Abominable Me.

Lay awake last night reading a fantastic new book, so good I could not put it down, promising myself every chapter I read was going to be the last of the night but each one drew me on and on. Until I got so close to the end I had to go with it. Had spent the best part of most nights this week reading it, trying not to devour it too quickly, savoring the quality of the writing and even the company of the fictional characters. This last night was a Sunday and I was still reading it in the early hours of Monday morning. I could hear the wind outside my house moving the very full leafy branches of the trees in the park across the road from my house. It is the tail end of summer and the trees are still thick with greenery. Soon those same branches will begin to lose this years growth of green leaving the stick thin branches tap tapping against each other. For now though all you hear is a calming shooshing noise. Good conditions for a good read. And this is a damn fine read. The Abominable by Dan Simmons. I was so looking forward to this book since I first heard about it. So when I was given an advance proof copy of the book I felt as though Christmas had come early(which is saying something coming from a good Irish catholic who celebrates the wee baby Jesus' birthday every year..actually I am a rubbish Irish catholic but all the big holy days remain bullet points for me. At this point it feels like a race memory.)The Abominable is a very ambitious, very detailed and sprawling epic about a journey to the very summit of Mount Everest in the year 1925. A team of expert climbers from very different backgrounds attempt to discover the whereabouts of a seemingly lost rich boy and all round fop who went up the mountain but never came back down. The story begins in the here and now. The author describes his meeting with an elderly resident in a care home who has his own story to tell regarding an undocumented attempt to best the highest mountain in the world. This elderly man the world does not even know about has the most wonderful story to tell. A magnificent story about courage in the face of danger, loyalty and friendship, the thirst for adventure and exploration, of a world filled with mystery and places where the bravest men have not set foot. There is the mother of all mountains, There are nazies and bandits and holy men,There is Tibet and There are Yeti.
                 What more do you need for a close to perfect read.
                 Dan Simmons has created a cast of characters who feel close to real. I will never forget The Deacon, Reggie, Jean-Claude and Pasang. In transposing a series of journals belonging to the main character Jacob Perry(Jake to his friends) he brings them alive in a narrative feat of magic. Jake is an adventurer and a mountaineer with sky blue eyes and Forearms like Popeye. He is brave, decent and intelligent and it will take every ounce of character he possesses to survive the trials and tribulations his journey presents. If it is possible to develop a crush on a fictional character then by golly I think I developed one.
                   Everest is a cold hard mountain cloaked in mysteries and the weight of its own immense presence. Who knows what strange demons haunt its silent heights. Never mind the sound of wind in the trees. Imagine the noise the wind makes as it howls around a remote mountain monastery which conceals a wall mural depicting Yeti devouring the entrails of a still living victim. This is just one of the otherworldly visions Jake Perry must contend with. A haunting vision by flickering candle light as he attempts to get to sleep the night before the sky burial of a deceased friend.
                   I did not want this book to end.
                   I did not want to say goodbye to these characters.
                   I suppose now that I have read The Abominable I never will.

Black is the new Black.

