconced in the portion of our brains marked 'frivolous' and 'not worthy of compassion'. I'm not asserting I particularly succeeded, just that maybe my MO with this kind of poem is 'compassion for pop culture'. Or something.

The Day The Building Ate The Plane

2008-02-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

Hello,
I have been thinking about the last VWC project and how I could contribute to the next one. I am trying to combine death and martydom together in a modern way. I confess, this posting has recycled lines, I think four, that were in my last VWC piece. But it is only a frame at the moment which I'll build on. All thoughts welcome and thank you.

I saw a plane in plain sight fly into a butter building.
Honed and droned in like a bloodhound following a finger print stink,
And the building swallowed it, hole, gobbled its load

And

Belched back flames into the blue,

And

I know they’ve been hit before
But this is twisting black.
This is a shatter smack.
The emotion ripped through tear ducts
Travelled through lens and fibre optic flux

And

Breath was held.
Are their more?
Are you sure?

And
The people stood straight as it melted
Down and Down and Down
Down into pyroclastic snow
Covering earth, trapping bone.
But I can wind it back, back it winds
Up it goes, watch it again
I can freeze it.
I can see them now.
He has blue eyes, a yellow tie,
A wedding ring,
An Archimedes swing.
They are waving.
They are falling.
They are sunk.

Hello Fellow Undead Very Much Alive Artists

2008-02-15T08:32:00.000-08:00

Dead chuffed to be part of this blog for Voodoo Word Circus: The Dead That Never Lived in June 2008. VWC is the brain child or Monkfish Productions are we delighted to be working with Ross as our poet in res on this piece.

MMM....You guys are well ahead of me in your work already. I think that the idea of dead soap stars in parallel with events in the real actor's lives is really interesting and I think this would be a really interesting idea to germinate....

Huge McFuck

2008-02-14T16:41:00.000-08:00

I fully admit that at least eighty percent of my copious, perhaps damning, knowledge of Scrooge McDuck comes from factual crapshoot wikipedia. The great thing about wikipedia is that, unlike a conventional encyclopedia, where a team of academics assemble to decide what society needs to know about and to what degree, on wikipedia it's chucked out to the masses. The upshot is that the length of a person, place or subject's wikipedia entry acts as a rough index as to how much the world at large cares about it.

And daaaamn if the world at large don't care lots about Scrooge McDuck. His wikipedia article is longer than the ones for William Wallace, Robert Burns, or indeed actual ducks.

But who can genuinely say they're surprised? Uncle Scrooge's appeal to modern audiences quickly surpassed Donald's - after all, Scrooge swam in a lake of gold and travelled the world on adventures. What did Donald do? Get pissed off at a fly, or something.

But alas, this sainted canard had a flaw built into him from the start. His creator, Don Rosa, had committed to a birth year - 1867. In the infinite, magical kingdom of Disney, here was a character who, by dint of being born in a specific time, had a built-in expiration date. In a cast of deathless archetypes, Scrooge was mortal.

I'm not sure how canon his death-date of 1967 is. It would mean that the events of popular Scrooge-centric spinoff series Ducktales happened sometime between 1947 and his death - given the fairly static ages of Huey, Duey and Louie and Webigail, probably a span of no more than two years.

What were final days like? Who came to his funeral? Is there an afterlife in the Disney world? And, you know, in the last analysis, is there much difference between calling out into the void after a fictional character like Scrooge McDuck, and calling out after our ancestors, after the countless humans who've become no more than text and hearsay? Do we care whether it's God or grandpa or Yorrick's skull that calls back, just so long as somebody says something, dammit.

The Impossible Deathbed Lament Of Scrooge McDuck

Life
Is like a hurricane
Spend long enough
In its cosy eye
And soon
You come to think the whole world
Turns round you

Behind Killmotor Hill
The sunrise is fresh minted sovereigns
But the last son of Clan McDuck
Lies gasping for water in a golden bed
His grasping fist recalls young Donald, that
Apoplectic Hornblower
Who taught him the politics of rage
Age has Ebenezered his vigor
In its counting house of days

As a youngster, Scrooge rose early
Even then, he carried himself
With a certain avuncular aplomb
His gimp leg gifting him a tick-tocking surliness
His shinebox
Like an unexploded bomb

Lately, he cannot parse fact nuggets
From fool’s gold fables
He views his past
Through an astigmatic haze
A blurry tartan of
Fourth quarter forecasts
Tax havens, FTSE broadcasts
The jangling slang of ancient registers
Diamond money pins stabbed through
Bill folds like pioneers’ flags
Some pharaoh’s curse, a
Flash of bandaged paw,
This shapeshifting necromancer in Borneo
And the unholy rumble of Niagara
As he dangles
By his cane
From a frayed rope ladder

