Caleb Parkin's Brainthoughts and Pictures

www.skylabstories.wordpress.com

2011-05-17T03:20:00.000-07:00

Humans!

I no longer update this blog and am 'phasing it out'...

So please go to:

www.skylabstories.wordpress.com

There is up-to-date information of what I'm up to there!

Thank you thank you,

Calebx

Let Us Bite, Bite, Bite

2010-11-11T11:01:00.001-08:00

As ever: forgive me, it's been some time since my last blog.

Yesterday evening, I travelled over too Cardiff to install another Vermin poem in Tactile Bosch. The show is called 'Tenure' and the piece fits in well with that idea. The poem itself is written in red, on a duvet hanging from the ceiling, and the title, containing speakers which play the poem like a menacing phone call, are just above it. The publicity image is above, though I ended up using a pizza wheel/knife (with the word 'pizza' in it) as the cutlery to go either side of the participant's head...

Instructions:

Place your head to the pillow. Take a moment to rest. Feast your ears on what the bed
is saying. Read the small print under the duvet. Acknowledge you accept the Terms and
Conditions of your nap by writing your name on the front of the duvet. Just sign. Sweet
Dreams. Let us bite.

This piece invites you to be the guest of honour at a feast in New York. With vampires
everywhere in pop culture, the resurgence of one infestation in NYC presented delicious
potential to combine contracts and coercion, gangsters and gluttony.

Vermin takes as its starting point those species humanity has deemed ‘ excessive’ , pairing them with human excess: vengeful seagulls (Vermin I: Cull (After Hitchcock)), avaricious ants (Vermin II: Super.Organism), lusty pigeons (To His Coy Hen or, The Closest to the Dodo) and vain rats (Vermin IV: An Exact Science – previously installed at Tactile Bosch).

Here's what you hear through the pillow:

I'm planning to finish the last two Vermin pieces over the next two months and hoping to collaborate with an artist friend to illustrate them, in a set of little Beatrix-Potter-gone-wrong books...

Poo-tee-weet? Life doesn't have to be ugly.

2010-09-16T06:16:00.000-07:00

Once again, I have ventured forth into the realms of participatory arts...

This time, for a night at the Cube Cinema in Bristol called Beacons, Icons and Dykons, in honour of John Waters this time. The night consisted of various performances, some music and then a screening of 'Pink Flamingoes', Waters' proto-gross-out disgusting-fest starring the inimitable Divine.

The equally inimitable performance artist Paul Hurley (as my partner I would call him that, wouldn't I?) performed an epic cross-stage-licking piece inspired by this scene from the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl4f7wK67Uw

Suffice to say there was no kissing until a significant amount of tooth-brushing and drinking had washed away the stage-residue.

For my part, I carried out a sound piece called 'Poo-tee-weet?/Life Doesn't Have To Be Ugly' where I asked people to emulate Kathleen Turner 'Serial Mom' demonstrating her innocence to the visiting police officers by calling to the birds outside the window...

'Officers, life doesn't have to be ugly: just listening to the birds out there...'

It reminded me of the last moments of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse Five', in which a bird calls 'Poo-tee-weet?' in the wreckage of Dresden after the Allied bombing there.

Even though they are a mating call, a territorial cry, we see bird song as somehow innocent, free of mankind's apparent urge to destroy one another. So I thought it would be fun (well - interesting) to get people to emulate the bird song of the person who came before them and create a 'dawn chorus' of human birds to play in the foyer of the cinema. I'll aim to put up the results, perhaps with Serial Mom at the beginnning, once I get the technology sorted.

Powder-Monkey

2010-08-07T05:45:00.001-07:00

I read at a Pride fundraiser last night - a lovely event where various intrepid writers went off for twenty minutes to create pieces based around words shouted out by the audience. The quality of what they managed to make was really impressive and highly entertaining.

It fell to me to amuse those remaining for the intervening twenty minutes...And the second piece I performed contained the following villanelle, based around the terms 'Monkey Hangers' (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger ) and 'Powder Monkey' (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_monkey ).

Here's the poem:

Powder-Monkey

My hands and their eyes turned the pitchest of black
The sea waves the same to a creature or boy
So they’ll say that a monkey hangs over the deck.

For the days and leagues before we were wracked
The Captain’s tide turned; there were no ships ahoy,
My hands and their eyes turned thepitchest of black.

With Napoleon’s garb buttoned up to my neck
In my tiny cockade, a mechanical toy:
So they say that a monkey hangs over the deck.

When the gulls formed an Empire and started to peck,
The crew’s tattered bodies became Trompe-l'œil:
My hands and their eyes turned the pitchest of black.

When our enemy’s land became more than a speck
Sail-wrapped and mast-snapped, too numb to feel joy
They’ll say that a monkey hangs over the deck.

I wanted to plead but my salty tongue cracked,
The court on the sand didn’t know the word ‘boy’:
My hands and their eyes went the pitchest of black
As they cheer that a monkey hangs over the deck.

I also read a story, which I'll pop up on my Skylab Stories blog, as it's more of the psychadelic Victoriana...

Logan's Run Middle Class Butlins

2010-01-12T06:33:00.000-08:00

Forgive me, Blog, it's been some time since I last blog-ged.

Thanks goodness, the festive Season is over! As much as I'm not quite a bah-humbug type, I'm glad that life seems to be able to continue...

We're presently at Center Parcs in Elveden for my Mum's 60th birthday. A Canadian friend asked what it was and I said there were villas and a swimming complex and such - and she said 'So it's like Butlins?' To which I could only reply yes, ot's like a middle-class Butlins. My partner Paul initially though it was ALL under a big glass dome - like the 70s sci-fi film Logan's Run. But it's not - just the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, which we've already visited a couple of times - and gone on all the flumes and rapids. Fun.

This morning, my little nieces were excited about a squirrel outside on the summer tables and chairs. There's a lot of them here - it's re-asserted my idea that a Squirrel Army would be the most fearsome of weapons. Must start farming them.

