On having a deft touch (not)

This morning I put three minor edits in to Episode 2 of Shelved (the sitcom I’m working on).

The trouble is that the minor edits (and they really were very minor) had a cascade effect.

Episode 3 had a corresponding scene tweak which led to Episode 4 having a comedic device upgrade. As a result, Episode 5 had a re-characterisation and Episode 6 is up for a rewrite tomorrow.

Which is critical really; Episode 6 being the season climax.

In the last draft I thought Episode 6 was right, but with the new thin end of the ‘change wedge’ springing from the scene tweak in Ep 3, the first five episodes now feel tighter; better knitted together.

The dialogue has better structure, the visuals are leaner but more effective and there’s a new running gag which could feed a second season.

I know I suffer from Compulsive Editing Syndrome (and if that doesn’t exist, it really should!), but just once I’d like to stand back from a piece of fiction and be able to say ‘There, that’s finished!’

The hard thing, or so I’m told by the people who have successfully achieved this, is getting the pitch right and attracting the engagement of the commissioning powers.

But I’ve always had a difficulty in letting go, that’s my real problem.

Anyway.

In other news.

Sophie’s laptop has had life breathed in to it and is now almost silently whirring away, like an almost silently whirring thing.

It’s much faster than it ever has been too.

The hard-disk was fried which was why no amount of recovery procedures could get the thing back on its feet. Fiddling about with the registry isn’t going to work if the partitions are crumbling.

So it has a new hard-disk and a fresh install of XP.

I imported a backup of datafiles from one of the EDD’s I use as three-tiered backup devices.

And the hardest job encountered?

Getting the iTunes database to behave itself.

Really, iTunes, who’d have believed it?

As I was *manually* making squillions of adjustments to the content in that piece of Apple software, I was mentally composing a nested conditional SELECT statement and a corresponding nested UPDATE command which, between the two of them, would have tidied the 2,000+ song records, weeded out the duplicates which iTunes insisted on creating in the first place (because of a bad piece of re-routing in the most recent iTunes upgrade), renamed a few tracks to INITCAP *and* produced a tidy-up exception report, when I suddenly realised that my VB skills may not have worked on the Apple product anyway.

And then I thought ‘No, iTunes on XP has to be VB-compliant’.

But it was all academic anyway, because the exception-handling sub-routine would have needed to be about 80 lines long.

So I persevered and just did it manually.

What did I say about having a deft touch? Not?

But at least Soph’s back up and running, and I can now put my EDDs away.

So there is a slight feeling of satisfaction in this house tonight.

Juvenilia – Hardback and eBook Editions Now Available

It is my delight to announce that my new book, Juvenilia – Collected Poems 1998 – 2008, is now available in two new formats in addition to the paperback which was published in February. 

Juvenilia – Hardback Edition

This
hardback edition comes in a beautiful dust-jacket and a traditional
cloth cover. It takes longer to print and post, so please be aware that
orders take much longer to fulfil. This edition is £20.00, though
please also be aware costs for postage and packaging are significantly
higher and not included in the retail price.

Juvenilia – eBook Edition

This eBook edition is developed
specifically for the new generation of eBook readers and will be
compatible with Apple’s new iPad. There is no delivery charge and the
book is downloaded and instantly available. This edition is £4.99.

For more details, and to buy a copy, please see the P.Viktor/Lulu Store. Thanks again for your continued support.

Castor and Pollux, In Three Parts

I

What strange brothers are these
limned in stone, prostrate statues
upon a tomb?

Effigies, who lie in great repose
above skeletal remains
that do not share granite’s properties.

They are immortal –
lichen-covered and somnolent,
weathered by acid rain,

Whereas bone is veiled in
mortal dust, ghost deposits,
lying in the dark, forgotten.

Here lies Castor, the cadaver
of a man in his sixties, hair ashen
and face sunken –

One eye purpled like fruit,
his mouth crudely open in death –
a stone gauze over his countenance.

He is long departed,
the whorls of fingerprints eroded,
his irises stolen and lids shuttered.

Beside him lies Pollux,
his brow strewn with fresh lilacs,
his eyes with sweet almonds.

His face is the pale oval
of a strange saint, a monument
from an ill-lit heaven.

