Keyboard Tune

a hypnogogic texture

Declaration

My Name was Michael Rodney Bohemian, and this was my Favourite Song.

Rob Bell

Went to see Rob Bell at Liverpool Cathedral last night. Rob is a celebrity pastor from the states (easiest way of putting it) but he is quite unlike the usual perception of the preacher evangelist types who love the sound of their own voice on the God Channel.

He is young and full of questions. He is not afraid to answer questions too.

A man recently nabbed me in a cafe and gave me a bashing from his bible for ten minutes. It was in one ear and out the other. When it was over – mercy from above – I had no idea about the personality behind this makeshift sermon. He could have been Dan the Dagger man from Dagenham. The point is that too many people spout the bible like robots without offering any of their own opinions to substantiate it. And then there are those with testimonies that are difficult to grasp because they are 100% certain of some miracle or other which doesn't even qualify as a miracle to you.

Rob Bell knows the bible backward, but he writes his own books too. He’s got his own mind. It’s not a bad one. He was raising similar doubts to the ones I have. He suggested that if a 17 year old does not accept Jesus (or indeed never heard of him, or lived before Jesus’ time) then is he still being eternally punished 17,000 years later? He shed some light on the concept of eternity in as much as it is relative, like a weekend of bowls with nothing to drink compared to a weekend sampling Paris restaurants with Winona Ryder. FOREVER could be a mere 3 days, if you are buried alive.

Which got me thinking about TIME and SPACE, and my recent understanding that they are BEYOND our understanding.

He touched upon his future works involving QUANTUM PHYSICS. I have bookmarked that area myself and wonder if the quantum level is the next logical rung on the ladder for anyone searching for answers in general. There is only so much to measure in the top veneer of the world we have already mapped so well, and things behave so differently beneath the surface that defining the miraculous becomes that much easier.

So he’s a clever dude with faith, although at one point it was uncertain whose side he was on! But what gets me is his following. The turnout was great. They say the church is big business. This guy signed 500 books at the end in a blink. The queue stretched away like only a handful of authors can dream of. Hmm.

The cathedral is astoundingly magnificent inside; a shrine for a giant with no budget spared. Bit chilly though.

And Christians are NICE people. Everyone was smiling. Everyone looked trustworthy. If we all had been naked except for rucksacks full of liquor, soft drugs, and refrigerated Galaxy Caramels, it might have been Heaven right there and then.

THINGS LEARNED ABOUT LIFE LATELY: There is no D in refrigerated. Peas and Beans taste nice together. God hates me. And oh yeah...

You're gunna burn in Hell!

New Termite Piece

I’m delighted and thrilled to welcome another addition to the Termite family! It’s smashing to see a familiar face and he will be much loved of course, what with him being the cutest and all!

This white clay is best for sculpting because it is very soft and malleable. Not the best for threading though! Trying to sew the worms through the holes with this stuff was like trying to play pool with a rope, or have sex while rotten-eyed drunk! It was like knitting fog, I tell thee! Of the thirteen coils you can see on the front, there were at least fifty on the waste pile! All buzzin’ now however!

The rear side is so messy that it would take a perfectionist to even try and tidy it up. It’s best accepting the messiness as a design in and of itself.

And as for me, well, you know, I’m just spinning along on this wheel of life like everyone else, unable to get off, pause it for breath, or speed the damn thing up. Still learning from the same old mistakes, still shouting at pigeons, and still feeling occasionally hopeful despite being vaguely dissatisfied but uncertain why. Ya heard. Over and out. Roger that. Yup. Yippee. Hooray. Laters.

Dark Venus

I visited Dark Venus last week. Nothing’s been the same since. It was so hard to drag myself out of there. Maybe I should be done with it and move in with him? More TV than I need, and still the music I love. That's all that really matters, right? I made Dark Venus, but now he’s making me.

no need to knock just walk straight in

he knows you're coming and he's always waiting

Photographs

Sarah Connor: thru generations, space and time.

"Excuse me, have you got another bun please?"

Check below for what are quite rightly labelled as 'unexplainable'. http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/50-unexplainable-black-white-photos

Coral and Coils

CORAL TORCH...for showing the light, putting in fish tanks, or tooling yourself up with on the streets of Cameron's Britain.
IMPROMPTU PIECE...purpose undefined
COILS...for hanging up

Soundbites

‘Writing is not something you go to school to learn, it’s something you drop out of school to do.” Ray Garton

"Tom Lyons is a bacon." Graffiti, meaning Tom Lyons is a copper.

