I'm currently working on a weird Prog rock follow up to the Kickball issue - here's some work in progress...
Monday, 27 July 2020
Monday, 29 June 2020
Saturday, 27 June 2020
Thursday, 25 June 2020
Sunday, 21 June 2020
Friday, 19 June 2020
Art Diary Day One
During lockdown I've been doing a bunch of reading including Lynda Barry's Syllabus which has really made me want to keep at the discipline of not only doing daily art but art that pushes me - so I've been doing copies of stuff very much out of my usual comfort zone. Here's day one of extracts from the last six weeks or so
Thursday, 18 June 2020
Raven by Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray
I spent much of my childhood reading Doctor Who
novelisations to the extent that in many ways Terrance Dicks’ sometimes brisk
but always accessible writing is my default memory of the original show. But I’ve
never conducted an experiment whereby I watched a story for the first time and
pretty much immediately followed it up with the book: I already know most
stories either through their TV form or as book. So reading Raven is actually a
pretty new experience for me – I finished the series this time last week and
now have finished Burnham and Ray’s novel. And it’s a fascinating experience to
encounter both so close together.
A little background to the show: it’s Burnham and Ray’s
follow up to the legendary Children of the Stones and, probably, isn’t as
impressive as the predecessor mainly because Burnham and Ray seemed to be
throwing idea after idea at Stones, so there are few longeurs (there’s more
than a few in Raven). The problem is the show finds it hard to wrap it all up
in twenty five minutes so the final episode is almost a classic but never quite
manages to cap the complex plot lines simmering along.
Raven is a far simpler story – Borstal kid is sent to the “midshires”
to stay with a crotchety archaeologist and his ornithologist wife; he gets
involved in attempts to turn a system of caves near a stone circle into a
nuclear waste dump, despite the caves showing very obvious historical and
religious importance to someone;
Raven also has a mysterious past that seems linked to the caves… and any more
will probably spoilt a few surprises. Because it’s simpler it never quite feels
as adventurous as Stones, and there is definitely padding, but in terms of
storytelling (as opposed to acting which is great, with Phil Daniels acting
veteran performers off the screen effortlessly) this does allow the final
episode and a bit to be far bolder. Because there’s less to wrap up, the TV
version ends episode five on something very ambiguous which manages to remain so
into episode six which then holds off the dramatic meat until the very last
five minutes which is… either insanely and boldly brave in terms of how much it
embraces lack of resolution or maddeningly vague depending on your viewpoint.
The novelisation is fascinating because it manages to tease
up some ambiguity (the television crew’s appearance now seems definitely part
of a design) whilst also clarifying some narrative points (the weird scene with
the vicar mowing his lawn being the prime example), but also ends up very
muddled in other places. Partly I assume this is because the book is written by
the TV show’s authors but through a combination of the shooting script and
trying to describe some of the performances. With the Professor and his wife
and Bill this is absolutely fine because they’re very much “types” and that’s
easy to write. Naomi sort of wobbles a bit because she’s far more, creepily, an
object of lust to several people in the narrative where her performance on
screen was such that you could quite easily nudge people’s fascination with her
to be being impressed by how driven she
is.
The problem characters are Clive Castle and Raven himself,
mainly because the performances seem very different to how the characters were
probably written. The Castle in the book is a bit of a mess: a weird
combination of shallow poseur, effeminate ladies’ man and helpful idiot. The
book can’t ever take the various elements and combine them to make a believable
whole: the TV show does, with Hugh Thomas performing a dazzlingly odd
performance as the calculatingly camp but deeply charming Castle. It’s a very
nuanced performance so the jealousy of Raven manages to feel natural and mostly
as paranoia on his side. That’s also helped by Daniels whose performance is
incredibly naturalistic. He manages to convince several emotional pivots from
angry to confused to excited to charming with startling ease. On the page Raven
just seems like he’s barrelling towards a breakdown.
The other problem is the lack of ambiguity. One of the
strongest bits of the show is the cliff-hanger, of sorts, of episode five which
seems to resolve at the start of episode six but then suddenly settles again into a really strange shift which
goes from the legendary, Arthurian themes of the plot into something more universal.
That works beautifully on screen but on the page it loses a considerable amount
of the magic. Similarly the reveal of the final chamber and the sequence with
the minister are a lot less weird on the page than on screen which again blunts
it considerably. However I am very
glad to say that the final scenes of the book, whilst not having anything like
the power that they have on screen where they play out the show in almost
complete silence, are significantly better and the final paragraph is
beautifully judged: the focus is not so much on ambiguity as to whether there
might be another series (as it sometimes feels like the show’s ending is) but
as to the rest of what Raven is here to do. That’s very nicely done.