Was listening to the radio last night. A balmy evening with street sounds drifting in through my open bedroom window. Amy Winehouse's voice came drifting from the gently vibrating speaker. The song she recorded with Tony Bennett. Body and Soul. A dedication to a smokey kind of love. Lovely song. It was sadly a reminder that there would be no new recordings from that frankly amazing woman. That a powerful humanely soulful voice was lost to the world when she passed away. I put on Back to Black and one of the tracks that holds special meaning for me. OVER FUTILE ODDS AND LAUGHED AT BY THE GODS.  AND NOW THE FINAL FRAME,LOVE IS A LOSING GAME. Oh,the lovely Amy. If she only knew just how beautiful she was. A luminous talent that struck like lightning. A flash of raw primal energy that flared all too briefly, illuminating everything in sight before the dark closed in. If you have never believed in demons then just what was it that assailed this complex and fragile young woman. I do not know nor understand the decisions and events that may have driven her down a road best not traveled. I just marveled at her immense talent and the genius wrapped up in her recorded output. And the dizzy spell cast by her on form live appearances. And that singing voice. My god, that heaven sent voice.Was there ever a songstress who managed to convey through her vocals and the way she used them to show her understanding of the dangers that come with daring to love the big love. The 3rd or 4th time I listened to her second album and masterpiece Back To black I truly believed I was listening to one of the finest albums ever recorded. That nothing I ever heard so captured what it is to be an adult and believe yourself to be in love. Young love is celebrated widely and ultimately falsely. Grown up love is not always something worth singing about as it is close to madness. Few performers inhabit the world they sing about the way Amy did. Like a diver swimming with sharks who does not use a cage. Few performers are able to look the world in the eye, wink and tell it I TOLD YOU I WAS NO GOOD. All that wistful longing, the great sadness and joy, the masochism of heartache, the narcissism of need.
             Her work seems so impossibly fresh and alive it is hard to remember she is not. Yet that is the awful truth. Twenty seven years. It was not a long life. Filled with as many ups and downs as it is possible to imagine in a lifetime. I then watched I TOLD YOU I WAS NO GOOD. A DVD recording of one of her live appearances on stage in London. The whole thing is just electrifying. So many highs. I love Hey Little Rich Girl. I see and hear a great unmade kitchen sink English drama that just breaks your heart but in her hands also makes you want to dance. It is like a finger with a broken painted finger nail pointing at a dying sunflower turning one last time to catch the rays of the rising sun on its face. We are all desperately hoping to feel that familiar warmth on our faces, to remember what it is to be young and alive. To energize our lives and lift them out of the mundane and the ordinary. As Amy managed to do on so many occasions.
               But maybe there is a price to be paid for catching those rays of light and trying to hold on to them. The brightness blinds you to the pitfalls of this life. The tragedy is that the bright lights never look brighter than when we are falling into the darkest of places.

Drawn In.

Took a comic book scripting class on Monday night past .Or perhaps I should say I gave a comic scripting class in The Crescent Arts Centre. In a lovely airy classroom with wide french windows along one side and ballerina mirrors along the other. The event was the brain child of Sean from Cinemagic who invited me to take the first night. To get the ball rolling on a month long project with a view to producing an on-line comic which is all the work of a new wave of young writers and artists from the province. The hope is that each participant will contribute a piece of their own work, the theme uniting them being SEE ME, NOW. We are making our own little time-capsule, saving this moment, and we are going to bury that time-capsule on the internet. I have done workshops before and each one is a very different experience. Sean handed the class over to me and I did my best to inspire and inform. To try coaxing the student into breaking the tyranny of the blank page and produce a stand alone piece of work. In the beginnings it is always very basic. Pens, pencils, erazers and sharpeners all rallying to combat the glaring emptiness of a page resisting being filled. Hopefully we have made a good start. Everyone in the class rose to the occasion and after a short break to draw breath and collate our thinking we got down to the nuts and bolts of telling stories. The breadth of their stories was impressive. Everything from the very personal,to the political,to the fantastical. I was most pleased with their efforts and do hope each one completes the projects they have begun. It will be an interesting compilation come the upload.
               You know I remember back in the day when I used to go to the Crescent Arts Centre when it was a nightclub. An old run down church venue where I used to dance til the early hour. Swinging a sweaty head full of dreads. Busting my scarecrow moves. I got jumped and beat up one night by some blokes who thought I was a complete freak. The person I was with ran away in fear and left me to get a punching and a kicking. Later that same night I challenged him about this and he started crying and said IT IS NO GOOD DEPENDING ON ME.I AM SORRY. I HAVE NO COURAGE. He was so pathetically honest I remember bursting out laughing. Such was the generosity of our young spirits we both laughed long and stupidly. Despite my bruises and tattered nerves. Or maybe because of them, who knows.
               Who would have believed that many years later I would be taking a class in a refurbished version of that sticky floored venue. On a subject that has brought me so much joy..
                Certainly not me in my Haysi Fantasyzee Days.
                JOHN WAYNE IS INDEED BIG LEGGY.
             

The Time Lady,The Tramp And The Robot Dog.