Goodness, someone's obviously thought of it already!

Climbing Everest (Secretarial Services)

2009-12-17T07:57:00.001-08:00

Apologies for the terrible lapse in blog-age: what with moving house and the continued job-hunt and general readjustment to not-being-in-an-office-every-day-ness, I had a lapse.

However, I am not settled into my new abode - just down the corridor from Lady High Renaissance - and cracking on with things. One of which is filling in an Arts Council application for a project we may be doing at Clevedon Pier - the Funding Gods willing - next year.

To which end, I have just been to print out the forms so I can work my way through them in tangible paper from as well as ephemeral digital form (forms). Since the printing shop has shut along Gloucester Road, visited a shop just down the road called Everest Secretarial Services. It's worth a visit if only for the chat with the old lady who works there and for the window on another time it appears to be. With me, one other chap needing to fax some papers (a challenging two sheets) to India and another waiting (he had an appointment) for his CV to be rejigged, the lady was so flustered initially that she asked me to come back in a bit - even though all I wanted was to print from a memory stick. This was quite an advanced request, though. I can only imagine what she did to the CV, whatever it was I would imagine it was very en vogue in the late (19)70s.

However, in the short time that I was there she did convey the information that Imogen (who called but was told she was far too busy with three people waiting and was, perhaps, a daughter) was refusing to cook Christmas dinner for her in-laws as they'd forgotten her birthday; that Everest Lady had given up on the central heating and that was why the paper was steaming as it came out of the printer; and that if it did snow, she wanted to the M4, M25 AND A12 all to be blocked so that she didn't have to attend Christmas with Imogen or any of the others. They had the Daily Mail guide to birds on the wall. You could almost hear the sound of the mechanical typewriters in there...

OK, so the printing was 10p/sheet - eek! - but the added extras were pretty special.

Going Rouge: A Fabulous Life, by Me

2009-12-09T10:47:00.000-08:00

Just been reading a (fairly crass) satire of ol' gun-totin' hockey-playin' Sarah Palin's 'auto' biography. Let us be in no doubt there must have been significant ghost-writing here - to the extent of the film Poltergeist. He book is built on an Indian burial ground, it's that ghosty.

Here she is with a gun. She loves guns. For killin' animals and all.

I think there's ample scope for a gleefully camp take on it as per my blog entry title. Perhaps with me, or some other willing make-up wearer, as Palin all glammed-up with lots of rouge on, in the style of a Pierre et Gilles photo like these:

And this one:

That's it - I'm thinking LOTS of glitter, a very, very phallic gun and perhaps a protruding price tag from the bikini she'd be wearing. I'm sure she'd love it in all it's campery. Fabulous.

Monster Mistakes

2009-12-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, I received an email from the job site Monster.co.uk offering me a post as a Lollipop Man in Enfield. Apparently, this matched my search criteria. The only, single word which I can see fits is 'Council' as in my previous job at Bristol City Council. Beyond this, there is not one iota of geographical or skills-related matching there AT ALL.

If Monster.co.uk and it's 'Power Search' are anything to go by, then there is no hope! Monster Morons.

Grumpy Geisha

2009-12-07T08:41:00.001-08:00

Well, after a weekend of gallery openings, rave-geisha activity and socialising, today it's back to the grind of trying to find work and trying not to be grumpy about it - in spite of the deluge outside...

On Saturday, Paul and I donned neon-coloured Geisha outfits for an event in Dalston - www.towardsafluidstate.com

It started a little slowly as we didn't quite know what we were doing - never having been a rave-geisha before - but once everyone had a few drinks and we'd realised there was little brief other than encouraging people to buy the (actually very gorgeous) sake cocktails from our area. In the process, we got to try a variety of gins (from a frozen pussy, poured by a nice lady dressed as a cat), has some lovely chats with people, lots of photos taken with folks - and I received some tuition on how to walk better in heels by a ballet dancer. All in all a very jolly time.

This week it falls upon me to move house - joy! Always fun. So it's back to the boxes for me and then off to the gymnasium - I may as well stay a fit unemployed person while I'm still paying the membership...

Making a List, Checking It Twice, GOING TO FIND OUT

2009-12-04T09:03:00.000-08:00

I'm presently sat in my living room, having been distracted from filling in a Housing Benefit form - joy to the world - by my housemate and boyfriend's lovely singing of Christmas songs.

We've just been doing a delightful three part harmony version of Away in a Manger - whose lyrics are rather sweet and gentle as you'd imagine - and then moved on to the actually rather sinister Santa Clause is Coming To Town...As per the quote on the title line, it may as well be written about a serial killer selecting their victims.

Here are the lyrics:

You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
O! You better watch out!
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town

Here is my re-envisioning as an informational poster to warn parents about this sinister visitor:

WATCH OUT
DO NOT CRY
DO NOT POUT
THIS IS WHY:
He Is Coming

He has a list
Accurately researched
He knows
He Is Coming
He sees you
He knows
He knows
For goodness sake
WATCH OUT

WATCH OUT
DO NOT CRY
DO NOT POUT
THIS IS WHY:
He Is Coming
HE IS COMING

That's my Christmas card sorted.

Faux-Chav Wear, Diction Insults and Cycle Blindness

2009-12-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

Well, today after attending the gymnasium, I stayed in my sportswear to go to Broadmead. When in Rome etc. While there, a young man also in trainers, tracksuit bottoms and baseball cap (but as day-to-day wear) asked me for the time - and I wondered, would he have done so if I was in dandy coat and smart attire? Maybe there's a code of conduct which states you can only ask another be-hoodied personages such things.

I replied 'It's quarter to two,' and he asked, smiling 'Quarter to, or quarter to two?'

'To two,' I replied, with better clarity. 'Terrible diction.' But he did not hear this second part. How dare he insult my drama-degree educated diction? Ruffian. Next time I shall spit the time at him. Not literally, of course. How vulgar.