"The slower it takes you to make it the more you learn along the way." Anon

"4 grand mcguskins." My boy Stephen Farnham's way of saying she's had a four thousand pound boob job

“They can suck my d*ck while I’m puking.” Eminem

"I'm suffering from female addiction." Anon

"There was a massive and huge domestic rabbit loose on the pavement today. I actually crossed over to avoid it." Myself

"It's all senseless articulation in a howling void: you see cars and trains, I see shapes and forms." Tommy Lee Jones

"Suffer the pain of discipline today, or suffer the pain of regret tomorrow." Anon

* * *

I must say, this Google blogger is a proper ball-ache. I've never known anything to have such a mind of it's own. I have to alternate between two separate browsers just to do the simplest operation. It's preposterous. The effort and time it takes to publish anything that doesn't look an absolute mess is a joke. If it were up to Google, there would be no colour or line breaks in the text at all, and the pictures would be all over the place. It keeps changing as well, and getting worse. Doing random things I'm not asking of it, for no reason than to do my nut in. Becoming more hassle than it's worth now. No wonder so many other blogs look like a bag of shite. What a load of poppycock. Posting this way feels like doing the washing with a mangle and one arm tied behind my back. You wouldn't believe. Seriously, I'm not sure I can do this much longer. The goal was always a year, and that got done. A few weeks back, it almost got sacked off. Unless someone takes over...(hint-hint)

My pal David Lamont was dead right in saying: "Facebook, Twitter, Blogging...it's all a step too far."

Dre vs Tempah

Never been a Dre fan. Haven’t seen him for years, and never in a music vid, so this for me is a comeback. It’s an awesome comeback. He is still around, doing what he loves, and looking hench in the bargain. Eminem, despite been the best lyrical genius rapper ever, has corny verses in I Need A Doctor. The tune has a catchy keyboard effect all the way through his bits though. Dre comes in on the very last chorus, which the radio doesn’t always play, and if the weight training sequence doesn’t inspire, then maybe the flashbacks of his privileged career might touch you. The floating transparent spectre woman completes the package. The special effects on her are truly impressive. I can’t believe her. I’m struck by her image. It doesn’t look like much, but believe me someone worked their ass off on a computer making her look so ghostly and graceful. She’d make the perfect Hazel in Escaping Hazel!

When I first saw Tinie’s training sequence in Wonderman I laughed aloud because I saw it coming. It wasn’t until the vid had finished when I realised he was taking the piss. So instead of me laughing at him, I understood that he was laughing at the likes of Dre. Some may perceive his treadmill form to be a direct insult on the Dolph Lundgren bit in Rocky 4. James Bond is parodied too. I have to say that as long as the quality is this high, he can feel free to rip off and mock anyone he wants. Every shot in this vid is like a movie set up! The one where he is superimposed in front of Ellie Goulding’s face with a heads-up display is simply as good as it gets! I’m tellin’! The electronic element absolutely pings as well.

VERDICT: Close, but Tempah, because I ca’nae get it outta me head.

More on Writing

^^^DIGITAL POTTERY^^^

Termite Citadel flanked by Termite Monastery in front of unnamed slab.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~So Chapter 2 of a probable 7 in Escaping Hazel is almost done, and Chapter 3 is taken care of in terms of what happens where. For a day or two I had to really concentrate on what would happen because I was in Beginner’s Limbo but now it has gotten into a little flow I can relax some. It’s good to have it on the mind though. After doing nothing but short-short stories for 4 years, it’s a nice change to get into something longer. The start, with slow movers, can be boring and challenging, but soon the scenes become so interesting that they are almost like mini short stories in themselves, and little unscripted incidents which you don’t expect then grow bigger than anything else.

Lee Child said he likes to be as ‘in the dark’ as the reader about what happens next, when he’s doing a yearly bestseller starring Jack Reacher. I was surprised by that. He was fired from his job in TV as a forty-something and decided to write a novel. Supposedly, someone buys a Lee Child book every single second. Yeah, and Sandra Bullock is a munter.

Jack Reacher (6"5, body to die for, women wanna be with him, men wanna be him) is an ace character, and the one book I’ve read was high octane stuff. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that those kind of commercial novels in general come at little cost to the author. John Grisham, former top attorney and fellow career-switcher, is another example. So is Jeffrey Deaver (who outlines and plots his novels vigorously).

