Edinburgh's Sights and Shows

Atmospheric though the city of Edinburgh is it's ghosts come alive every year when the Festival pops up and performs it's rite of enactment of crowd pleasing.  Every year is a pilgrimage for me to discover the odd, strange and even the weird and I never regret it. 


First stop is another mini-pilgrimage to the Poetry Library that stands as a testament to the enduring quality of poetry and it's many delights that lie within it.  This year I discover the poet Tony Curtis whom I wish to read more of and of the interestingly titled 'Nietzsche's Attaché Case' that I wish another browse through.  Stacked with everything from Pam Ayers to Zoe Skolding it is my own mecca that I love for what it posses and for where it is; tucked away, for those in the know, in a side street off the Royal Mile as humbly as those who read poetry, I say not without a little hope. 


It is a hard person who could not be a bit more idealised sitting in an entire library packed with words written by hungry writers. 


In previous years I learned that Edwin Muir himself contemplated suicide rather than work another year at the dreaded fish remains factory and having to bath himself every night to be rid of the stench.  It was a fact I needed to have and now have passed it on to you, both without charge.  Though I could have stayed I had to leave for I had another appointment- one with the Metaphoric Table.


  Chiasmus was my new word for the day.  The meaning being the second half of a sentence reflecting the first, as in: 'Scotland has not let you down, don't let Scotland down'.  There were many other words in the show but that was the first.  Written as a lecture by a professional writer due to the lack of easy to access information about literary devices they have devised a table similar to the Periodic Table showing these devises and their names. 


Most were frankly (should that be embarrassingly?)  new to me as the techniques of writing I've never given much thought to, but this show gave me an understanding of how useful these trials could be if one were only aware of them.  Fortunately they are all printed out on a sheet to buy for only a fiver.  A future purchase, I expect.


  Next was a show by fellow Word Mustard poet Melanie Branton and her inability to 'get' a boyfriend.  Though I have seen Melanie perform a number of times most of the material was new to me and though there was a total of four audience members we were captive.  Mostly humorous pokes at the advice she has been given about relationships, and the idea of relationships in general, the tone turned harrowing with the poem about Jesus being her boyfriend.  "It was very good therapy", she said. 


  Congratulating her with her show I moved on to another poet from one door to the next, which turned out to be apt as the show was The Door to Door poet by Rowan McCabe.  The premise for this was the poet knocking on doors and asking people if they wanted a poem written for them showing that poetry can be for them.  A good idea that I'm firmly in favour for but his show demonstrated the pitfalls of this lowly line of work.  Performed well and with a sweetness of human kindness Rowan showed that he was OK to open the door to.


  Further afield in the Summerhall, an ex-veterinary training centre, was the play Black Cat Fish Musketeer, which was about online relationships.  Probably cleverer than it needed to be it was a ingenious use of space, which there wasn't much of.  Using filing boxes and a personified computer to mediate between the two leads.  Very satisfying. 


  Last, after a hallomi burger in a bar round the corner of the coach station, was a late night show double bill of two comedians male and female.  The smallest stage so far yet the two did a comparable job of making whoever was there laugh.  The best line was from the woman with 'I'm told I'm sexually active, which is strange because mostly I just lie there.'  There the night ends and I go back to my tent next to the airport and sleep as the planes fly over.


Edinburgh, welcoming, forgiving and trying.  Fun experiments in the art and science of creating, I'll see you next year.
 
Now this is where you hit a paywall- well not exactly a paywall more like a moat you can swim across- but what I'm saying is that if you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me by going on Patreon.com and search for Alistair David Todd-Poet. 

I only ask for the lowest possible donation ($1) so that you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night sweating about bills and tax.  Two reasons I ask you of this is 1) It would mean a lot to me and 2) I can buy more books. 

Another way you can support me is by buying one of the literary books that I write.  The links are on the side of the website, if you are reading this from a mobile phone than switch to web mode to see it.

You can even message me with recommendations of books I should cover that I haven't already, I'd be really interested in what you have to offer me.  In the meantime stay safe and all the best to you.

'This Is Calcutta'- An Evening with Will Self

Will Self, writer of books such as Great Apes and Cock and Bull, owns a pair of the deepest set eyes I have seen as if they are looking out from a tunnel and inspecting and dissecting every aspect of modern life.  

When I say to him that I am a fellow writer he sympathises admitting that even writers of his own generation will never reach the stature of the generation before with the likes of Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.  The changes in publishing and in reading have been such that it's very difficult to get yourself noticed.  The advent of creative writing courses means there are plenty of writers, just not readers. 