His youthful cheek is worn
by rivulets, having turned away
from his death-bed companion.

Here I visit, a grave
somehow a composite of memory,
of things not known to me.

I place a hand, hot with blood
onto their coarse, granular feet,
as if to make solid the connection.

II

He labours upon the stair, under the weight
of another cardboard box freighted
with a life’s long-collected cargo, a selfhood.

At the top of it is my apartment,
slowing filling up with objects to possess it –
as I stake a claim on a place, a short-term tenant.

By the tenth load he is wearied, 
his back broad as a workhorse under a rein,
but slack, his fifty years working against him.

He staggers for the briefest moment,
a moment that slips quickly between insight
and memory,

As the current offers the musk scent of sweat
down the steps to where I stand,
redolent of a fragrance yet to be recognised.

He motions onward, carries his burden
but leaving me stood there for just a second.
Such might define sexual attraction,

Such might be a yearning so hidden
under rational thought it is quickly forgotten.
I motion up the stairs behind him.

III

He was born under the sign of the twin
but a quarter of a century ago, one of
the Dioscuri, son of Leda and a swan.

But his birth succeeded his brother’s
by forty-three years, a conception
altered by the long course of history.

When the elder, Castor, born under
the crab, climbed into a cherry tree,
he was stabbed through the heart –

A spear of time correcting the error.
The younger, Pollux, mourned for
two years before an offer was made.

He, the immortal one, might share
his precious gift with his brother,
that they may both walk the line

Between death, in Hades, and life,
in Olympus. Thus the strangest
affliction did occur – one brother

Became the other, Castor’s traces
found in the flesh of Pollux, but his
own form turned to ash and dust.

Thus immortal only by memory,
and thus mortal only by proximity.
Both were brothers, but in one body.
 

Note to Self

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don’t do it. If you’re doing it, stop.

(From The War of Art by Steven Pressfield)

Three Ghosts

They were lost within the shuttered camera eye,

somewhere along the Leeds to Liverpool Canal,

smiling blindly into sunlight, unaware of what

was to come, a ill-lit future they could not foretell.



Three of them, perched upon the lock gate’s arm,

a father, a sister, a brother, the last known picture

of them together. Even then the older man’s face

was insubstantial, his silver hair amongst clouds.



Not but a single month after Easter he was gone,

the last glimpse of him a portrait. What a moment

not known to be momentous, the Lancashire hills,

the chalky sky behind them full of indifference.



Once I went in search of them, walked the trail

they too had followed, and found the same lock.

But the gate was empty, the wind blew solemnly,

as clouds scudded across the pale sun like a clock.

Night Visitor

The narrow cot on which he sleeps is boxed-in,

a coffin, lidless, lying still on his single mattress.

But not asleep, the boy’s gaunt chest rises in quick

succession and a sickening wheeze sounds, a choir

of air, of the damned screaming in the distance.



His pale form is just visible in the witching hour,

his white bed sheet a knot of fabric about his feet,

and his limbs, blue-wax, seem emaciated, as bones

spun in a thin gossamer of skin. His eyes are lidded,

his face a frown of concentration on a tide of breath.



He might suffocate here, amongst the deposits left

by dust mites, who efficiently fill up his mattress,

his pillow, with allergens born on faecal matter.

They will secure his death, these steady workers

who find nourishment on flakes of human skin.



He reaches to a shelf where his lamplight sits,

and takes the small device which he holds to lips,

the bitter taste of Salbutamol clings in his throat.

He sucks upon the inhaler for dear life, but brings

no solace, no ease, as taking in carbon monoxide.



This fiend of illness sits on his chest, in which

he can get no rest as his young back begins to ache,

those muscles having shrunk to squeeze out lungs

in their tight, iron grip. In keen misery he sits up,

sudden, steps from his bed and alights the stairs.



About him drags his bed sheet, ghostly raiment

in which he appears to us as a pallid apparition,

caught as though between the dead and the living.

The house about him is silent, as the family sleeps

upstairs, unaware of his laboured gasps for air.



He finds an armchair and sits there, counting

his short, shallow breaths, measuring their depth,

and willing his lungs to deepen into vast caverns. 

Then the narrow bronchi slowly begin to open,

allow the first trickle onto a cracked riverbed.