These days
He can no longer sort
The stupid angles of his brain
Nor even tame his bladder

But still
Clearest of all
He recalls
Impossible
Gem-sharp dreams
Where he swims through a gleaming cash lake
In a twelve-story Futurist cinderblock
Chock full of heaped tender
A bright Mammonite cathedral

He can taste the aroma of Rands, Francs and Kroner,
Heft each swan dive like a Faberge egg
Let the sure weight transport him to way back when
A butterfly stroke through a bluff of doubloons could
Cause an imbalance in the Yen

He has drowned his best years in that corpulent silo
Midased his own heart
Then set it to cool behind bulletproof glass
And a laser-web
There was always one more dime to covet
It was never money
It was the love of it

Now that lucent organ burns in the furnace of his chest
A lone piper gurning
Forcing a requiem down silted arteries:
Here’s the tree that never grew
Here’s the duck that never flew
Oblivion unhinges its dull, dull maw

For
Some mysteries are best left unsolved
Uncle Scrooge,
You cannot rewrite history.
There’s no recasting Custer’s busted pride
No tugging the bayonet
From Crazy Horse’s splendid back
And sewing shut the split
How many Bible black afternoons have you squandered
Staring into an open fridge
Wishing it was a time machine?

Step away from the collection plate, old man!
You can’t buy back your misspent youth
This is simple needle’s eye economics
Soon those bold grandnephews
’ll be straddling your cold carcass
Levering each gold tooth
From the final vault of your lockjaw rictus.
Ever the coin-biting pessimist
You missed the long con
This limited flesh was the true wooden nickel
Its obverse engraved by the reaper’s grim sickle

Caches to ashes
Boom to dust
In the golden calf
We antitrust

This is the big crash, McDuck,
The culling of the sacred cash cow
The Money Bin going molten
Billions in bullion
An ocean of faces, dates and franked slogans
Converging in meltdown
The merger
To end all mergers
It’s 1929 all over
Taking you so far into the black
You can’t breathe

And your heart trots out
Its last bland iambs
De dum
de dum
de dum
de dum
end stop

O there’s no asset-stripper
So doughty as Time
But friends,
We know the freedom of liquidity
For the wages of sin is death an a’ that,
But a wage, well, that means dignity.

Cathy

2008-02-14T15:27:00.000-08:00

Cathy
you wild you
kept on going you
truly weren’t I think -
stifled yourself
half to death
and died
your
muddy clogs off
in the dark
borderless yard

Your life so polar
spat and snarled yet
never whole
was wasted land
a mouth of soil
and broken neatly
down the middle-
yr breasts
got eaten
and kept
and corseted
in thorn and title
while fold-dark skies
kept on and splashing on
for what?

And it comes
to this-
kicking at the walls
like a
muzzled halfling-
you don’t know
or even fancy
the landscape in a man
full of hate- this
drawing room of sexless
paisley
like nothing else could do-
are you disabled?

Death-bound
in hills and crinoline
to love only man
or man-
would the real live space
of moorless you
go empty without
clamour?

He made couches out of commas

2008-02-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

The boy in the book
fucked his fist out,
took to making letter lists
sleep slicked himself with digits
and cubed bits and centimetres and pixels
and the scrits of kerf that lolled off the cover lip.

He knee waded deep to the pylon spine
and grout gripped as the arms all Ceilidh made moving,
the fist that fucked him, a footnote.
The scapula smuck of edit
got him at the edge of that Blackpool Penelope,
always he’d seen a signpost to the common,
but actually turned out it was a death wedge
of more story coming.

2008-02-14T14:18:00.000-08:00

The dead good

2008-02-14T11:23:00.000-08:00

Hmmm, interesting theme. So what do I have to say about it? I suppose writers are all going to come to this from their own interests and obsessions- which is what makes it so nteresting. But when I think death ,I think legend, and how people make sense and construct the departed with all their own seperate pieces. I think of Edgar Allan Poe

' There is nothing so poetic as the death of a beautiful woman'.

As a woman this pisses me off a bit, and yet it also rings true of society. There is a weird fetishisation of the dead when it comes to women- the women of paintings, film, and tabloid- which disturbs, and yet continues to fascinate. Don't all of us Know Marilyn died in the nude? Of course, we can't only blame Elton John.

How many paintings of Ophelia before the lake have we seen? Whether fictional or real the death of a beautiful woman intrigues, worries, presents is cautionary tale in picture book form; whether we want to or not we continue turning the page.