Thinking back, my own personal writing history has come out of big sacrifices. Or was born out of big problems. Or something like that.

A Writer's Life

Like A Cold You Came In...An illusion

Your Voice, Your Memory...All Inside My Head

Melting Into You...Destiny So Cruel

Story is ticking along nicely. Things falling into place slowly. Not the whole thing. Never the whole thing. Where’s the fun in that? Just enough to know what the next few scenes are about. So far, only an hour of TV a day and no radio outside of the bathroom. Even though I may only sit down to write for an hour throughout the whole day, that hour will have been thought about a lot. It’s far-fetched to think that after watching Graham Norton, or listening to Pete Price, or being brainwashed by trashy but excellently done music videos, I can expect to sit down and flow straight into an uninterrupted page of fluent script. Not happening.

To anyone who has ever spent a day or two in police cells, they will know that you only have your own mind for entertainment. Imagine how much ‘deep thinking’ Charles Bronson has done. I’ve never freely meditated this much before, out of choice. It’s because I don’t want to write any old bollocks. I want to know what’s coming next. I want to figure it out. And that requires thought. Typing this blog passage with some tunes on is bliss, all of a sudden! I am rich. If you have access to a tap, so are you. Figuratively speaking.

I’m writing bits n bobs on a table squeezed in the kitchen, in the library, in the cafe, and the pub’s next (although I better be careful because it’s 53 days without a tipple). This’ll be done within a few months. I’m living this one. Knowing it’s coming, later, even if only a couple of paragraphs, is comforting. I’d rather be doing something else, to be honest, but this is the way it is. I’m not too distant from a police cell, in a sense. I can’t do what I want, anyway, so I’m far from free. Not in the truest meaning of the word. Who is though?

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Enough. Did you hear about that 10 year old boy in the news who hung himself? They’re blaming the anti-depressants he was on. Even I know not to prescribe drugs to a boy of that age! That G.P takes the expression ‘Dr Feelgood’ to a whole new sinister level! What a tragedy. I didn’t know I was BORN, aged 10. Seriously. My consciousness hadn’t kicked in yet. To not only want to die, but go ahead and swing, at that age? WOW.

And what about the 18 year old who stabbed the 14 year old girl? See the picture of her? Who in their right mind would want to repeatedly stab a pretty young thing like that? I bet it was over something stupid.

"To all my niggas and my boys, my hoes and my tricks and my pimps, I bid you a jolly Sabbath."

6 Days, 6000 Words

When You Talk To Me,

It's Painful

Been Loving You For So Long,

Only Know Your Name

Had to stay up till half one in the morning to make the word count last night, which suggests this rate can’t last very long at all. Out on a limb from today having to invent prose from scratch, and the outline from months ago hardly holds water anymore. Story is about to take a new direction. It’s about to enter the ‘setting’. It’s an idyllic institution, of sorts. Could not make a habit of intense writing like this, because it’s hard not to repeat yourself. I could easily cut 3000 words out, because some of it is rambling – long paragraphs of personal first person narrative describing feelings, thoughts and emotions. Not anything happening, nobody talking, no descriptions, nothing.

The idea is to have the story strike out in a radical direction in the second phase, darting straight into a scene of characters with loads of dialogue and action. So the word count is set to dry up, but I’ve sketched a quick second outline. By outline, what I mean is 20 minute spider graph. Most importantly, I’ll have the book on my mind, and everything I ponder will be judged on merit for inclusion. No need to carry a notepad in my back burner, because everything about Escaping Hazel is sticking. Becoming tied up in this has been like slipping into an old, comfortable jacket, but now it gets a bit tricky.

Eating: Potatoes, chicken, rice, raison and cinnamon bagels, malted wheats, tuna and mayo on wholemeal bread. Listening to: YouTube favourite playlist, including popular music from female artistes such as Nicole Scherzinger (Poison), Lady Sovereign (Guitar), Pink (Like a Pill), Anastasia (Time), Amy MacDonald (Don’t Tell Me That It’s Over), Cheryl Cole (Parachute), and Nelly Furtado (Maneater). Brushing My Teeth With: Salt Water, grit, and finger.

Strong Start to New Book

Started typing up the first chapter of the new book on Thursday. Managing a 1000 words a day so far. Strictly typing, some might say that’s not much. Can usually average between 2 - 4000. The thing is, I’ve found myself rewriting as I go, and having to really think about the copy. I started this story exactly a year ago to this very day, and things have changed since then. Oh, I’m not putting that in, I think, but then have to make something else up to compensate for it. So I’m very happy with 1000 words a day. Every pen merchant under the sun would settle for that [apart from Dean Koontz, who pulls entire titles out his ass].

