January 2010
18 posts
If it wasn't for his son, we wouldn't know
My mum read Salinger late on, at forty, when she decided to study English at university. This was instead of looking after my sister and I, pre-formative years. For three terms we were told to leave school for a different house, to someone else’s mother, to dinners prepared in such a different way to anything we’d experienced previously we were at once scared and excited to eat them.
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Captions for artworks (whose original captions...
- Landscape with village road and figures conversing in right foreground (behind what Dave described as “a might of colour”)
- Landscape with farmyard and figure drawing water from a well (that Jess suggested looked deceptively deep, before starting to panic)
- Landscape with small boy standing in left foreground (that Allan mentioned is lacking in any real “excitement”,...
Style defined by activity
We changed people’s hair. Not the colour. Just the way it grew. In what direction. Whether it curled.
We got rid of hereditary influence. People didn’t want to look like their parents. We made it grow depending on an individual’s movement. How fast they walked. Whether they skipped.
The hair of the quick grew backwards. Staying close to the scalp. In reaction to their battle...
Matthew Dear makes over-rated melancholy sound...
The Ascent of Everest by John Hunt (Review Part 1)
I ordered this book from Amazon sometime before Christmas on the recommendation of a ‘friend’. It arrived yesterday, three weeks late, which was a disappointment as much as the book’s lack of physicality is. I was not expecting it to fit through the letterbox.
Instead, (and I understand it’s not the most original of wishes), I was hoping for a mountain of a book;...
Piraeus, 1944
My grandfathers met briefly about thirty years before my mum and dad did. Nobody in my family knows exactly how, or what happened. The circumstances differ depending on the story-teller’s age. I’m thinking about writing a Wikipedia entry about it.
My gran says they met in Greece, “during the war.” She talks about most things honestly, without embellishment. She once turned...
Weather report
Our studio looks out onto a canal and it’s completely frozen. We’ve managed to make a few holes in the ice with rocks we’ve been hoarding, but it’s pretty thick. Thick enough, we think, to walk on. Later we’re all going to tape knives to the soles of our shoes and go skating.
Ben: Character references
1: I met Ben in a brothel. We were shutting that mother down and there were people all over the place, half-naked, hiding their faces. I remember a couple of kids - first day on the job - got a little over-excited and started throwing one of the girls around. Ben had a word - mentioned something about how even whores have feelings - and they stopped, immediately; they just put that little lady...
Compliments
You’ve got a sort of workman’s whistle. He’s a real page turner.
A list of bands who 'made it' in 2009 but will be...
1: The XX
Alternative endings
She has difficulty sleeping. He works from home but can’t stop thinking about the office. They decide to keep their heads down. He runs and runs. Time-travel. She says good riddance but doesn’t mean it. They raise that goddamn mountain to the floor.
The books gaze back
Life in a library. This is funny…
http://thebooksgazeback.wordpress.com/
Rob. Remember when I wrote this and sent it to...
Colour (varying) within strict parameters. Highlights added to otherwise sophisticated forms. The conservative application of refreshing structure. The downright playful. Rob is on the floor, rolling around in laughter. The whole place is a mess.
Let's get high on rye and dance
The truth is, on any other night that begins with some sort of mishap - a car failing, a slip on a patch of ice and the tearing of something - you can turn round and get off home, to safety. There’s little pressure, if any, to continue with an evening that is so immediately doomed to failure. But on New Years Eve there’s no such reprieve. You’re forced to carry on - drinking,...