What are you writing?

luka

Well-known member
yeah zhao i guess the interenet is a way out of that and i started doing somehting but i lost heart cos no one was into it. i will go back to that cos it does have plenty of potential. the big problem is that reading on a computer screen is impossible. ideally i think i'd like to give some bits and pieces to a computer wizard and say, this is what i want, make it happen. i don't want to do the johnson gimmick again obviously. but i am quite keen to avoid blocks of text. i would like the foreground the word. to encourage a forensic focus on the word. like how you can do that with a sound in music. surround it by space. no it doesnt kust become a peice in a tune or whatever, it is a piece of music in its own right, i'd like to do that with words. and then demonsteate how much headier it gets when you get combinations of TWO words! excitement! add an adverb to a noun! wow! so it will probably come down to the arrangement of words on the page like mallarmes thing. the difficulty is to find a way of doing it which doesn't appear arbitary. if you are using more paper i think you should probably be able to justify it convincingly.
 

luka

Well-known member
incidently you know who the best writer of prose on this forum is? craner, easily. if you can put pressure on him to write instead of absorbing himself in the grotesque soap-opera of americna politics you'd be doing the world a favour. this is the first thing i found of his as an exmaple. hopefuly he'll be embaressed if i put this here.
he has a talent i think and he should be encouraged.

Valentine's Day Message

I gotta fetish for fuckin' you with your skirt on

I liked due to those who complain about the "coarsening of culture" which can be, nevertheless, allied to a certain languorous contempt for everything except the deep glut of consumption. Plus, I'm fully with that particular fetish.

But I was always subtle about this: there was posture or the way her legs looked in nylon, skirt and heels, when crossed. The eyes, their colour, what they convey - humour, mischief, mystique, occasional genius, joy, loss, or sorrow. Even spite - now that was something - just NOT blank, bored, or self-serving. Charisma contained like a secret revealed in body language and movement - for example, the way she walked down the street, flicked hair out of her eyes, or smoked a cigarette. The feel of clear skin or a cold body warming up.

I was overtly romantic at some point, and still there seemed to be a problem. Well, yes, apparently there was a problem. I just wasn't told. You think that could mitigate it?

Her desire was mobile, moved continually, or died. To be left standing still, or to be caught, or trapped, was to be left in silence with her own thoughts. To be left with nothing. In the end, it came down to this:

vanity. In retaliation I learned to love it and so revenge its covert form; I admired its extremes. The best dressed and the mirror-struck. I began to afford them the simple respect they deserved. They would be judged on personal taste, self-obsession, or detachment. I knew where to stand and there would always be reflected glory.

There was also The Image all over the rest.

How words betray us, for in saying your image I did not want to make you believe I saw you. No. If only I had! I sometimes tried desperately to see you, by shutting my eyes or just the opposite, by opening them very wide upon the darkness of the room.

There was also "my eye for the ladies," twitching like a maniac, with insane industry, converting someone on the street into something as flat and fleeting as a bus stop Versace poster. (George Melly said that losing his sex drive was like being untethered from a wild beast!)

Not just images and bodies but every material: metal, glass, plastic, fibre. So tactile! The connection between Guy Bourdin's early slides of LA doorways and curbs and his later fashion photographs make exact and perfect sense now. He made connections that would come to define the link between lust and consumerism. He realised this subtle intimacy between things, how it would, in the future, finally determine reaction and response, undercurrent and contours.

This is more to do with blank and obtuse visual dynamics, the awkward and cruel pose of bodies, the sheen of skin glossed into a plastic (fetishist) desire, the sharp colours and angles of concrete curves and corners, corrugated iron doors, road signs, and the discreet order of rock formations (Bourdin's early photos of cliffs and granite structures, and his Kodak slides of LA buildings and road patterns set up the visual lexicon of his fashion photographs - a tactile and textural language is worked out before and directly informs these pictures). Bourdin creates an impersonal visual world (coldness and cruelty) that remains glacial and grotesque in its distance and distortion, and is therefore necessarily and inescapably seductive. A cold eroticism that freezes LA sun. (atff)

It's the distance that compels a desire to touch, or be absorbed. Which makes lust a little sick, or sickly - a total glut, and only those with a taste for the suffocation of hardcore pornography can bypass it completely.

But it is human to search, from lure to lure, for a life that is at last autonomous and authentic.

Otherwise you are caught; and not caught because disgust is inescapable, yes, and also, with luck, there can be personal and physical rapport. Contact of bodes is an escape from image and cloth; the obscure magnetism of smell, touch, humour, empathy, desire. The unraveling. Something mortal and mortifying. Love is a tangle of physical reactions and mental telepathies and a spark of laughter. That's why it fades, or comes undone. Then it leaves the obtuse impression that wrenches.

Dear Darling. Damn your enormous eyes.

This is the short story of our loss, what a fucking waste, or waste of time. It still makes me angry. Incensed, I should say! Speechless! I still blame you, totally. You probably blame me, finally.

The one I loved, no I wouldn't go so far as to discuss her again.

No.

Soft answers.

The good things of life - caviar, plovers' eggs, champagne - it seemed to me it was all as if he had never heard of them, but had discovered them all by himself.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
i like the albino deer in the goblin boozer (and rather fancy the idea of a scoop in same).

it reminds me of Quillian water.

this was a drink found in the city of Quill in the realm of Brice in the Fighting Fantasy gaming series (the fantasy world of Titan).

it was said to look like water, taste like water, smell of nothing, and three small measures would kill a man.