Also while in Broadmead, I was amazed at how many people simply WALK OUT IN FRONT OF YOU if you're on a bicycle. Is the principle here that you can only be run-into by things which make a noise? For this is not the case. People are then somehow affronted if one uses the bell - so perhaps what I need is a steampunk bicycle something like this:

With an OVERSIZED BELL/HOOTER, measuring perhaps 1 metre along the side of the bike, like this:

No time to photoshop this right now, but you get the idea.

BOOM! BOOM!

2009-12-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

It's that time of the month again...No, not that one - it's THEME CHANGE time.

H Ren and I just attended the galleries and took a late luncheon after one had one's interview with the Man about one's Allowance (dole). Our discussion ranged around a few ideas - including the persistent yet too-bizarre 'Tap Tap Tap Month' until we set upon our final, defiant theme, it's:

BOOM MONTH

Yes, in spite of all the Liquidations, Administrations, Downsizings, Unemployments (and I speak here from very personal, current experience) it's time for some end-of-year BOOM. Of whichever sorts we see fit. Of course, with H Ren's imminent show and the fortune that awaits from the wealthy artistic benefactors lurking out amidst the towers of Bad Debt (was there ever a good kind?) BOOM is sure to be just around the corner...

To celebrate, here are a selection of serious booms:

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Also featured is Basil Brush, who loves to say BOOM and is also very Dandy (for a Fox) as well as fitting in nicely to H Ren's recent sub-theme/look of Game-Keeper. Perhaps she'll take Basil out with the Duck of Prey. More on the DoP later in the week...

Evil laughing in the face of Uncertainty

2009-12-01T00:13:00.000-08:00

Being as I'm now unemployed, I think a ramping-up of the Blog effort is in order.

Since I last wrote, I've ended my 'proper work' at the BBC (as it dried up) and been to Thailand - which was nice. This morning, I awoke early with things on my mind (of a lurrve-related nature, but I won't bore you with it too much) and have an interview with a job Advisor at 11. All being well, I'll then be an official Dole Scummer. Awesome. Penniless writer status is imminent.

With regards to present uncertainty - I shall only post up the following song and its lyrics - because as I listened to Erlend Oye's lovely song (he's a legend), it occurred it spoke very well for me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjUrAJAl01I&feature=related

Courage

Having said what I needed to,
Having shown what I feel for you,
What my intentions have been today.
Now it's time for you to do the same.
And no love can be guaranteed.
It don't come with no warranties.
It's a leap you have to make.
It's the risk we all must take.

Well it's clear where the cutting line
Woke up deep for the longest time.
But I can't offer any help.
You must do this all by yourself.
And no love can be guaranteed.
It don't come with no warranties.
So wake up, or wake up alone.
If you want me, show some
Courage, courage, courage, courage,
Courage, courage, courage, courage,
Courage, courage, courage, courage,
Courage, courage. Show some
Courage, courage, courage, courage,
Courage, courage. Show some
Courage, courage, courage, courage,
Courage, courage.

Henceforth, I shall endeavour to stick something up on here every day of interest...

By way of something a little lighter, I was chatting to my dear friend H Ren yesterday (who has a show opening at 2 Degrees Gallery, Montpelier on Friday) and she started to do her patented Halloween Cackle - a maniacal laugh she developed while we were out clubbing that night.

So here are my Top Five Evil Laughs:

1) The Count from Sesame Street (OK, so he's not evil and actually teaches kids to count - but it still, err, counts OK?)

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJxKvwMIVtA&feature=fvst

2) Skeletor from He-Man/She-Ra. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au9nTSkPZNk

3) Dick Dastardley/Muttley (more Muttley) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZm47SrmuwMSee:

4) Dexter of Dexter's Lab - can't find it on YouTube though!

5) And last, but by no means least - as it's the inspiration for H Ren's to be sure - The Wicked Witch of the West: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGm7DLMhQxo

Until next time, Evildoers!

Clear Autumn - a seasonal apocalyptic story...

2009-10-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a year or so ago, but thought I'd pop it up on the blog in case anyone should read it...

Clear Autumn

I’ve been thinking about change recently: how we notice it, when we notice it, what counts in our mind as a change worth noting. The changes in my body seemed only slight, but were obviously the start of some decisive decline. I can see that now. Drawn over the past, the line of change seems so clear.

So it is with all our lives now. There wasn’t a cataclysm or a boom which bust up the party – more of a slowing-down and fizzling out, like a sparkler in a bucket of water. There was conflict, of course, and there were those who did not weather the change – but things have levelled out again, only with less colour, less extravagance. Whatever paints life has lost most of its palette.

Near my home, I walk around the tree-lined streets some days. We used to walk for miles on our four strong legs - young man’s legs – out to the woods beyond the gorge: our hands warm and knitted together as we strode through the unravelling seasons. It’s harder to reach the woods now with the bridge gone – and it would take much more than twenty pence to cross that icon again. Although the television says it’s not a good idea to walk alone, even in the daytime, I cannot just stay inside and watch the endless repeats on the ever fewer channels that move across the tiny screen. It’s less a window on the world these days and more a porthole in a sinking ship. Perhaps the news itself is a repeat - there seems to be no system. There used to be so many channels, catering for every niche taste and sub-group, but they’ve become much less complex, less important. Televisions once grew larger and larger, as if the age of the dinosaurs were upon us again, but became prone to natural selection and began to shrink again. But there was no meteor, just a slow starvation.

