I feel I should do another post, I have numerous other things I should be doing. In my time at home, it's been alright. Reading quite a few books, particularly the second and third books in the Song of Ice and Fire series (I think I'll write and post a scripted version of a chapter from the third book, as an exercise), not going out and every once in a while going out.
Dylan Moran for example, saw him in the city doing some stand-up. All the conventions I thought would stand for comedy didn't. I should point out this was my first time at a stand-up gig. Don't get me wrong, it was alright, but... people we're laughing just to laugh, not because the jokes were funny (some were) but because there was a fear of being left out, as if you are intellectually inferior because everyone else got it. One source of annoyance was that guy to my right, he laughed after everyone else laughed at a joke, as if he is the punchdrunk version of a pothead, a delayed reaction because the cogs in his head are rusty and crap. I think I could do stand-up, I have some material that could be performed for ten-fifteen minutes.
Also saw Foo Fighter, Biffy Clyro and Jimmy Eat World at MILTON KEYNES, MILTON KEYNES. The 65,000 fans of the Foos entered the National Bowl, this was an unplanned thing for me, I was asked to go by my cousin the week before as his mate dropped out. It was interesting, as my cousin referred to it as a mini fest, I don't think I could handle an actual festival, due to hygenie, crap food and all that. The music was great, they opened with two of the guys from Supergrass doing songs from Elvis Costello, The Cure and The Doors, nice opening. Jimmy Eat World was awesome, I've been listening to them ever since, Biffy was more eh to me. As the Foo Fighters came on stage I was feeling crap, dehydrated and all that, I swear I could feel my kidneys hurting. The music was great, and most importantly the best jam between Seasick Steve, John Paul Jones and Grohl on drums.
As for writing, haven't written anything for a while, not for two months. Good thing? Bad thing? I'm jotting down ideas and being excited about old and new ideas, not quite figuring out what I want to write first. I need to pick one thing, devote my writing to it and then move onto the next thing. But mentally, I am unprepared, I need some other challenge as well. Hopefully back to running and more importantly getting a job.
Best spend some time getting a job, money is an important thing at the moment, since I am considering making short films, but we'll see what's what.
Monday, 11 July 2011
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Untitled - Revenge of the Working Title
Still alive, still aimless. Moved back home less than two weeks ago. Home comforts make me a lazy person, but I'm slowly winding up to prepare for continuing my writing. Jotting the odd idea in the notebook every now and then. Reading as much as I can. I take away more from books than I do any other medium.
I've started thinking about writing some novellas, I'd never thought I would be interested in it. We shall see how it goes, I have a certain sylisation that I am willing to try.
I've stopped exercising, I've let my facial hair grow. I've noticed a lot of my sentences started with the letter 'I'. Not honing a vocabulary, rather a husk of such a thing. I talk about my aspirations, never really set foot towards meeting them, interesting that.
I'll spend some time enjoying home comforts, I feel like Hoffman in the Graduate lazing around after finishing Uni. To be honest, I have done a lot of DIY. I still have a short film to write for sometime, I only remembered an hour ago. I'd best get to writing that short film, it seems simple enough, a talking heads piece. Could be considered a strength of mine.
Signing off.
I've started thinking about writing some novellas, I'd never thought I would be interested in it. We shall see how it goes, I have a certain sylisation that I am willing to try.
I've stopped exercising, I've let my facial hair grow. I've noticed a lot of my sentences started with the letter 'I'. Not honing a vocabulary, rather a husk of such a thing. I talk about my aspirations, never really set foot towards meeting them, interesting that.
I'll spend some time enjoying home comforts, I feel like Hoffman in the Graduate lazing around after finishing Uni. To be honest, I have done a lot of DIY. I still have a short film to write for sometime, I only remembered an hour ago. I'd best get to writing that short film, it seems simple enough, a talking heads piece. Could be considered a strength of mine.
Signing off.
Monday, 16 May 2011
One Step Beyond!
A kid was bit by an adder in the new forest the other week. I feel inclined to go to the new forest and bite an adder now.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted and there is good reason for that. I finally finished Uni, it was alright. We celebrated and all that, had a good final day, I honestly don’t think it could have been better. But now, after a week, I m fed up. I’m aimless; I’ve got nothing to do. I’ve jotted down some things I want to do before I leave Southampton for good. What gives me meaning? My writing. What do I like to talk about? Ideas. I try to challenge myself.