Oh dear, Leela has left, but the moment has been prepared for. Enter Romanadvoratrelundar..or Romana(although the Doctor was all for christening her Fred). Her first appearance on screen was jaw-dropping. Long,tall,beautiful and majestically Gallifreyan, she walked around The Tardis like she owned it. Not that she would want it. A wonky type-40 would have been beneath her. This incarnation of Romana first appeared in The Ribos Operation, the first part of The Key To Time sequence. Check out the expression the Doctor shares with K9 the first time he lays eyes on her in the Tardis console room. For a brief moment the ghost of Harpo Marx plays across his features. It is a lovely moment and shows the intimate regard he has for his second best friend. It is great that K9 is still traveling with his master at this point, still doggishly loyal and dead-pan as ever. They are a funny dysfunctional pretend family are this Tardis crew. Grown up but utterly child like. The perfectly pitched performance by Mary Tamm as the aristocratic time-lady allows for a very special dynamic between the pair. She is so patient and grown up while he is allowed to play the gifted lost boy. The Key To Time was an epic quest with a different episode every Saturday tea-time at the tail end of the decade now remembered as...the Seventies. Long thought passed we have ended up there again thanks to the good people at Big Finish. Seven new episodes detailing what came next after their escape from the Black Guardian. After he almost tricked them into doing his dirty work for him. The retrieval of an all powerful artifact to be put to some nasty business by an all powerful evil entity. An epic quest with a twist in its tail and a truly startling glimpse of a demented Tom Baker on top form. Oh how I love Old Who! Yet here are seven more wonderful stories in a season gifted to us by people who are producing some of the best Who ever. 

Here are seven new stories which possess cross-over elements rather than a linking story arch. The first is a wonderful PGWoodhouse inspired comedy of terrors that just lends itself so perfectly to this particular Tardis crew. Its a great start and hits the ground moving in the most charming fashion. The wordplay and the comedic timing dazzle under confidant and joyful direction. Just listen to the extras following for greater insight and appreciation. Next we meet The Lann and the barmy but brilliant Cuthbert who is more than a worthy rival for the doctor(played by David Warner..yes,I know only bloody David Warner!). after that the Tardis crew face the Justice Of Jalxar and we see the sublime return of Jago and Litefoot(Hurrah!For me thet represent Doctor Who's finest spin-off. Yes I said spin-off. Go and investigate. Treasure awaits!). It is just Who at its finest. You can practically smell the pong of Olde London Towne. From there the Tardis takes us to a watery Abyss where Alice Krige(yes, only bloody Alice Krige!) leads  a scientific expedition into very dangerous waters indeed. And just as you are coming up for air who should reappear but Cuthbert and his private security guards The Daleks(Yes!Only the bloody..well,you get the picture.). It is an epic conclusion to a season that was surely televised in some other dimension. Actually that is not fair to the incredible things Big Finish achieve on their own terms. They are just the best at what they do.SNKT! Two special mentions for the wonderful John Leeson as K9 and the equally wonderful Toby Hadoke  as Mister Dorrick. I do hope we meet them again in other stories. Not jus for what they bring to the stories they are in but for the fun they bring to the extra material. 

There is an added poignancy to the proceedings with the sad passing of Mary Tamm. Another victim of that terrible disease cancer. He performance is so informed with a lightness of touch and a gentle joy that is hard to imagine how ill she was to become. Her time as Romana in these stories is just as lovely as her onscreen time all those years ago. Better written in some ways. She seems to draw an impish quality from Tom Baker who obviously found Mary to be utterly charming. The last line of the series belongs to her and will bring a tear to the eye of the listener.

There has been much talk of late about the possibility of a female incarnation of the Doctor. We now know that at least for one more incarnation this is not to be. however way back in 1990 that very notion was put to Mary Tamm in an interview. Would she consider becoming the Doctor and her reply was a resounding yes. It was even suggested that it would perhaps turn out that Romana was The Doctor all along. I do not know about that but I cannot help but imagine how classy the interior of the Tardis console room would become with her as the pilot. 

Time and its relative dimensions would never look better.

You Are The Quarry.