The sun seems larger than it should on this bright autumn day. I carefully tread the tectonic plates of the pavement (of which there are more and more) alongside the rows of moulding fossil cars . Everything is out of scale, out of place. Out Of Scale, I laugh out loud, the title of the dinosaurs’ biography. Sometimes I think up the fossils’ Latin names, though I don’t know that ancient tongue, and mix it with made-up marketing words; words which were designed to capture an idea that would capture us. Mondeosaurus Ex. Fronteracus. Rangia Roverius. I loved these creatures as a boy, dominant on every continent. I suppose parts of me are getting older faster than others, dying more hastily, so I walk slowly to be democratic to my body while indulging my boyish mind. I feel like the world, divided in to time-zones: – some entering night, some still clinging to dusk. Dividing in to more and more paving slabs.

As I pass the park the industrious crowd of rabbits barely look up as they consume the green of the grass. They are so numerous now that those few of us that walk past don’t seem a threat. I don’t like it when we have to use them, abuse their trusting nature, but they are plentiful, nearby and easy to catch; so it makes sense. I remember cooking Indonesian rabbit stir-fry once a long time ago, in the early days. How we both cringed at having to cut through the bone of our market-bought meat. It’s necessity now, not novelty. A raven lands in front of me on the cracked slab surface, and we stare at each other. It seems to be listening for something, from me or from the sky, but all we can hear is the leaves.

It was around a week ago I began to notice the change. Not the normal change, a new one: a change in the change. They turned pale, as they have each year, but then continued to turn paler and paler, until they could not be seen at all. They moved through the spectrum from green to yellow and red and then vanished into a range beyond the human eye. They had not ceased to be, but just ceased to be seen, by us, by me. The air around the deciduous trees looks like an inverted heat haze – the transparent leaves make the image wobble, like a dream-sequence or flash-back on the oldest repeats. It took me a while to notice that it’s not just the deciduous trees who have taken this unknown cue to sleep – it’s all of them.

The few people I pass and acknowledge move through the transparent detritus as I do - slowly, uncertainly. The substance of the leaves hit me as they fall, startling me, though their light does not strike my eyes. In the places where the wind deposits them, drifts build and I nearly fall as I walk through them. This is not such a change: my legs are so heavy that it feels as though the air is thick and rotting. But it’s the sound that alerts me to the drifts more than anything else: the crunch and squelch, mixing with the sound of rushing in my ears. Volume up, brightness down. On the colder days, they scrape along the ruptured pavements and shatter beneath my feet. Sometimes carrier bags get caught in these troops of dancing shards, and because I cannot see the scraping leaves, it seems the sound of the bag is amplified; one voice copied and pasted, thousands and thousands of times. A trapped voice, like his – trapped in the call-minder which now has only silence to mind. I catch myself in one of the fractured shop windows and notice how pale I am. Perhaps I will go the way of the leaves – falling, invisible.

I pass the doctor’s surgery, but it’s still the same. I’m running out of the prescription and I have to take more and more each day. It has been locked for a few weeks now. I wonder what has happened to the nice lady behind the prescription counter who always smiled, even whilst shaking, and was always well turned out in spite of everything. I hope she is OK. I hope everyone is OK. I return home and unlock the yale lock, the second lock, the third.

He was there waiting for me, in the frame, with my mobile phone next to it. I switch it on for a few moments sometimes, though it always says the same thing. I allow myself to look at one of the text messages from before, hoping the bars will spring up and the network will appear and a new message will come to me. The signal that meant we could talk. Some sort of explanation. He was lost in one of the storms over-seas – not lost to the world I hope, but to me – and there was little hope of getting back in to this country now. If there is such a thing.

From my well-worn place in the arm-chair (which was red once, but now more grey) I try switching the television on, but it won’t. I stare at the dusty image of two bright faces and equally bright clothes, and remember how our colours deepened. How our passionate red remained, but mixed with all the colours of our years together. All these memories are just compost now. Compost that will feed nothing. In the corner of my eye, I think I see a plane glinting in a blue patch in the sky, but it’s just an apparition, a reflex from before. The apparition of the leaves is real though, and the square of sky in the window shimmers as they pass. It’s like the window itself is trying to change channel, but cannot. This is it now – the only thing I can watch. Everything dying, becoming clear.

'Human Waste' - a new story

2009-09-13T09:54:00.000-07:00

Well I mentioned an odd fixation with Royal Mail/letters in stories in my last post - so here's another story which, while not primarily about the post man, does feature a rather unfortunate one...

This will get a looking over soon, but here's the first draft I wrote mainly on the train to Port Eliot a while back and have finally typed up. I hope you enjoy it (if anyone reads it!)...

Human Waste

She’s not sure how long she’s been sitting here, at the end of the corridor facing the front door. She daren’t go nearer to it because she knows the box is there, just outside on the pavement. Her stomach rumbles loudly, and she jumps. This was not the diet she had envisaged and fight-or-flight responses were not the exercise she wanted.

A number of options have now passed through her mind to escape, but the absurdity of it all has stifled them. She should just walk out, through her front door. At the moment – it’s around 10.30 on Tuesday – she’s waiting to see if the post arrives. Or rather, she’s waiting to see if the postman arrives. She shudders as she remembers yesterday morning: the thud of the letters on the doormat, the single step the postie took before SLAM the lid of the food waste bin, a muffled cry and a faint crunch. She assumed the post bag must still be there, unless that went too, so surely someone would be along to get it soon? They probably don’t care, she thinks, Or they’ll just send another temp. Another temp, like me.

One of yesterday’s (possibly final) batch of letters was from her current employer informing her they would no longer be requiring her services, but that they ‘wished her every success for the future.’ Was this what they meant? Perhaps it was the letter slopping on the doormat which has heralded her present incarceration?

A couple of hours have passed and she thinks it’s time to eat something. There’s some slightly-past-it apricots languishing in the fruit bowl. She picks one up, and it has begun to turn soft and discoloured beneath, like a half-moon, waxing. Instinctively, she goes to place it in the little food bin under the sink, then stops. It’s too full and too old and she doesn’t want to open it. Why this week for the bin-men’s strike? Of all the weeks they could have done it?! In a moment of rage, she storms down the corridor towards the front door, yale lock down, second lock open, steps out and leans – rotting apricot in hand – to open the large brown box. In the split-second she does, it starts to shake violently, the lid begins to lift and something starts to emerge from within, slowly. It’s hairy, but not in a mammalian way – more like something seen under a microscope. Attached to one of the hair-like things is a scrap of red fabric, just the colour of a Royal Mail uniform. She turns, apricot at arm’s length, through the door, closes it quietly, walks back down the corridor and turns around. She realises she’s crushed the apricot in her hand and orange gloop is dripping to the floor.