If I think of myself in stages, and for some strange reason, I kind of do. I am at the pinnacle of myself, there is no greater challenge than yourself and besting your past efforts. I could destroy my past iterations. I think of what I’ve done, having the most boring year out, travelling two hours a day, five times a week to go to college. University is more of a lesson for life than it is degrees, and that’s lucky because by degree won’t get me a job. I’ve learnt how to look after myself. I am smarter, faster, stronger, overall more rounded person.
I’m currently in a limbo, between different steps of life. The next one is familiar and at the same time not, I’ll be back in my old surroundings, but at the same time I cannot go and enjoy all the comforts, because I have to get somewhere. I owe it to myself. I can’t be like people I went to school with, they went through what I’ve been through and now they’ve hit a plateau in life. These are people who are smarter than me, one step ahead, and they just stop and get a job. That’s pretty much it. Why give up? Why now? You have to keep pushing forward to get what you want. That thing between the people who you look up to and the person you are, it’s a barrier, and that is you. I won’t give up.
Three years didn’t end on a whimper. But with a powerful explanation point, for my friends, and the many, many people I feel indifferent about, cheers. You can’t ape the experience.
Monday, 25 April 2011
Nostalgia
Currently, I have got the nostalgia of Uni in my mind, it always comes just as things are about to end
I always think of a song. Take it Easy by The Eagles particularly this part:
I always think of a song. Take it Easy by The Eagles particularly this part:
'We may lose and we may win,
though we will never be here again'
And then onto the next part of my life, but not after a scenic sunset and a JD & Coke in my hand.
You know what they say. Red sky at night, shepard's house burning.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Long time, no type
Two weeks at home came to an end several hours ago. Back to the ghost town of Southampton, I'm tired, hot and a third thing I cannot think of right now.
Back home, time, pace. It has a different rhythm to city life, not too quick as the former, nor does it go at a snails pace of a village. Not good, not bad, just home. I weighed the pros and cons between home and uni, I can sleep there but no gym to go to. I got bored, ate terribly, went through three seperate tubs of Ben & Jerrys, had plenty of free pub grub. The first week, I don't know what I was doing but I acheived next to nothing, so much for finishing my second draft of my screenplay and starting my third draft. As I type, I am twelve days away from the hand-in and I didn't even bother doing the other work, yet. But to be honest, that just feels supplementary. My final mark means nothing to me, my screenplay does.
I slowly but surely got around to finishing the second draft over the course of the last week, I luckily got upto 20 pages for two days, but in between slogged to progress but I wasn't feeling it. Sometimes I need to warm myself into it, other times I just know it isn't working and do something constructive like sit in front of the television, eating digestives.
The script slowly came along, tighter than the first draft by a while. If my first draft was a car, the engine would have dropped out after a mile. My second draft, that can get you to the shops, think about calling a taxi back. I created some great moments, I feel it could become a film, and has all the potential in the world to have a sequel.
I finally got around to reading my Cormac McCarthy omnibus, nowhere near finished. The Border Trilogy. I bought it because, I've seen several adaptions of his work, but I didn't want to read The Road or No Country for Old Men. So I got this, It took some time getting used to in the way it was written, abstract description, lack of grammer. I'm used to Ellroys Staccato sentence structure. I love it when writers change the way a novel can be written. Cormac just gives me a clear sense of Mexico in the first of the trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, which I am still reading). Rawlins, and John Grady Cole, two teenage ranchers from Texas travel to Mexico on a sense of adventure in the mid-1900s. Sometimes it is better when a character cannot explain themselves in that of an English Lit postgrad, uses the intelligence of the characters to tell the world through their eyes, yet maintaining a third person perspective all way through. Skipping over conversations with summaries where as another might just be a monologue of several pages. I can tell I am going to regret finishing the book, I don't want it to finish. The book creates a world free of Western movie tropes and just tells a story, a simple one, told well and with style.
I wrote something pretty cool, where this paragraph currently is. Then I decided, I'd rather one of my characters says it. If you see any typos, fuck you, I'm tired, I thought regret and wrote recreate (edited). You want to read something good? Read the extract below this post.