It was earlier in the year 2013 that the author Ian M Banks let it be known through a statement that he had an inoperable cancer and the chances were not good that he would see out the year. This sadly proved to be true and he passed away on Sunday 9th June. It was such a short time between the wider world becoming aware of the seriousness of his condition, gall bladder cancer, and him succumbing to the disease. I can not imagine how hard this must have been for his loved ones and those close to him. Friday past I finished reading his last completed work The Quarry, released the month of his passing. I did not know what to expect from that book. I Certainly not the smallness of the world it takes place in. The quiet, and at times not so quiet, intimacy of the enclosed world of Willoughtree House, decaying and crumbling, perched on the edge of a quarry readying to swallow it whole. In that house a group of old friends gather about a friend dying of cancer. They are also looking for a mysterious video tape from their shared past that throws a shadow over all their futures. This is not the whole story. This is an Ian Banks novel after all. The dying man Guy and his young son Kit rail against the fate their lives together has brought them to. Their situation feels heart achingly real, like two candle flames flickering in a wind that threatens to extinguish them both.
             I read The Wasp factory ,his first published work so very long ago. Probably around '85 or '86. I remember how even in my know it all youthful arrogance I was a bit taken aback by some of its content. How I was even a little shocked by this artsy looking paperback I picked up in Harry Halls Bookshop in Gresham street. A couple of years later I read Consider Phlebas  for the first time. It sort of became the yardstick by which I measured my enjoyment of epic science fiction writing. You know IT WAS GOOD BUT NOT AS GOOD AS CONSIDER PHLEBAS. That lasted a good wee while. Until I read Use Of Weapons. Which then became my new favorite Ian M Banks. I think I was a shallow reader lacking wider references or sophisticated tastes. I just knew what I liked and The Culture books were so damned good. I even got to meet him a couple of times. At the readings he did at Waterstones Bookshop in Royal Avenue, Belfast. He was very personable and always chose interesting and entertaining excerts to read for the amusement of those attending. This was off course many years before there was even a glimmer of the purple hues of geek chic so the whole evening may have appeared terminally dull to the cooler eye. Yet we were more than happy in the cloistered trappings of the freshly published Banks. We were not friends. I was just a fan who would attend his readings given a chance. Just the Face From Space in the back row looking with utter admiration at this worldly wise whisky lover with a brilliant mind gifted to the world for a short time. All twenty seven of the books he had published in his lifetime are scattered about my house in different places. All of his books are worth seeking out. All of them worth keeping and sharing. The Quarry is a worthy addition to that remarkable body of work. The twenty eighth book is about to join them.
               There will be no more.

Come And See Now.

Got some new ink done by Joseph at his Lost Souls studio. He had also got some astonishing work recently which he had traveled to Russia to get done. At the hands of someone he respected. Who does watch the Watchmen indeed. The hands that have decorated his skin are some of the best in the world. He knows this. He works very hard to pay for the travel and the expertise. It as though the canvas of his time on this earth is right there in front of you. I had something done which has haunted my imagination since childhood. I do not remember its origins or why it should have affected my imagination as it did. I read a book recently which suggests the origins of such notions but it was a series of explanations I am not altogether comfortable with. The book dealt with the insights of one Cesare Lombrosso and I do not wish to take on board the broad associations his theories bring to the surface. I found some of his ideas deeply repellant and have since learned in later life he believed in even goofier things if that is even possible. Lombrosso suggests a desire for tattoos is indicative of a criminal pathology. A inescapable desire rooted in the very bones of those born to be criminal. That we are not shaped by our experiences or the homes or class we grow up in. We are what we were born to be. It is not even destiny. It is just bone, blood and birth. Lombrosso was an Italian criminologist who held the belief that crime was an inherited trait. Passed on by human nature. THE SEEDS OF MORAL INSANITY AND CRIMINALITY ARE FOUND IN MANS EARLY LIFE. He is considered by many to be the father of modern criminology. FORENSIC MEDICINE SHOULD RECOGNISE THAT IN THE CASE OF THE CRIMINAL MAN WHO IS IN CONSTANT STRUGGLE AGAINST SOCIETY, TATTOOS-LIKE SCARS ARE PROFESSIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. For me it all comes across as a series of Eugenics based sound-bites. Turin in the eighteen hundreds..what a swinging scene. RELIGION, WHICH TENDS TO PRESERVE ANCIENT HABITS AND CUSTOMS, CERTAINLY PERPETUATES THE PRACTICE OF TATTOOING. Oh Cesare, with these insights you are spoiling us.
              Also read three Chuck Palaniuks. Lullaby. Haunted. Damned. Feel like a spring has burst out of the top of my head, with a diseased cuckoo calling the hour, like something out of a Looney Tunes short, only with actual blood and gore and brain and bone matter. He is a powerfully affecting writer of stories that can shock and cause you to despair at the monstrous banality of modern culture and the demons that stoke the engines that drive it. poor man. To see the world as he does even for one day. Must be awful. His hell is right here on earth. Staring back at him from the side of a milk carton. I was brought up a catholic so my vision of hell is your basic Bosch Nightmare with glowing autumnal skies, medieval torture equipment, screaming demons ,fiery wyrms chewing at your go-gos with an ever lasting chorus of wailing and gnashing of the abandoned and forgotten.Hell for him does not seem to be a place of painful retribution but a place where the Damned endure poor lifestyle choices. Ah well, in the scheme of things America is a relatively new thing so it is no suprise a child of that fabled country should see hell as such. A thoroughly modern hell. Something has scrambled his genius so that it spurts out of him in these bookish orgasms. I think he is quite brilliant at times and appalling at others. Reading three of his books back to back made me want to take a a hot shower to wash all the neurotic fear sweat away, only I cannot. My immersion heater is busted. No hot water.
              Three Chuck Palaniuks followed by a cold shower.
              No thank you.
              That is too old school Irish catholic a response even for me.
               