In her head she can see the image of a pop-up book about insects she had as a child. On one page, a paper recreation of a trapdoor spider lurking under its hatch to punce on a printed ant each time you opened the book. She wishes she turned the box’s handle over to the ‘locked’ position, though she doubts that could stop it. She wishes she didn’t feel so much like an image of prey.
She’s holding the letter from the stationary company who have sacked her and thinking about the manager’s comments:

On Monday last week, it was, ‘Nice weekend? You’re looking really well.’ Really well.

On Tuesday, it was, ‘That skirt’s nice – it really suits someone your shape.’ Your shape?

On Thursday, ‘Did you see Nigella last night? I bet you love her, don’t you.’ It wasn’t a question, it was an assumption.

Finally, on Friday, ‘You going out for a few drinks tonight? Yeah.’ Yeah. She didn’t wait for the answer, she just knew she’d be eating, drinking, eating, drinking, growing ever less her idea of woman-shaped by the day until she galumphed back into the office for another round of not-quite-insults. Beneath every phrase which slipped through her lips was a layer of Heat--magazine close-up-on-the-thighs paparazzi FAT. So as the last two weeks have passed, our hallway captive has started putting ever more food in her brown bins. And, at this very time, the bin men have struck, the transition from one telecommunications company to another has meant no phone, no internet and the joystick of her mobile phone refuses to go down or right, as well as the poor reception in this urban canyon. The word ‘canyon’ makes her think again of the trap-door spider in the sandy desert and the ant printed on the page, an eternal and unattainable target. This all feels like a trap. This all feels like something the predator in the brown box arranged. Tomorrow morning, the Telewest man is due at 9am. She doesn’t want him to go the way of the post-man. She doesn’t want it to have another meal.

She holds the letter in one hand and traces the word ‘Success’ with her forefinger, over and over. Even the manager’s signature is prim and priggish, all straight lines and little loops.

A few minutes later, there is a chirpy mewing from outside: a local cat, eager for its evening meal. She recognises its sing-song dinnertime patter: it’s the same tortoiseshell cat which has left dismembered mice and non-specific rodent viscera outside on the pavement a few times – as a token of its love, no doubt its owners would say. It is chirruping while it marks its scent on any available doorframe until there are reliable human legs to rub against. Not my doorframe, she thinks, Not now.

Moments later she can hear the box rumbling against the pavement and the merry meowing becomes a guttural screech as the inevitable happens. A crunch, a low rumble and what sounds like a belch issue forth from outside the front door. It’s hardly a Sheba advert, she thinks – the cat never becomes dinner in those.

People joke about it, don’t they? Don’t leave those socks there, they’ll grow legs and start running around on their own if they get much smellier.’ But they wouldn’t count on this.

I found something prehistoric at the back of the fridge! But that was just mould, a fluffy culture on a piece of cheese.

I don’t know what it used to be, but it had almost evolved into a new life-form…But if it really did, would this be it?

For the last two weeks she just hasn’t felt like eating. Food which would usually have gone into her stomach has slid into the fetid box, then into the strata of decay in the larger one. It was only a day or two ago she realised the bin men hadn’t collected anything and by that point it must already have been packed to the brim. Not only with food, but with the snide comments which had put her off it. She could see straight through them and yet in her subordinate state all their subtle, pernicious seasoning had burrowed into her subconscious. A bead of sweat – it’s been the hottest June for years – drips from her brow and on to the letter. It lands on the word ‘future’ and the ink runs. The paper rips in her hands and she tears it into as many pieces as she can.

Her head feels like it’s full of sand. She sees an arid landscape covered in a banquet of cream cakes, pavlova, gateaux and they all begin to turn fecund, sizzling in the sun and decaying at high speed. It’s like an M&S dessert desert. As night falls double-time over the landscape it isn’t dark blue but the brown of the food waste bin lid enveloping the sky.

As it does, a shape is silhouetted against it, something living. She wants to see it fully, to witness it and note down its features, but all she knows is that it’s hungry. As the bin-lid night slams finally shut, her eyes spring open and there are several loud raps at the door. The letterbox is pushed inwards and from her position on the floor, she can see a human eye peering in.

‘Hello?’ says the eye.

She stands slowly and walks towards the door. Turning the lock down, her head swings instinctively down to the ground on the left to the food bin. There’s one there – but not the one she remembers. This one is shining clean and there’s a slip attached to the handle (which is still in the ‘Unlocked’ position) printed in bold, municipal typeface and friendly graphics of people looking implausibly happy to be recycling.

We’ve replaced your food bin because it appeared to be broken. Thank you for continuing to compost with us!

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ – she has forgotten all about the man at the door. It’s the post man. Well, it’s a post man.

‘Oh yes. Who are you?’ she enquires.

The man gazes down at his red uniform, his reflective bag and gestures to the little crown emblazoned on his chest.

‘I’m the post man…’ he replies, at the edge of sarcasm.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Oh – well now I am: the last guy just walked off the job apparently. So they just got me in from the agency. It’s such a disposable culture now, know what I mean?’

‘Yes. Sure.’ She says, taking the the letters and smiling, but not all the way to her eyes. She doesn’t know about that, but she knows she’s hungry.

On the way to the shop, she sees a photocopied, handwritten sign on a lamp-post, with a forlorn image of a tortoiseshell cat on it and a mobile number to call. She hopes they find Tammy – she really does – but she doubts it.

'Imagine all those people who'll never get their letters...'