The high, lonely whistle, as through naked trees,

starts to lessen, the constriction of back muscle

eases in. For hours he sits there, the long night

blueing to dawn, diluting as ink by a rim of sun,

into whose shimmering light his bulk solidifies. 

Marina and the Diamonds – The Family Jewels, Review

The world of pop hasn’t always been a place where creative female singers, often lazily described as kooky, could find expressionistic harbour and great fortunes alike. Cyndi Lauper was the trailblazer for ‘kook-dom’ at a time when the biggest female popstars were almost uniformly playing most heavily on their sex appeal, all too keenly aware of the commercial impact of a sly wink and racy lyric. With her debut album She’s So Unusual, Lauper not only made the boldest statement of her career but paved the way for women to be more than just ‘Boy Toys’ (to borrow Madonna’s earliest tagline). They could be performance artists; they could take references from Pop Art and street culture and blend them with high fashion; they could flout gender norms and have personality, charisma and an offbeat way of viewing the world. In this manner, Lauper opened the floodgates for women from Tori Amos to Björk, Regina Spektor to Fiona Apple, Gwen Stefani to Imogen Heap, and Lady Gaga to Florence Welch.

The Family Jewels won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Many have criticised its over-produced, commercially conscious posturing and, of course, Diamandis’s vocals, but these seem to be more a matter of taste than indictments of quality. There’s plenty to be applauded here; avoiding the generic pitfalls that Little Boots tripped up on, The Family Jewels lives up to its brazen promise and ought to give Marina enough clout and credibility to stake claim to the crown of a genuine popstar.

Official Website of Marina and the Diamonds

Buy Marina and the Diamonds – The Family Jewels (Amazon)

Review written for and originally posted on Wears the Trousers.

Doin’ the Zebedee thing

I do wonder how many people get the Magic Roundabout references that pop up here from time to time…

Anyway gang, it’s been fun. No really. Real fun.

I’ve been up since 8am and it’s 9.25pm which, by last night’s standards, is a very late night indeed.

Thanks for your company. I’d love to stay and chat with you all some more, but I’ve got a hot date with a hot woman and a certain Mr Hornby Of The School Of Cool Writing.

Bastard that he is, because no-one should be allowed to write as well as he does.

Anyway.

And tomorrow, you know, it’s promising to be another busy day.

I have a feature on record labels to finish, it’s weeks overdue. And I have to finish audio editing a loooong interview with a band, it’s months overdue.

And I have to finish resurrecting Soph’s laptop from the dead.

And I need to ride a couple of horses – one of them needs cross-country schooling if I can swing some time up on the course.

And clean and polish my work-shoes.

Clean out the car.

Take the lorry out and tank it up.

Breakdown, clean and oil 3x saddles and 2x bridles.

And I need to enter the one-day event at Larkhill too, but there’s a couple of days left for that one.

So I’m going to bed now.

‘Cos there’s lots to do tomorrow.

Have a nice one.

Michael Peppiatt – Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, Review

Francis Bacon is a giant of twentieth-century art and to many (including myself) he is the greatest artist of that age. I have long admired Bacon’s paintings, ever since I became involved with the Tate Gallery Liverpool when I was fourteen. I was lucky enough to be part of their Young Tate Project which allowed a small group of teenagers from the North West to curate an exhibition from the Tate’s extensive collection of modern art (the first and last time, I believe, the public has been invited to do so). I remember seeing Bacon’s work during many workshops around the gallery (situated in Liverpool’s Albert Dock) and being in awe of a quality in them that at the time I could not quite articulate. I would later recognise it as an existential horror which informs all his paintings. Eventually, one of Bacon’s portraits of Van Gogh was included in our exhibition, Testing the Water, such was the group’s visceral response to his work. Since my somewhat privileged education in modern art at a young age I have been fascinated by this enfant terrible of modernism and in recent years I have become equally intrigued about the man as much as the work.

The Official Website of The Estate of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon – The South Bank Show 1985

Excellent interview with Francis Bacon by Melvyn Bragg for The South Bank Show in 1985. I am currently reading Michael Peppiatt’s brilliant biography of Bacon, Anatomy of an Enigma, and these YouTube videos are an evocative snapshot of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century which are the perfect accompaniment to Peppiatt’s book. Enjoy.