Here are a couple of my poems about the death of Marilyn from different points of view.

I'm also working on some monologues- but haven't finished them yet.

The Embalmer’s Wife

Truth is, I haven’t thought of her in years.
Remember his care reducing the swelling,
and after asking me to lend an eye.

Of course the movie make-up still had to be applied.
The partners nodded, said he’d done good;
it was only me who mentioned her chest.

Rather, the lack of it,
something the procedures took away.

I woke with the birds, snuck down
to cradle what should’ve been in my hand.

The enhancers just didn’t seem right.
I searched the house to find my children’s first socks,
a baby’s stuffed rabbit, powder puff,
small things, to stuff in
till she looked herself again.

These things that had been everywhere,
road trips, the coast, picnic, a wedding night,
seemed to make her complete.
As if I had taken her missing chest with me
to show it everything I thought it should see,
got to know it as it said goodbye.

The Undertaker’s Wife

The library book on de-cluttering
says everything you don’t use must go.
The house keeps its hands in its pockets,
I sneak up to find things I’ve never seen before.

An orgy of birthday cards, Christmases,
those lines of crosses in different colours.
Firing lines of kisses, I’m not sure if I claimed,
neat as sutures on the back of her neck.

An old white sheet her body somehow used
to create alps covered in snow.

In his bottom desk drawer, a lifetime later,
a small piece of brown paper,
the tag that looped round her big toe.

Niagara

Each day a little less left. She waters down her eyes

and turns up her smile so loud it’s white noise.

All that’s left is waterfall.

Water

fall

roars applause

as all eyes follow the perpetual

motion of her hips.

Her mouth moves on and on, as if cut

from a movie he hasn’t seen and spliced in.

Water

fall

conspires, won’t let her forget.

Her laugh like busy hands, exaggerated

for a dull husband in the wings.

A man with one word on his face

shakes the sense into her; his slap

like a tuning fork that makes her face sing.

Waterfall

sometimes

just falls.

Her look that could kill as he sleeps, keeps on

breathing, breathes in deep, as if it was love.

Waterfall in her ears

as she goes back to the house, something left behind,

searches room by room, like he moved into her

taking anything of value, closing doors,

turning out the lights.

Birthday

That year they didn’t sing anything
when the wife brought in the cake.

My son blew out the candles,
wax dinting the icing like snow prints,
when we asked the boy to make a wish.

The cards flapped when the door opened
or shut, seemed to sigh their greeting in my ear.

My daughter’s doll was naked on the birdbath.
The birds came and went
until night crept in.

The way those last days
she swapped her sentences for Hallmark verse,
Made her body stone by stone into sculpture,
sparkling rhinestones like the fossils of rain.

The Cellar

Old Joe never to spoke to Harry again
after he opened the cellar door.

His boots shuffled out
the pads of her toes,
her footsteps
no one knew were a tip toe in heels.
Rain prick of stiletto’s
like buried children’s toys in sand
on the dust on his floor.

Twenty years since a decent bottle of wine.
The white gloves where she left them,
folded one on top of the other in repose,
etched grey by years, waiting for a posy.

A light hand on his arm for that second
mummified.

First steps...

2008-02-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

Always been a bit apprehensive about doing one of these blog things but I'm getting involved tentatively. From what I can see death is on the cards and I found the first six pages of this Kisteva book on amazon today. Some of you may have heard me bang on about abjection before and I don't profess to really follow this essay but something about the wording of it makes it compelling. It definately resonates with me, it is a piece of psychoanalytic writing (lit crit, whatever) but I don't really consume it in that way. It's only the first six pages or so (which is probably about as much of it as I read when I was at uni).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/0231053479/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-page

Die, Di

2008-02-14T07:51:00.000-08:00

At the risk of upsetting a thousand lonely satellites, I propose The Death of Diana, Princess of Wales: A Tragi-Comedy in Three Parts.

In all seriousness, I would like to explore this bizarre period in recent British history - the accident, the aftermath, the very public, nauseating grief, the strange, failed attempts at civic memorials, the conspiracy theories, et al.

There's an excellent little pamphlet released by a think tank a few years ago called Conspicuous Compassion, which takes the Diana phenomenon as its prime example. I will use this is the basis of a piece of writing, perhaps.

aerith dies

2008-02-14T05:44:00.000-08:00

Probably the most controversial death in a computer game, the death of Aerith Gainsborough in Final Fantasy VII has become one of the most seminal moments in videogame history.

