When I talk of taste, I'm not talking of "Jolly ho, I've such excellent taste in literature" or "People are developing a taste for fantasy in the light of Game of Thrones" or even "What the hell are you talking about, people have and always will have a taste for fantasy".
No, I'm actually talking about, well, a form of synaesthesia, that strange ability that some "people" have for seeing sounds, or hearing colours, or feeling tastes. That sort of thing. I've developed my own version of it.
I now have a taste for words. Words leave a taste on my tongue.
Whenever I think of the word "literature" I get this strange, large, flat, slightly tangy, slightly bitter, taste spreading all over the back of my tongue, feeling like it is filling my mouth from side to side, like a piece of lemon soaked rice paper. Thinking about not words, but the construction of words, the writing of letters, drops drizzle lime onto the back of my throat.
Like a literal word soup is rising out of my throat; not in a nasty, vomity way, but an enjoyment of the construction of letters, one after the other, the gap after a group of them then more.
Reading Clive James fourth chapter of his life story "The North Face of Soho" brings on the same feeling - not the actual act of reading it, but the thought of reading it. The taste is there when I think of "Blue pencilling" "Slugs of hot metal" "adjusting the balance of a line".
What makes it all even more bizarre is that this must indicate a subconscious desire to do all this, and BE a proper writer slash journalist slash essayist slashy "Man of Letters" because the actuality is that everything I write is straight out of the neurons in my head, 6 rounds rapid fire...
It's like sucking a lemon after slugging tequila.
A hard shot of words...
Wednesday 26 September 2012
Saturday 22 September 2012
Cat People
I am sure discerning readers are familiar with this;
The most memorable scene, in my view, of many from Quentin Tarantino's superb Inglorious Basterds, backed of course by David Bowie's Cat People.
And that brings us on to the under-rated 1982 remake of "Cat People" which features this scene of, again in my view, equal beauty and greater mystery, in which Natasja Kinski finds out her origins. The backing this time is Moroder's original take on the song "Cat People".
The train shots cannot but help me of the video for "There Goes The Fear" by The Doves.
Cat People. Not a great film, perhaps not even a very good one. But this scene lives with me always. And Mr Bowie is present somehow in both!
Enjoy.
The most memorable scene, in my view, of many from Quentin Tarantino's superb Inglorious Basterds, backed of course by David Bowie's Cat People.
And that brings us on to the under-rated 1982 remake of "Cat People" which features this scene of, again in my view, equal beauty and greater mystery, in which Natasja Kinski finds out her origins. The backing this time is Moroder's original take on the song "Cat People".
The train shots cannot but help me of the video for "There Goes The Fear" by The Doves.
Cat People. Not a great film, perhaps not even a very good one. But this scene lives with me always. And Mr Bowie is present somehow in both!
Enjoy.
Tuesday 18 September 2012
Doomsday
I bought Doomsday a while back, another "off to Cash Converters" £1.50 spent on a DVD, a DVD sold for god only knows what desperate purpose.
Profiting out of misery. That's what me and Cash Converters do.
Anyway, Doomsday is a film that crops us often enough on Sy Fy and I watch out of the corner of my eye, cut price Angelina Jolie - but more attractive and less haggard - and former Lara Croft Rhona Mitra throwing some eye patched shapes while coping with Bob Hoskins using the same voice he did in thar Paul Hardcastle song that wasn't "19".
"Fink of the maaahney! Imagine what you caaan do wiv it!"
That one.
The film is from the same team that came up with the far superior Dog Soldiers and The Descent, and large chunks of the cast of those two films are lurking about here in minor to middling roles, leaving Mitra, Hoskins, Doctor Bashir from Deep Space 9, concrete voiced professional Scotsman David O'Hara and Malcolm "Mark of Quality Cinema" McDowell upfront. Sean Pertwee also gets to do his trademark dying before half time shtick.
The film is terrible. It is also brilliant. It is a blatant Mad Max rip off, not only of 2, but 3. The acting is bobbins, the script mainly terrible apart from some decent off beat humour and the plot largely an irrelavance compared to the odd, jarring but decently different jolt from chain saw custom buggy mayhem to Excalibur style sword maiming and a lengthy section that seems to exist only for Adrian Lester to show off his martial arts moves.