2009-09-10T08:03:00.001-07:00

I'd forgotten I'd written another poem based around a Coventry experience - going to pick up a letter.

Images of letters and the postal service seem to crop up in my writing - a post man (post-man?) has been eaten in a story I'm writing (called Human Waste, which I'll post up soon) and the last story I read at Folk Tales - 'Whale Fall' - had a post box and its contents being stolen by Giant Isopods. 'Think of all those people who'll never get their letters,' says an old Bristolian lady looking on.

Maybe that's the image: how many of us never receive the messages others send, or vice-versa.

Earlier on, I was looking into getting a Royal Mail bike, but I'm not sure you can. Shame. I thought I could be rather Mercurial on it - winging around imbued with potential messages which I may or may not manage to send. There's something pleasing about it. And I just like the redness of the uniform and the bikes.

Anyway - here's what I wrote:

I needed the key
in the letter
from the form
but the plexi-glass laughed
with only second-class mirth
for returning (as it stated)
only two hours
post attempt
at 0752.
In the queue
on the wall
of this modernist monolith
taken from a brother
of the concrete Duplo briquettes
from the background
where this solo family photo’s set.

‘You shouldn’t trust the form,’
she said, the red of the P740
flashing through her crowned chest
and to her eyes. I smile
but with no return address. Next
to the strata’d grey and brown
of the window back in, a
war memorial reads:
‘To all those who fell
in the Two Great Wars from…’

But the words cannot be seen
perhaps the letters never delivered
in this light, or left clear for
[Your Name Here]

As I pass beneath
the oblong grey
the frame splits:
I watch myself approach the door
from the other side,
inside-out, my red-handed
Sooner-or-later self.

Epic delays while Sent To Coventry...

2009-09-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems I've neglected my blog once again over a period of months.

I've been working away in Coventry since June - I have been, literally, Sent To Coventry. The project we've been doing here has been expansive, challenging and at times very hard: a youth theatre production coupled with a TV production is no mean feat.

But that's another story, and one for after the transmission so's I don't get into any trouble (not that I would as noone reads this - except maybe (and thank you) my two subscribers). While I was seated backstage today I started to jot down a Cov sonnet which I suppose is inspired by its often rather dreary architecture and the sad history which bore it:

O fateful twisting ring-ed Road of Cov,
Whose exits one to nine swoop sharp and low,
In aspect city-fitting like a glove
Of concrete or a sock, a washing blow.

The AXA oblong thinks itself, reflects
Each passing sky, outmoded idea.
Cathedral spire whose roofless mouth inflects
The burning echoes, siren-scream through years

Of incandescent steely reveries
And hyper-hopeful modernistic mores
With mega-boom untold prosperities
Spread over umpteen polyester floors.

But we forget, O lest (oh yes) we do
That history's a question, not a clue.

Art Phuture Farm

2009-05-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well then - this is long overdue...

I thought I'd post up the work I did over the weekend - the group from We Haunt ( www.greycontent.org.uk/wehaunt ) which unfortunately I'm not a 'regular' member of this year...However, I went along to a group excursion to Susie's farm in Pembrokeshire over the weekend - and got involved in making some work and some photos.

On Saturday night we all got involved in Michal's (www.michaliwanowski.com) photography around the farm with his technique of using a high-power torch and long-exposure. The results were really amazing...Here's my 'portrait':

For my part, I found it quite overwhelming being in the space as I don't usually work in site-specific performance of the kind the other artists are perhaps more well-versed in. But I forced myself to go round and do some automatic writing on the Saturday and then boiled it down and did a roving performance on Sunday - in the same car but covered in feathers.

After my initial writing, I decided on three loose 'rules' for the writing, which were:

1. The birds are in control.

2. The farm is a machine.

3. I am a cog in that machine, but I do not know what I am for.

Here's what I wrote:

I: (by the barn at the top of the hill)

On the roof here too, loudly.
Spare barbed wire, coiled
in crowns, slithering.
To keep them out - not me in.
I think that's it. It seems
to be growing. The vines on
the back wall pierce brick
like skin, growing. Coiled,
ready for a meal of something.
There are tools, but not for anything
I can do; shaped for elements
I can't see or touch or harvest.
Symbols which might be language.
I recognise the skull at least,
and the X, but it doesn't
translate. Arrow-shaped bodies
dart past, taking lives in their
mouths without chewing.

II: (by the dairy)

I know they need fluid, but
not which kind, or if I am
the right part to offer it. Sounds
through pipes, instrument-light,
flutter-roof, bangbangbang low-
rumble corrugated doors in
stereoscopic sound. They want it,
the gauges are their eyes above
and they might never come down
unless I find my part. It is
rusty and the roof is scratching at
my scalp again. In the other room
duracel-manic-flap, back and forth,
one is here and here is not
the sky. There's a code and
it must be one I have
inside me if they
need me, here.

III: (by the branding gate/machine)

It is inviting, high enough for
me, but my horns were lost
among the grass some time ago
where they took root and
sprouted more of these devices.
But they are not ready yet, still
waiting to flower; cog-bloom, bolt-
sprout, mechanism rooting. My
feet are soft in the concrete, wet
with dew and I want to go
through but my nose does not
have a ring to it and I cannot
sing like the trees, my instructions.
I want to go through but
I don't know who this is for, or
what it did the last time, or
the time before, or
the time before.

IV: (in the shed with the caravan and the horse-box)

There are eyes from the slot
in the box and at the other end
a tail, geared and hydrolic.
A lolling tongue, patterned and
floral, panting. It must be
tired from all the running and from
having people stepping in and out
of its ribs. But at least, I think,
it knows what it is. It does
not have eyes like mine, its ears
are pricked up and signalling. It
sings with the fluid machine as
I must, or else the clouds will
scatter, tatter, pillow-fight blizzard
will bleed from above. I am
a water-boatman skimming
milk, an earthworm
flying in the silt.