BTW Luka i hope these coffee outlets in the plague cities don't include yours?

he won't thank me for saying it (i mean, he does work near Soho) but something Oliver once wrote about Zurich was first-rate (FOR THE DELUGE; CITTA blog, September '06), among other bits.
 

luka

Well-known member
i find his current sordid obsessions very saddening. he has lost his soul i think.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
though confess that I couldn't read that particular piece any further than "I got a fetish for fucking you with your skirt on".

Yes, well, ah, that was a snippet of a Ja Rule lyric from the great Ashanti song 'Mesmerized'. The next bit goes: "On a back street in the back seat of a Yukon."

I am actually quite embarrased by that piece, as Luka well knows, though I'm fond of it for other reasons (mostly nostalgic).
 

luka

Well-known member
hhhahahhahha write something new then for fucks sake.... this is your last oppourtunity. once you start teaching those kids are going to suck out all your energy.
you'll just come home, pour a large scotch and collapse in front of the television.
fall asleep on the sofa, hand still clutching glass at 9.45pm. you knoew its true...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I agree, though confess that I couldn't read that particular piece any further than "I got a fetish for fucking you with your skirt on".

I couldn't help but see that as a set-up for the classic punchline, "Trouble is, the damn thing's much too small for me".


josef k. (what is it with people on here and capital letters?) writes very well, so I was chuffed when he said he liked my line about Capital-ism as a 'disincarnate spiritual vampire'. As far as humour goes I wish Jaie Miller would post more, he was hilarious.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
you'll just come home, pour a large scotch and collapse in front of the television.
fall asleep on the sofa, hand still clutching glass at 9.45pm. you knoew its true...

What are you on about? Jenks writes poems and runs a family in his spare time and he's a head of department!

I'll probably have more energy than I do now. The kids will galvanize me.

Anyway, you've thoroughly disgraced me on this forum. I'll never live this down.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
was Ja Rule addressing that line to a willing Ashanti?

if so, and let's be frank here, he's punching above his weight, i fancy
 

craner

Beast of Burden
But what an inspired rhyming couplet.

Ja Rule doesn't exist anymore, does he? Ashanti wouldn't even look at him now.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
you're right Ollie.

i don't think he's been around for a good year in the public eye.

ja_rule2.jpg


ashanti-in-white-on-white-on-floor.jpg
 

luka

Well-known member
youve disgraced yourself with crypto-fascist ravings over the last 5 years, i could hardly do anymore damage. im trying to restore your reputation as a sosphiticate and man of letters.
 

luka

Well-known member
i'll prbably stick some soppy bits in too like this


Let me tell of memories, back a thousand lifetimes, or maybe many more.
I have so many memories. The world around me fades as eyes turn inward.
I have no name. No mother, no father. I am neither male nor female, young nor old.
Time has come to a complete halt. It’s shape now visible in its entirity.
If I say to you
Terror, and exhileration, in equal measure
I think you will know what I mean.

The shining city is built, in the bosum of green hills. O! Happy City. Star trails in swirling night.
River with voice of laughing infants, tumbles down dale to heedlessly split the town in twain.
The wound is sutured with bridges, which leap gracefully over the river at regular intervals. Bone bridges of ivory. Bridges of spidery steel or silent white marble.
On hot summer days children press cheeks against the cool marble pylons.
Run through reeds in the shallows. Eels flit past tiny ankles. Herons watch over them with parental indulgence. An amused, loving concern.
Sky of swifts and swallows. Many fine old trees. The oldest trees are the towns most prominent and respected citizens. There is much sadness when one dies. A thousand years of continuity is broken and the limbs which were home to generations of birds and climbing children, are fallen on by woodlice and other creatures of rotten wood, warm rich decay.
The men are laughing in the taverns. There are people in the squares, reading, talking and ruminating, under the shade of birch and poplar.
You also walked its wide boulevards, in the afternoon sun, with all the other promenaders.
I remember you with fondness.Your smile. Your easy gait. You don’t remember I know. It was too long ago, and such perfect happiness, hardly seems creditable now. But humour me, as I reminisce.
You loved Verlaine and recited his poems to me, by the river, in the long grass.
‘Les fluers des eaux referment leurs corolles,
Des peupliers profilent aux lointains,
Droits et serres, leurs spectres incertains;
Vers les buissons errent les lucioles;’
and though I speak no French, I was moved to tears of joy. The heart swollen with giddy love. Your face was so responsive, so alive and untroubled. It registered everything which passed over it, every emotion and idea, every change in temperature, cloud covering and uncovering benevolent sun, every tendril of the delicious breeze
I remember distinctly just how wide your eyes opened. How sensuously you drew breath, how your features would melt into bliss, just momentarily, on the in-breath.
I recited long lines of Whitman, prayers of Rilke. It was that kind of day. The sun was shining, the world was young and fecund. You didn’t realise, did you, just how wholeheartedly life can be loved?
the hard carapace of bone dissolves, sharp intake of breath as pleasures multiply.
insistent. singing in the cells. joy ruptures bone carapace. self melts, spine arches, head thrown back….
 

luka

Well-known member
you have to get sentimental sometimes. demonstrates emotional depth y'see...
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Luka, I know we can get your fantasy novel out there when it's done.

We just need to fabricate a good sales pitchy pull quote or glowing review from someone already famous in the genre, and paste it everywhere online. It would also help to create internet hype by having the right bloggers promote it and talk about how prescient/timely it is. Fantasy novel readers love the internet.

Are you looking for an agent? If I can sell a loperamide program to J&J, I can sell a fantasy novel to anyone.

10% non-negotiable
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I'm writing a thing about time travel for a Canadian art fanzine at the moment; it's about the time I saw a picture of myself dancing with Jayne Mansfield (true).

Any time travel anecdotes or stories would be good. I'm not going to use them, it'd just be nice to read other people's experiences of time travel. If there are any...
 
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