But to me, the whole sequence in the cannibal emo stadium makes the movie worthwhile; fantastically soundtracked by Adam and the Ants, Fine Young Cannibals (you'll never hear me say that again) and Siouxsie and the Banshees, a mohawked future death punk serves up crispy fried Pertwee to his minions while yelling great stuff about catching, cooking and eating his enemies. Fishnetted pole dancers strut and sway, and a busty lady in a bad tribal facial tattoo does some serious leering.
It ought to be worse than Tina Turner doing her "Welcome to Thunderdome" chain mail bra routine with Angry Anderson not singing the Scott and Charlene wedding song, but it isn't; the sequence works really well. Which makes me wonder, with the brains behind the movie that there were, the film isn't a whole lot better than it is.
Profiting out of misery. That's what me and Cash Converters do.
Anyway, Doomsday is a film that crops us often enough on Sy Fy and I watch out of the corner of my eye, cut price Angelina Jolie - but more attractive and less haggard - and former Lara Croft Rhona Mitra throwing some eye patched shapes while coping with Bob Hoskins using the same voice he did in thar Paul Hardcastle song that wasn't "19".
"Fink of the maaahney! Imagine what you caaan do wiv it!"
That one.
The film is from the same team that came up with the far superior Dog Soldiers and The Descent, and large chunks of the cast of those two films are lurking about here in minor to middling roles, leaving Mitra, Hoskins, Doctor Bashir from Deep Space 9, concrete voiced professional Scotsman David O'Hara and Malcolm "Mark of Quality Cinema" McDowell upfront. Sean Pertwee also gets to do his trademark dying before half time shtick.
The film is terrible. It is also brilliant. It is a blatant Mad Max rip off, not only of 2, but 3. The acting is bobbins, the script mainly terrible apart from some decent off beat humour and the plot largely an irrelavance compared to the odd, jarring but decently different jolt from chain saw custom buggy mayhem to Excalibur style sword maiming and a lengthy section that seems to exist only for Adrian Lester to show off his martial arts moves.
But to me, the whole sequence in the cannibal emo stadium makes the movie worthwhile; fantastically soundtracked by Adam and the Ants, Fine Young Cannibals (you'll never hear me say that again) and Siouxsie and the Banshees, a mohawked future death punk serves up crispy fried Pertwee to his minions while yelling great stuff about catching, cooking and eating his enemies. Fishnetted pole dancers strut and sway, and a busty lady in a bad tribal facial tattoo does some serious leering.
It ought to be worse than Tina Turner doing her "Welcome to Thunderdome" chain mail bra routine with Angry Anderson not singing the Scott and Charlene wedding song, but it isn't; the sequence works really well. Which makes me wonder, with the brains behind the movie that there were, the film isn't a whole lot better than it is.
Saturday 15 September 2012
To Write Like Ballard
More of an influence than Burroughs on me to be honest, although I have nothing in common with either of them, having neither shot my wife in the head nor been brough up in a Japanese Internment Camp. Formative years, a negative blank of non distinguishment, life the same as most others, fishing village to small town, nothing shot up, brains not blown out.
No Nova Mob graced my upbringing.
I like natural diasters, winds gutting the earth to the mantle, rains and humidity drowning the earth and leaving everyone counting back along their cervical vertebrae to a primieval jurassic park, primitive nervous system like the crocodile's bleeding up into a future where sophistication hinders not helps.
It appeals, as does sitting under endless rain under a tarpaulin with only rum and tea for company, grey clouds lowering to face level, and if the idea of fucking a cailipered cripple appeals not, I wish I could have thought of it as he did. Fuckholes lined in jagged metal; he saw it, I didn't. I can't.
Again I dream of having that power in my pen or the tips of my fingers; a dream, but a good dream, no? We'll see how it turns out, hammer the keyboard till you bleed, and let the words come
No Nova Mob graced my upbringing.
I like natural diasters, winds gutting the earth to the mantle, rains and humidity drowning the earth and leaving everyone counting back along their cervical vertebrae to a primieval jurassic park, primitive nervous system like the crocodile's bleeding up into a future where sophistication hinders not helps.
It appeals, as does sitting under endless rain under a tarpaulin with only rum and tea for company, grey clouds lowering to face level, and if the idea of fucking a cailipered cripple appeals not, I wish I could have thought of it as he did. Fuckholes lined in jagged metal; he saw it, I didn't. I can't.
Again I dream of having that power in my pen or the tips of my fingers; a dream, but a good dream, no? We'll see how it turns out, hammer the keyboard till you bleed, and let the words come
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