We are at the Watershed in Bristol, Will has just arrived and is getting his picture taken with his back against the harbourside, for an event about Mental Health and Homelessness, which takes place during Mental Health Week.   

I confess to have a vested interest in this event in having been diagnosed with Bi-Polar and also technically homeless due to my illness.  In the context of a steadily increasing homelessness and more becoming housed in temporary accommodation with  an increasing suicide rate, according to government statistics, it seems to be a timely event for St Mungos to put on.  

St Mungos recently launched a new initiative called Safer Off the Steets (SOS Bristol), a fund raising fund raising campaign to help tackle the rising problem of homelessness.  

Will Self is known for his scathing attacks on politicians and general cultural he unusually turns out to be a generous and deeply sympathetic, as well as a (not so unusual) deeply articulate, speaker.  His voice has a particular drawling quality as if it was made out of a strong wood like oak with someone raking the bark.  It's as deep set as his eyes and unerringly always at the concept level of ideas. 

 His talk began with an article that he had written for the New Statesmen, which was not published and subsequently for which he was fired for (“O woe is me”).   It was about a homeless man he knows called George and about the housing culture of which he tries, and tries and tries, to get a footing in.  Normally he is found under a cash machine trying to get a few pounds for a drink so he can be somewhere warm and to temporally forget his situation.

Will talks about how new houses are being developed, which are normally luxury flats way out the means of people like George.  He describes how he helped George to get back into the system with the council as it is the only way he can get into some sheltered accommodation and, with some hope, get a stable place to live.  George is only one of the many people who have fallen into homelessness.  He wasn't always like this once he had a wife, a home, a good job, now all lost where all attempts to get any of it back have resulted in hopelessness.  Things can be done on an individual level that can make a difference.

“Personal contact is important”, Will says, “because once you know of the homeless person in question’s name they cease to be a ‘homeless person’ and they become someone who actually want to help get off the street and help them achieve what they would like to achieve out of life.  To give what you can give is also very important as it may be a vital stopgap to hunger before they get some real help.”

“In some periods of history there may be only so much you can do but”, Will encourages, “we here are all people who would wish to help- in fact probably most people here have probably waited with someone at A&E or have spent time talking and providing food for someone who needed it- and that’s not a bad number.”

“In London where I live I saw a man in a wheelchair rolling down a busy highstreet, his leg newly amputated because I could see it was still raw and bloody, and his look was the look of a crazy man and I thought this thought, which I don’t think often, is that we have stopped being a civilised country, we have become Calcutta.”

“Calcutta was a country that became a byword for every sin and nastiness you could find because of it’s large poor population.  In a sense we distrust poverty, hate it, which is right but we hate the people who are in it and ascribe negative characteristics to those people of whose fault is not of their own making.  That’s what’s happened here and a lot of that is because of our new Victorian values we have been coerced into believe because of neo-liberal dogma that we’ve allowed to govern so much of our lives.”

In being asked a question, that refers to Dostoevsky’s quote about how you can tell what a country is like by how they treat their mental insane, Will admits to being pessimistic about hospitals’ futures and generally pessimistic about how people on the lowest rung of the ladder are treated by governments.  And on a question of politics Will said how he would vote for Labour if only they were more honest about their proposed government. 

“If they had said ‘We’ll be poor for ten, twenty, thirty, hell, a whole generation, we’ll stop buying iphones from China and stop consuming the shit out of everything but everyone will be equal’ then I’d vote for it but to think it can get everything it wants is dishonest”.  

A question from someone in a housing association for drug addicts told how he was having to leave the property because the association has calculated that it will not make enough profit.  To which Will said with disgust, and worry, of how poorly people like this man and himself (Will Self was a drug addict for twenty years) will be treated and are treated shows how badly the market based system has encroached on our moral ability to look after each other as everything has to make it’s own way without central government support.   

The Grass Arena by John Healy is recommended by Will.  A good book if you want to understand the nature of addiction.   

A weighty evening yet an enjoyable one, a happy one where a major writer gave his thoughts about the concerns of the day and also a sad one where our group of around thirty or forty people felt just as ignored to by most people as the homeless he was talking about.  

But the difference we can all make to those who are less fortunate and are struggling their way though life can make all the difference.  I have started asking the names of those whom I give money to as a beginning of a friendship that may one day be as useful to me as it is to those without homes or family.

