luck in the head
by uzwi
Towards the end of this–about 23 minutes in–there’s some footage of me & Ian Miller talking about our graphic version of my short story “The Luck in the Head”. I suppose it must have been 1990 or 91. People tend to describe this as an “adaptation”, but actually it was a collaboration, which lasted some months & produced a brand new item.
Are you going to do it again – either graphically, or in interactive e-book form? Cool to imagine, say, Tom Waits and “In the Neighbourhood” tracking bits of “Nova Swing.”
And this does its best to explain why any of us try writing in the first place:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227091.900-review-how-storytelling-shaped-humanity.html
Good question, Martin.
MartinM – good link, looks like a very promising work. Based on what little I know through my wife’s work on the visual aspect of it, I would say Boyd is bang on about the crucial role of attention.
Obviously blogs are now a form of interactive storytelling , and did anyone mention the Exquisite Corpse? I’ll reserve full judgement till I get to read it but what I would hope Boyd’s impact might be in part is the de-hyping of artistic or technological forms of expression, to reveal the base and fundamental drives behind spinning a tale. I really *want* to see the emperor acting up as though he has new clothes while being able to discern his nakedness, rather than get all worked up about the meaning of ‘folk tales’.
MJH – great to hear the qualities of your speaking voice for the first time: precise without descending to spareness, exact without self-elevation to fussiness – maybe consider some sort of audio-based work rather than graphical as an extension of the multimedia track?
>>maybe consider some sort of audio-based work rather than graphical as an extension of the multimedia track?
Well, as it happens:
Yo, Zali – indeed! Are we going to see any clips, or was this just a quick bit of zen elbow work – there in the minute and gone?
To my knowledge, alas, there’s no video of that performance – wish I’d had my current phone, I’d have got the whole thing! Btb, I really enjoyed that evening – any plans for any more Raagnagrok / MJH soundclashes?
As with all Resonance FM related events, the whole thing was recorded. Audio not video. So it’s somewhere in their archive, not necessarily public as yet. There’s also a demo-tape for another project that didn’t quite come off, and it’s quite possible that Pilkington has recordings of the practice session buried somewhere on his hard disk.
Al: you never know.
What was interesting about the Resonance session was that it was readings of the material written for Barbara Campbell’s 1001 Nights cast. These texts were specifically written for performance, so the collaboration actually extended back to those and through the live performance. Also, on the night we had Erik Davis reading his own texts which brought another layer to the cake.
A spoken word/sonic art jam for five people – with only four actually present.
And now I’d best stop hijacking attention from the Harrison/Miller collab.
MartinM & Zak: you might well ask… I’m always up for an interesting collaboration.
Hi MikeM: thanks. On voiced stuff: I used to write primarily to be heard, rather than read off the page. Now it’s more the latter, but I still love reading aloud. I keep meaning to put some audio up here, or at least link to some, & never get round to it.
Al: thanks for the link.
Krishna: it would be great to hear anything Resonance FM had–great to do some more stuff with you & Mark, too. (Not that I had to do much but read, you guys put all the real work in.)
I’d love to see another performance! Fiddling around with various digital video bits and pieces just now too, would be interesting to try and film it so there’s a visual record too.
Thanks, Krishna – and would agree all round it’d be really good to have some links to this and other recordings from here.
I’ll see if I can get Mark to make enquiries with Resonance. Watch this space.
I’m curious about the differences between writing to be heard and writing to be read off the page. It seems like the differences would be subtle, important but hard to nail down, or are they more concrete than that?
Also, for a while I’ve wanted to ask, when you read something you like do you (or did you when you were first learning to write) go back and dissect the sentences and paragraphs in a clinical manner and study the structure? I’ve always worried that was probably a necessary thing to do in order to learn how to write well, but I’ve rarely done it because of a fear it would be like ruining a magic trick by learning how it is done.
Hi gElm. To “dissect clinically” you need quite a large range of grammatical & structural tools, also a poetics or theory of some sort (to which you are wedded in a fairly blinkered way). Even then you are assigning lots of personal values to things, & guessing about the effects of what you try.
I doubt anyone’s that clinical anyway. I’m all for technique but I wouldn’t want it to get in the way of something I felt was right. I like the sensation of, “Jesus. Why did I do that ?”
Though you can’t remain a reader-for-the-sake-of-it, you have to trust that part of yourself which used to be knocked over by a book or a sentence or a scene.
I think the mistake there is to think of it as “a magic trick” in the first place. That’s reductive. Actually it’s such a complex & organic process, you can’t damage it by learning about it. You’re safe unless you think that’s what you’ve done; unless you choose to limit it that way.
Paradoxically enough, the writers I’ve met who most defend that view of writing (that it’s a mysterious & fragile gift which must never be analysed or it will go back to the fairies) tend to be formulaic professionals, whose methods & definitions have to be massively conscious & reductive from the get-go.
Thanks very much for your response. You must often get asked for advice on writing and it probably gets tiresome. My comparison to a magic trick was inaccurate, what I meant more was the wonder of being able to pick up a book and start reading and all other troubles vanishing for a while. I’m not worried about damaging my writing process because honestly there isn’t much there to damage. My worry is that if you study structure or technique too much, does it become so second nature you can’t be wholly immersed in a book you’re reading because you’re distracted by being aware of the structural bones under the skin. I remember the first time I saw Touch of Evil there was an introduction by a television presenter who went on and on about the opening tracking shot (which is awesome) and as a result I spent the first part of the movie paying more attention to the camera-work than on the movie as a whole. But I’m repeating myself and you’ve already more than answered my question, so I’ll try to follow some wise words I heard Eduardo Galeano say in an interview yesterday: When words cannot be better than silence, it’s better to shut up.