Recently I made a radio programme for basic fm with the help of Apples and Snakes and Amina Marix Evans. It was much harder than I thought it would be - just the art of putting stuff together in a way that would be of interest to other people. Made me understand a bit more about how a good radio piece is a work of art/technical skills/ having an ear. For some reason I find it easier to edit film that sound recordings - familiarity, maybe, lack of practice. But would love to try it again.
You can hear it here
Several lovely people helped me to make it - Lisa Matthews, Kirsten Luckins and Apples and Snakes, Carmen Thompson, AJ McKenna, and Michael Hann with music.
An extremely nasty bout of flu - the swine variety. I think it was a kind of cosmic revenge for my last posting. There is nothing to be done but suffer - and wipe down your tops, as the lad in the call centre informed me. Don't go near your GP or A and E ward or you'll spread it around. Not that there is any way you can move. And who can help? You can't speak or stand. Experimenting with a new language based approach to poetic exercises, I offer this as an example of one friend's attempt to pull me out of the depths.
new year old dog
and how are we to prove the love of a devious coward as he powers through the snow to attend her flu apply loofah in the shower merciless as a larded lord? penniless, his worth is laughter she, cursing less, admits he fits her like a shoe.
Vertigo last night - a dreamy, surreal movie with surprisingly modern touches, including the swirling vortex used to denote mental collapse in poor old Scottie. James Stewart plays another broken man - this time with a terrible obsession for a woman who never really existed. Although it is a great film in many ways, it's a disturbing one to watch and hard not to cringe (and feel implicated) at the humiliation of both Midge and Judy as they are subjected to an unforgiving male gaze. The Midge type characters in Hitchcock never get their man - but on the other hand, they are unlikely to end up dead. I was thinking about this film when I wrote this poem:
Hitchcock Blonde
Ice cool. A frosted Barbie hard and cold to the touch her hour glass figure infinitely breakable.
Examine her carefully. The painted blue eyes with built in tears (press button A) the immaculate underwear uneasily prised from her brittle carapace.
Shoe her in black lay a tailored suit on a firm foundation restrain the breasts (remove nipples first) contain the ample derriere.
But still she will run shackled for our entertainment hobble to the nearest lake the highest tower fling herself in or off.
Drama queen.
Torture her against a backdrop of nuns an op art chorus line. She will raise a tiny hand gloved in pearl grey. Listen. “Scotty,” she will murmur. “Don’t let me go.”
I made this movie a while ago using my own footage taken in various locations, a piece from Psycho, and some footage from a beautiful film I saw on Youtube - I used a piece of it and can't remember the name of the person who made it! So if anybody recognises let me know so I can credit. The poem is part of a series I wrote using Hitchcock poems as a stimulus - this one is based on a film called Shadow of a Doubt, quite an early film (1943). But of course I've just hijacked it for my own purposes.