If you wish to donate anything to the SOS Bristol project the website is here for their crowd funding site: 

https://www.fundsurfer.com/project/bristol-rough-sleeping-partnership 

Will Self's new book 'Phone' is out this Thursday, 25th of May.

Parted Painting

It was a sad affair and nothing I could do about it.  Such is a small fact of life.  The painting still hangs in the corridor of, if not power than certainly, pain and I'm sure it is not looked upon with any kind of fondness.
  I lay listlessly trying not to respond to the hectoring Little Englander spokesperson arguing for a true and pure national race.  There was already a headache rummaging in my head and I was on my last Asprin of the day.
   It was neatly painted, neater than anything I had done previously, which was a cause of suspicion as before I had almost disregarded all techniques I had ever learned.
  My old master was a trying man, he tried his hand to almost everything but kept coming back to what he knew.
  I had studied beside him watching his work and hand with my eye attempting to take it all in.  The eye, he once told me is like a pool ready to be filled with any dye worth the colour.  Things have been swimming in them ever since.  I still learn a lot by thinking of him- the lusty European- but he can't still my headaches or do justice to my situation, that pains me daily.
  What is it about the English?  Their pig-headedness, their unruly stubbornness,  their crass faith.  What does it all boil down to?  That portrait,.. I wouldn't have bothered if I knew the trouble it would cause me, as it is simply not worth it, not worth it at all.  What would I know?
  Of course the joke is that it was on commission, that it wasn't my idea to have it painted, that came later.  That's another thing the English are short of: Irony.  Not short of it, but short of picking it up, of perceiving it when it comes into view.  Ha bloody ha.
  Yeah, that painting, I'm sure my old master would have been proud of me for having done it.  A real realistic piece, none of the clouded concrete of abstraction, but something full of the details of the ruddy sordid world.  I never thought I would admit it but Lucien Freud is heroic in his work he attempts and does, admist a grey and dying Lowry landscape.
  Such pains artists undertake to follow though with their visions of reality, but there are many ways of seeing.
  Even though I had worked on that painting for many hours every aspect of that image is starting to fade and I know I could never refresh it again.
  The guy in the corner is getting louder and I could knock him out before getting myself kicked out before getting myself kicked out into the beating cold and trying to establish my feet again.  I drink up my whiskey and toy with ordering another while I wondered about that big house where one of my finest works rested in, never to be seen again,    

'The First Man In Space' First Book Now Published

The long narrative/ dramatic poem 'The First Man In Space', under Beyond the Books Theatre publishing, is now out in The Shop of the kind I am pleased of the kind be sold in.  The Art in Mind Shop on Orchard Street in Weston-super-Mare, in a Limited Edition format (only 3 copies have printed, the Second Editions should subsequently be better quality and available to buy on Amazon)  at the reasonably priced £24.99, is where it may be found.

'The First Man In Space' deals with the subject matter of Yuri Gagarin's first ever flight beyond the stratosphere.  Purely dealt with as metaphor for Man's unique mastery over nature (though it has been dramatised as a Russian film, coincidentally made over the same period as it had been writing this version).

Separated into Four Parts:  Imagining, Training, In Space, On Earth, the poem explores not only the growth and expansion of Humanity's knowledge and experience but also that of the foremost astronaut growth as a man from a boy and then into an much older man.

Taking the base facts of the exploration and other bits of research into the science of space flight the poem's most distinctive quality is the use of imagination from the writer's own life extrapolated onto a figure more ambitious then himself and able to achieve more than many people could ever have the chance to do with their lives.

First written in the last year of study at University the poem has undergone a few versions.  Always originally intended to be a one man stage piece (with music from various classical composers) it has been decided that it should be printed in it's original entirety as a 'text' in it's own right.

This is the First of many outings into the public Space of the publishing atmosphere which we can hope to see more poems as well as plays and novels to come out as they come together in the writer's and graphic designer's hands.

I hope you all Live Long enough and Prosper well enough to enjoy this piece of enjoyment.

In Praise of Dirt

In the search for enjoyment where would you more likely look, in a laboratory or in an artists studio?


Unlike some people I enjoy large amounts of history and identity, so I also enjoy large amounts of stains, as something to look back on.


A Brexiteer friend of mine, in the pub, (of course, where else are they to be found?), was telling me the importance of identity: 


"For the Welsh", he said, "they have their leeks, for the Scottish they have their kilts, for the English..." he stumbled and couldn't find a single clear image as to what that is to be English and what, indeed, would it be?