A few other points: the introduction was probably a bit too
tricky to make so it’s a nice extra to get a Raven origin story of a sort.
Also, you can tell that much of Raven was filmed in the worst weather
imaginable – sometimes this is a strength, such as Raven shouting at the
supporters in the stone circle as rain pours down which is impressive even if
difficult to film, and at other times there’s a grimy dampness to the
proceedings as opposed to Children of the Stones which benefits from obviously
being made during the legendary 1976 heatwave. Thankfully the book can at least
escape from that a little, although it’s slightly disappointing there are no
other attempts to open up the story. The book does benefit hugely from art by Les
Matthews, strange and spidery little illustrations which manage to evoke
something of the visual magic of the show’s dream sequences but in a very
different way.
Finally: a word on why I’m reading this. I’m working on
finishing a novel about a “lost” 1970s British kids TV show and this show – as book
and as television – is absolutely perfect to tidy up a few plot points. Raven
has for some reason a lesser reputation than its flashier forebear (probably
why the book was so affordable) but that’s very unfair I think. It’s much more
focussed and mature and willing to embrace ambiguity in a way no other show of
the period – other than The Owl Service maybe, and that had an Alan Garner
shaped head start – managed to do so lightly.
Tuesday, 26 May 2020
A Home For Mr Blubbery Tussle: A Collage Novel Part Four
Those waves were also observed
by the House of Ghosts, crying with laughter at the fate of the robber who sang
of the Red House at the end of every day. The way through the woods, the narrow
path and the whispering door: these Mr Pickering would never return to, his
face an orange of obligations. “All is mystery and all is misery”, he claimed
to the mouse, a cherub of wisdom and with the smile of the Knowing Darkness,
who merely laughed.
In a vision, the Diadem
of Subsidium found a scent of the famished hemisphere that had been written in
the infamous Manuscript of International Hopscotch. A comically conical clue
but one that had resulted in the fenestration of the Lamed Wufnicks. Festooned
in their growths, the home of Iolanthe Feint affronted the Blubbery Tussles.
The flaw in the law was that the cellar augured badly for the home – and what
was this? In the festering vestibule, hugging themselves and giving pious chase,
were none other than the dreaded Black Coats of Diadem of Dark Mass. And again,
a gust was felt in the gibbous vestibule.
This reduced the wisdom of Mr
Blubbery Tussle, but the pipes whispered in his ear “The Orbs! The treacle! The
Men are on the highway! Digging trenches”
“Wormwood of my soul!”
cried Mr Blueberry Toussel. The domicile of Cagliostro Cosmos had pursued the
Orbs of Flat-nosed Pete.
Elsewhere the Orbs of the Peanut Devotion had deftly
located Irma Collusion. Bordeaux Castle, where snugly hidden was the Plinth of
the Eleventh Ganglions, was threatened by the foetid teeth of the Orbs of
Tourniquet Mount. The helicoidal cohort shunted the domestic fortress in
sceptic triumph, while the scavengers eclipsed the tumour of the pedant. “Woot!
Creed! Cultivate!” cried the Magdeburg Hemispheres.
And Twenty Five Orbs,
within the humid orbit of the chasm, passed the wisdom of the Goblin Archive
which shuddered in shame and in vain. The House of the Isle of the Vein allowed
Merry Phillip Glimmer to present his fatal victory. But in the Country of the
Demented Compasses, the Olive Orbs awaited the approach to the Island of Esme.
And the actor, Lasky,
knew exactly where everyone everywhere would be. His friends, in those moments,
lived not by the White Horse of the road but in the exterior of tomorrow. But
when he got there, the chasm opened and the Orbs and Prisms pulled him fatally
within.
And in that pungent dawn,
Mr Blubbery Tussle sat and thought. And as he did so the guileless song of a
Ball and Hammer arose within him.
“And all is quiet now, as
the sea sees the ant. The wisdom of the night weighs the doubt of the sun’s
fall, the folly of guiding the paths of tomorrow and the wisdom of lamentation
and love for all birds. This is the wisdom passed down from moon to sun, daughter
to father until the very end.”
And the actor, Lasky,
whispered “And all is quiet now, as the sea sees the ant.”
And the rest was
salience.
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I'm currently working on a weird Prog rock follow up to the Kickball issue - here's some work in progress... ...


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A few days ago, my good friend Nick of the blog A Pile of Leaves mentioned picking up a book of ghost stories because of the cover. Befo...
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I spent much of my childhood reading Doctor Who novelisations to the extent that in many ways Terrance Dicks’ sometimes brisk but always a...
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I'm currently working on a weird Prog rock follow up to the Kickball issue - here's some work in progress... ...