Bank Finger

2008-12-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

Well it appears to have been a month since last I sat down and emptied my often-quite-dull brain on to the screen...So here goes.

Writing-wise, I guess I have been in a 'gathering' phase, rather than an overly productive one. Having done my installation at Tactile Bosch, read at Heads and Tales and at Madabout Words, I'm trying to make some new work...I'm hoping to have a piece read in a shop in Bedminster - I know, hit the big time - in January (which I must revise over the weekend) for a local theatre project called Trade It: Local, the aim of which is to get people back in to independent shops inn late January. My monologue, 'Units of Memory', is about a lady in her 80s whose husband has died, who is speaking (I hope) from between the two Video Bank stations next to the shop 'Compuwave'. I guess I wanted to counter preconceptions by placing an older person in such a 'techie' setting...And by having her use the images and ideas of technology to evoke something altogether more poetic than the setting might conjure up immediately. We'll see if it works - January 17th.

Ursula from Heads and Tales has approached me about working together on a new venture under the H&T umbrella, providing 'accessible literature' in various guises - watch this space. Also hoping to go and read a story I read for the H&T Halloween even t down in Dartington for a new community radio project.

Today, I've taken my first steps into the world of ADULT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT. Terrifying. But overdue. Or overdrawn. I was practically frog-marched to a Personal Banker (shudder) on Tuesday when I went to pay in a cheque to the bank...Glancing at the screen, well-turned-out and no doubt immaculately financially-managed Rebecca (I think) behind the till looked at the screen, sighed and said, 'Have you thought about speaking to a Personal Banker at all?' It was hilariously unsubtle. I hate people who seem to be in complete control of money. Having had an initial chat, I took the usual dislike to said Banker (who had a rather good name - Valery D'Arcy - very Victorian) but after going and re-jigging my finances today he wasn't so bad: rather laconic and direct, in fact. Qualities I do not expect from Bankers. I did, however, end up with a savings account. This is probably a good and sensible idea, but that's not to say he didn't get commission. The numbers '399' were suspended behind him in the form of huge silver balloons. I have not idea what it meant. Years before I'm in the Black? He may have instigated a poem on the meeting and on finances - watch this space, too.

An incident last night sparked a remembrance of a story I heard while staying at St Briavel's Castle recently, for a friend of Paul's 30th celebrations. While on a tour, the tour-guide showed us a window where, some years before, another worker in the hostel had heard, on several consecutive nights, a baby crying. After the third night of this, she came back in and saw that the window 'frame' (though they weren't good at windows in them days) had collapsed, and inside it was the skeleton of a baby. Apparently, animal skeletons were often built in to windows to ward-off evil spirits, so they do not know why it was a baby who was chosen in this case.

Our next door neighbours baby, Charlie (my middle name), has recently been crying. A lot. Thankfully, we've been round for dinner before and know that he's also very sweet. Last night, I was lying in my now-centrally-situated bed and heard him through the wall, and so cocooned myself more within my duvet, womb-like, to cut out the sound. Babies in walls and babies in bed. Grow a third eye and watch this space too - I intend to make it into a poem.

For now, I must away to Paul's for dinner, an early night and then a week of familial visitations, London workshops and then back next Thurday. It might well be a month before the next update, but I don't think anyone's going to beat down my door...

That is all.

Calebx

Zombies, Zombies, Everywhere...

2008-10-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

...Blog? What blog?

It appears a month has nearly whisked by, and I've not updated my activities on here at all. Shame on me.

I write while watching the catch-up episode of Dead Set on E4 from last night - which has so far been great fun.

All else is well in the world of Caleb. I'm reading tomorrow night for a story-telling group called Heads and Tales in the presently-closed Bristol Old Vic auditorium. It's a grown-up spooky fairy-tale called Moonslice. I'm really looking forward to it now I've read through the piece a couple of times - and am looking forward to hearing what the other writers have done for the evening.

Eek - one of the characters just went all Zombiefied on the TV. And then an undead shop-keeper gave chase of the stolen van they were picking up medical supplies in. It's not ideal, really.

Anyway - next week, as part of my 'International Tour' - I will be reading some work at an event in Frome. I've decided to address the apparently two major themes of English literature - Sex and Death - but not in that order...I'm going to read a selection of 'elegies', or at least poems for lost things - two about piers (Clevedon and Weston) a poem about my ex-dog Frank, one about my deceased Granny, and then finally the Vermin II: To His Coy Hen or, The Closest To The Dodo...

It' a curious business, this blogging - during the day I tend to have quite a lot of thoughts I would like to commit to paper/screen, but once home they seem to leave me. Perhaps it's a matter of writing until the thoughts of the day return of their own accord.

For now, however, Dead Set has finished - and continues to be very well made - so I'm off to prepare for dinner at a friend's house. I'm supposed to dress up tomorrow evening - I think I'm going to go as a dead thespian - red dressing gown/smoking jacket, pale make-up, cigarette holder, side-parting. That should do it...

Until next time, Blog.

First musings on a poem about motherly story-telling.

2008-10-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

A pox on this time of year and its wearisome germs! I've been all sickly and sniffly and snuffling and rubbish all weekend - how boring. When we're all downloaded into a computer chip this won't happen...

But otherwise all is well. A fine weekend was spent in the new Bristol residence of my beau, and I stumbled through my day at work aided by a variety of symptom-suppressing anti-cold products.

I thought I should keep in the habit of updating this 'ere blog by putting up any half-worked up writing I saw fit. After my holiday at my Mum's house in France, I thought I'd like to write something to commemorate and explore her extraordinary ability to archive her life by talking to you about it - by chatting and telling 'stories' of a sort. At a first attempt, I wrote this:

So anyway
Mum tells stories
(Did I tell you about that?)
Well, not so much stories as
Many-tiered pockets of memory
Which might connect by key-word
Or by phrase or by person or by -
Which reminds me, did I tell you about -
You know, do you remember?-
Mum's stories - well anyway
They diverge and and shoot-off
Like a vegetable patch in glut
Spilling out into space, sprouting
Excessively and blending themselves
Into soup and then pouring out from her
As these stories, anyway, of
Others, of older brothers, of failed fathers,
Of mortal bother, of soap-style lather whose suds
Runneth over into something which nearly doesn't resemble
A story at all (Did I tell you about that?)
Oh I'm sorry. So
Anyway.