The challenge comes when I will have to make up the second chapter from scratch in a few days. With an outline, this might not be a problem. It might even be faster. As long as I write every day, I don’t see why I shouldn’t reach at least 500 words, which I would still very happily settle for. That’s the key – doing it daily. Lose the flow, and it means rereading over it all to help slip back in. Long gaps are good for letting the plot thicken in the real-time subconscious, but not when typing the draft up.

Whenever I read about writer’s harping on about their own work, it feels to me like they are squirting their smallness all over me*. They talk as if their characters really exist. They talk like they are creating something in the real world, not just arranging letters on paper. Get over yourself, I think. But the story behind the story is probably more interesting than the story itself, and most of all to whoever wrote it.

I’ll never be at the stage where NEIL GAIMAN is, taking before & after pictures of himself at his writing desk, pre- and post-shower & shave. This is not ME, ME, ME, oh no, never never never. Not unless success sweeps me off my feet and there is an actual demand from people all over the world to see me at the desk in my dressing gown. Even then, I’d wear a Hannibal Lecter mask, to make it more interesting, or goofy joke shop teeth. I'd have to get a dressing gown, too.

What this IS, however, is HAZEL, HAZEL, HAZEL. I’ll tell you that now for a fact. All I know for sure, so far, is that when she’s not in holographic form, she wears either a business suit or chunky black steel toe-capped boots. Whichever, she’s on my mind, and I have faith that she’ll come good.

*A quote from John Siddique, poet.

Termite Monastery & All the Same

TERMITE MONASTERY

Termite Monastery took maybe 2.5 hours. To remake, it would take less than 1 hour. It’s the first piece this year. Writer’s Block is a myth compared to Potter’s Block. It doesn’t even come close. There has to be a certain frame of mind involved before being prepared to shape something respectable from a lump of clay, especially hands only with no extruder involved (extruders make clay worms of varying thicknesses which can be wrapped or weaved into interesting shapes). As is common, there was a point when it was nearly scrapped and scrunched up to start again, but anything is salvageable because it’s a trial and error process. The clay does exactly what you want. A.D

DB TINK: Sample of latest song (bottom). The keyboard is running out of voices. What we have here is two versions of the same track, separated by 5 years and a better unit. Play old one first (top), but watch your ears don't pop. It was never DB Tink's purpose to create perfectly sounding tunes - nor harsh and screechy either though, ha! He only recorded stuff any old crap way so as not to forget the melody. He's saving them for when he has the right mike, and a belting machine. Give him a studio, and he’ll give you the world.

A Keyboard and Personal PC computer are 2 heavy contenders for desert island objects. What would you wish for if you were stranded on a desert island for all eternity: pool table, packed larder, expresso maker, doll house, toilet roll, go kart, the complete and unabridged commentaries of every test cricket match ever played as an audio book, a life size bronze cast of Laurence Llewelyn Bowen......or a better genie?

Madness on the M6

£NON-FICTION£

The sun is coming out. The weather is changing. The clocks are going back next week. It’s just that time of the year, after the doldrums following new year, when things begin to pick up, don’t you think?

What could be better than a walk in the Lake District? It was sweet. Fond hours along a nature trail with only the pleasing sight of RAF planes navigating by, rather than queues of static motor car traffic.

A nice day. A nice walk. Done. But on the way home...

A car – the very next car in front of us, on the motorway, doing 60 at least – drifts out of the left hand lane. I didn’t see that bit, to be honest. I just heard Julie saying “F*ck!” in that special tone of seriousness reserved for things that truly surprise or shock us. Now, Julie NEVER swears. The very first glimpse I got of the accident unravelling right in front of us was of a car rolling onto the grass beside the motorway and bouncing off a farmer’s dry-stone dyke.

The absolute key detail* is the blond female hair I saw coming out of the open sunroof as the car rolled. A car, flying through the air upside down, and blond female hair cascading from the sunroof. Then it came to rest and the second detail my mind recollects is the passenger, a man, get shook back into his seat like a doll.

Our speed takes us past them but then we pull up. I didn’t want to get out the car. I didn’t want to see. I’m not one for blood and gore. If her hair was hanging out the sunroof, then her head could have been too. That girl’s head could be like an egg for all I knew. One thing for sure, it was a damn serious crash. Off and rolling at motorway speeds is always going to be a serious crash.

