Saturday, 20 February 2010
I write while watching a ridiculously over simplified facile and self contradictory documentary about homo interneticus. It has told me I am becoming more like a fox than a hedgehog. It is making me realise why I do not miss the television. I am in a hotel room, which I state by way of explanation, in London after a gruelling day trekking the streets with my companion. I am drained and weak, she seems unaffected. We have come so far. We have seen so much. One thing seen is this photograph of April Ashley Britain’s pioneer of gender reassignment who in 1974 played countess Dracula at the Collegiate Theatre.
Thursday, 18 February 2010
I have received a letter from my landlord informing me that upon quitting my lodgings I must render them to their original state. After a brief survey I have come up with a list of things to do.
Lean on the bathroom shelf and towel rail until they hang limply on the wall.
Prise filler out of four large holes in the kitchen.
Tear up the sealant on the bath and encourage mold growth by rubbing yoghurt into the crack.
Kick the electrical socket by the door until it starts fizzing.
Block the sink with unnamable matter.
Place three pairs of soiled pants in the airing cupboard.
Pull the toilet roll holder out and glue it back to the wall with a clear rubbery substance.
Rub lard around the oven and bake until black smoke issues forth.
That should do it.
Lord of Misrule II In his autobiography Christopher Lee described bursting into Peter Cushing’s dressing room shouting “I have no lines!” Cushing replied “you are lucky, I’ve read the script”. Later he mentions staying with Mr and Mrs Cushing in Whitstable where he had an “elaborate aquarium of tropical fish”. Like my companion he also tells of Cushing’s enormous ornithological knowledge.
I was most taken by another passage on pages 274-5
“dying as Dracula was usually worse than having a tooth out. Being struck by lightning was the least of my discomforts. The worse was the time they discovered that vampires cannot abide hawthorns. I thought the religious connotation in dubious taste, but a film studio is not the ideal setting to thrash out a theological issue. I had to crash through a tangle of hawthorn bushes with a crown of thorns on my head, with Peter Cushing on the further side waiting to impale me with a stake snatched from a fence. They lacked the foresight to provide a dummy tree and I had to tear a way through vegetation with spines two inches long, emerging for tge coup de grâce shedding genuine Lee blood like a garden sprinkler.
Bullets, daggers, paper-knives, stakes, darts and lances were embedded in me. Poison, heart failure and old age attacked me from within. I became dust – red, green or sooty. I was drowned, asphyxiated and incinerated, and three times when I was burnt, the barn or studio went up too. I always came back for more. Through clouds of nuclear waste I intoned, ‘the world shall hear of me again.'”.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Confusion
I am impatient to get to Whitstable. It seems that I will not be able to truly move on until I have finally encountered Mr Bown in the act of calling. My companion has reminded me on several occassions that there is another bingo hall not two hundred yards from my lodgings but I am unwilling to dilute the experience with pale imitation. This morning I came across a page in my notebook which illustrates my current state of mind. It is illustrated and transcribed in list form below.
Gleam
A matter of life and death
Chromamnesia
Flowers
Lips
Standing still
Colour
Camera Obscura
Magic
Appear
Pearlville
Double acts
Chases
Slapstick
Romance
Emotion
Villains
Heroes
Make do
Westerns
Gangsters
Ruffians
Narrative ideas for the count of monte cristo
Justice
Treasure sparkling possiblities
Disguise and revenge
Plots
Goldfinger idea
Revenge on all those people who have ever slighted me
Dancers
Three girls
Dumped
Various
Last night we watched the Powell and Pressburger film “A Matter of Life and Death” I had seen it twice in the last twenty or so years. Despite this I was surprised to see that the action on Earth was in colour and Heaven in black and white. I had remembered it the other way round.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Magic
Cathy Lomax has asked me to make some work for the next edition of ‘Arty’ the title is to be ‘magic’ so I spent some time yesterday reprising my “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion for the stills camera. I found a statue of the Virgin Mary to be my assistant. She seemed very comfortable in the act of appearing magically inside the studio window. Virginity is, I suppose, not a condition usually associated with magician’s assistants. Though often they feign ingenuousness they know too much. They have been initiated. Though I haven’t yet decided which images to send to Cathy (they must also work in black and white) I am drawn to those which reveal the illusion. It is as if knowledge of the trick has failed to diminish the magic.