The fact that it caused such an uproar is interesting, to me at least. Probably because we believe that video games work to a very well-defined framework. We dont expect them to obey a moral code, but we expect them to be fair, in some sense. Therefore, when the story kills off a team member you had spent 70 hours training up, it breaks the frame. Cue grown men crying into their joypads.

An additional gripe is that Aerith's death pretty much removes the team's ability to use the 'Phoenix Down' magic option. Therefore, characters can no longer be revived if they get mortally wounded. All-in-all, its a big bony slap in the face from the grim reaper.

Is the reaction is a genuine outpouring of grief, or just a feeling of being swindled and pissed off? Maybe the reactions aren't so different anyhow.

Here's an extract from the wikipedia page:

In early planning stages of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith was to be one of only three protagonists. Before this, Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura decided that one character would have to die, and after creating the three characters, decided on Aerith after a long debate. Nomura stated in a 2005 EGM interview: "Cloud's the main character, so you can't really kill him. And Barrett... [sic] well, that's maybe too obvious". This was not changed after other protagonists were created.

While designing Final Fantasy VII, Tetsuya Nomura was frustrated with the "perennial dramatic cliché" where the protagonist must dramatically sacrifice herself to express her love for someone. He found that this appeared in both films and video games from North America and Japan. "Is it right to set such an example to people?" Director and scenario writer Yoshinori Kitase concludes:

"In the real world things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, 'If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.' These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood." —Yoshinori Kitase, Edge Magazine, May 2003

While reflecting on the game, Tetsuya Nomura claims that "Death should be something sudden and unexpected, and Aeris' death seemed more natural and realistic," and "When I reflect on Final Fantasy VII, the fact that fans were so offended by her sudden death probably means that we were successful with her character. If fans had simply accepted her death, that would have meant she wasn't an effective character." Rumors have circulated that Aerith can be resurrected in Final Fantasy VII or that the possibility was removed in development. "The world was expecting us to bring her back to life, as this is the classic convention". A lengthy petition asking for Aerith's revival by Japanese players was sent to scenario writer Yoshinori Kitase. However, Kitase states that "there are many meanings in Aerith's death and that could never happen"

off the air

2008-02-14T04:52:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a few years ago after the death of the actor Raul Julia. In particular, Julia's last on-screen role as M. Bison in Street Fighter the movie.

At the end of the film, Bison is roundhouse-kicked into a wall of televisions by Jean Claude Van-Damme. He is electrocuted and dies. As it happens, Van-Damme quips: "You're off the air. Permanently".

Julia was survived by his wife and two sons. I wanted to write something about how strange it would be to watch your dad die like that. This train of thought led onto feelings about my own dad, and that led to the poem.

I don't know why I changed it from Van-Damme to Rutger Hauer. I guess I wanted to distance it from Julia and make it seem like the events were happening inside a more generic action film. Anyway, here it is-

Rutger Hauer
_____________

My dad hijacks a nuclear missile
and threatens to launch it
at the Statue of Liberty
if his demands are not met.

He salutes a wall of televisions:
sallow-skinned agents are activated in Honduras,
followed by Washington, Rome, Peru…
Each with a briefcase handcuffed to their wrist

and a scorpion tattooed on one buttock.
Codes are scrambled. Intelligence suggests.
Manic laughter brings down a chopper, whilst
fresh ammunition is shuttled to the coast.

Dad puts a bullet through his general’s eye.
There are reports of a life-sign inside the perimeter.
Guards are found naked or not at all.
Torture chambers flood with blood.

The adventure ends. His army crushed,
my father stands alone on his secret island,
staring into broken radar screens, sparks
raining off his trim, well-decorated uniform.

I pause the video less than a second before
Rutger Hauer rolls out of the darkness, then
edge the film on, frame by frame, until
the image closes in like hands around a neck,

and my Dad’s eyes dilate for the last time,
lips dribbling scarlet plasma.
And then I get down on my hands and knees,
press my face against the television set,

and tell him that sometimes
it’s OK to lose.

Buy antichrists / sell red heifers

2008-02-14T04:31:00.000-08:00

Thought I would get things rolling with a few links to radio programmes.
Both of these are old episodes of This American Life:

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=114

(Stories of people's last words before death. Their one last shot at figuring things out, summing things up. One last moment of asserting the fact of our existence- at the moment of our annihilation.)

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=125

(Stories of the end of the world. More people believe it's more imminent than you probably realise.)

Finally this:

http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html

Its a stock exchange for the impeding apocalypse. Always worth keeping an eye on, especially if you're planning to take a holiday soon.