The Taste of Literature

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...

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.

Soul-less Sci Fi

I hate CGI and shiny surfaces; films sculpted out a block of marbled perfection, road tested by preview audience robots.

This is not the sccience fiction creation I aspire to.

I like rubber and latex suits where you can see the zip up the back, I like models where you can see the dinky drilled holes and the hairdryer parts and cannibalised airfix model kits.

I like planets with stupid names and pinky orange matte painted skies; where the mad scientist holds court amidst the fearsome buzz of Tesla Coils and robots menace damsels with heads made of an anglepoise lamp. I like rubber rocks being thrown, I like the papery thwack of collapsing polystyrene sets.

I like spaceships that look like breasts or phalluses with a November 5th sparkler providing the propulsion; I like craft with pointless wings in the unforgiving vacuum of space that emit sounds that you shouldn't hear in the void.

I like creatures that are tentacled entities of frightening antipathy towards the human race; or the occasional interplanetary policeman telling us to stop fucking about with atomic weapons especially if they have massive foreheads and strange hair.

I like grit. I like dirt. I like being able to see the fucking join. I like mistakes, failure and fun. I like being entertained.

And in modern sci fi, I get dazzled. And more often than not, I get bored.