That's it for now - it'll need refining, but not too much (for that is surely the point)...

Off to bed to try and get well again, for there is SO much to do.

Caleb x

Vermin IV: An Exact Science

2008-10-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

Good Day,

Well, a fairly uneventful one at worst. I ambled my way through the day doing research and the odd odd-job, and caught up with some work friends over tea. Nice. I also entered another poetry competition last night, so fingers and everything else crossed that one of the many I've entered in the past months will yield something...I could do with the cash, apart from anything else. What's the exchange rate on cash vs artistic-recognition these days...? I dare say it's better than the Euro...

I entered a piece about my late dog, Frank, to the National Poetry Society Competition last night. Here it is, with a picture of him (which is horizontal, like Frank is now, as I cannot figure out how to rotate on here!):

Frank

He hops lightly into the boot:
he trusts us, but
we do not trust him
to be just like us.

He rumbled
during a storm
at a niece, a granddaughter –
clapped his jaws
jagged as lightning
in space, too close.
Then a warning bolt
(not full voltage)
at a child
(just his height)’s
apple cheek. He
could not understand
these higher-status
tiny pups, vexed
but through some hex of the pack
unable just to stay back.

There was a final
confusion, a bearing of teeth,
a decision, a final stroke,
thrown ball. I tell him
man to man
that we are sorry and
to be nice
to the other dogs
in doggy-heaven,
if that’s where
anyone’s going.

I unpack my clothes
like with like.
In the mirror
I regard my furry
face, bristling
with suspicion, the haircut,
just acquired, with dislike,
brush my incisors,
prepare the razor,
pluck unsightly hair
from my wet nose,
eyes watering,
the colour of his.

I also went for a chat with a nice free-lance director chap today, with whom I'm going to collaborate on my next poetry-video-installation piece - based on my poem 'Hexadecimalice' - a monologue by a rather sinister computer. It should all be a little David Crononbourgian/Tetsuo Machine-man in flavour. And I might wear some space age make-up and white-eye contact lenses. Awesome fun. Watch this space.

At the weekend, I installed the fourth of my 'Vermin Cycle' of poems, 'Vermin IV: An Exact Science', into a gallery called Tactile Bosch in Cardiff: www.tactilebosch.org

I thought it pertinent to put up the little phone videos I made of the piece, which I'm hoping to get some decent quality photos of, too.

The piece was in the little attic space, which felt suitable verminous - I'd set up a little stool to sit on and read the poem from the front of a mirrored bathroom cabinet, which was spilling saw-dust out underneath the reader. The film images were being projected from a hamster cage, on to the push-me, pull-you labcoat screen in front.

Perhaps this gives some sense of what it's like to go in and read from the mirror, but some more pics will follow. It was the usual lovely crowd of artistic-types at the opening, and the initial feedback on An Exact Science was really encouraging. It's so invigorating as a poet to trap someone in a little room with just your poem and a setting you see as fitting to read it in.

I'm most excited about the Hexadecimalice video and installation now, especially as I'll be working with an experienced Direct-orr (who also seems like a nice man) who is really up for playing with images alongside my writing...

And now, off for thali down the road.

God speed! ;-)

Caleb x

Blogging: Adding My Voice to The Throng. Sam Sparro's nice voice and erroneous dress-sense.

2008-10-01T10:38:00.001-07:00

Dear Reader,

To introduce myself: I'm a Bristol-based media-bod and writer, trying to make my way simultaneously in the worlds of worthy TV documentaries and, when I'm not doing that, writing, performing and otherwise tinkering with words (poetry and short fiction).

Truth be told, I know not whether you, Dear Reader, exist; or indeed whether my petty wafflings and occasional profundities will lure anyone in to this blog for very long.

However, after seeing that I can also (techno-joy and wonderment!) add photos to this blog directly from my mobile phone camera, I thought I would start one nonetheless - as a repository of sorts...For things which catch my eye, phrases that pass through my mind and may go nowhere at all, for little happenings which I would like to hold on to. So, and be not put off, this is just as much for me as it is for anyone else: isn't all blogging? Alack for this twenty-first century, for we are all 'celebrities' now...

On which topic, I went to see Sam Sparro last night. Black and Gold? Slick and Bland more like. Though he does have a great voice and some nice pop songs, it all felt a little too packaged and shiny, like some salad which, when it's been open for more than a few hours, will start to blacken and produce fetid liquid in the packet. Let the boy breathe!

Mr Sparro came on wearing a white Tyvek (tm) baby-grow with a multi-coloured label for his surname hung around his neck. It appeared as though he had been labeled before being put on the bus to camp. In summary: it did nothing for him. The only time Tyvek baby-grows are acceptable, we agreed, was for actual babies in potential bio-hazard areas. His next outfit looked as though he'd spilled primary-coloured down his front (get the boy a bib) and then he appeared in a black, huge-shouldered cape and gold disco shoes for 'Black and Gold'. Underneath this was a gold-trim black tunic, which I can only imagine would have gone down a storm at a Roman disco.

Still, his backing singers were nice - three impressively-bosomed and lively black ladies, one of whom was the singer from Oh My Gosh by Basement Jaxx. I think it was all over for me when they did a selection of mid-nineties dance classics as the encore. Don't play it again, Sam.

Anyway, I hear the Julbott (my splendid housemate-Landperson) and must go and feed her some stuffed-crust pizza as promised...

Until next time, Computer-Screen...

Caleb x