The Kindness Of Strangers

WHOEVER YOU ARE,I HAVE ALWAYS DEPENDED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS. So said Blanche Dubois in the Tenesse Williams play Streetcar Named desire. And poor Blanche was as nutty as a fruit-cake. I myself am something of  a fruitcake. There is no denying it. My own experiences of the random reactions of strangers being along the common lines of WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? or WHY ARE YOU NOT ME? Although I share the ache of fictional characters sadness at the lack of empathy at broad in the world I try not to get too hung up on it. Indeed, every now and again I am pleasantly suprised by the actions of others and when this happens I feel rich with life. Take this for an example. I am not the fastest human being in the world. In fact I am a rambling tangle of uncoordinated limbs that at times seem to act independently of each other. When I tried my hand at waitering my nickname by the other waiters was Lightning. For I was anything but a lightning bolt. These days I am worse than ever, my circus days long behind me. One morning I was ambling along in an attempt to get a bus to work. The driver had seen me but was not prepared to wait and started to pull off leaving me in my usual state of embarrassment and abandonment. I sighed trying to feign indifference. I DID NOT WANT TO GET ON YOUR STUPID BUS ANYWAY. Then it stopped and a figure leaned out and waved me forward. C'MON She said with a wide friendly smile. I speeded up and hobbled forward(part of my brain was saying PLEASE DO NOT SHOUT RUN FORREST RUN as all the bus passengers press their faces against the bus window and howl with laughter. I have history after all)actually managing to get aboard dignity intact. She had kindly asked the driver for a little patience and that is what he demonstrated. I was so grateful and it even caused a ripple of smiles amongst those seated.     
            Anytime we saw each other after that we would always say hello and chat. Just about the ups and downs of life in general and particularly the minefield that is retailing. I learned she was from Poland and that she and her husband were both making the most together of a new life in Northern Ireland.
             I asked her name.
             MAGDALENA she replied.
             I babbled a load of comic related gobblydegook in suprise. A few years back I had worked for an American Comic Book Company called Top Cow. Amongst the things I had done whilst working for them was to create a character called The Magdalena. And this was the first time I had ever met anyone with that name. That is her in the photograph with a copy of the re-released graphic novel of the origin story of the character. I felt she had to have a copy if only to prove I was not some looney she had unwittingly encouraged with a simple act of kindness. I mean it was not as though I had claimed  to have visited the moon (although in truth I have, in all its many phases.)
             MAGDALENA meet THE MAGDALENA.
             The most recent comic I have worked on is about North African Pirates making slaves of Irish people.
              I think if I was running for a bus and a Swarthy Swashbuckler leaned out beckoning me forward I might now pause.
              Wait ten minutes.
              Get the next one.