It all happened so quick. And in slow motion at the same time. Weird.

I was expecting blood. I was thinking crimson. The idea that the car might explode never occurred to me, but the thought of a messy-bodied woman tangled in metal held me back for a good ten seconds at least before stepping out. The responsibility of being first on the scene is massive. It’s also horrible. You don’t know what the nuts to do.

But this girl is out before me. There’s a scratch on her finger and that’s it. Her passenger, her dad, is also unmarked. She is absolutely unscathed, considering. I’ve just seen her get tossed about, upside down, with her hair billowing out the sunroof, off the motorway, off a wall, and she’s just like, huh, totally fine. Completely fandabbydozy.

She’s shocked, oh you bet she is, doesn’t utter a single word, all distant and vague, but she’s actually on her feet, she’s stood up, looking girly and pretty and blessed and alive. A cut finger, nothing more. I wanted to hug her. I actually wanted to hug her. I did a kind of mild manly half cuddle with one arm and said something along the lines of “Well in love, I could see your hair blowing out through the sunroof, I’m glad you’re okay, you’re lucky to be alive, put the lottery numbers on this week.”

Eventually she sat and by the time the ambulance arrived she was breaking down into tears. Until then she remained blank and staring and in shock. Perhaps she did bang her head, and to be honest I don’t see how she couldn’t have banged her head (view picture), what with her head more or less dangling out of the sun roof as her small car’s flipping every which way but loose. The driver’s side is caved in. She must have been flung towards the passenger side when that happened.

We took her number so I should be able to find out what happens at the hospital, but like I say, the girl was standing up with a scratch on her pinkie when she should have been stuck red and dead. She cheated death. She told it to do one. Her name’s Emily, and here’s to her.

*Passing a separate wreck several years back, I remember seeing a potato on the road, which had come clear of some shopping bags. This car was upside down on concrete, and the driver had already been whipped away in a body bag. Absolute key detail.

4 Movies a Day Keeps _______* at Bay

Some covers just say it all, don't they?

What’s the most movies you ever got done watching in a day? I’ve been a fan of slipping straight into another one as soon as one finishes, and now and again I’ll even watch three, come bedtime, but Sunday was fixed with not three but FOUR movies, one of them even fleshed out with adverts on Channel 4.

They were FAIR GAME, TAKEN, THE SUNSET LIMITED, and SHOOTER. I almost turned the last one off after 90 minutes to watch something else, but stuck with the last quarter determinedly. The first one nearly got switched after just twenty minutes, but Naomi Watts can be very persuasive.

The Quentin Tarantino related his habit of watching three movies a day once in an interview, so ever since I considered this behaviour standard practice. Perhaps he has much better reason because he makes them, but still. If they’re decent movies, it’s time well spent. There’s a lot of crap about though. A ton of crap. The moviefilms I watch are carefully selected. Sometimes the title and/or front cover is usually enough, but if in doubt I like to see who’s in it, or try to glean a few plot details. If I ever watch a trailer in full, it means that I’ll never watch the film.

I distinctly prefer NOT to know the premise of a movie before I watch it. The less known, the better. Very rarely one knocks you off your feet anymore though; perhaps they had more effect when you were growing up because you were more emotionally receptive?

If it’s got Val Kilmer and Dakota Fanning in it, I’d much rather be pleasantly surprised by their sudden screen presence than by their names appearing at the beginning. I’d rather wait until the end for the director’s name too.

(One of the movies consisted of two men sat in a room talking about faith for ninety minutes. Not to most people's tastes I'd imagine, but right up my street).
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Sky News reported that Colonel Gaddafi’s forces have been ‘degraded’ by the recent coalition assaults. Degraded? What did we do, rush over there, line up all his troops, pull their underpants down, take some pictures, and post them on the web?
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DB TINKERBELL has found a new muscial avenue. Doesn't happen very often. In fact, only twice - once when he discovered Trance, and once when he discovered Symphonic Metal. How does your musical history pan out? Do you have special songs that trigger special memories? A kind of music that speaks louder than the rest? How tough would it be narrowing all you like down to your fav top ten songs? The bounce-bounce-heavy track below has brought the Asian download chart into vested consideration. Kicks in at 48 secs.

* reality, boredom, writing, cleaning, fingerbanging the neighbour's cat