It is not for nothing that Malorie Blackman in her mature Noughts and Crosses has her black characters describe the white characters as 'blanks', and also not for nothing that the most appalling vision of conformity comes across as a white man in a clean black suit and dark shads in The Matrix who spawns like a zombie hydra whose main reason for their  scariness (zombies not hydras) is for nothing else but their inability to reason and their sheer mass of numbers.  


I ask the heading question because our overriding fetish of controlling spaces with cleanliness and order is directly opposing our need to be creative, where our main hubs of humanity gather are maintained  not in a frenzied passion of excitement, jubilation and festive culture but as laboratories for neo-liberal experiments. 


The fundamental belief of capitalism with it's need to manage and contain and monetise is not a process of living as much as it is a process of blood being taken from a willing arm, the blood being money in this analogy. 


Characteristics of the, disappointingly figurative, High Street are just that, disappointing, but also, and tellingly, sterile.


The need to be clean is not as powerful a motive to be so as the need for other things to die, which partly comes from our belief of our exceptional status of our destiny as nationalities and as humanity, in general.


The firing rage, the guillotine, the lethal injection (again lab equipment) the whole gamut of death sentences are not clean ways of behaviour, but they are orderly, and on the whole mass society prefers mass order over an individual's mass freedom.  Utopias are made from a single personality.


Totalitarian states exist because they remove all opposition, first with those are more obviously different into increasingly smaller circles where even the slightest difference becomes unthinkable.


Minorities are removed from majorities so that the people who still have the power to oppose can be removed for their opposition, like a bag of unruly cats.


We are born as blank slates, but part of life is the accumulation of things, stuff, friends and experiences; the other part of life is maximising the celebration of our gains while minimising the sorrow of our losses, though even these terms are too reductive to made fully expressive, which is, in itself, another symptom of our scientism of life in language.


Humphrey Bogart didn't want the lights to wash out his hard earned wrinkles yet this is exactly what our belief in neo-liberal capitalism has done in a blistering whitewash of history, identity and family managed and produced as if it was a detergent sealed in it's neat blister pack against disaster, like lobsters and frogs in a boiling pot.


The recent disease of European minds has been attempted to be 'cured' (itself a sinister newspeak) with an intensity of greed for money and status and fame and which has actually only made things worse as survivors and victors of Large Wars. 


The drones that people arrogantly play with and have such fun with at weddings shockingly forget that it is almost the exactly technology that is the reason so many other families have had to go to funerals. 


Yet our short term vision for short term gain means that we miss this point accidentally as well as deliberately, even if we are looking for a way out, to use Milan Kundera's phrase, 'the trap that the world has become'. 


We look after No. 1 until there is no-one left to look after.  As Victor says in David Hare's My Zinc Bed 'the whole world is in AA'.


Even relating back to the question of the question of artist studios and laboratories is misleading as the distinction isn't so neatly separate.  Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin was only possibly because it was untidy as the chaotic mind of a mathematian looking at the logic of clouds can yield incredible results of technological progress for the rest of humanity. 


In short, if we are not progressing as society it will be because we are not playing and that we place the undeservedly high value on being clean.  Whole elements of society would be better off if there was more paid play time in the Pixar model of development and research.


The question of identity, how is it made?  Through art but our increasingly pigmy culture it is viewed in increasingly narrow frames of reference to the point where there is no reference, let alone a common one and cuts in the arts takes less and less oxygen out of the world allowing the smallest of imaginations to survive, who in turn are less powerful and less useful even to manipulators with vested interest in us. 


As a reminder: we live in unprecedented times and one of those unprecedented advantages is that we are mostly free from catastrophe severe and fatal, what we have misunderstood, in a not so immaculate conception, is that largely disaster is the norm for most of the world and for most people who have lived and we cannot expect anything different to happen to us, but in our concrete bubble of our own making, filled with amniotic fluid  and a multitude of umbilical cords, our own life- blood is drained out, as a cow milked of it's supposed worth.


We've convinced ourselves that the green deserts are wilderness and countryside and have never altered the view since despite reasonable arguments that it makes the world not so much a garden but living museum, and any view to change this or to let loose the 'raucous summer' of rewilding (to use George Monbiot's feral pharse) is an impossibility that, frankly, staggers me as the benefits are obvious and manifold. 

Life and, it's tenet, Living does not do very well when it is highly controlled.


Make the world a better place?  Start by skipping the washing one week a month and make some real memories.