Back home, time, pace. It has a different rhythm to city life, not too quick as the former, nor does it go at a snails pace of a village. Not good, not bad, just home. I weighed the pros and cons between home and uni, I can sleep there but no gym to go to. I got bored, ate terribly, went through three seperate tubs of Ben & Jerrys, had plenty of free pub grub. The first week, I don't know what I was doing but I acheived next to nothing, so much for finishing my second draft of my screenplay and starting my third draft. As I type, I am twelve days away from the hand-in and I didn't even bother doing the other work, yet. But to be honest, that just feels supplementary. My final mark means nothing to me, my screenplay does.
I slowly but surely got around to finishing the second draft over the course of the last week, I luckily got upto 20 pages for two days, but in between slogged to progress but I wasn't feeling it. Sometimes I need to warm myself into it, other times I just know it isn't working and do something constructive like sit in front of the television, eating digestives.
The script slowly came along, tighter than the first draft by a while. If my first draft was a car, the engine would have dropped out after a mile. My second draft, that can get you to the shops, think about calling a taxi back. I created some great moments, I feel it could become a film, and has all the potential in the world to have a sequel.
I finally got around to reading my Cormac McCarthy omnibus, nowhere near finished. The Border Trilogy. I bought it because, I've seen several adaptions of his work, but I didn't want to read The Road or No Country for Old Men. So I got this, It took some time getting used to in the way it was written, abstract description, lack of grammer. I'm used to Ellroys Staccato sentence structure. I love it when writers change the way a novel can be written. Cormac just gives me a clear sense of Mexico in the first of the trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, which I am still reading). Rawlins, and John Grady Cole, two teenage ranchers from Texas travel to Mexico on a sense of adventure in the mid-1900s. Sometimes it is better when a character cannot explain themselves in that of an English Lit postgrad, uses the intelligence of the characters to tell the world through their eyes, yet maintaining a third person perspective all way through. Skipping over conversations with summaries where as another might just be a monologue of several pages. I can tell I am going to regret finishing the book, I don't want it to finish. The book creates a world free of Western movie tropes and just tells a story, a simple one, told well and with style.
I wrote something pretty cool, where this paragraph currently is. Then I decided, I'd rather one of my characters says it. If you see any typos, fuck you, I'm tired, I thought regret and wrote recreate (edited). You want to read something good? Read the extract below this post.
El Capitan
The captain reached out with one hand and rapped with his knuckles against the door. You didnt have to kill him.
A keyring rattled outside. The door opened. The captain held up one hand to an unseen figure in the partial dark of the corridor.
Momento, he said.
He turned and stood studying them.
I will tell you a story, he said. Because I like you. I was young man like you. You see. And this time I tell you I was always with these older boys because I want to learn every thing. So on this night at the fiesta of San Pedro in the town of Linares in Nuevo León I was with these boys and they have some mescal and everything--- you know what is mescal?--- and there was this woman and all these boys is go out to this woman and they is have this woman. And I am the last one. And I go out to the place where is this woman and she is refuse me because she say I am too young or something like that.
What does a man do? You see. I can no go back because they will all see that I dont go with this woman. Because the truth is always plain. You see. A man cannot go out to do some thing and then he go back. Why he go back? Because he change his mind? A man does not change his mind.
The Captain made a dist and held it up. Maybe they tell her to refuse to me. So they can laugh. They give her some money or something like that. But I dont let whores make trouble for me. When I come back there is no laughing. No one is laughing. You see. That has always been my way in this world. I am the one when I go someplace then there is no laughing. When I go there then they stop laughing.
- Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses.
A keyring rattled outside. The door opened. The captain held up one hand to an unseen figure in the partial dark of the corridor.
Momento, he said.
He turned and stood studying them.
I will tell you a story, he said. Because I like you. I was young man like you. You see. And this time I tell you I was always with these older boys because I want to learn every thing. So on this night at the fiesta of San Pedro in the town of Linares in Nuevo León I was with these boys and they have some mescal and everything--- you know what is mescal?--- and there was this woman and all these boys is go out to this woman and they is have this woman. And I am the last one. And I go out to the place where is this woman and she is refuse me because she say I am too young or something like that.
What does a man do? You see. I can no go back because they will all see that I dont go with this woman. Because the truth is always plain. You see. A man cannot go out to do some thing and then he go back. Why he go back? Because he change his mind? A man does not change his mind.
The Captain made a dist and held it up. Maybe they tell her to refuse to me. So they can laugh. They give her some money or something like that. But I dont let whores make trouble for me. When I come back there is no laughing. No one is laughing. You see. That has always been my way in this world. I am the one when I go someplace then there is no laughing. When I go there then they stop laughing.
- Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses.
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